00:00:41
Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick and
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with me as always, this guy when he was a kid he thought Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve party was hosted by Dick
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Fart. He is the Captain. You can call me Richard. It's good to be seen and it's good to see you. Happy New
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Thanks everybody for going to truecrimegarage.com and clicking on that donate button and helping out with
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Instagram, all that stuff at True Crime Garage. And thank you so much for making
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2018 a great year for us and we look forward to 2019. All right, Captain, that's enough of the
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business. Everybody gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime.
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Zanesville, Ohio. A little before 5:00 p.m. on October 18th, 2011, Sam Copeck walked to the paddock behind
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his home to attend to the horse he bought 9 days earlier. The horse was acting skittish and moved
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toward the far corner of the field. On the other side of the fence separating them from his neighbor, Terry
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Thompson's property, Copeck noticed Thompson's horses seemed very agitated. They were running in a circle and in the
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center there was some kind of dark shape. Only when the shape broke out of the circle could Copeck see it was a black
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bear. The bear was small and ran away from Copeck. Copeck planned to put his horse in the
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barn and go back inside his home. He walked over to his horse and started guiding the animal to the barn when
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something caught his eye. Just on the other side of the fence and staring right at them was a fully grown
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African lion. Kopechne continued with his horse to the barn, even though the lion could easily
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clear the fence separating them, it just sat there watching him and the horse as
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they hurriedly walked toward the barn. Sam Kopechne and the horse made their way inside and Sam locked the doors
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behind them. Once there, Sam grabbed the phone and called his home where he knew his
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84-year-old mother was sitting watching TV. She picked up the phone and Sam explained what he saw.
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Mrs. Kopechne telephoned the home of Terry Thompson, her neighbor, but no one answered.
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Inside the barn, Sam Kopechne kept a watchful eye on the events just outside. To his astonishment, he spotted a tiger.
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The tiger spotted the horses and quickly went after them. With no one answering the phone at the
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Thompson's house, Mrs. Kopechne called 911. The emergency dispatcher picked up. Mrs. Kopechne said, "Yes, this is
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Delores Kopechne on Kopechne Road. We live next to Terry Thompson and there's a bear and a lion out."
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The dispatcher questioned further, "There's a bear and a lion out?" Mrs. Kopechne replied, "Yeah, right up
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behind us." That would be the call that set the whole town on edge for with that 911
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call, postal delivery was suspended and the Zanesville City Schools were closed and thus began
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the search for lions, tigers, and bears. Deputy John Mary was serving a court summons a couple miles away when the
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call came through about large and dangerous animals in the area of the Thompson and Kopchak properties.
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He responded immediately arriving a short time later. There he could see just inside Thompson's fence a tiger, a
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black bear, and two lions. While he was waiting for Mrs. Kopchak to answer the door, he saw a large gray
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wolf running southward along the road. He ran to his patrol car and followed the wolf.
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After following the animal for a while, the wolf veered from the road and started running toward a house. The
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officer pulled over abruptly, parked the cruiser, and popped the trunk. Keeping his eyes on the wolf, Officer Mary
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retrieved a rifle from the trunk and set out on foot following the animal. Along
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the way he called in each observation and action to police dispatch. Do you understand how big a wolf is,
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right? Well, yeah. I mean, they're It's not like he's tracking a big dog. This is like
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a dog times a hundred. Yeah, it's not not like a coyote like you're picturing in your mind right now.
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Picture that but times it by about three cuz they're giant. So, he's keeping his eye on this animal.
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He's got the rifle now that he got from the trunk of his car. And he's following
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this wolf on foot. And he said he was about 80 yards away when an order came over the radio to put
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the animal down. Officer Mary fired a single shot and dropped his target. After the wolf went
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down, Mary fired a few more times to make sure the animal was dead. He was inspecting the body when a call came
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over the radio. Some officers cornered a lion near Thompson's residence, so he hurried back. Mary drove up the hill and
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stopped near the Thompson's driveway. There he saw a black bear. Officer Mary got out of his cruiser and facing him
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and running straight toward him was the bear. Armed with only his standard issue
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weapon, the officer fired a single shot before the charging bear could reach him.
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Just in a short time, officers saw several lions, at least one tiger, a cougar, a black bear, and a grizzly. The
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officers were ordered to patrol the borders of the Thompson's property. So, he's ordered to take down the wolf,
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but as far as patrolling the property, were they told to also take down anything that they saw at the time?
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Yeah, I believe that anything that they spotted, you know, they wanted them to basically
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form a perimeter around this property. And if any of these animals are trying to leave the property, their orders were
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to shoot to kill. Mhm. Um so, here's the situation, Captain. We have the Thompson's property.
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He was known, Terry Thompson was known to have exotic animals. And so, this wasn't like something that
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was unknown to the sheriff's department or to the local police. They knew about this. The problem here is these animals
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are loose. They believe they're coming from Thompson's property. And when they get to the property, they can see lions,
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cougars, multiple bears. Oh my. And the question here is how many of these animals does he have?
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And how many of them are loose and why are they loose? Right, because this isn't this is a
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private property. This isn't like a zoo where a bunch of locals have gone through and said, "Hey, I've been there
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before. We know that there's 40 animals or 100 animals." Nobody knows how many animals there are.
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At 5:35 p.m., the man in charge, Sheriff Matt Lutz, arrived on the scene. In the 15 minutes that it took him to
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get there, the reports over the radio escalated. The seriousness became very clear. There were several large and
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dangerous animals on the loose. Now, in the immediate area surrounding the Thompson property, there's an apartment
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building, soccer fields, and Interstate 70. No one seemed to know where property
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owner Terry Thompson was or what was really going on. Sergeant Steve Blake decided he should drive up to Thompson's
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house. So, we know that there's animals all over this property and this guy decides,
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"Hey, I'm going to drive up to the house." Mhm. And who cares if there's lions there or
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tigers there? Yeah, they need to locate Terry Thompson and they need to speak with him to
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figure out what's going on. I mean, it takes somebody with some big cojones Yeah.
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to do that. Or or a lot of uh he trusts his vehicle. You know what I mean? Like, he's like
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Who cares about the vehicle? You have to still get out of the car and go to the door.
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Well, as he neared the farm buildings, he saw more animals. Uh their cages had either been cut through or left open.
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Mhm. The officer honked the horn several times, but no one came out of Thompson's
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house. Back near the road, John Moore arrived. Moore worked on the Thompson property for Terry and took care of the
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land and fed Thompson's exotic animals. John Moore went with Officer Blake back up to the Thompson house. Along the way,
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they saw nothing. When they arrived near the home, Moore pointed out some cages. The cages
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contained two monkeys and a dog. Still no sign of Terry Thompson. They turned around, but before they could reach the
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road, they spotted a large white tiger near the barn. Mhm. At the tiger's paws, there was a
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lifeless human body and the tiger appeared to be eating it. Okay, so Eating the body.
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Eating the body. The human body. Mhm. Mhm. So, this is a crazy scene, right? I mean, we've talked about a lot of
00:11:34
strange scenes uh throughout the years on this show. Some would say it's a typical Thursday.
00:11:40
This has got to be one of the craziest scenes that we've ever discussed. And And we've we've often spoke about how
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easy it is for armchair detectives or people watching TV at home to go, "Well, why did the police do this? Or why
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didn't they do that?" And we've always tried to remind everyone that often they don't know what they're walking into
00:12:00
when they arrive on a scene. Sometimes they get a domestic call. Or sometimes they get a call about, you know,
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a strange vehicle somewhere. Mhm. And they arrive and they don't know what's going on.
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Or two drunk guys in a garage doing a podcast. The thing here is they at least get the
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call that there's a a lion and a bear out wandering around. But when they get to the scene, they're spotting all kinds
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of animals now. Mhm. Since the law enforcement could not get in touch with Terry Thompson, and it was
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likely his body they spotted near the barn, they needed to get some intel from Mr. John Moore. So, they did an
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impromptu interview with Moore and Moore's fiance at the foot of Thompson's driveway.
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After some back and forth, they determined that there were 56 animals on the property. I'm unclear, Captain, if
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this includes the two monkeys and the dog found in the cages near the home or if this is from another portion of this
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very large property. Mhm. Meanwhile, the authorities phoned the Columbus Zoo. The Columbus Zoo is is
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pretty well-known. I mean, it's nationally known. Opened up in 1927, the Columbus Zoo is considered to be one of
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maybe even the number one zoo in the United States. It is. I mean, sometimes it goes falls to number two,
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but when I rank all the zoos, it's the best. There you go. The The nonprofit Columbus
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Zoo houses thousands of animals and hundreds of different species from all over the world. The zoo is about 40 mi
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away from the Thompson property. The zoo's chief operating officer was alerted by a staff member who told him,
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"We have to go to Terry Thompson's. The animals are out." Now, the COO didn't know who Thompson was, but others at the
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zoo did. Mhm. Dr. Michael Berry, the zoo's director of animal health, was up at Thompson's
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property to inspect his large private collection of animals in 2008. Berry said he was horrified at what he
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saw there in terms of security, cleanliness, and animal cruelty. It wasn't like this guy had this
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facility that was nice for the animals. These were small cages for big animals. There was I mean, it was dirty.
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Mhm. It looked like they weren't fed properly, but the laws being so I guess you'd say loose in Ohio,
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Mhm. that all they could really do is do these checks on these individuals and then maybe fine them or have a a permit
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violation, but even that wasn't even a big fine. The Columbus Zoo assembled its capture
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and recovery team armed with both tranquilizer dart guns and regular weapons, and they set out for
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Zanesville. Continuing the interview with Moore, he told police he last spoke with Terry
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Thompson the night before at 9:00 p.m. The officers needed to get back on Thompson's property and move to see what
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was really going on. The plan, one officer would drive a pickup truck while four armed officers
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would sit together in the bed of the truck. Mhm. And they were told to neutralize the
00:15:00
animals on the loose if they saw any. They drove back to where the lifeless body was spotted. Two tigers surprised
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the crew charging the bed of the truck. The officers were forced to shoot them. The tigers were put down.
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From where the truck was, the men could see a man's body flat on his back. A white tiger was on top of him. The
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tiger stood up and was staring at the truck. They believed the body was that of a deceased Terry Thompson.
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Mhm. The unit received a call to respond to another portion of the property. When
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they returned, the white tiger was gone. At the spot of the body, they found bolt
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cutters and stainless steel Ruger .357 Magnum revolver. The cause of death seemed to be a
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gunshot to the head. The gunshot wound suggested a barrel placed in the mouth. There was a sizable laceration on
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Thompson's head that was consistent with a big cat's bite. Mhm. The body had laid in one spot for some
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time, and then it was dragged some distance away by his arm. The body had been chewed on. There were
00:16:06
also pieces of raw chicken scattered around the body. Well, that's interesting cuz you wonder
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where this raw chicken is coming from. Was Thompson carrying it? Well, here's the thing. One of the
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experts from the zoo theorized that Thompson probably used the raw chicken to entice the animals to eat the
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chicken, but also eat his body. Mhm. So, let's talk more about the zoo's involvement, right? Because I remember
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hearing this on the radio and thinking, "Cool, they're bringing in the experts from the zoo. They're They're doing the
00:16:37
right thing." Right. But, by the time the Columbus Zoo team arrived, it was dark out.
00:16:42
Well, we already have a bunch of dead animals. Well, they were told that it wasn't safe
00:16:46
for them to try to tranquilize anything because so many animals were circulating
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and others were scattering outward. Well, and and let's break this down because what I heard was first of all,
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when you hit the animal with a tranquilizer, it works best if you hit it in not a fatty area, but a a muscle
00:17:06
area. Mhm. So, in the dark, you wouldn't know did you get a good shot or a bad shot? And
00:17:12
if it hits a muscle, it's going to take 5 to 10 minutes, but now that animal's going to be irritated. And those animals
00:17:19
are around other animals. So, do you irritate that animal and have it attack another animal?
00:17:25
Mhm. Or again, if you have a bad shot, it could take 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or not completely work. So, then you have
00:17:32
the fear of you have four tranquilizer guns, you start shooting these animals and
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they start after 5 10 minutes, they start dropping and and going to sleep, I guess.
00:17:43
Right. But then you could approach them and all of a sudden, boom, they're back up.
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Mhm. So, this this becomes uh a hazard more so because of because of the time of day and not being able to
00:17:56
see where you're shooting the animal at. Yeah, and this was covered this story was covered really well by a lot of our
00:18:03
local media coming from Columbus. But one of the best uh sources for information on this case comes from GQ
00:18:12
magazine. They did a uh big story on this about a year after it took place, around the 1-year
00:18:18
anniversary. Mhm. And according to that article, even when a tranquilizer dose is successfully
00:18:25
administered, it needs about 10 minutes to take effect. And there is great care that is required to establish that it
00:18:32
was done correctly. Right. So, as you were pointing out, and as this article points out, it is
00:18:38
impossible with so many animals running around to to do it this way, to to correctly administer a tranquilizer.
00:18:45
When the zoo people returned to the site the next day, this was 5:30 a.m., and they were joined by Jack Hanna. Now,
00:18:52
Hanna is is famous. He is famous for his appearances on shows like The David Letterman Show, and he established his
00:18:59
career at the Columbus Zoo. The previous day, he was doing an event at Penn State, and although he had just had knee
00:19:06
surgery, he drove straight there. He says 100 miles an hour. Zanesville's right between The wilds and
00:19:13
the Columbus Zoo. Mhm. So, I think that become it makes it more his problem, even though it's not his
00:19:19
problem, if that makes any sense. And Zanesville it it holds a a special significance for Jack Hanna. He went to
00:19:25
school around there. He enlisted in the army there. Mhm. I guess he spent his honeymoon night
00:19:31
there as well. And Hanna was a trusted and still is a trusted animal advocate. And Zanesville only being an hour from
00:19:39
us, I mean, it was a place that my cover band played all the time. I mean, those
00:19:43
people there, they love Garth Brooks and they love Nsync. Mhm. I played there so often, probably
00:19:51
every 6 weeks or so. And so, when this hit the news, it was like it could have been the weekend I was
00:19:56
there. Yeah. And let me just say if I saw a lion, I'd straight [ __ ] my pants. And the really sad thing here is by the
00:20:03
time that the zoo was on the scene the following day at 5:30 a.m. when, you know, when they had sunlight to work,
00:20:10
by this point 49 animals were confirmed dead. There was only one unaccounted for
00:20:16
animal. This was a monkey. Though, no trace would ever be found of it dead or alive. It was eventually decided that it
00:20:23
most likely was eaten by one of the cats. Right. Like once um he was letting all
00:20:28
the animals out, that during that time it was attacked by one of the cats. So, six of Terry Thompson's animals
00:20:36
survived. Three were leopards. They were still in their cages. Two more were monkeys kept in the living room of the
00:20:42
house in two small bird cages. And finally, out back near the empty swimming pool was a small grizzly bear
00:20:49
also in a bird cage. The house itself was disgusting. One person on scene said it was the most
00:20:56
horrific smelling house they'd ever been in. There was garbage and feces all over
00:21:00
the place. Garbage bags filled with garbage that was knocked over and I mean, the place
00:21:07
was just filthy. Yeah, his wife is going to arrive at the scene around lunchtime.
00:21:11
Yeah, Thompson's wife, Marion, uh she gets to the home. Now, she had to be convinced that the survivors, these
00:21:19
animals that survived this whole nightmare situation, they had to convince her that they needed to take
00:21:25
them to the zoo for safekeeping. Right. She was saying, "Please, Mr. Hanna, don't take my children."
00:21:31
Marion insisted on removing the monkeys from their cages herself. Uh she was waving off the zoo's personnel and
00:21:38
getting these monkeys out of the cages. She explained that she spent $30,000 buying them. And it seemed that she did
00:21:45
have a real bond with the animals. Before she opened the cages, she sang to them like a sing a lullaby or something.
00:21:53
Right, so before she opened up the cages that weren't the right sizes for those animals
00:21:59
and the filth that was on her property before all that stuff, she had a real bond with
00:22:05
them. Th- That's what people reported at the scene, yes. Mhm. And they said that the
00:22:10
the filthiest house they ever seen seen. The monkeys clung to her um and she took them one by one out of
00:22:18
the cages. It was decided that the dead animals were to be buried uh there and then on this property. And Mrs. Thompson
00:22:26
chose the spot where they buried the animals. So, the simplest and shortest version of this story is we have a man,
00:22:36
Terry Thompson, who on the second day of these events, they firmly believe, law enforcement firmly
00:22:43
believes, this man took his own life, but before doing so, he opened or cut open several of these cages, letting out
00:22:52
49 animals. Mhm. And these exotic animals, as we said, lions, tigers, bears, cougars, were
00:22:59
roaming this property. Yeah, a lot of people think there was two agendas here. One for him to set
00:23:04
them free, but then like you said before, after he committed suicide that they would eat his body, but then also
00:23:12
maybe that the second reason for this was that he wanted the animals to wreak havoc onto Zanesville.
00:23:20
Yeah, and the thing here is regarding the cages, some of them being open, some of them being cut.
00:23:25
Mhm. I don't know enough about it to speculate what was going on there. You would think he would just open the
00:23:31
cages, but one person on the scene said that they believed the cages were cut so
00:23:36
that he couldn't reverse what he was doing. Right. Like that you know, he's he's setting
00:23:41
this action forward and it's going to go down no matter what once he cuts that first cage.
00:23:46
Well, and a lot of people speculate too that he didn't release the leopards because they would have killed him
00:23:51
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Let me get you to the very latest now in a story that has captured the attention
00:27:39
of the nation coming out of Zanesville, Ohio. That's where a man who had a menagerie of wild, exotic animals on his
00:27:46
property, more than 50 of them apparently, opened their cages to set them free before taking his own life on
00:27:52
Tuesday. A number of those animals, 48 of them, were killed and there is a lot of questions this morning as to why they
00:27:59
were killed, why they could not have been tranquilized, perhaps moved to a zoo. Joining us to help answer some of
00:28:03
those questions this morning is Jack Hanna, director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. He worked tirelessly
00:28:09
with police as they tracked down those animals. Jack, good to have you with us this morning and it is obvious to so
00:28:15
many just in watching you over these last couple of days how hard all of this has been on you as an animal lover.
00:28:22
It's been the worst thing that's ever happened to me in 40 years of this career, 40 years. But you know, I I sat
00:28:26
there yesterday when I got there and in daylight and saw the carnage of the animals and I go, why couldn't we have
00:28:32
tranquilized them? But then when I was with the veterinarians and the sheriff, you only only we had four we had four
00:28:36
tranquilizer guns that got there. Now, once they got there we're 50 miles away on each side. The darkness was about 45
00:28:42
minutes. Picture you I don't know if you see these bears behind me. Those are grizzlies. We had a couple of those
00:28:46
loose along with 18 tigers, 17 lions and lionesses. So, picture about 30, 40 of them coming out of this whole compound
00:28:52
with with with four tranquilizer guns. Now, if if we even shot one of these animals, like a tiger or a bear, this
00:28:58
thing has to hit a certain muscle. They're They're real good shots these folks are. But, we have 30-something
00:29:02
animals coming out coming at the sheriff, right? With our with our people. So, what can be done with four
00:29:07
guns? What you have happen here, once you hit the animal, the animal goes and for 3 to 10 minutes, he's not down. He's
00:29:13
just running everywhere cuz he's nervous, the drug is taking effect. No telling what would have happened if four
00:29:18
tranquilizer guns were all we had there and that started with 34 animals. They're huge carnivores. We would have
00:29:23
had There's no doubt in my mind with the 30-something years of the 40-something years doing this, we'd have some deaths
00:29:27
on our hand. Therefore, he had to make the critical decision. Every time I look at it, I know why people around the
00:29:31
world are contacting me around the England, Australia, all over, are very upset with over this whole thing, the
00:29:35
sheriff doing this. He had no choice. Or we would have major loss of human life in Zanesville, Ohio yesterday during the
00:29:42
night time, especially yesterday morning when the sun came up. So, it's all over
00:29:46
with now. Uh I sat here I sat here last night and cried several times when I look at this these pictures. I don't
00:29:51
believe it's happened, but what had to happen or we would have had a we'd have a mess on our hands beyond
00:29:56
comprehension. Jack, six of the animals were able to be saved. They were transferred to the zoo.
00:30:00
How are they doing this morning? They're doing very well. We have footage, I think, here right now of the
00:30:06
animals footage that was taken earlier is about 4:00 a.m. this morning. They're eating well. They're doing well. And by
00:30:10
the way, the governor, we met all day last night. The governor now is passing laws immediately. There will be no more
00:30:15
animal auctions in the state of Ohio with exotic animals. Within 6 months of that, we're going to go out here to the
00:30:19
people like we saw last night, and those folks better expect a knock on their door. And if they're not up to
00:30:24
standards, which are going to be great standards cuz I might have something to do with setting those standards, those
00:30:28
animals will be taken immediately and taken to the wilds where we're going to spend several hundreds of thousands of
00:30:32
dollars building a repository there for these animals to have a home in a decent
00:30:36
way. You bring up such an interesting point here. Terry Thompson, who had these animals, had a record of animal abuse.
00:30:42
Authorities were called out a number of times, even had convictions on related charges, and yet he kept these animals.
00:30:48
The conditions have been described as deplorable in some cases. If we knew of the situation there, if it was seen
00:30:54
firsthand, how was it allowed to continue? That's just what we've been sitting over
00:30:58
here for the last 3 hours since 5:30 this morning. My wife asked me the same exact question. The sheriff had been up
00:31:03
there 30, 40 times. He went to prison. My own people I didn't know but I didn't know they were out there somewhere.
00:31:08
There's people who have these animals I didn't know it was him. The own people went there and they weren't allowed.
00:31:12
They went to the tobacco and firearms and people went there and they went to rescue him for all the weapons. They
00:31:16
went there, but they weren't allowed to do anything because the law states he's not open to the public. So the United
00:31:20
States government cannot inspect his property to to write him any kind of citations. So what do we have here? We
00:31:25
have a situation that was unbelievable. There wasn't any law that we could do anything to him. Can you imagine this?
00:31:29
all they could do Jack was basically check and make sure he had the permits that he needed to have in the state of
00:31:33
Ohio and that was it. Is it? Can you imagine that? Well, that that whole thing is changing in the next
00:31:38
60 to 90 days and this will this will be one of the toughest states in the country when this gets done to pull
00:31:43
anything like this off ever again. As long as I'm here, I know the governor, Governor Strickland started this whole
00:31:48
thing, Governor Kasich now is going to carry it through in the next few months and we will be out there and this will
00:31:52
not happen again here under my watch in the state of Ohio unless somebody is sneaking this without any of us knowing
00:31:57
inside of a cave or something. There's so many questions about why this happened and how it happened, what his
00:32:02
thinking was before he took his own life. You actually met with his wife yesterday who's dealing with a number of
00:32:07
things at this point. Tell us a little bit if you can Jack about this conversation and any insight she may
00:32:12
have been able to offer you. Well, what happened was I understood she was very upset with me for taking her
00:32:17
children. Remember these these were her children. For me for someone killing her
00:32:20
children and why would I be up there trying to take the remaining three leopards, there's certain little small
00:32:25
primates and I say small apes this big and as well as one grizzly. Why was I taking please don't take she was crying.
00:32:31
She was actually uncontrollable. And you know what I did? When you see somebody that's just beaten to death that's just
00:32:36
done. She's lost her husband, You know, I can't help that. But But her husband committed suicide. But you see someone
00:32:40
that's lost everything. I hugged her and I tried to hold her. She was shaking and
00:32:44
she I've lost everything. Are you taking my children? I said, "I'm not taking your children. I'm taking them to the
00:32:48
Columbus Zoo right now to take care of them. They're still your children. They're your animals. We cannot bring
00:32:52
them back in these conditions. I'm trying to help you right now." And you know something? Tears started coming out
00:32:55
of my eyes. I'm not just telling that for you. I don't want anybody to feel sorry for Jack Hanna. I'm saying that
00:32:59
the emotions that have been with me and our staff that the sheriff deputies When
00:33:02
you saw those deputies sitting there that had to shoot those animals, I wish you could have seen their faces. I wish
00:33:06
you could have seen them when they said they had to go and talk to their children. That's not something that they
00:33:10
wanted to Half of them looked like they had tears in their eyes what they'd done. They They were afraid to somebody
00:33:13
even look at me because here they are shooting animals that Jack Hanna was trying to save. You know, this is
00:33:19
something that that if you try to write a script for this, I couldn't even imagine even Hollywood coming up with
00:33:23
something like this. It The thing is like a such a bad dream for all of us that it's
00:33:28
over now. The animals lost their lives. The only good out of this came that in 90 to 100 days from now, this state will
00:33:34
hopefully never have to face this again. But the woman as you it was was beaten.
00:33:37
She's done. What was I to do but hold her and tell her that you know, this will hopefully never happen again.
00:33:43
That's all I could do. Jack, can't tell you how much we appreciate your time this morning. Thank
00:33:47
you. All right. First beer break of 2019. 19. Yeah, and we heard Jack Hanna talking
00:34:01
there during that clip. The strange thing though here, Captain, is while that was Terry Thompson's body that they
00:34:07
found on his property, Mhm. you know, you and I know there has been some question. And the question here is
00:34:14
did Terry Thompson take his own life or was he murdered? Yeah, well, cuz somebody's sitting there
00:34:20
and they're thinking, "Hey, I'm listening to the True Crime Garage and what are these
00:34:24
wackadoos talking about? Where's the crime?" Mhm. Well, first of all, it's a crime to
00:34:29
release these animals into the public. Mhm. And if they would have got a hold of
00:34:33
somebody this, you know, somebody would have been facing murder charges. But now
00:34:37
you have where you the individual that let these go, did he commit suicide or was it foul play?
00:34:45
And you know what though, as sad as it is that all these animals, these magnificent animals were killed
00:34:51
Yeah. that night, it's almost a miracle that no one was hurt in this whole thing.
00:34:58
And look, we're we're animal lovers here. And so is obviously Jack Hanna. Mhm. But he said it best, the fact that there
00:35:06
were zero human casualties, this is almost a miracle. Mhm. Well, let's take a look at Terry
00:35:14
Thompson. Terry Thompson was 62 years of age at the time of his death. Yeah. Thompson's body was taken from the scene
00:35:21
for an autopsy at the Licking County Coroner's Office. Terry William Thompson was 5 ft 5 in tall and weighed 174 lb.
00:35:31
He was wearing a black t-shirt, blue jeans, and white briefs. He had a cardiovascular disease. The only notable
00:35:38
substance in his blood was Benadryl. There was gray powder residue on his left hand that appeared to be from a gun
00:35:45
being fired. Aside from the gunshot wound, they found a 2 and 1/4 in vertical laceration on the right lower
00:35:53
forehead and along the spine of his nose. There were 21 other injuries or clusters of injuries that they detailed
00:36:02
these simply as on his head and neck area. Right. Others were noted on his torso and legs.
00:36:09
And then there was a 5 and 3/4 in by 4 in gaping laceration involving the pubic region with the
00:36:18
absence of genitalia with exposure of the pubic bones and adjacent soft tissue. Right, but to be clear, we have one
00:36:26
gunshot wound. Correct. So, we believe that is from himself. He's or or we think because we have the gun
00:36:34
residue on the hand. Now, people argued that uh Thompson was a guitar player and
00:36:39
that he played right-handed guitar. And so, the fact that he would have been shooting with his left hand would be
00:36:45
odd. Mhm. I I also make the argument that I know a lot of people that are left-handed that
00:36:50
play guitar in the traditional right-handed way. Mhm. Because your dominant hand on on a
00:36:56
right-handed guitar is your left hand. So, that it to me is no sign of what hand he is.
00:37:02
Right. But, I think, you know, his wife probably could tell us what hand he was.
00:37:06
Well, remember John Moore and remember Moore said that he last spoke with Terry Thompson at 9:00 the previous evening.
00:37:14
Thompson told Moore about a letter he received from an unnamed author saying Terry Thompson's wife, Marion, had been
00:37:21
unfaithful. Now, I don't know if she actually cheated on Terry, but if she did, this is how this went down.
00:37:29
Remember we said Dr. Michael Berry, the director of animal health at the Columbus Zoo, was up at Thompson's
00:37:35
property for an inspection back in 2008. Right. This, I believe, was at the request of
00:37:41
law enforcement. Dr. Berry was accompanying a an ATF raid that eventually led to Terry Thompson going
00:37:48
to prison. Thompson was in prison for a year on gun charges. Even though Dr. Berry did not approve of the animal
00:37:55
situation as far as the law is concerned, there was no action that they could take concerning these
00:38:02
animals. You know, this is for a multitude of reasons. One, the animal laws in Ohio,
00:38:07
as you pointed out, and actually many states at the time were pretty relaxed. Right.
00:38:12
You know, well, very relaxed animal laws. The other reason Thompson didn't receive any punishment for the animal
00:38:19
situation was because under the old setup, you were allowed a certain amount of time to improve the animal situation
00:38:27
and environment before action would be taken against you. So, basically, they saw a problem. They told him, "Hey, you
00:38:34
can't be treating these animals or taking care of them in this way." Right. And instead of there being an immediate
00:38:40
punishment like there would be for other laws being broken, he had time to correct the situation. So, he made
00:38:47
changes or upgrades or whatever to improve these facilities. But regardless, he went to prison for 1 year
00:38:54
for the gun charges. According to this letter, Thompson's wife cheated on him while he was in prison. Thompson was
00:39:00
only out of prison for 3 weeks before he opened these cages, cut some of them open, and
00:39:07
killed himself. Yeah. When Terry Thompson spoke with John Moore at 9:00 p.m. the night before,
00:39:13
Terry was asking John Moore about Maryann having cheated on him while he was in prison. Moore told Thompson he
00:39:20
didn't know whether she did or didn't. And then Terry makes this statement back to him.
00:39:26
Mhm. He said, "Well, I have a plan to find out, and you'll know it when it happens."
00:39:31
Okay, so his plan was to release these animals and then maybe she'd tell him? No, I don't think that I don't think he
00:39:39
thought he would figure it out. I think he had this plan to do something very crazy.
00:39:46
Right. I mean, letting these animals out and then taking his own life. And I think it was just that it's kind
00:39:52
of a a very ominous statement, right? Hey, I I've got a plan. I'm not going to tell
00:39:58
you what it is, but when it happens, you'll know because it it's going to make the news. You're going to hear
00:40:03
about this. Yeah, when you see the lions running down, you know, 70 Right. on the freeway, you're going to know
00:40:10
what it will happen. But this is this is a tricky situation anyways cuz one, it's
00:40:15
like I don't like to take anybody's rights away. So, should somebody have the right to have a tiger? I
00:40:22
To me, it's like, well, if you can afford to house one and you can and you can care for it properly, if you
00:40:28
have enough land, you know, what's the difference between somebody owning one privately and and
00:40:34
somebody having one at the zoo? Mhm. But now, the zoo has funding. Do you have the funding?
00:40:40
In this case, Thompson just doesn't have the funding. Right. And maybe he had the funding at one
00:40:45
time. Mhm. And then maybe this is part of everything slipping away from him. He has this house with some land. He has
00:40:53
all these animals he can't take care of. He has people coming after him saying, cuz one, the more and more animals you
00:41:01
you have, the more and more inspections they're going to do, the more and more they're going to be nitpicky. You need
00:41:05
to fix this, you need to fix that. I don't think I had enough money to take care of these animals. And instead of
00:41:11
being the bigger man and saying, "Hey, how about I I sell these to somebody that can or or donate these to some
00:41:18
zoos, give these animals proper homes." There it was almost like he was stuck, like he was going to try to figure out
00:41:26
this problem. I got I got to make this right. And then he who had these illegal guns, right? That's what he was arrested
00:41:33
on. Correct. So, you have So, just a odd situation where you have these tigers and these lions living on
00:41:40
your property. Now, you have these illegal guns. And look, there's probably a lot of people
00:41:45
in rural areas that have illegal guns. But maybe because they couldn't get him on charges
00:41:53
for the animals, they went after the gun route. Well, the ATF was there for the raid.
00:41:59
And I think what they did was they knew animals were on the property, so they decided to bring someone in from the zoo
00:42:06
with them to accompany them. Right. But what I'm saying is, if they have charged him, if they have given him
00:42:12
him fails and and charged him to fix things and they can't get it where they can
00:42:18
stop him on that level well, we also heard a rumor that he has these guns. And that'd be another way to
00:42:26
get him in trouble. And just basically I mean, we've see this happen with a lot of people. Like, oh, we know this guy's
00:42:32
a drug runner. We can't get him on drug charges, but we can get him on taxes. Mhm. I just wonder if it's the similar
00:42:40
thing. If he was becoming such such a nuisance, if they knew that these living conditions were not fit for the animals,
00:42:48
but we can't do anything but charge him some fees that he's going to pay. That maybe this is an another avenue to
00:42:58
get him to get him to wake up and fix his situation. Well, let's unpack some things before we
00:43:03
move on. So, first it was determined that Terry Thompson took his own life after opening the cages on his property
00:43:10
that day. Now, second, you got to wonder how could a private citizen amass a collection of so many unusual and
00:43:17
potentially dangerous animals in the first place. Well, that is because at the time there were very little laws
00:43:24
preventing that. You know, what laws were in place were as said very light at the time of this tragic event in Ohio
00:43:33
and a few other states, a home and land owner could buy as many tigers, lions, and other exotic animals as he or she
00:43:40
wanted to. You know, as as as many as the heart desires. So, even if you own just like an acre.
00:43:46
Yeah. Wow. Yeah, and and at the time they were technically under no obligation to even
00:43:51
tell anyone that they owned these animals. Oh, that's nice. Now, to breed, exhibit, or commercially
00:43:58
transport animals across state lines, you did need a USDA license for that. Uh Uh, and this required that facilities be
00:44:07
inspected periodically to check that they met some very basic standards. But, other than that, there were no special
00:44:14
checks or controls. Now, the change in these laws, amongst some of of the other details deemed suspicious by some, have
00:44:22
surfaced conspiracy theories regarding the deaths of these magnificent animals and Terry Thompson.
00:44:28
Right. And the agenda of the conspiracy theories, let's just get this out in the
00:44:33
open. Yeah. The what they're stating is that somebody killed him. That authorities killed him. That this
00:44:42
was planned by authorities. And the reason why is because the laws are so loose.
00:44:48
Mhm. That they wanted to tighten up the laws. They wanted to make it harder on individuals to own these animals. And
00:44:56
so, anybody in Ohio or other states, they start trying to point out these like little things
00:45:03
that don't line up, saying they made this happen. They made They're the ones Law enforcement are the ones that made
00:45:11
this uh, scare, this panic. They're the ones that then, you know, massacred these animals. And
00:45:19
and all for for them to be able to pass uh, tighter laws, stricter laws. Yeah. So, the the general thought is
00:45:29
it it's it's the old argument. We've heard it a hundred times. It happens every time there's a school shooting or
00:45:34
mass shooting where people set suggest, "Hey, this was a scripted event that took place because we need stricter gun
00:45:45
laws." Right. And so, here we get these These laws did pass. The I think it's called the
00:45:50
Dangerous Animal Act or something like that. But, these laws did pass and they passed relatively quickly after this
00:45:56
situation. So, then people point to that and say, "Well, this was orchestrated so
00:46:02
that these laws could go on the books. Now, I don't want to get into the finer details of of the law and these
00:46:10
laws. Right. But, one thing I would like to point out to people that make that argument
00:46:17
is technically, at one point, we did have stricter animal laws, but they expired.
00:46:24
Mhm. And for whatever reason, the Ohio state government, once they expired, did not
00:46:28
do a very good job of getting them back on the books. They just kind of sat there.
00:46:34
I've been thinking about this a lot this week, but I started thinking about this, like, you
00:46:38
know, who do you blame here and who do you who do you point the finger? Who Who do
00:46:43
you get angry with? Who do you lock eyes with? Bring them in close. Sniff them. Let them know
00:46:55
you're a piece of [ __ ] Who do you do that here? And at at some point I went, "Well,
00:47:02
it's it's the people passing the laws, too, though, right? Aren't they responsible for this?" But
00:47:07
then I really started thinking as the week went on, you have a lot of other problems to deal
00:47:13
with. Oh, yeah. And you have millions of citizens. You have these you you have a lot of missing
00:47:20
children, missing people. You have murders happening every day. You have all these things that you have to deal
00:47:25
with. How many people in the state of Ohio actually own these types of animals? And out of those many people, how many
00:47:34
own too many of them? Right. And how many of them, you know, cuz like, look, if some guy in Cleveland
00:47:40
owns five lions and he has the the land for it and he has the you know, how many of them are causing
00:47:48
problems? Mhm. And so, I I can't really put a blame on them when that has to be a low
00:47:56
it has to be low on their list of priorities. Mhm. Well, the other thing that people like
00:48:01
to point out, too, Captain, is that many have suggested, how would he have been able to open up all these cages? I mean,
00:48:07
we're It's not one or two cages, it was like 50. So, many people have suggested, "Hey, he
00:48:13
would have been attacked and killed before he could get all those cages open." Now,
00:48:19
we should point out, if you look at pictures of his property, one, these cages were like in groups.
00:48:26
You know, they would have like I mean, picture like a a grocery store where you have aisles.
00:48:31
I am going to be posting a lot of this a lot of these pictures that we're talking
00:48:35
about to our Instagram page. Go to Instagram @truecrimegarage. So, picture this. This is the way this
00:48:42
goes down. I mean, you could You could open up a cage, walk three step steps and open up another one. Walk three
00:48:49
steps, open up another one. I I mean, very quickly he could open up all these cages. The The thing that I have a
00:48:56
problem with with people saying that I I get their argument. I get the argument of saying, "Hey, man, you let
00:49:02
go all these big, huge creatures and they didn't kill you before you got to the last cage." I get it.
00:49:09
Right. But, the thing here is we have a guy that I mean, he he did take care of these animals in some
00:49:17
sense. You know, he he did have some kind of relationship with these animals, one. And then two, I mean, we're we've
00:49:25
all had, you know, dogs or cats or whatever. Have you ever just opened up a cage and
00:49:30
not open the door for the animal and and notice that it it takes the dog, uh, you know, 3 minutes or so to figure
00:49:38
out that, "Hey, I I'm free." You know, um, so I wonder if it's that situation. The other thing, too, is we have people
00:49:46
that had suggested, "Well, they didn't have to kill the animals." Well, well, let's stay on the the cage
00:49:52
for a sec second because a lot of people also claim that there was chains and certain locks on these doors. So,
00:49:59
that would make it harder. The cages are close together, but there's chains and there's locks on all these doors.
00:50:05
There is no evidence of that. Mhm. And you'll hear people talk about this. There was chains on all of them, so it
00:50:12
would have took him so much longer. You have no evidence of that. That's just speculation that you're making.
00:50:17
Right. Right. And the thing too that I think that gets lost along the way when people look for a conspiracy
00:50:24
and and it's fair that people look for a conspiracy, I think, because as you pointed out, when something like this
00:50:30
happens in any of the cases we cover, you want somebody to blame. You want somebody to hold accountable for
00:50:37
something that you did not like or didn't agree with or that was just plain wrong.
00:50:42
Well, right. And that's the thing. And And this is where I people that look into conspiracy theories get a bad rap.
00:50:49
I mean, it's the idea like you take Sandy Hook. You're talking about one of the most horrible tragedies in the world
00:50:56
in the history of the world. But you can watch those videos where in the back of the school building
00:51:03
it's almost like they're going in a circle. Now, I don't know what that means and
00:51:09
I'm not saying that it's that that Sandy Hook was a conspiracy. That's not what I'm saying at all.
00:51:15
That happened, but what I can't make sense of is why are these individuals going in a circle on the back of the
00:51:20
school? I don't understand that. And so, that's not me calling the whole thing a
00:51:24
hoax. That's me saying, "Well, what's up with that?" Yeah. What's up with that? Don't start that.
00:51:31
Um but but same way here. If he if he is left-handed Okay, so he shoots a gun with his left
00:51:39
hand. Well, it seems like the exit wound is coming from the left side of Thompson's
00:51:45
head. Mhm. So, you got to put the gun in and then point it that that doesn't make a lot of
00:51:51
sense. It would make more sense if you fired the gun with your right hand and you put that in your mouth, the exit
00:51:57
wound would be coming out of the left side of your skull. Mhm. So, I I think it's likely and this is this
00:52:04
is tough because we're doing a a a radio show, but you know, I'm going to show you something. I think it's likely that
00:52:11
he did this that he uh that he did one of It was a revolver and from the way that the autopsy
00:52:19
in the mouth right side up. He put it in his mouth upside down. That would be my guess because the way
00:52:25
that the autopsy reads, it sounds like this is horribly graphic, but the the the top back portion of his head was
00:52:33
blown off. And so a crime show, man. I I'm not doing this thing in 2019. I'm not doing the thing
00:52:39
where I'm apologizing if you get offended. Okay. I just said that it was It's a true crime show. There's going to
00:52:46
be some stuff. I didn't apologize. I just said that it was it's graphic. But the thing here is
00:52:54
Okay, who cares what hand he is? There's gunpowder residue on him and it's not like they found it on his foot, you
00:53:01
know? I don't I was I would also argue there's probably some kind of residue on his right hand.
00:53:08
And the thing that gets lost in the shuffle here when people take a look at this, when
00:53:13
they glance at this, you do have to do some digging to find out that he kind of made a threat to his friend the night
00:53:20
before when he said, "Hey, I've got I've got a plan and you'll know it when it happens."
00:53:25
Yep. I mean, that's a threat. And obviously after all this happens, we know what his
00:53:30
plan was. Yeah. And the thing that's I mean, it's it's tragic, but I just don't see a situation
00:53:37
where this guy was murdered. We don't have any eyewitnesses that have anybody else on the property
00:53:43
at the time of him releasing those animals. Right. That we know of. Right. Uh interesting story though, so
00:53:52
I know a guy that was a sheriff here in uh Zanesville. Mhm. And he told me that one time that they
00:53:59
had to go to the Thompson house and talk to him. And there was three sheriff on one side.
00:54:03
I'm I'm probably telling this story a little wrong. Please forgive me. But they're on this island. There was
00:54:10
this island in the kitchen. Mhm. And on one side of the island was Thompson. On the other side of the island was the
00:54:17
three sheriff. Mhm. And then all of a sudden they could hear claws. And they know he has animals.
00:54:24
Right. They know that they know that he has big cats. They know lions, maybe tigers.
00:54:30
They don't know everything, but they know some stuff. Right. So coming down the hallway are these
00:54:34
giant claws click. You know how your dog you can hear your dog. And they said right behind Thompson just walks
00:54:43
a tiger. I can't remember if it was just a regular tiger tiger or or if it was the
00:54:48
white tiger. Right. But they said this just walked right past him. He didn't flinch. He didn't
00:54:53
even look at it. And it just walked into another room. And one of the guys uh you know, drew his gun on it.
00:55:00
Mhm. Cuz he thought Well, yeah, I'm going to need this if this thing decides to pounce on me.
00:55:05
Could you imagine if you're sitting there talking to him and you just start hearing
00:55:11
those claw marks. Mhm. I mean there's some things that are just hard to picture what you would do.
00:55:20
Mhm. And that's one of them. I mean uh wouldn't know what to do. Well, and I'm going to say some
00:55:26
unpopular things here. But I've I do. I do want to put out my feelings or at least my thoughts. Let's not say
00:55:34
feelings. We'll say thoughts on this whole event and how it went down. Look, I I I do not love the outcome of
00:55:43
this situation. I don't love that so many of these wonderful animals were killed.
00:55:48
Um but the the thing here is we have a police department that's responding to a situation and they had to make a call on
00:55:58
the fly of what to do. What is in the public's best interest? How do we protect the other citizens in this area?
00:56:07
And I think they had to make a judgment call on the fly. Again, I don't love the
00:56:11
outcome of everything, but they had to protect the public there. And they had to put these animals down
00:56:18
as sad as it is. And the other thing too about this whole situation, man, for all
00:56:24
these years, this is going to be very unpopular. Okay. That I I apologize. Here's an apology.
00:56:31
our last show of the the year and the last show of our career. So, for years, you know, this happened
00:56:38
over 7 years ago, I've really had a pretty strong hatred for Terry Thompson. And what we talk
00:56:46
about when something terrible happens or something goes down, you want somebody to hold accountable. You want somebody
00:56:53
to hate Look in the eye. for their actions. Look me in the eye. And so, I've for all these years, I've
00:57:01
hated Terry Thompson. If you do want somebody to to hold responsible for this, it's Terry Thompson. It's the guy
00:57:07
that opened up the cages and killed himself. But, the more that I got looking into this situation and the more
00:57:13
I got studying Terry Thompson's life, I'm really just kind of left feeling I I'm not going to lie. I I feel bad for
00:57:20
the man. And And here's why, okay? I don't agree with getting 50 animals, whether they be exotic animals or just
00:57:29
dogs and cats. Right. One person can't take care of that many animals. That's not something I agree
00:57:34
with. But But you can try to love all those dogs. If you got 50 dogs, you can try.
00:57:40
What I saw was a man that made a lot of bad decisions, but he had lots of collections. He collected guns, he
00:57:48
collected cars. He This man served this country in Vietnam, and he saw some terrible stuff. He was He was a gunner
00:57:57
at the door of the helicopters. Yeah. And so I don't want to go into the things that he probably went through
00:58:04
during wartime, but it was very obvious to people that knew him that war changed
00:58:10
him in a bad way. When he came home, there was often times where he would mention things like "Yeah, I'm I'm not
00:58:17
going to heaven. I've I've killed too many people. I You know, during wartime I've had to do some some bad things."
00:58:24
And what I see is more of a hoarder. You know, we see these situations on TV where that you find some person that's
00:58:33
like buried up to their neck in trash in their home because they won't throw anything away.
00:58:38
Yeah. I think we got this guy, Terry Thompson, who decided one day he wanted to start
00:58:43
collecting animals. And I think probably his intentions were good in the beginning. I think
00:58:48
yeah. I think this is a psychological thing. It's you know, like you said with the hoarding or the collecting. It's
00:58:53
almost like something happened in war and he and he has some kind of broken uh part inside him. He's trying to fix
00:59:02
it by these collections, by whether it's gun collections or animal collections. Yeah, and he I mean, this guy he had a
00:59:09
pilot's license at one time in his life. He had a very successful business where
00:59:14
he he was a Harley-Davidson dealership that he owned for many years. So he made a lot of money. And but what he did with
00:59:21
his money was he collected things, guns, cars, animals. And the thing was people
00:59:27
pointed out to say, "Hey, I'd go to Terry Thompson's property. I'd see all these beautiful cars from the '50s and
00:59:33
the '60s just sitting there neglected, falling apart, rusting." Right. And what I think happened here was his
00:59:40
last love might have been the collection of these animals. And I think at some point he just kept
00:59:47
collecting them and collecting them, and he couldn't take care of them. Right. And it
00:59:52
Was it the right thing to do? No, hell no. Terribly wrong. He should have got out a long time ago. But what happened
00:59:58
was when he got arrested on those gun charges and he went away to prison, everything that I could find, it seems
01:00:04
like his his life with his wife, his marriage was falling apart before he went to prison. But when he went to
01:00:11
prison, she didn't visit him very often. They didn't have phone calls very often.
01:00:16
She He went to prison, she treated it almost as if their marriage didn't exist. And I think what happened is
01:00:23
Terry Thompson got out of prison. After being there for a year, he came home and
01:00:28
he felt like he had nothing. He a man that had a lot and and now he had nothing. No children, no all of his
01:00:35
things were neglected the entire time he was gone, and even his wife was not his
01:00:40
anymore. Right. And I think when he had nothing, I think this guy was probably suicidal for some
01:00:46
time. I think he was deeply depressed. And I think that he Well, and a possible I'm just going to
01:00:52
throw out another possibility there, too. I mean, he could have some kind of early onset dementia or
01:01:00
You know what I mean? Like where he's just not completely there in his head. I mean, that it's very possible.
01:01:06
I think the most horrible part of this entire story, though, I think he let the animals out to punish
01:01:12
his wife. Right, I think he was going to kill himself anyway, and I think the the
01:01:18
letting the animals out was a way to punish his wife, because they were or at least spoke of them as if they
01:01:26
were their children. And we've seen this in other cases that we've covered before, in cases that we'll cover in the
01:01:31
future. Sometimes the husband or wife will do something terrible to the children to punish their spouse.
01:01:40
Well, right, but let's start with the idea that you're you're the sum of all your actions, not
01:01:46
the sum of one action. But meaning yes, he served his country. And that's a good thing.
01:01:55
He probably was a good friend to people, good businessman, fine, whatever. But this act
01:02:01
is a piece of [ __ ] Mhm. This act is a piece of [ __ ] These animals did not deserve to live
01:02:07
that way, they did not deserve to die that way. Right. And um and I would have I would have hated to
01:02:15
be one of the sheriffs and having these animals running free. And the fear that you must have. I mean,
01:02:22
we all see these majestic animals when you go to the zoo, but it's from a distance.
01:02:28
Mhm. But if this was in another yard, what would you feel? The fear that you'd have to fear.
01:02:36
And a lot of these cops just it was awful. And and like we said, there's there has been rumors
01:02:44
that the some of these cops have said Mhm. that that this was fun, like hunting,
01:02:50
right? Right. Is it possible that there was out of all the uh police officers involved,
01:02:58
a lot of them, which Jack Hanna said, a lot of them were crying Mhm. afterwards, a lot of them felt awful, a
01:03:04
lot of them said, "I have to go back and tell my son or my daughter, I killed a lion. I killed a tiger."
01:03:12
Mhm. Now, did one of those guys go to the bar, get drunk, and instead of telling
01:03:18
the truth, decide that he's going to make some stupid joke about it? Possibly. But I I really do think
01:03:26
that this was a a very unfortunate situation, and the cops did what they had to do.
01:03:34
Everybody involved as far as Jack Hanna and them, they had to just deal with those consequences.
01:03:40
Mhm. Because those decisions, when you first hear about it, it almost sounds like the
01:03:44
zoo was telling the law enforcement what to do. But that's not what happened. They had to take it They had to make
01:03:50
actions happen before they can get the advice of law enforcement. Mhm. Now, as far as the conspiracy theories
01:03:58
stuff goes, there are some people that own animals that claim that they reached out to law enforcement when
01:04:04
they heard about this saying that they could help. Again, I don't fault the I can't fault
01:04:10
the sheriff because you you're running out of time. You're running out of daylight. And I just don't see the
01:04:16
conspiracy. I think there's enough evidence that the Thompson had a lot of demons
01:04:22
from his past, stuff going on mentally, stuff going on in that present time with
01:04:27
his wife. Um and just such a tragic thing. Yeah, and I think it regarding law enforcement, we should
01:04:36
keep in mind they are the ones that called the zoo. They are the ones that called in the experts from the zoo.
01:04:42
have to call anybody. Right. They tried to get them involved. The zoo did get involved. The but they
01:04:46
were the ones that put that action into place. And I think I'll leave it here for today with a statement from one of
01:04:53
the officers on the scene that day. He said, "I was sick shooting these animals because they didn't ask to be there."
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simplisafe.com/garage. Real quick, Captain, before we wrap up here today, I want to mention that I got
01:05:52
a very nice email from a woman named Gina who was suggesting that we cover the Jodi Arias case. Well, we actually
01:05:59
covered that way back in season 2. So, if you want to hear all of our old episodes for free, you can do that by
01:06:06
getting the free Stitcher app. We have all of our previous seasons and years, whatever you want to call them, on
01:06:12
there. Plus, you'll want to check out our premium show Off the Record on Stitcher Premium. I'm still receiving
01:06:19
emails from people regarding our Jodi Who's in True Update that we did months back. So, it's a hit show. Check it out.
01:06:27
It's on Stitcher Premium. It's a hit. All right, I got some recommended viewing for you if you
01:06:34
haven't heard. We have a famous person in the garage now. We know him as the Colonel. The rest of
01:06:41
the world knows him now as Nick from True Crime Garage. And uh you were on the Lake Erie's Murders.
01:06:49
Lake Erie Murders, yep. Lake Erie Murders, which uh premiered last night on the ID channel.
01:06:56
Yes. And so, you want to check it out. It's a three-part you're you're part of the
01:07:00
three-part series about about the Amy Mihaljevic case. Yes. So, if you haven't checked that out,
01:07:07
I don't know when it's playing. I don't know when it's playing again, but you know those those channels typically
01:07:11
re-air things and I'm sure you could see some of that at their website as well. Well, now that you're a celebrity, your
01:07:18
pay does not increase here in the garage, my friend. And you know, maybe next time that you're uh
01:07:24
you're on TV, maybe you could ask me to join you. Well, I would have liked for you to be
01:07:30
on, but they were afraid of your foul mouth. Oh. Well, until next week. All right, everybody be good, be kind,
01:07:38
and don't litter.