"A little boy loses his arm to an African lion, 1972 or 1973, Tennessee," he remembers. Shoot to Kill: The Ohio Animal Massacre - Terry Thompson's final day Jack Hanna's lion, at Jack Hanna's animal farm. And it planted the seed of caring for wild animals for the rest of his life. Red, a half-Arabian pinto, was acting skittish and had moved toward the far corner of the field. Deputy Tony Angelo, a sniper on their SWAT team, had a bolt-action rifle, Deputy Ryan Paisley had a nine-millimeter HK MP5 submachine gun, Deputy Jay Lawhorne and Kanavel had assault rifles. Somehow, no one was hurt. The 39th Santa Barbara International Film Festival will resume in Santa Barbara, Calif., continuing to take . Over the days I spend visiting them I become strangely accustomed to the fact that, just around the back of an otherwise perfectly normal home in Ohio suburbia, there can be a tiger or a cougaror, in some cases, many of each. Hanna was a trusted animal advocate, and as he emotively articulated his pain at the deaths that had taken place, his unequivocal insistence that the sheriff's department had no other option than to act as they did served as a powerful antidote to the other obvious narrativethat a thoughtless small-town law-enforcement brigade had murdered dozens of noble beasts because they were too dumb and trigger-happy to think of a better alternative. What, then, about the way that male tigers are usually neutered in sanctuaries, but male lions are not, because when neutered they lose their manes? I'm Terry Gross. Deliberately or not, he seemed to imply that Thompson's body was, aside from the gunshot wound suggesting a barrel placed in the mouth, otherwise fairly untouched. You've had no conversation with her about that at all?No. But for those who'd prefer a Rosebud moment, here's one more story from forty years earlier, from the time when an Ohio youth with beautiful blue eyes found himself forsaken and lost, deep in the kind of darkness and damage that some never completely escape. ". ". She sounded calm when she reported what her son had seen, as though there was really nothing too strange or alarming about a lion and a bear running loose on an October afternoon in Ohio. Your neighbor could buy as many tigers, lions, cougars, and other exotic animals as he so desired and would be under no obligation to tell anyone. It probably made all the difference. Fox Movie,' a documentary about his life. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. He was the type of person, you weren't real sure what he would do. A big digger was brought in and a hole was dug maybe thirty feet deep. (Nearly everything. As they pulled up between the barn and a row of cages, two tigers started out of the barn toward them. Why do you need so many?' "He would sometimes step on other guys' girlfriends. By now the order had come over the radio: Put the animal down. Thompson's sounds like an idyllic small-town-America '60s childhood: bicycles, Boy Scouts, loving parents, sporting triumphs, souped-up cars, girls. Inside the shop, along with the bikes and guns, were the kind of animals he favored in those early days. Or taking them to the McDonald's drive-thru? But of course I've never killed anyone in civilian life.I understand.I don't even kill flies.Terry Thompson and a government informant in conversation at his home, secretly recorded in April 2008. And he said, 'Well, I got through Vietnam' ", When John Moore told the police about a letter accusing Marian Thompson of adultery that Thompson had received on the day before his death, the implication seemed to be that he had received some fresh, devastating news about his marriage. Nearby, they found bolt cutters and a stainless-steel Ruger .357 magnum revolver. Terry Thompson: Songwriter, Storyteller and Actor While animal advocates have agreed that there was little the authorities could do in the matter, the brutal massacre serves as a reminder of why privately owned exotic animals are considered to be ticking bombs. ", "Terry, are you sick?" Ad Choices, 18 Tigers, 17 Lions, 8 Bears, 3 Cougars, 2 Wolves, 1 Baboon, 1 Macaque, and 1 Man Dead in Ohio. The sentences that go round my brain are ones that were said to me by one of the animal owners I spoke to, Nancy Wider. "She was saying, 'Please, Mr. Hanna, don't take my children,'" says Hanna. View all posts . Terry William Thompson grew up just east of Zanesville on his parents' farm, close to the airport.