On September 11, 1985 an elderly Kentucky man named Fred Myers arose early only to locate a dead man lying outside his garage. On the off chance that this wasn't sufficiently odd, the perished individual was wearing an bullet proof vest, Gucci loafers, night vision goggles, an extensive travel bag, and a parachute. At the point when the police arrived and researched further, they discovered he likewise was in possession of two handguns, two or three blades, $4,500 in real money, ropes, and sustenance (dehydrated food).
So what was in the travel bag? $15 million worth of cocaine… !!
The police at that point gathered the man had jumped from a plane and had passed away because of his parachute failing to deploy. (It was likewise later noted by companions of the man being referred to that he had an affinity to push the envelope on how late he could open his parachute; so it's additionally conceivable that in the obscurity, he just held up too long to pull the cord.)
The man was later recognized as Andrew C. Thornton II-an offspring of silver-spoon life turned paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division, turned opiates officer, and later legal advisor and lawyer, before by once more changing vocations and running a drug syndicate with a boss, one of the leaders of a drug smuggling ring in Kentucky known as "The Company".
In any case, we're not here to discuss Thornton's uncommonly bright life. The subject of today is an improbable casualty of Thornton's last voyage - a substantial wild black bear now lovingly referred to conversationally as Pablo EskoBear or just, Cocaine Bear.
Around three months after Thornton's end, Cocaine Bear was found dead in the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia in a similar area where Thornton's plane (a Cessna 404 which he'd put on autopilot and jumped out of) had slammed into the ground. The 175lb wild bear was discovered encompassed by 40 discharge packets that had been torn open, all of which contained hints of cocaine.
Drawing an obvious conclusion, specialists contemplated that the bundles had likely initially been loaded with cocaine before the bear got to them. They additionally inferred that Thornton more likely than not chose to drop the bundles from the plane attributable to as of now being vigorously stacked with almost 80 pounds of cocaine he'd been conveying when he leapt from the plane. Apparently, he expected to go and recover the bundles once securely on the ground. In any case, even had he survived the jump, he would have discovered that Pablo EskoBear had eaten the substance of each of the 40 compartments…
To affirm this is the thing that happened to the CocaineBear, its body was sent to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation where its stomach was inspected via autopsy. The state analyst who performed the analysis would later note of his discoveries: Its stomach was literally packed to the brim with cocaine. There isn’t a mammal on the planet that could survive that. Cerebral hemorrhaging, respiratory failure, hyperthermia, renal failure, heart failure, stroke. You name it, that bear had it.
News of the bear's uncommon destiny was accounted for upon by papers the nation over and it rapidly moved toward becoming cherished as a feature of the legend encompassing Thornton in Kentucky. Cocaine Bear himself was energetically nicknamed by the media "Pablo EskoBear", after famous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar who, at his cartel's pinnacle, is evaluated to have provided upwards of 80% of the cocaine snuck into the United States, doing a lively business of about $26 billion (about $48 billion when balanced for inflation) every year.
This may have been the last anybody would have heard about Cocaine Bear on the off chance that it were not for an organization known as Kentucky for Kentucky, who, in 2015, chose the bear as a piece of the state's valued history and tried to find what had happened to his body. What they found was that, subsequent to overdosing on enough cocaine to execute an elephant, Pablo EskoBear went on a remarkable journey.
They found that the previously mentioned statel analyst for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation passed the body on to an anonymous companion of his who was a taxidermist as a hobbyist. This friend had the bear stuffed and afterward gave it away to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, who put it in plain view in their visitor centre as a display piece.
Disastrously, a woodland fire in the mid 1990s incited staff to move Cocaine Bear to a storeroom in Dalton for his own security. Nonetheless, after just a month away, he was bear-napped by an obscure thief who sold him to a pawn shop. The pawn shop proprietor at that point sold the bear to national performer and musician Waylon Jennings, who thus offered it to a companion of his who lived in Las Vegas, a one Ron Thompson-a man who was known for helping the well off have a "decent time" while in Sin City. Thompson, who ironically is supposed to have been a partner of Andrew Thornton amid his drug running days, at that point put the bear in the middle of his mammoth mansion until the point he passed away in 2009..
Indeed, even in death, Cocaine Bear knew how to party, spending about 10 years living in a vulgarly substantial Vegas chateau claimed by a man who brought home the bacon fulfilling the indecencies of the rich and acclaimed who came to town, since that is exactly how Cocaine Bear rolled.
Cocaine Bear's story doesn't end here however. After Thompson kicked the bucket, he, alongside a large portion of Thompson's different belongings, went available to be purchased via auction.
So who was the highest bidder for Cocaine Bear?
As per the notes from the auctioneers, an elderly Chinese man acquired him for the entirety of $200. This man, Zhu T'ang, at that point put the bear on display in his customary traditional Chinese medicine shop after his significant other hinted she wasn't an enthusiast of his most recent buy. To cite her, "I wouldn't have it. It frightened me. I told him to take it to the store."
As indicated by T'ang's better half, her significant other was continually purchasing arbitrary stuff she didn't care for, however he had a specific affection for the bear. On that note, after T'ang passed away in 2012, regardless of auctioning off his business, she kept the bear for reasons not openly known.
In any case, after delegates of Kentucky for Kentucky figured out how to track the bear down and educated her of its storied history and place among the pantheon of Kentucky people saints, Mrs T'ang revealed to them they could have the creature for the cost of delivery, as she by then basically needed it out of her home. They acknowledged, putting a conclusion to Cocaine Bear's journey.
Today, Cocaine Bear is the central attraction in Kentucky for Kentucky's Fun Mall and can be discovered wearing a trucker hat and a little sign around his neck highlighting a concise recap of his story, and in addition a stark cautioning:
don't take drugs or you'll wind up dead (and possibly stuffed) like poor Cocaine Bear.