In 1985, a black bear living in the Chattahoochee National Forest in north Georgia stumbled upon – and eventually consumed – million of pounds worth of cocaine that had been dropped from a drug smuggler’s plane.
Now, the bizarre story of the ‘cocaine bear’ is getting the Hollywood movie treatment and being transformed into a horror-comedy directed by actor Elizabeth Banks.
The first trailer for Cocaine Bear landed on 1st December, with many fans stunned by the claim that it’s “inspired by true events”.
The footage shows a drug kingpin (Ray Liotta) order two of his mercenaries to track down and recover the lost cocaine, but the pair’s task takes a disastrous turn when they discover a bear has reached it first.
Elsewhere in the trailer, a worried mother (Keri Russell) searches for her lost daughter (Brooklynn Prince) and her friend (Christian Convery) who stumble across some of the cocaine in the woods. They’re unaware, of course, that a bear has consumed a load of the drug and is on the loose…
Don’t coke the bear. #CocaineBear pic.twitter.com/3FmY8WmAdv
— Cocaine Bear (@cocainebear) November 28, 2022
So, did Cocaine Bear’s gruesome murder spree actually happen in real life?
If you’re wonder what is fact and what is fiction in the upcoming horror-comedy, then read on for everything you need to know about the true story behind Cocaine Bear.
Cocaine Bear true story: How accurate is the film?
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The horror-comedy is indeed loosely based on the true story of a 175-pound black bear who, at some point in December 1985, discovered and consumed millions of pounds’ worth of cocaine in a Georgia forest.
However, while the movie depicts a subsequent murder rampage by the animal, there is no evidence that this actually occurred.
In real life, the bear ingested the cocaine, worth an estimated $15m, and subsequently overdosed, before it was discovered by officials searching for drugs dropped by an airborne smuggler, Andrew Thornton.
According to an Associated Press article from the time, authorities believed the bear had consumed “several million dollars worth of the cocaine”.
“The bear got to it before we could, and he tore the duffel bag open, got him some cocaine and OD’d (overdosed),” Gary Garner of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation explained to the outlet.
“There’s nothing left but bones and a big hide,” he added of the animal.
As for exactly how the cocaine ended up in the forest, it was believed that Thornton, a former lawyer and narcotics police officer, had dumped the packages from his plane months earlier on his return from a cocaine haul in Colombia.
After dropping the packages, Thornton put the plane on autopilot and parachuted out with more cocaine attached to his body.
It was a move that ultimately resulted in his death after his parachute failed to open, and he was found in a driveway in Knoxville, Tennessee.
According to The Washington Post’s obituary at the time, Thornton was wearing night vision goggles and a bulletproof vest, and also had $4,500 in cash on him, two guns, and the keys to the plane that had crashed into the mountains of North Carolina several hours away.
Investigators retraced the flightpath of Thornton’s plane and eventually found nine duffel bags of cocaine.
But, of course, the bear beat them to the 10th.
Three months after Thornton’s death, the dead bear was discovered south of the state line between Tennessee and Georgia in the Chattahoochee National Forest.
The bear’s story doesn’t end there, though. Kentucky For Kentucky retail store in Lexington, Kentucky has a stuffed bear on show, which it claims is the original.
“Its stomach was literally packed to the brim with cocaine. There isn’t a mammal on the planet that could survive that,” the medical examiner who performed the bear’s necropsy told the store.
“Cerebral haemorrhaging, respiratory failure, hyperthermia, renal failure, heart failure, stroke. You name it, that bear had it.”
Cocaine Bear is scheduled to land in cinemas on 24th February 2023.
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