Elizabeth Banks’ “Cocaine Bear” is now playing in theaters, bringing with it an onslaught of detached limbs, blood-soaked bodies and gory mayhem. But that’s not exactly how …
. Banks’ film, scripted by Jimmy Warden, is inspired by the 1985 discovery of a dead bear in Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest.
The true story behind “Cocaine Bear” started in September 1985, when convicted drug smuggler Andrew Thornton died after a parachuting accident. Theis that Thorton was traveling in a plane with 880 pounds of cocaine and thought the Feds were trailing him, so he decided to throw some of the stash out of the plane and take some more with him when he parachuted out. His plan went awry.
Thorton was reported dead on Sept. 11, 1985. He was found in a driveway in Knoxville, Tenn. wearing Gucci loafers and with roughly $15 million worth of cocaine strapped to his body.reported in December 1985 that a 175-pound black bear “died of an overdose of cocaine after discovering a batch of the drug.” The bear was found dead in Chattahoochee National Forest.
“The cocaine was apparently dropped from a plane piloted by Andrew Thornton, a convicted drug smuggler who died Sept. 11 in Knoxville, Tenn., because he was carrying too heavy a load while parachuting,” read the United Press International report in The Times. “The bureau said the bear was found Friday in northern Georgia among 40 opened plastic containers with traces of cocaine.”findings from Dr. Kenneth Alonso, Georgia’s chief medical examiner at the time.
That’s about as far as the story of the Cocaine Bear goes in real life. Unlike the new Universal Pictures-backed horror comedy, there were no other casualties or severed limbs found in the forest that linked back to the bear. As screenwriter Jimmy Warden
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