In case you haven't heard of it, Cocaine Bear is a new dark comedy about a bear that accidentally eats a bunch of cocaine, then goes on a rampage through a national park forest. 🙃 Think of it as Final Destination meets The Cabin in the Woods...with a 500-pound bear thrown in there, LOL.
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Directed by Elizabeth Banks, the story is actually inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner's plane crash, missing cocaine, and the black bear that ate it. And here are the real-life facts:
1.So there really was a "cocaine bear," a black bear that ate a bunch of cocaine in the woods back in 1985.
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2.And it was eventually given the nickname "Pablo Escobear" (or "Eskobear," as it's sometimes spelled), named after the notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
8.According to Gary Garner, an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation at the time, "The bear got to it before we could, and he tore the duffel bag open, got him some cocaine, and OD’d."
10.After an autopsy, it was revealed that although the bear had "a stomach full of cocaine," just 4 grams of cocaine was actually found in its blood.
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11.But that was enough to cause all kinds of deadly problems, like "cerebral hemorrhage, respiratory failure, heart failure, stroke, hyperthermia, and renal failure, among other symptoms."
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12.The bear's body was eventually stuffed, and it is actually on display in Lexington, Kentucky, now.
14.The drug smuggler in the film was really named Andrew C. Thornton II, and according to the filmmakers, he was "an Army paratrooper turned racehorse trainer turned narcotics cop turned DEA agent turned lawyer turned cocaine smuggler."
15.Although Thornton is portrayed as acting alone in the film, in real life, he had been accompanied by a man named Bill Leonard, a former karate instructor.
19.According to Leonard, they believed that "somewhere over Florida," they heard federal agents talk about following their plane over the radio. So Leonard began dumping bags of cocaine out of the plane.
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20.After a bit of a fight over this, the men eventually decided to abandon the plane. Leonard jumped out first.
22.Leonard apparently landed near an airport in Knoxville, Tennessee, walked to a grocery store, called a cab, and went on to meet Thornton's girlfriend at a hotel in downtown Knoxville (as they had planned).
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23.Thornton, however, was found dead in the backyard of a home in Knoxville wearing a parachute, Gucci loafers, and combat fatigues, and with several weapons and a bag of cocaine.
24.Finally, by that afternoon, on Sept. 11, 1985, narcotics agents and police, along with officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Customs, and the Federal Aviation Administration, had come to the site, and Thornton's body was easily identified, thanks to several forms of identification and a key to the airplane that he'd been carrying.
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