Letter to Mike Webber re Terry Thompson

Still looking for Terry Thompson notes but found cub age / size chart Jamie did that may be helpful.

 

https://bigcatrescue.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Tigers2-12weeks_Blackbox.jpg

 

What I remember from the call was that it was approaching dusk here and I was walking across the field out by the Party House when a call came in as UNKNOWN.  The man on the other end was screaming, "I hate you but I hate them more!"

 

I get a lot of rabid calls from crazy cat people so I rarely take note of their ramblings unless they will give me something concrete that I can use.  He was screaming, and just about every other word was foul and abusive cursing, but he was saying that everything I had suspected about how these cubs are bred, trucked across country with no permits or record keeping, used as pay to play props and then how they would just disappear was all true.

 

He said he knew it was true because he had been the one trucking them around the country between doc Antle, Joe Exotic, Kathy Stearns, Mario Tabraue, Gregg Woody, (another name that I recognized at the time but have forgotten now that he's long gone out of business) and a whole bunch of names that I either didn't know, or couldn't remember because he was firing them off so fast in between curses.

 

He said that he trucked baby tigers and other baby wild animals from coast to coast for all of the big guys on a regular basis because they were all a network of cub pimps who kept each other stocked so that they all always had cubs to offer.  He said many of them died in transit and that the conditions on both ends were often horrific.

 

He said cubs that outgrew the pay to play stage were often sold or given away to anyone who would take them but that a lot of them just disappeared.  He said they often died or were killed.  He said all of the players knew that there was no enforcement of the laws and they all knew how to circumvent the authorities.

 

This was at a time when it was still legal to be moving cubs of any age across state lines, as long as there was a USDA license at each end of the transfer to act as the middle man for anyone who wasn't.

 

I remember asking him to put it in writing because I wasn't where I could write it down.  He just kept screaming that he was sick of these people and that he wanted me to shut them down.  I told him (because I tell everyone) that I can't do anything based on what he tells me; I have to have it in writing, with names, dates, particulars that I can go on to make a case.

 

He said I could quote him because he didn't care what any of them thought now, but I remember telling him that wasn't enough.  I couldn't just say, "this guy told me..." and have it do any good.  He may have felt his name would make a difference, but I don't remember him telling me his name, and even if he had, I probably wouldn't have known who he was, since he would not have been on my radar given the fact he'd been in jail.

 

I could hardly understand him because he was so angry and was going on a mile a minute.  I figured he'd email me if he was serious.  I didn't think much of it.  Even the next day, when I awoke to the news of the Zanesville Massacre, I didn't immediately connect the two events, because it was weeks, if not months, before the story was fully known.

 

Once I had a better understanding of what had happened in Zanesville, it left me wondering if that call had been from Terry Thompson.  I remember trying to go back through my cell phone's past calls to see if I could tell if the call was from OH but I couldn't as no information appeared on a lot of calls marked UNKNOWN CALLER.

 

I didn't have much reason to try and document the call at the time because all I had was hearsay and if the police had found my number on Terry's phone, I figured they would call me.  I didn't know we'd be doing a movie about it 6 years later where it would have been pertinent for me to ask if Jack Hanna was one of h