Owning exotic animals is an odd way to inflate the ego, but it’s a way. The tragic case of Terry Thompson, who owned a virtual zoo in Ohio. And there were no doubt countless opportunities to intervene, before tragedy occurred.
Is alcoholism the best explanation for owning exotic animals, their release into civilization and the suicide of owner Terry Thompson?
Terry Thompson, 62, released 56 wild, exotic animals, including lions, Bengal tigers, leopards, monkeys, bears, mountain lions and at least one wolf from his 73-acre Zanesville, Ohio property before committing suicide. Thompson had previous run-ins with neighbors, who had repeatedly complained about animals escaping, and the local sheriff’s office, which had charged him with animal cruelty and neglect. He had been released from federal prison only a month earlier after serving a year for possessing unregistered firearms (133 of them, including a machine gun and several guns with missing serial numbers). He had recently split up with his wife. He owed at least $68,000 in property and income taxes, and was recently hit with a federal tax lien.
This combination of extreme risk-taking behaviors, defiance of convention, conflict with the law, problems with neighbors, family and finances and ultimate suicide provide compelling evidence that Terry Thompson’s life story is best explained by alcoholism. One of many ways to defy convention in excessive, risk-taking ways is by owning exotic animals, as suggested in the Antic-of-the-Month of issue # 51 of TAR (October 2009). Throughout my work I have shown that the commission of crimes is fueled by addiction at least 80% of the time (compelling evidence for which is provided in Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse). In a talk I give to Enrolled Agents entitled “Alcoholism, Your Clients and Tax Fraud,” I include a list of another speaker’s “10 Greatest Tax Scofflaws of All Time,” which include at least seven alcohol and other-drug addicts. The other speaker, Sharon Kreider, EA, CPA knew nothing about my work when she compiled the list. Since alcohol and other-drug addicts comprise only 10% of the population, if addiction was not connected to tax fraud we would expect to find only one addict among the ten. Based on this anecdotal evidence, the odds of addiction in someone who commits tax fraud could be at least 70% (but it’s probably closer to the 80%+ likelihood of those who commit crimes generally). Extrapolating from this and my own experience as an EA for over 30 years, I’ve found the likelihood of addiction in someone severely behind in tax obligations to be at least 50%—and probably much higher for a person with net assets (likely for someone who owns a 73-acre farm with at least 56 wild animals) or who “should” have net assets. Furthermore, Thompson appears to have been going through a divorce, 40% of which involve at least one addict. And he committed suicide, which I argue in How to Spot Hidden Alcoholics: Using Behaioral Clues to Recognize Addiction in its Early Stages (pp. 108-109 and footnotes) results from one’s own addiction-caused problems at least 70% of the time. Any two of these clues gives roughly 80% odds of alcoholism; combined, they seem almost irrefutable.
One long-time friend of Thompson commented “he just wasn’t thinking right.” No doubt, but confabulated thinking is a manifestation of alcoholism. The same friend also suggested he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. While this might be true, Myth # 64, “’Personality disorders are more common than alcoholism,’ or a variation, ‘He’s no alcoholic—he’s just crazy!’” in Alcoholism Myths and Realities: Removing the Stigma of Society’s Most Destructive Disease establishes that those with mental disorders are usually not crazy—they are usually alcoholics. Another long-time friend of Thompson excused his decision to release the animals and commit suicide, saying he was not a nut, but was driven to act the way he did by crazy neighbors and law enforcers and didn’t have any other way out. We’re sorry for your friend, but non-alcoholics usually figure out a way of dealing with life’s obstacles and challenges in reasonable and civilized ways. Alcoholics, due to damage to the neo-cortex—the “human” part of the brain responsible for reason and logic and for restraining the impulses of the lower brain centers—often take unreasonable actions to resolve conflicts, which Thompson clearly did.
The unfortunate aspect to Thompson’s history and the death of 48 wild animals (shot by local authorities, who were under a mandate to protect nearby residents) is there probably were, as is true for nearly every alcoholic on the planet, dozens if not hundreds of opportunities for close people or the law to intervene before tragedy occurred. Given his felony conviction, the law had both an excuse and a reason to coerce and enforce abstinence, but didn’t. If Thompson had alcoholism, and since abstinence often leads to sobriety, the tragedy of Thompson taking his own life and the death of so many extraordinary animals was completely unnecessary.