Just how “true” is the story that Cocaine Bear is based on?

“Pass” was my first reaction when the Gofobo email arrived in my inbox with the headline, “Watch the new trailer for Cocaine Bear.”

That sounded like a complete shitshow of a premise for a movie if I ever heard one. Seriously? Horror comedy is tricky, but have we devolved so far that we have to go to the utterly ridiculous?

I hit delete and moved on with my day. But I couldn’t get away from mentions of the movie. Not long after, as I scrolled through Instagram, ID had info about it I couldn’t ignore. Specifically, their post, “5 Things to Know About Drug Officer Andrew Thornton And The Real Story Of The ‘Cocaine Bear.'”

Wait. What? There really was such a thing as a cocaine bear?

I’m a sucker for “inspired by real events” storylines, so I broke down, watched the trailer and was instantly humbled. Once again, I’d let my critical Virgo nature get the better of me. The takeaway? Don’t judge a movie by its title. This one looks like it has the potential to be crazy fun.

Let’s take a look at what it’s about, as well as check out some headlines from the story that inspired it.

Cocaine Bear Synopsis

This comes directly from the movie’s website:

Inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner’s plane crash, missing cocaine, and the black bear that ate it, this wild dark comedy finds an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500- pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of cocaine and gone on a coke-fueled rampage for more blow…and blood.

Cocaine Bear Cast & Crew

It’s directed by Elizabeth Banks and boasts an impressive lineup, including the late Ray Liotta (The Many Saints of Newark). Appearing with him are Keri Russell (The Americans), O’Shea Jackson, Jr. (Straight Outta Compton), Christian Convery-Jennings (Sweet Tooth), Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family), Brooklynn Prince (The Florida Project), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (BlacKkKlansman), Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones), Hannah Hoekstra (2019’s Charlie’s Angels),  Aaron Holliday (Sharp Objects), and Emmy winner Margo Martindale (The Americans).

Cocaine Bear Fact vs. Fiction

Facts

In 1985, Andrew Thornton and his bodyguard were on a mission to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. from Columbia. Fearing the FBI was hot on their trail, they threw some of the cocaine overboard. The bodyguard jumped with some of the duffle bags. He survived. Andrew Thornton also jumped with some, but his parachute failed. Soon after, his crumpled body was found on a gravel driveway of a suburban home in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Fiction

A bear really did find one of the duffle bags filled with cocaine and ate some of it. It didn’t spark a coke-fueled killing spree, though. Instead, the coke killed it.

Headlines

It all started with a body found on a driveway

It didn’t take long for authorities to identify Andrew Thornton as the “armed body laden with drugs” who parachuted to his death, ending up on a Knoxville resident’s driveway. Or to point out Thornton was a former narcotics agent —before he decided that joining the bad guys was more profitable.

Linking the dead ‘chutist with a crashed plane

It also didn’t take long for authorities to match the pilotless plane that crashed in North Carolina with the dead parachutist in Knoxville.

Another crazy headline that broke was the fact Thornton had put the plane on auto-pilot before he jumped. Which just seems both so rude and reckless. What if it’d ended up killing others when it crashed? Thankfully that wasn’t the case, though.

What the cocaine really did to the bear

In real life, the poor black bear that stumbled across the 75 pounds of cocaine Thornton threw from the plane died of acute cocaine intoxication. There was no coked-up killer rampage. That’s Hollywood taking a real-life case that was crazy enough and running with it to make it even crazier.

But the bear’s body did spark another mystery. The coroner concluded the bear had about three to four grams of cocaine in its system. It could’ve eaten more, but that alone was enough to kill it.

The trouble was the duffle bag. There was a lack of cocaine residue. Empty bags had been found that did not account for what the bear ate. That led authorities to believe some of the cocaine had been pilfered after the bear’s death and placed in other containers.

Bags of cocaine turned up in several places

This article talks about how scattered the bags of cocaine were that Thornton had thrown from the plane. Months after his death and plane crash, authorities found three more duffel bags full of cocaine in a wooded area of Butts County, Georgia. They weighed about 250 pounds and were estimated to be worth $25 to $40 million.

The article also elaborated that, at the time, authorities had found 670 pounds of cocaine from the botched smuggling attempt. Eight duffel bags of it were found in the Chattahoochee National Forest, and three more bags had been found hanging from a tree by a hunter. It also mentioned how “one of those bags was blamed for the drug overdose death of a bear in North Georgia…”

Where You Can See the Cocaine Bear

Amazingly, the cocaine bear’s body wasn’t disposed of like you might think it would’ve been. In fact, the bear’s afterlife has as wild a story as his death, not to mention a cross-country one!

According to Knox News, the cocaine bear was taxidermied. At one point, it was on display at the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area in Georgia, which is among the areas where some of the duffel bags filled with cocaine Thornton threw from the plane landed.

Then it was stolen. Later it turned up in Las Vegas. Apparently, Waylon Jennings had a collection of preserved animals he kept out there, and it was a part of that. But then it found its way to Reno, where it was among the decorations in a traditional Chinese medicine shop.

Now it’s on display at the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall in Lexington, KY. Which, judging from the 2016 commercial for the store, seems like a perfectly fitting place for such a storied bear to wind up. (The commercial is embedded below for viewing pleasure. The cocaine bear even makes a cameo.)

I have a sneaking suspicion the Kentucky Fun Mall will attract a ton of new visitors after Cocaine Bear premieres on Feb. 24, 2023. It still proudly displays the bear and even sells cocaine bear merchandise.

Kentucky Fun Mall Commercial Featuring Cocaine Bear

Cocaine Bear Trailer

For More Info

Visit https://www.cocainebear.movie.

Check-In

Did you know about the story that inspired Cocaine Bear, or is the movie the first you’re learning of it too?