'Cocaine Bear' is here to strike a blow to staid Hollywood
Entertainment
Police found a sad scene.
NEW YORK (AP) — On Dec. 22, 1985, The Associated Press reported the following from Blue Ridge, Georgia:
“Investigators searching for cocaine dropped by an airborne smuggler have found a ripped-up shipment of the sweet-smelling powder and the remains of a bear that apparently died of a multimillion-dollar high.”
Police found a sad scene. A 175-lb. black bear dead near a duffle bag and some $2 million worth of cocaine that had been opened and scattered over a hillside. The parachutist, a former Kentucky narcotics investigator, had fallen to his death in a backyard in Knoxville, Tennessee. His unmanned airplane crashed into a North Carolina mountain. Back in Georgia, the bear, examiners said, had overdosed.
The story is in many ways too much. Too absurd. Too ’80s. Even the screenwriters of the “Fast & Furious” movies would think it far-fetched. The stranger-than-fiction tale quickly receded from the headlines and, before some began to stoke the myth of “Pablo Escobear,” it mostly stayed buried in news media archives.
