“Cocaine Bear” Drug Smuggler

The Wild True Story behind the “Cocaine Bear” Drug Smuggler

Cocaine Bear plays fast and loose with a lot of facts, but the story of drug smuggler’s ill-fated plane trip is all too real.

The Cocaine Bear, also known as Pablo Eskobear (sometimes spelled Escobear), was a 175-pound (79-kilogram) American black bear that overdosed on cocaine in 1985. The cocaine had been dropped by drug smugglers in the wilderness in Tennessee, United States.

The bear was found dead in northern Georgia and was stuffed and displayed at a mall in Kentucky. It inspired the 2023 comedy horror film Cocaine Bear.

On September 11, 1985, former Lexington, Kentucky, police department narcotics officer turned drug smuggler, Andrew C. Thornton II was trafficking cocaine from Colombia into the United States. After dropping off a shipment in Blairsville, Georgia, Thornton and an accomplice departed in a self-piloted Cessna 404 Titan. En route, the duo dropped a load of 40 plastic containers of cocaine into the wilderness before abandoning the plane above Knoxville, Tennessee. Thornton was killed instantly when his parachute failed to open. According to the FBI, Thornton dumped his cargo because the load of two men, in addition to the cocaine, was too heavy for the plane to carry.

On December 23, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation reported finding a dead black bear that had eaten a large amount of the cocaine from the jettisoned containers. The containers had held about 75 pounds (34 kilograms) of cocaine, valued at $2 million, and by the time the scene was studied by government authorities, all of the containers had been ripped open, with their contents scattered. The chief medical examiner from the Georgia State Crime Lab, Dr. Kenneth Alonso stated that its stomach was “literally packed to the brim with cocaine,” although he estimated the bear had absorbed only 3 to 4 grams into its bloodstream at the time of its death.

Dr. Alonso did not want to waste the body of the bear, so he had it taxidermied and gave it to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. The Bear, however, disappeared until it emerged again in a pawn shop. Eventually, it made its way to the “Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall” in Lexington, Kentucky, where it remains to this day.

On March 9, 2021, Universal Pictures announced that a film, Cocaine Bear, was in development. It was also confirmed that the film would be directed by Elizabeth Banks. However, the film takes some liberties, as the real events which occurred between the bear’s ingestion of cocaine and its death are not known; notably, the bear did not kill any people, unlike the bear portrayed in the film. The film was released on February 24, 2023.