EscoBear: The ‘Cocaine Bear’ true story about the bear who died of an overdose

While it may seem fanciful, in 1985 a bear was found dead in the forests of Georgia, USA, by members of the police. Further investigations found that the animal’s strange death had been a very unusual one, a cocaine overdose. Subsequently, the local media began to call him “EscoBear”, and the case was so famous that a film called “Cocaine Bear” will now be shot.

Now that it has started to go viral on social networks’Cocaine bear’, Ray Liotta’s latest film, few know the real story behind “EscoBear”. Dubbed by Georgia residents as Pablo Escobear, after the Colombian drug trafficker, this bear consumed 30 kilos of cocaine, though some reports say it was just over 20. And you’ll wonder how he got it, because even more impressive it is knowing that it fell from the sky.

Indeed, EscoBear found a bag of cocaine which had been dropped by Andrew C. Thornton III, a former officer and convicted trafficker who was carrying large quantities of drugs in his plane. In 1985, when Andrew tried to move, he had to throw a bag of its contents, as he believed the plane would not support so much weight, finding the animal’s nose.

The bear was found dead next to a canvas bag containing cocaine after he died of an overdose. It wasn’t until September 11 of that year that an old man named Fred Myers found the body of a man in the doorway of his Kentucky home. It was the same Andrew, who had died after his parachute failed to deploy when he jumped from the plane.

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EscoBear, the bear that became a Kentucky legend

The story of EscoBear not only caught the attention of Elizabeth Banks to bring it to cinema with ‘Cocaine bear’ but that the great black bear had become a Kentucky legend. Three months after Thornton’s death, the animal was found in Chattahooche Wood, the same where the smuggler’s plane had crashed, and was surrounded by 40 empty packages which police deduced were cocaine.

The bear’s body was sent to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, where it was analyzed for death reasons. The coroner found that they had produced staggering amounts of cocaine in his stomach, causing brain hemorrhage, respiratory failure, hyperthermia, kidney failure, heart failure, and stroke, all at the same time.

The myth of the EscoBear started a legend in Kentucky that also surrounded Thornton, known as “The Bluegrass Conspiracy”, and which has been talked about a lot over the years. For all this, Elizabeth Banks has decided to make a film, and this is how ‘Cocaine Bear’ will be released next February 2023 in cinemas.