Tragic story of 'grizzly man' and girlfriend gruesomely eaten alive by bear while filming entire ordeal
Topics: Animals, Alaska, US News, Documentaries
Britt Jones
Featured Image Credit: Lionsgate
Topics: Animals, Alaska, US News, Documentaries
The man known as the 'Grizzly Man' and his girlfriend were eaten alive by a bear when out camping in Alaska.
A documentary maker and lover of bears, Timothy Treadwell, was given the nickname 'The Grizzly Man' due to his love for the animals and the way that he would live among them.
He would often fly out to Alaska every summer and did so for 13 years.
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But one year's camping trip led to tragedy.
Treadwell would talk to, play with and even touch the bears when he visited.
He even believed he was one of them and that the giant predators were misunderstood.
Apparently, Treadwell had been repeatedly warned by friends and family of the dangers of the animals, but still decided to camp with them every year.
In October 2003, just hours before the couple were meant to fly back home for winter, Treadwell was mauled to death by a bear in front of his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard before it turned its sights on her too.
The couple’s air taxi pilot, Willy Fulton knew immediately what had happened when he landed at Katmai National Park due to the couple not being there to greet him.
On a typical day, he would find the couple waiting on the shore to be picked up, but on this morning, there was an eerie silence and the 'meanest looking bear' standing on top of a pile of human remains.
The couple's tent was also destroyed and found collapsed and torn alongside their evening snack that was still unopened.
A morbid detail that would confirm what had happened was when a ranger spotted fingers and an arm in a 3ft-high mound of grass, mud and twigs, alongside some other remains.
They also found what was left of Timothy's head, which was connected to a small piece of his spine.
The worst part was an accidental clip the couple had shot during the ordeal.
On a usual day, the pair would film their interactions with bears, and this bear was no exception.
Except they did forget to remove the lens in their panic which provided a six-minute-long audio of the couple being murdered.
A 2005 documentary about the attack was made by Werner Herzog titled Grizzly Man, which was pieced together from Timothy's actual video footage of the bears.
The biography was critically acclaimed, achieving a 92 percent Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.