Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Insane True Story of Cocaine Bear

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

In December 1985, authorities in Georgia discovered the carcass of a 175‑lb black bear in the Chattahoochee National Forest after it had ingested cocaine—estimated between 40 plastic containers of the drug—dropped earlier that year by smuggler Andrew C. Thornton II from his plane during a failed smuggling run.

You heard of this movie Cocaine Bear? You know that's somewhat based on a true story, sort of? Now the story starts with this guy. His name's Andrew, and Andrew's in his 40s, living in Kentucky, and Andrew used to be a police officer, but recently he's turned bad and become a smuggler. Like he'll pilot a small plane, and sometimes he'll smuggle drugs, and sometimes he'll smuggle weapons and stuff like that.

And he'll fly like thousands of pounds from the U.S. all the way down to Columbia. Like, it's crazy the operation they got going. And he does get caught once, and he gets six months in prison, but once he gets out, he goes right back in the game. So there is no stopping Andrew. He really seems to like this gig. But then, one day in 1985, his whole life changes. Because he falls into a huge score,

and this score would require him to fly from Georgia all the way down to Monterea, Columbia, and pick up a huge shipment of cocaine. 400 kilos, which is almost 900 pounds, which from what I read during this time in 1985, is worth about $15 million, or about $50 million in today's money. Now, this is a big job. Like, 900 pounds is a lot, and Andrew can't do this score alone, so he decides to ask his karate instructor to go with him.

This guy, who will just call karate instructor. Now, allegedly, Andrew doesn't tell karate instructor that he's, he's going to traffic this illegal white powder. Instead, he lies to him, and he tells him that he's taking a trip to the Bahamas, I guess to like hang out. And he's like, you want to go? And Karate instructor's like, all right. Whether or not Karate Instructor was actually tricked into being involved in this drug deal is in dispute. Anyway, so Andrew and Karate Instructor hop on a little plane and Andrew starts flying them from Georgia, where this starts, all the way down to Columbia. And I guess about halfway through the trip while they're in the air, allegedly Andrew's like,

Hey, just FYI, I was lying about the vacation to the Bahamas. Actually, we're going to go to Columbia and pick up 900 pounds of Coke. And at this point, Karate Instructor just like has to go along with this plan because like, what else is it going to do? Get out and walk. And again, this is if you believe Karate instructor wasn't in on it the whole time, which I'm personally skeptical. So anyway, they land the plane in Colombia.

and there they meet with Andrew's drug cartel contacts, and they start loading up the plane with duffel bags of coke. Once they're done, they take off, and they start flying back. Once they're in the air for a while, they reach the airspace over Florida. And so they're over Florida, and Andrew and Karate instructor are listening to the open channels on the radio. And they hear that the feds have spotted their plane and that they're about to start following them.

Because I guess a lot of drug traffickers fly through that area, and the feds have flagged their flight as suspicious. And immediately, Karate instructor's like, oh shit, and he starts freaking out. I mean, he doesn't want to get busted, so he goes to the back, he opens up the side doors, and he starts pushing the duffel bags of coke out of the plane. Here's the dildo. A common way to smuggle drugs during this time is called parismuggling. And that's where traffickers will put narcotics into duffel bags,

and then those duffel bags have parachutes on them, and they will then fly over a drop zone, and they'll then fly over a drop zone, and they'll push the product out, which will then parachute safely down to the buyer or whoever's down there to catch it. And they do it that way so that when the plane lands, if the smugglers get busted, they can be like, there are no drugs on my plane?

I don't know what you're talking about. And so the bags of coke that the karate instructor has pushed out of the plane, I guess the parachutes on the bags open and they just start parachuting down. But up on the plane, Andrew sees karate instructor pushing the bags out, and he's like,

what the fuck, bro, that's worth millions of dollars. And he starts yelling at him, and soon they're yelling at each other. But I guess, Andrew quickly realizes karate instructor actually has a point, and this is a lost cause, and if they stay in the plane, they're probably going to get busted when they land.

And he doesn't want to get busted, nor does he want to lose this expensive shipment. And so he decides the best course of action is to just throw the duffel bags out of the plane and have himself and karate instructor jump out with parachute. as well. And sure, the plane will end up crashing, but they'll survive, they won't get busted, and they can save their big-ass shipment of coke. And so, boom, Andrew straps a parachute

onto himself, and Karate Instructor does too. Then he pushes most of the shipment out of the plane, and Andrew grabs one bag to take himself. And then Karate Instructor jumps out. He jumps out first, and he's like falling through the air, and he waits a beat, and then he opens his shoot, And he crash lands in an open area kind of near a small airport in Tennessee, but he's safe. Meanwhile, Andrew also jumps, and he's falling through the air, and he goes to pull his shoot, and it doesn't open. And so he tries again, and it doesn't open again. And he tries several more times, and still, nothing.

And so he activates his reserve shoot, and it actually does work, and it starts to open, and that is when, Kaboom! It's too late. He hits the ground, landing in someone's backyard, and he dies. While karate instructor, he can't see what happened to Andrew. So he does what he and Andrew had planned to do. He walks to a nearby grocery store and he calls a taxi. And a taxi takes him to a hotel that he and Andrew had agreed to meet at. And of course, Andrew never shows up and meets him there because, you know, he didn't survive. But you know what did survive? A lot of that cocaine, like a lot of it. A lot of it lands safely on the ground in various places in the area,

mostly in the forest. And some of it landed on the other side of the Tennessee border in Georgia. And that is when this girl shows up. We'll call her Paddington. Paddington is a black bear who lives in the area. And so Paddington is chilling in the forest, like stealing picnic baskets or doing whatever it is that bears do. And bro suddenly comes across one of the bags. filled with about 75 pounds of coke. And I presume she's like, whoa, what's all this? And when she can't figure out what it is, she's like, oh, okay, I guess I'll just eat it. And she starts eating it. And she eats a lot of it, like a lot lot of it. And pretty quickly Paddington unfortunately overdoses and she dies. Then a few months later, the feds

find her furry little body out in the forest and there are duffel bags of coke scattered everywhere and so they later do an autopsy on her and the medical examiner finds her stomach as he puts it literally packed to the brim with cocaine that is an exact quote now this medical examiner I guess he thinks this story is amusing and so he has Paddington's body taxidermy like stuffed and they give it to a local recreation area to put on display. A few years later, it ends up in Kentucky at this place called Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall. And there you can see that they have put Paddington like the actual bear on full display. And here is a side view of her and they gave her a hat and they now call her Pablo Escobar.

Jesus. Anyway, and so now karate instructor, he does eventually get caught by. the feds and he cooperates with them and he blames everything on Andrew and he tells them, I was in the plane, but I had no idea. Andrew was smuggling drugs. And I guess they believe him because he gets no charges and no prison time.