Screaming couple eaten alive by bear and gruesome feast is caught on camera

Daily Mirror

22-05-2025

WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard desperately tried to fight off the adult grizzly while camping out in Alaska - but their hungry attacker started eating them before they were dead
A couple who wanted to befriend wild bears made a fatal mistake while camping in Alaska - and paid for it with their lives in the most horrifying way.
Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard, 37, had been spending time with wild grizzlies - something former heroin addict Timothy had done every summer for the past 13 years.
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He played with, talked to and even touched the bears, which can weigh as much as 700lb (317kg) and stand at a height of 8 to 9 feet (2.4 to 2.7 metres) on their hind legs. Timothy had been warned by his worried friends and family that the bears were not his friends, but the 46-year-old believed he was at one with the creatures, naming each of them and insisting they were just misunderstood.
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One rainy October afternoon in 2003, the day before they were due to be collected by seaplane to return home for the winter, Timothy and Amie had prepared their snack and were in their tent when disaster struck. Cheese and sausage was found in a ziplock bag, along with an open packet of crisps and a chocolate bar.
The next few minutes were caught on Tim's own camera, as were all his previous interactions with the grizzlies. The tape, which was recovered after Tim and Amie's deaths, was the focal point of award-winning documentary The Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog, who says the blood-curdling audio should be deleted so that nobody else has to listen to it.
The lens was left on the camera, but the recovered recording starts with a frightened Amie asking if the bear is still out there before Tim screams: "Get out here! I'm getting killed out here!"
The tent zipper is heard as Amie rushes out into the storm and shouts for her boyfriend to 'play dead'. Her screams and shouts appear to work and the bear lets Tim out of its grip, but as soon as she heads over to help, it returns, apparently clamping its jaws around Tim's head once more and pulling him towards the undergrowth.
Frantic, Tim screams for Amy to 'hit the bear' and she is heard telling him to 'fight back' before attacking it with a frying pan.
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Throughout its attack the bear is sinisterly silent, with Tim's shouts giving way to moans before Amy panics and lets out a series of spine-chilling screams.
There the tape runs out.
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Air taxi pilot Willy Fulton was one of the first on the scene after the vicious killings, and later said he knew instantly what had happened when he landed at Katmai National Park to collect the pair.
Instead of finding them waiting on the shore, there was an eerie silence and the 'meanest looking bear' sitting atop of a pile of human remains, feeding from a human ribcage.
Tim and Amie's tents were found collapsed and torn with their evening snack lying opened and untouched. Their shoes were lined up neatly by the door, and outside one tent lay a 3ft-high mound of grass, mud, twigs and remains, with ranger Joe Ellis spotting fingers and an arm protruding from it.
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Nearby they found what was left of Tim's mauled head connected to a small piece of spine. His right arm was also found, his wrist watch still attached.
But it was the video camera in Tim's tent that would provide the full terrifying picture of what really happened.
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When the bear was shot, investigators recovered four bin bags full of human remains from the stomach of the 1,000 pound 28-year-old male, who is said to have struggled to feed that season due to his age and broken teeth.
According to Willy, Tim had previously tried to befriend the bear, but it 'never happened'. The pilot also revealed the same grizzly bear stalked him on the way back to his plane.
Tragically, Amie had confessed to friends before the trip that she was terrified of the bears and thought her boyfriend was 'hellbent on destruction'.
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She'd told Tim the camping trip would be her last and had a new job waiting for her back in California.
And in a heartbreaking twist, Tim's own hubris led to their deaths. Food that autumn was particularly scarce, and Tim had been warned that the grizzles were far more aggressive than usual. Grizzles need to pile on weight before their hibernation over the winter months, as the US National Parks Service pointed out in their report.
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"Treadwell's pattern of occupying prime feeding sites where bears aggregate along the Katmai Coast is likely to have contributed to his decision to camp at Kaflia Lake during a time of year when bears were fiercely competing for food sources," wrote the investigating rangers.
"It is possible that a bear investigated the camp in part due to the food found in the sleeping tent, and that the fatal confrontation resulted as a consequence of Treadwell's history of approaching bears and allowing bears to approach him within a few feet."
The report concluded: "The pattern of behavior exhibited by Treadwell appeared to a result of his opinion that he had established a special relationship with bears in the area of the camp. This pattern of behavior is well documented on video taken by Treadwell and presented to the public by several national media outlets."