Couple mauled to death by grizzly bear caught on camera
WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard were eaten alive by the full-size adult bear while waiting to leave their campsite.
A couple attempting to make friends with wild grizzly bears were viciously mauled to death after making a fatal mistake.
Timothy Treadwell, 46, and his partner Amie Huguenard, 37, were spending time with the bears in Katmai National Park, Alaska, which Timothy, a former heroin addict, had done every summer for 13 years.
Despite concerns from friends and family, he named the creatures he encountered and believed he was at one with them, playing with, talking to, and even touching them. Adult grizzly bears can weigh 700lbs (317kg) and stand at a height of up to eight to nine feet (2.4 to 2.7 metres) on their hind legs.
In October 2003, the couple were preparing to leave Alaska for the winter and were preparing a snack as they waited in their tent for a seaplane taxi to pick them up when tragedy struck. Cheese and sausage was later found in a bag in their tent, as well as an open bag of crisps and a bar of chocolate, the Mirror reports.
The horrifying minutes that followed were captured on Timothy's camera after all his earlier interactions with the bears. The footage, recovered after their deaths, was the subject of award-winning documentary The Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog, who said the disturbing audio should be deleted so nobody else has to hear it.
The lens was left on the camera, but a terrified Amie can be heard asking if the bear is still out there before Timothy shouts: "Get out here! I'm getting killed out here!"
The tent zipper can be heard as she rushes outside and calls to him to "play dead", which works at first, as it releases its grip on him before apparently clamping its jaws around his head and pulling him away.
He frantically calls for her to "hit the bear" as she tells him to "fight back" before lunging for it with a frying pan.
The bear remains chillingly silent, with Timothy's shouts becoming moans before Amy panics and lets out several blood-curdling screams.
Air taxi pilot Willy Fulton was among the first people on scene after the horrific attack, and later said he knew straight away what had happened when he arrived to collect them.
With no sign of the couple, he instead saw the "meanest looking bear" sitting on a pile of human remains, gnawing at a ribcage. Their tents were found ruined, with their untouched snack lying on the ground. Outside one tent was a mound of grass, mud, twigs and remains, with a park ranger finding fingers and an arm sticking out of it.
Nearby they discovered what was left of Timothy's head connected to a small section of his spine, and his right arm with his watch still attached.
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After the 1,000-pound bear, a 28-year-old male weighing 1,000lbs was shot dead, investigators recovered the equivalent of four bin bags full of human remains from its stomach. It is said to have found feeding difficult that season due to his age and broken teeth.
According to Willy who was also stalked by the bear before it was killed, Timothy had failed to befriend it. Amie had also admitted to friends before the trip she was scared of them and believed her partner was "hellbent on destruction".
She told him this would be her last camping trip, and she had a new job lined up back in California.
In a heartbreaking twist, it was Timothy's own over-confidence that caused their deaths. Food was scarce that season, and he had been warned the bears were more aggressive than usual. They need to put on a lot of weight before hibernating for the winter, according to the report from the US National Parks Service.
Investigating rangers wrote: "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.
"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."
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