9. Go on a Cocaine Bear pilgrimage.

You can’t make this stuff up. On September 11, 1985, Andrew Thornton plunged to his death from the Cessna 404 he was piloting. He had jumped with a parachute, but it did not fully open. He was found dead with a broken neck on a gravel driveway in Knoxville, Tennessee. He wore a bulletproof vest, khakis, and Gucci loafers. The New York Times reported that he also “carried $4,500 in cash, two pistols, two knives, night-vision goggles, ropes and food.”

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There was more: iconic South African gold bullion coins called Krugerrands, Teflon-coded bullets able to pierce body armor, vitamins, a compass, an altimeter, a membership card to the Miami Jockey Club, the key to the airplane, two Kentucky drivers’ licenses issued to Andrew Thornton and Andrew Bourbon, a notebook with numeric codes no one was able to decipher, and an epigram in his pocket that read "There is only one tactical principle not subject to change: it is to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time." Most shocking of all was 79 pounds of cocaine in 34 football-sized bundles of cocaine in a black Army duffel bag worth $15 million. (The weight of the cocaine might help explain the parachuting accident.)

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And that was just some of it. Before Thornton jumped, he had already dumped 800 pounds of cocaine from the sky. Those black duffel bags landed near the Georgia-Tennessee border in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest, where rangers found them dangling from trees. After Thornton (and his bodyguard) jumped, the unmanned airplane crashed in the mountains of North Carolina.

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Some background: Andrew Thornton enjoyed a blue-blood upbringing on a thoroughbred farm named Threave Main Stud in Bourbon County. After education at the elite Sayre School in downtown Lexington and Sewanee Military Academy in Tennessee, he joined the Army and trained—you can’t make this up—as a paratrooper. An expert skydiver, he became known for “pulling low,” which is releasing the parachute below 2,000 feet. According to the Washington Post, he earned a Purple Heart during U.S. intervention in the Dominican Civil War in 1965.

After military service, Thornton cycled through many jobs. He worked as a racehorse trainer, went to law school, and moonlighted as a martial artist. He boasted that he had killed a German shepherd with his bare hands. As Erin Chandler, author of Bluegrass Sons, described him, “Drew was the dark horse, the charmer, the bad boy with an appetite for drugs and women. Drew drank heavily with the men and seduced the ladies. He was the guy who sat at a table with the rest of the players snorting lines of cocaine, putting people at ease with a devil-may-care personality.”

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His charisma and daring made him a perfect agent. He joined the Lexington police department, cooperated with the DEA, and was recruited by the CIA. But the temptations were too hard to resist. Going rogue, he switched sides and joined a massive drug ring that reportedly included South American cartels, the Kentucky State Police, the FBI office in Lexington, and local police officers. According to one source, “They were selling guns, that’s what they did back in the eighties. They would fly down to South America and trade guns for marijuana. Then they picked up and started selling cocaine. They were flying out of Kentucky at the Bluegrass Airport. Back then there was no security, there were hardly any people that watched, they were smuggling cocaine. They were getting the guns . . . taking guns from the police department.” According to journalist Sally Denton, Thornton and his drug-running comrades used the same routes on the Kentucky River that had been used to smuggle bourbon and enslaved people centuries earlier. In other words, they had learned “the tricks of the trade from the bootlegger granddads.”

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One of those trips was Thornton’s last. On that ill-fated trip to Colombia, said Thornton’s bodyguard, “they landed in a swamp and were cajoled by machine-gun-toting Federales.”  According to Denton, those guards unloaded AR-15s, Uzis, AK-47s, and military-type explosives from the plane onto three-quarter-ton military vehicles. The bodyguard ate parrot, got food poisoning, and threw up on a wild flight back to the States. Somewhere over Florida, they heard federal agents on the radio talking about their suspicious plane. Concerned they were being followed, they jumped.

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Here’s how this wild story touches Jessamine County: Thornton owned a remote plot of land south of Nicholasville and Wilmore next to the Kentucky River. He turned it into a paramilitary compound. A sign on the property’s fence read: “NOTICE—TRESPASSING ON THIS PROPERTY MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH.” According to Denton, a painted sign at the entrance included the word Triad. A horseshoe-shaped symbol under the letter “i” depicted the devil’s pitchfork.

As activity at Triad Farm increased, neighbors heard gunshots and saw camouflaged men running around. There was said to be barbed wire, barracks, trenches, a rifle range, and a landing strip inside. Rumors circulated of duffel bags falling from the sky and lots of dark-skinned warriors—maybe from Libya or Nicaragua—parachuting into Triad. According to Chandler, “It was believed to be a training camp for terrorists, mercenaries and drug runners. They are said to have been practicing soldier of fortune training.” According to Denton, neighbors reported to state police that a cult of devil worshipers frequented the remote property, and that the constant firing of automatic weapons could be heard. According to ATF investigators, dozens of people wearing military camouflage uniforms were seen rappelling from the back cliffs of Triad down to the Kentucky riverbank. Police began to surveil Triad with airplanes. According to Denton, Thornton warned that if state police flew over Triad again, the plane would be shot down.

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Instead, Thornton died falling from a plane. His will, dated June 18, 1984, read, “To Henry Vance, my Jessamine Cty. Property, my Jerico and Eli Lilly stock and my oil well interests.” His obituary in the Washington Post described Thornton as a “007 paramilitary type personality.” “To friends,” it read, “Thornton was a man of loyalty, religious conviction, enchanting charm, keen intelligence and supreme self-confidence. To enemies, he was ruthless, egotistical, amoral — driven by an ego so fragile he overcompensated with machismo.” An FBI agent called him “a little boy who never grew up.”

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Locals describe the drug operators as “The Company” and the far-flung operation as the “Bluegrass Conspiracy.” The whole story too long and convoluted and shrouded in mystery to fully narrate here. But some speculate about connections with the Iran-Contra affair, the drug lord Pablo Escobar, the Medellin Cartel, and the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi (the uncle of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi). It is said that Thornton cultivated intelligence and military contacts in Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Panama. If you want to learn more, check out these gossipy volumes:

• Sally’s Denton’s Bluegrass Conspiracy

• Amber Philpott’s interview with Denton

• Reddit threads, where people write things like, “Has anyone ever ventured to McGee Lane? I’m about 90% sure I know where the Triad farm was, and furthermore who owns it. Has anyone spoken to a medium / psychic again regarding Melanie’s whereabouts? Is she in a cave close to Triad or close to Hall’s?”

• Erin Chandler’s Bluegrass Sons

• Court TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKL--uda5x8

 

So where does Cocaine Bear fit in? Three months later after Thornton’s plunge from the sky, a dead black bear weighing 175 pounds was found in the Chattahoochee National Forest. It was surrounded by open packages of cocaine. The bear carcass was taxidermized and initially spent time in a national park service display case. Then Cocaine Bear made its way to a Nashville pawn shop, the hands of outlaw country music star Waylon Jennings, Las Vegas, and an auction in Reno. The new owners eventually sold Cocaine bear to people from Lexington, where it is now on display at the Kentucky for Kentucky souvenir store on Winchester Road.

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In 2023 the horror-comedy-gore film Cocaine Bear was released by Universal Pictures. Featuring Kerri Russell and Rhys Williams, it got a 5.9/10 rating on IMDB. I watched it so you don’t have to--and have had trouble walking through forests ever since.