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Murder in Miami is a production of

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iHeart Radio. In

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the early eighties, cocaine was having

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an impact on many more places in the

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United States than Miami. Cbe

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Hackworth was a young newspaper reporter in

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Northern Georgia at the time. In

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September of nineteen eighty two,

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we had the first

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and biggest case of

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cocaine literally

0:37

dropping from the sky. It

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was almost six hundred pounds

0:42

of uncut cocaine,

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worth an estimated

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half a billion dollars. It

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was a big story, and that's not the case

0:53

that the movie Cocaine

0:56

Bear is based on. That

0:59

came several years

1:01

later. As it turned

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out, it was more like climate

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change. You're turning out cocaine

1:09

falling out of the sky on a

1:11

continual basis. It

1:13

wasn't just one case or two

1:16

cases. It took us a

1:18

minute to figure it out. But the driving

1:20

force behind this new

1:22

phenomena was that North

1:25

Georgia, with its cliched,

1:28

quiet little communities up

1:31

in the mountains, is as far as

1:33

you can get from South

1:36

America or the Bahamas

1:40

to the United States With

1:42

a large shipment of drugs in

1:44

a plane that is modified

1:47

to carry extra

1:49

fuel as well as the drugs. This

1:52

first case in Gilmer County

1:55

seemingly would not necessarily

1:58

be directly related

2:00

to Lamarchester. Nevertheless,

2:04

in retrospect, to look at an

2:06

old article of mine and see that

2:08

that far back before I'd ever

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even heard of Lamarchester. Roy

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Harris, the agent in charge

2:16

of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations

2:18

Field office in Atlanta,

2:21

told me that they felt

2:23

like there was a mastermind

2:27

behind this and other

2:29

cocaine cases we

2:31

were experiencing in North Georgia,

2:34

and the phenomenon of cocaine falling

2:36

from the sky seemingly inspired

2:38

certain sorts to seek out the woods

2:41

of Northern Georgia. There

2:43

was a noticeable increase in the

2:45

number of people going up

2:47

to Gilmour County and

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exploring the outdoors.

2:54

I think both we as journalists and

2:57

law enforcement were concerned

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that people were coming to

3:02

North Georgia on weekends

3:05

recreationally who had

3:08

not ever previously been inspired

3:10

to enjoy our beautiful

3:13

North Georgia mountains. It's

3:15

this specific era of specific

3:17

snow covered mountains that inspired

3:19

the hit movie Cocaine Bear, a gory

3:22

comedy from Universal Pictures and director

3:24

Elizabeth Banks featuring a

3:26

five hundred pound black bear

3:29

on a killing spree in a Georgia forest,

3:32

spurred on by consuming a considerable

3:34

amount of cocaine. The

3:37

movie Cocaine Bear. When

3:39

they say inspired by true

3:41

events, that's a phrase that

3:44

Hollywood uses very very

3:46

liberally to promote a movie.

3:49

It's loosely inspired by a case

3:51

in which the pilot of an airplane

3:54

jumped out of it with cocaine

3:57

strap to his body. It had already

4:00

dumped a large amount of cocaine,

4:03

which he apparently intended

4:05

to go back and get. He

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also probably

4:10

thought that he was being pursued by drug

4:12

agents. It appears that that was

4:15

not his plan to

4:18

jump out, but greed

4:20

got the better of him,

4:22

because he strapped some of the cocaine

4:25

to his body. He was

4:27

wearing a parachute. However,

4:29

that cocaine provided

4:32

enough extra weight that his parachute

4:35

did not work, so

4:37

he and his cocaine plummeted

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to earth, and that

4:42

gentleman perished. But

4:45

the story about the bear is

4:48

so fictional every aspect

4:51

of it is inflated. The actual

4:53

bear was found in close proximity

4:55

to cocaine, and subsequent

4:58

tests indicate that it had

5:01

ingested an amount of cocaine.

5:04

It was not a five

5:06

hundred pound bear as the movie

5:09

suggests. It was I

5:12

think about one hundred and twenty five pounds

5:14

or something like that. And it's

5:16

not that it shed the weight because of chronic

5:18

cocaine use science. The Gainesville

5:21

Times, Hackworth's former newspaper,

5:23

has tackled the task of weeding fact

5:26

from fiction in the case of the cinematic

5:28

cocaine snorting bear. The

5:30

movie has riled a number

5:33

of former GBI agents

5:35

who were directly involved

5:38

in this case. The Times,

5:40

where I used to work as a good

5:43

article you can look up that

5:45

sets the record straight. They

5:48

did an article, tracked

5:51

down the former agents and got

5:53

quotes from them, and they're

5:56

really not happy about this movie.

5:58

This was indicted of a real

6:01

problem that we were

6:03

having, and I don't mean

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by that the problem is wildlife

6:08

dying from cocaine. I'm telling about

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the importation of cocaine.

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So I think something that agents

6:16

and former agents dedicated a

6:18

significant portion of their life

6:20

and energy attempting to

6:23

curtail. The agents

6:25

feel so strongly about this that

6:28

fran Wiley, one of many

6:30

agents I knew well. She's

6:33

quoted in the Times as saying,

6:36

I think it's just evil, and

6:38

another agent said it was a

6:40

total farce. But that

6:42

doesn't mean Hackworth thinks Cocaine Bear

6:45

is entirely without merit. It

6:48

is almost entirely

6:50

fiction. I'm not even trying to

6:52

dis the movie, especially having not seen

6:55

it, but I am going

6:57

to dis the degree

7:00

to which they are playing be

7:02

based on a true story tagline

7:06

used for lots and lots of

7:08

movies and all

7:10

of those tape liberties with

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the facts, but this

7:16

one is a fabrication almost

7:19

whole claw. The only part

7:21

that is true is

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that a man plunged

7:26

to his death with some cocaine

7:28

and a bear got into

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it and turned up dead. I

7:33

don't even think they

7:35

ended up believing that the cocaine

7:39

was the cause of its death, or that it

7:41

had ingested enough cocaine

7:44

to die from it. I

7:46

think Elizabeth Banks is enormously

7:48

talented. I can understand

7:50

why the subject matter of this script would

7:53

be a movie that somebody might make.

7:57

It happens to be ray Leota's last

7:59

movie, who is a really great actor.

8:02

I will see it. I'm

8:04

looking forward to seeing it, although

8:07

I'm going to wait until it's on

8:09

one of my streaming services for

8:14

more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit

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or wherever you get the stories that matter

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