Featured Image Credit: Lionsgate Films
Topics: Animals, TV and Film
Jess Battison
Warning: Article contains graphic content
Bear enthusiast and documentary maker Timothy Treadwell was nicknamed ‘Grizzly Man’ due to his love for the animals.
It was tradition for him to fly out to Alaska every summer, having done so for 13 years. But on one year’s camping trip, tragedy struck.
Timothy would chat to, play with and even touch the bears when he visited - with him believing that he was one of them and that they were simply misunderstood.
The bear enthusiast was apparently repeatedly warned by friends and family of the dangers of the predators, but still decided to camp with them every year.
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But Timothy was tragically killed by the animal he loved so much, as he was mauled to death in front of his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, in October 2003.
The bear then turned on Amie, who was also killed in the incident.
The attack happened just hours before the couple were due to fly back home by seaplane for the winter.
Willy Fulton - who was the couple's air taxi pilot for the flight home - knew immediately what had happened when he landed at Katmai National Park.
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Typically, he would find the couple waiting on the shore to be picked up, but instead there was an eerie silence and the 'meanest looking bear' standing on top of a pile of human remains.
The couple's tent was found collapsed and torn alongside their evening snack that was unopened.
A ranger spotted fingers and an arm in a 3ft-high mound of grass, mud and twigs, alongside some other remains.
They also found nearby what was left of Timothy's head, which was connected to a small piece of his spine.
Before Timothy and Amie were killed, they were recording bear interactions as the enthusiast always did.
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And the attack was no exception, but in the panic, both Timothy and Amie forgot to remove the lens.
This resulted in six long minutes of disturbing audio from the attack, which was the final moments of Timothy's life.
In the years that followed, a documentary about the tragic attack was made by Werner Herzog titled Grizzly Man.
The doc was pieced together from Timothy's actual video footage of the bears and examined the bear enthusiast's love of heading to the Alaskan reserve every year.
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The biography was critically acclaimed, achieving a 92 percent Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.