I know many of my have probably heard of the attempted murders which occurred outside of Berryville, Arkansas. A West Coast couple, Norman and Leela Sterns, on a cross-country drive imprisoned by crazed local along with a paleontologist, Wayne Thomas, at his roadside zoo, Cosmic Caverns. Their captor, Adolphus Washington Greely III, son of Adolphus Greely II and Anna Louise Sponsler, and grandson of Adolphus Washington Greely I, the famous polar explorer and Medal of Honor recipient, intended to feed them to a giant dinosaurian reptile, later revealed as a Tennessee Cave Turtle, he held in an underground lake on their property. Thomas, with the help of Greely’s terrified servant, helped the pair to escape, though he, Greely, the maid, and the so-called Terrorpin died in an explosion which collapsed one entrance to the cave.

It is unknown where Greely procured the turtle, as they are not native to the region, though he likely got it while filling the rest of his makeshift zoo. According to Japanese zoologist Shohei Muku, Cosmic Caverns is an almost perfect environment for the Tennessee Cave Turtle. “Cosmic Caverns has constant humidity and high temperatures, for caves I mean, of 17 degrees Celsius. You’ve got a large underground body of water of indefinite size with connections to the surface for the turtle to live in. The cave was ever stocked with a large population in trout in the 1920s. If anywhere outside of Craighead Caverns was going to be used as a home for a Tennessee cave turtle, it would be there.”

The news of this terrible misfortune has already spread to our community, sparking outrage. Some citizens have even petitioned to close down the Lost Sea and kill Bessie. I feel I must urge calm. The true monster was Greely, not his turtle. Regardless, our turtle, Bessie, has never been reported attacking or harming anyone. It would be unfair to persecute her for it.

According to the Sterns, Greely seems to have had his full faculties about him, as the pair describe him constantly rambling bizarre nonsensical statements such as "There is a legend in these hills, that when it rains and the sun shines at the same time, the devil is kissing his wife." Whatever this might mean is certainly inscrutable to me. Regardless, no sane man would endeavor to feed random individuals to turtles. However, the depiction of Greely as a crazed Hill Billy does not ring true. Greely, both well-educated and relatively well-off, bought and ran the small zoo and cave system with money from the international conservation organization HBD. Clearly, whatever mental issues he had were well hidden or appeared suddenly.

I can’t help but wonder if there was more going on with the attempted murders than we know now. No college, colleague, or search of literature has turned up any information on an assistant professor of paleontology named Wayne Thomas. Similarly, the fact that he identified the turtle as a mosasaur throws doubt on his academic ability or knowledge. The one thing he appeared to have excelled at is powering through massive head trauma and a bullet wound to be instrumental in the Sterns’ escape. Of course, this does not necessarily imply anything sinister; Thomas may have simply been inflating his credentials when faced with a pretty lady. It is the place of the police to determine the true story of events; I just caution my readers to not take everything they read at face value.

Perhaps the story is not over for Cosmic Caverns. Carroll County Deputy Randy Langhover has expressed interest in buying the cave from HBD. While he has stated that he currently has no plans to maintain the aboveground zoo, he hopes that “Cosmic Cavern, in its natural majesty, can forget its bloody past and become a welcome attraction for all.”

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