[cryptic instrumental music plays]
[Steven] There was an endless supply of beautiful girls.
They were coming in and out of those gates constantly.
You almost needed a revolving door.
[Doc] As far as my personal and private life, I want to be honest.
I have nothing to hide.
And the truth is,
back in my twenties, back in the 1980s,
I was way too promiscuous.
[Doc] Tiger's a glamour show.
If you're a guy at the circus that works a tiger,
you know, you're gonna get more action than the clown.
[male voice] Doc Antle has a reputation for liking a lot of different women.
If you try to explain that operation to people who weren't part of it,
no matter what, it sounds like the most obtuse, weird,
Twilight Zone kind of shit, no matter what.
[Sean] I told Doc Antle back in 1999,
don't come crying to me with your women problems.
I don't want to hear about 'em.
I had enough trouble keeping track of my sordid shit,
without trying to figure out what Doc was doing when we weren't collaborating.
[birds chirping]
Just the other day on my Facebook post,
on my Facebook status, I posted,
"I never needed a Corvette. I never needed a tiger."
"I got a pretty big dick."
[cryptic instrumental music plays]
[birds chirping]
[sitar plays]
Bhagavan and I met for the first time at the ashram.
I think I was about 11 or 12 years old.
[Radha] They would offer a lunch and he came for lunch.
I was actually quite enamored with him right away.
[Radha] He was this larger-than-life character.
One of the first times that my daughter saw him,
she said to me, "I'm gonna marry him."
[Diane] Since she was a little girl, she's always had this mantra,
"You're not the boss of me."
[cryptic music plays]
[Radha] Growing up, I would sometimes spend the weekends at his house.
I wanted to spend time with him and with the animals.
[Diane] Everyone looked up to him
and I never had any indication that there was anything amiss.
I never worried about it for a moment.
[Radha] My mom moved around quite a bit and I enjoyed having the freedom.
I was grateful to be on my own.
[Sachi] Her mom was just not on the scene.
It was really bizarre and she lived with different families at Yogaville.
[Doc speaks indistinctly]
[Betsy] Radha became our babysitter
and then, after a while, she turned out to be his girlfriend.
[interviewer] How old was she when she started babysitting?
She was very young.
[Radha] I was 14 the first time anything romantic happened.
That's actually the day we were together for the first time.
[melodic synth music plays]
[Radha] He told me that it was one of his specialties,
but the first time was a bit underwhelming. [laughs]
[Radha] After we were together,
he said, "If it's not okay with you, you know, I can make you forget."
Like the Jedi mind trick. [laughs]
And I actually somehow, even at that age,
I found that more strange
than the fact that he was making sexual advances to a 14-year-old girl.
[Radha] At the time I knew that he was having a relationship with Sumati
and I think that's part of why I felt,
"Oh, I'm of age now."
[Radha] The first time was in the back of a truck.
I remember saying to him, "Why? Why in the back of a truck?"
And he said, and I quote, I remember this clearly,
"Because I wanted to get my claws into you."
[somber music plays]
You just pet him. You just let him rub on you for affection.
You don't play cat and mouse, tickle and slap.
-Huh? Yeah! That's a lot right there. -[Lion growls]
[Sumati] Up until Radha,
he sort of implied that it was just "Brahmi" and me and that was it.
But once he got involved with Radha,
he was like, "I want to have multiple women."
I was in a ménage à trois with Radha and Bhagavan more than once.
[Sachi] I remember, it seemed strange
because Sumati and her used to hate each other.
And then all of a sudden they were best friends.
[Radha] For as young as we were, we handled it
between one another extremely well.
[cryptic music plays]
But eventually my mom found out, actually through Brahmi.
[Betsy] I caught them making out, that's how I found out.
It never occurred to me
that he would be having sex with a girl that young.
It's hard for me to imagine I was married to somebody that would do that.
[Diane] Well, I thought, "We have to get her out of there."
In a short period of time, I had her flown across country,
I picked her up at the airport, moved her in with me,
and literally across the street from where I lived
was a catholic school.
[birds chirping]
[Radha] My mom enrolled me in Saint Monica's Catholic High School.
I just kind of felt, at that point, like I was playing the role.
We wore little catholic school girl uniforms,
which I find so hilarious now.
Especially thinking back to the big abduction. [laughs]
[Diane] In those days there weren't cell phones, but there were extensions,
and I heard her talking to someone, I thought, "Who is she talking to?"
So, I picked up the extension and I heard her say, "Okay, see you soon."
And it was Bhagavan and I got very concerned.
I took her to the police station and I said,
"I think my daughter is going to run away
and be with this gentleman who's married and lives in Virginia."
And that's when they took that picture of her that's on the poster
and they did some sort of scared straight tactic with her.
In my mind, I was a little naive.
I thought, "This is gonna nip it in the bud."
"Now she knows we're onto her."
I wasn't, at the time, capable of understanding
or wanting to hear that, or know that.
I really thought that I loved him.
About a week later,
she puts on her little uniform, a cute little outfit,
she takes her books, I said, "You got your homework?"
"Yeah," she goes out the front door,
and she doesn't ever come back again.
[somber music plays]
She doesn't come back.
[Radha] I was all too happy to jump in that car and run away with him.
[tires screech]
I really suspected that he had her, so I called him.
I said, "Bhagavan, where's my daughter? You put her on the phone right now."
He said, "I don't know what you're talking about."
"She hated you and she hated living with you so much
that I think she ran away."
"I suggest you look in the local shelters, because I think that's where she is."
So that began an odyssey of posters.
"Have you seen this child?" Because we didn't have amber alerts.
They said, "You need to write a personal note."
And I wrote, like, "Please call me. Everything will be okay."
And put them up all over town.
[cryptic music plays]
I lost my job over it because I was either crying or I was on the phone
with a police officer, or the sheriff, or a shelter.
Yeah, and I don't blame them, though. I was useless. You know?
[Radha] He put me in a hotel on the outskirts of DC.
So I was living in an Econo Lodge by myself for at least a month.
I don't know what the maid must have thought was going on.
She would come and she would clean, and I would sit there. It was bizarre.
[Radha] But it was pretty boring. I think I watched a lot of daytime TV.
[muffled TV program plays]
[Radha] And eventually, it became important to me
to let my mom know that I was okay.
After being gone for about three weeks, she calls me collect.
[Radha] While I was on the phone with her,
something happened when the operator interrupts on the call,
and my mom was quick enough to say
"Operator, my daughter has run away."
"Can you please tell me where this call is coming from?"
And they said, "From Washington. It's from Washington DC."
And I knew he had her 'cause she was on the east coast, and then she was gone.
I was like, "Oh no, I fucked up!" I panicked and like hung up the phone,
and then I had to confess to Bhagavan, "I called my mom."
"I think we're gonna have to move hotels."
I don't think he was particularly happy with that, no.
[suspenseful music plays]
[Radha] We cut my hair and, you know, put some highlights
and made it curly and kind of disguised me.
We had another entire identity for me.
There was a girl in Saint Monica's and she was a beautiful girl.
Her name was Chantal Rivera, and I just thought it was the most beautiful name.
So when he was like, "You need an identity,"
I was like, "I'll be Chantal Rivera."
When I went to go live on the zoo,
all of the staff were forced, even though they knew me as Radha,
they were all forced to call me Chantal.
I kept calling the sheriff down in Virginia,
I said, "Go to that property."
"I believe my daughter is there and she's only 15 years old."
You know, we would role play and go over it.
You know, "This is who I am, this is how old I am."
"No, I'm not Radha. What are you, crazy?"
[Radha] He thought, you know, that perhaps there were detectives with sonic equipment
waiting for someone to slip up and call me Radha.
[tense instrumental music plays]
[Radha] Bhagavan was being questioned by the police
and some of the staff met them with guns at the gate.
[dramatic music plays]
[Radha] I think Bhagavan somewhat enjoyed that cowboy role, too,
of like, you know, "This is our property. Nobody can come on."
[Diane] About a month or so later, she says,
"Mom, I don't want you to worry."
"Everything's okay. We're married."
I went, "Excuse me?"
"How can you be married? First of all, he's got a wife and children."
"You're 15 years old. How could you possibly be married?"
We forged my father's signature on the marriage license,
because you are not allowed to get married at 15
without one of your parent's consent.
[somber music plays]
Now, at this point, I had two options.
I could either go full-bore, sheriff, police, everything,
just converge and find her, and rip her out of there, and bring her back.
But I had a friend who was very smart and here's what he told me,
"You can do that. She will hate you."
"It will bring them closer together."
"Or you can do your best to be on her side."
"Support her, go to Virginia, make peace,
because the day will come, and it will come,
when she wants to leave."
"And when that day comes,
you want her to pick up the phone and say, 'Mom, I'm coming home.'"
And that's what I decided to do.
[Radha] My parents and everybody began to just accept,
"Well, we don't really like it, but this is the way that it is."
[journalist 1] With this many mouths to feed, Bhagavan can't do it alone.
And as of Valentine's Day of this year, he got a new right-hand man.
His wife, Radha.
[Steven] Bhagavan wanted to be kind of a Jack Hanna,
Jeff Corwin-type talking head, animal expert on television.
And Bhagavan came up with the idea of writing the script
and producing this movie he thought would draw attention to us.
-[Radha squeals] -[lion growls]
[journalist 2] Dr. Antle's latest project is a G-rated movie called Cubs.
Bhagavan and his wife Radha play a part.
It's being co-directed by an Academy Award winner
and former Disney director.
They may not be spending big bucks, but they do have a big message.
[Doc laughs] I made a full-length feature insane piece of crap.
It is the world's worst tiger film and it is so good because it is so bad.
[Steven] The Great Tiger Cub Adventure.
One of the biggest fiascoes I've ever experienced in my life. [chuckles]
You couldn't have cast that better for, like, a Saturday Night Live sketch
of like, you know, people making a big blockbuster movie.
[narrator] It was a beautiful summer day when the magic show came to town.
[upbeat music plays]
Everyone came out to see Marvelous Marvin
and his wild animals perform their magical, mystifying illusions.
[crowd cheers]
The idea, coming from a small town and being a ten-year-old,
that you're going to be a movie star in a film with tigers.
It was quite an event.
Andrea Terry went up to Wintergreen to get a look at the stars of Cubs.
[indistinct chatter]
[cryptic music plays]
[Martin] Buckingham is a quaint little town with two traffic lights,
one grocery store, cows, and deer, and turkey.
But to see lions, and tigers, and bears,
that kind of stuff doesn't happen all the time.
[Martin] There's kind of the whole gang here,
Radha, Bhagavan, myself, Anna, Teresa, RB.
We were gonna be movie stars and make thousands of dollars.
I mean, they were certainly behaving as if it was, you know, the next ET. [laughs]
We're gonna chose, perhaps, two or three boys and girls,
maybe two brothers, brother and sister,
to be in the whole movie, see you all can't be in the whole movie.
It was probably 50 kids went for the auditions.
They had the kids picked out
'cause it was kids of people that were gonna buy stock of the movie.
[Todd] A group of parents from the church were going to invest money.
Most of them were wealthier.
The original idea was that Kevin Bacon was going to play
RB, the three-year-old, when he grew up.
And even at 10, you knew who Kevin Bacon was.
That was kind of cool. But no, Kevin Bacon never showed up.
Bhagavan had bantered around a bunch of celebrity names.
Kevin Bacon was one,
but he could never get anyone interested because it was so bad, it was horrible.
I don't know if they even ever talked to Kevin Bacon.
I think it was just… big dreams, maybe.
[insects chirp]
[Todd] I never acted in a movie before that.
Here is where we shot the scene
where we found the baby tigers when we got off the bus.
[male narrator] Our heroes, Terry, her friend Todd, and little brother, RB,
stumbled upon something that would change their lives forever.
But they end up writing me out because
my parents wouldn't buy stock in the movie. [chuckles]
The story is about these three
finding these three in the forest one day.
[Doc] The guy that started it with me is an Oscar-winning frickin' filmmaker
who fell off the wagon in the middle of it and he went to La La Land
drinking, you know, full cups of vodka for breakfast and he's drunk, fucked up.
[director] Where were you standing, were you standing there?
Right there.
[director] Right there, okay. But where was your hand?
They can't stay in here, Bob!
[Bob] They can. I gotta match the shot.
Okay, but the cubs, it will kill them.
[Bob] Okay, all right. We're ready.
Close-up.
[Steven] That was a comedy of errors.
It was just one bad day after another,
and that production just started sinking lower and lower.
[journalist 2] How do these kids feel about their furry four-legged friends?
[boy] The cubs… all right, but the big tiger I'm not so sure about.
-Scarier when they're big. -Yeah.
-[Doc] You film tight and I'll shoo it. -[crew member] Rolling.
[Martin] We're three feet away from this massive tiger
who could, at any moment, change its mind and decide he wanted a snack.
I didn't know that I was at risk because the cat had actually gotten away
and they were trying to get the cat back.
The tiger cannot get to you or anywhere near you 'cause he's on a big tough chain.
I found out later on it had bitten a guy just not long before we started filming.
They had insurance on the animals, they had insurance on the equipment,
but no insurance on the kids.
The only thing between us and the panther was a 15-year-old girl.
[girl] How come we can't pet this one?
Well, actually, all of the animals are pretty nice
to the people who raised them from little babies or who feed them.
But they don't like strangers that much.
[Martin] There was some expectation
that any child movie with animals would sell big
and I think that's what everyone was sold on.
No one knew it was going to be a bust
and there was no speaking and it was narrated.
[Martin] This was all the cost that was justified.
We're talking a half a million dollars,
which you would think would result in much more than what it turned out to be.
We thought we were going to get paid at the end of it, and maybe be famous.
But if we knew we weren't getting paid, we might have protested.
[Martin] My family and a bunch of others were sold the promise
that if you invest in this movie, then you will get some payout.
And I'm sure a bunch of people lost a good chunk of change.
[Martin] Even by today's standard, what was done,
half a million is a lot of money.
So someone should be able to track down where the investments went
and where the money went, but we're talking 30 years ago.
There are two things about Bhagavan that are absolutely true.
One is nothing good comes from being associated with him in any way
and he will damage you.
And the second thing is, if there's any money to be made,
you're not the person that's going to make it.
[cryptic music plays]
[Steven] I signed a million-dollar contract to go to Korea
and do three shows a day, seven days a week.
Bhagavan would come in and out. He would fly in and out.
Meanwhile, I was there not only doing three shows a day, I was promoting it.
I was doing special VIP performances.
They had me working 18 hours a day
and I barely made any money from that gig,
because Bhagavan made a secret deal with the producer,
took most of that money, and I did all these shows for almost nothing.
Kevin spent my entire inheritance,
without my permission or without me being involved.
[Betsy] It took me, like, a year to even get a divorce.
That's when he started getting money out of other people.
[Sean] I wrote all the stage shows for Doc for 15 or 20 years.
The big highlight was to have the liger come out.
And, you know, "This is the liger, Sudan the liger."
"In the ancient city of Singapore, which was known as the city of lions…"
[female guide] Long, long ago, outside the ancient city of Singapore,
which was known as "the city of lions," there were reports of giant brown beasts!
-This massive creature you see before you. -[drums beating]
The deal was we would split the profits of the shop 50/50.
You get your picture taken with the tiger, and to get out, you walk past the swag.
[Sean] But man, you can get a T-shirt or an umbrella with a picture of a tiger.
So that was my nut, you know, it was the gift shop.
It was never enough to live on. I had to sacrifice a lot of shit.
[indistinct chatter]
[Sean] But the money that they generate is to help animals.
I love animals
and I think the work of conservation and preservation is extremely important.
Our trainers have dedicated their lives
to caring for and conserving these amazing animals.
We feel it's our responsibility to share what we've learned with all of you.
We went on a tour at 9:30 and we got done at 1:30.
And they made $25,000.
It was all about saving the animals and wildlife.
And everything we sell and promote
goes to help conservation in the wild
and people will buy that.
Doc Antle taught him that if he would give just a little bit to conservation,
people would see that and say, "Hey, this guy's heart is true."
And donate more money.
[dramatic music plays]
[male announcer] Meet Dr. Bhagavan Antle, founder and director
of the Rare Species Fund.
The Rare Species Fund is a grassroots organization that provides…
I started to realize this isn't about animal conservation.
This is all about how are you going to make more money,
how can we add to, what else can we bring to the table?
This is the door of one of the pygmy kings that was being…
I don't wanna say that. We'll talk about it.
We'll look inside this incredible door that was made by pygmies.
And you can see some of the incredible amount of equipment we've taken there.
[Doc] I have contributed millions of dollars
to conservation, which is totally trackable.
[percussive music plays]
[female voice] We've taken a look at Doc Antle's Rare Species Fund
and it's garbage.
A lot of that money just goes right back into his own facility
and he's arguing that that constitutes conservation.
[Steven] This is a deceptive practice that businesses use called "greenwashing,"
to convince the buying public
that their services are environmentally friendly.
Funds that are raised here in the United States
are then sent to projects in Africa, Indonesia, South America
to be able to protect those animals there.
[Jewels] We never did conservation work outside of the United States, really.
We would go on vacations to go see animals in the wild for fun.
[lions growling]
[Jewels] And we did bring tigers to Thailand
so they could develop breeding programs.
[cryptic music plays]
[Barbara] We went to the Samutprakan Crocodile Farm and Zoo.
It was like a zoo at the turn of the century.
[Barbara] Bhagavan worked so hard to get his tigers into Thailand, saying,
"This is a new bloodline that we're going to create."
"This is where they live."
"Tigers live in Thailand, we are returning them to where they come from."
Really, most of what we did
was teach the employees how to take photos with tiger cubs.
[employee speaks indistinctly]
[Barbara] There was a chimpanzee that would beg for cigarettes,
'cause he was addicted to cigarettes from people throwing them to him.
And that was a selling point for the zoo. This was not a conservation.
[Shavit] Talking about preservation programs in Asia or Africa,
it's very impressive.
Right? For propaganda.
[cryptic music plays]
If you let the outside people come and see what's going on behind the scenes,
then the dream is gone.
[Jewels] Any photo shoots that we did, if there was caging in the background
he'd say, "Don't use it."
He didn't like people to think that these animals were stuck in cages.
We're getting lost. This is Tiger Land here.
[man] I thought where we interviewed before was pretty good. Light and quiet.
If you like it.
-[man] It's good. -[Doc] We don't want to see cages.
[Magenta] The cats that were kept in those cages, they would pace.
There was nothing else for them to do, nowhere for them to be,
and they would just pace until the ground was bloody constantly.
And he wore bloody holes into the soles of their feet.
And when I would say something about it, they would just say,
"Well, hose it down."
You would just hose the blood out once a day.
[somber music plays]
[Shavit] The fact that the elephant, one of the most social animals there is,
maybe the biggest brain in the animal kingdom?
And she's alone every day.
I'm embarrassed to say I didn't even see the wrong.
[Magenta] At one point, they told me to go to the freezer to get some frozen quail
to feed the birds of prey
and I opened the freezer and it is full of tiger cubs.
And I was told that they had been stillborn.
[Magenta] Seeing those litters come in, those were all really healthy tigers.
We didn't have whole litters that were stillborn.
But, when you'd see something that seemed wrong,
he'd give you a reason for it and you just believed it.
You just accepted it because the alternative
is that terrible things are going on and you were involved in awful things.
That's right, look at that camera. Look at the camera.
[Doc] We're an open book, we have a fabulous facility
with unprecedentedly quality environments for the animals.
And there's nothing to see here, except the great work we're able to do
because of success, understanding, incredibly hard work,
and a team of people who make it their life.
[Shavit] Looking back, I feel bad about telling Julie
that this was the most amazing place ever.
That this is a paradise for animal lovers.
It's not a paradise. It's exactly the opposite.
[male interviewer] How did Doc react when he found out you two were together?
[melodic music plays]
[Shavit] It is so strange because he was okay with her
basically living with me.
Unheard of for the compound.
But at the same time that he was supportive,
he was making her life…
Hell.
…so miserable.
It was a ganging up on me from every angle.
[Shavit] I felt so bad for what was going on, I remember speaking to him
on her behalf.
I remember crying talking to him.
And here I am, a grown man, went to the Israeli Army,
and I'm crying because I love this girl.
Why are you guys treating her like this?
He was lying to people behind our backs and telling stories about people
because he needed to be the only source of comfort any of us were allowed.
[Shavit] Doc told me that Julie's crazy, that she's not right,
and that I should watch it, and that I'm wasting my time.
Part of me was like "Is she crazy?" I started questioning, "Is Julie crazy?"
And I was looking for reasons, "Is she? Is she really?"
No, she's not crazy.
I don't regret it because here we are.
-Right. [laughs] -Seventeen years later.
But part of me feels a little guilty, there.
[somber instrumental music plays]
[cub growls]
[Doc] Dry 'em off, don't just swaddle 'em.
-[woman speaks indistinctly] -[Doc] Shivering?
No, not yet.
[Radha] Sometimes your fantasy
of the way that life is going to be is better than the reality.
[Radha] I was always independent and a bit of a rebel.
And frankly I think that this is something that Bhagavan really recognized
and appreciated in me, and it backfired.
[melancholy music plays]
[Sachi] They started having problems.
Bhagavan was, of course, very controlling.
She was a teenager, she wanted to experiment with things.
[director] Action!
[Radha] When we would go and do jobs, print work and also film work,
often, he would have me stand in for the actress or for the model.
I got offered a couple of opportunities to model without the animals
and he didn't allow me to do it, and I was hugely disappointed.
[Sachi] She started to act out, not doing what he said,
taking the car when she wanted to.
-We were being teenage girls. -[cryptic music plays]
[Radha] I really wanted my driver's license,
which is this, you know, normal rite of passage for somebody my age.
There was always some type of an excuse
of why we couldn't get it or why we couldn't practice driving.
I took my fake ID
and went and got a driver's license anyway.
He was extremely angry about that, extremely angry.
[Radha] I began to realize this isn't about safety, this is about control.
[Diane] He was hoping that he would get this young girl and he would mold her,
and she would do dishes, and she would clean house.
He didn't know my daughter. That was not part of her plan.
[Radha] After we were living together and were married,
he had confided in me that he was attracted to me when I was younger.
Since I was 11.
That made me extremely uncomfortable
and changed the dynamic of our relationship.
I saw things more for what they were,
and it creeped me out
and I really no longer wanted to be a wife to him or a lover.
-[Doc] …had much to eat. -Ahh! [laughs]
Oh my word. And your wife lets-- Oh yuck!
And your wife lets you kiss her when you come home after a long day, huh?
[Radha] He was going away for jobs. I wouldn't go with him.
That was starting to be okay with him because I think he was cycling in Dawn.
This is Shankar, a two-year-old male.
[Sumati] Radha did an amazing thing.
I was so proud of her, like, I couldn't even believe it.
She's 17 years old when she left him.
She waited for him to be off on a job with Dawn,
so they were away from the house.
And I got a call, and she said, "I'm leaving."
"I'm coming out there. My girlfriend and I, we're driving out."
And I went, "Okay." [laughs]
"Okay, come on!"
[Radha] The first thing that I did was go directly to the bank
and close out our accounts, take all the money that was left.
And it wasn't a substantial amount of money,
but it was enough to fund the getaway.
[Radha] My girlfriend and I drove to the zoo.
I pulled as close as I could to the front and I ransacked that place
for everything that was my personal possessions
and everything that I could pick up that was of value.
[Radha] And it wasn't to keep the things. They were basically for leverage.
I had seen how he was in past breakups
and I knew that I was going to need something to negotiate with.
[Radha] In the nightstand was some other woman's perfume.
And also there was a vibrator, which wasn't there before. [laughs]
So, in the process of making my great escape,
and I admit it was a bit petty,
but I took all of the other clothes that were in the closet,
and I dumped out all the other perfumes, and left them sitting there
and I took the vibrator out, turned it on, and chucked it on the bed.
[Radha laughs]
And I remember thinking as I was driving away,
when we got far enough where I could, kind of, think clearly,
"Please, God, let there be enough juice in those batteries…" [laughs]
"…that when he comes home to see that I've ransacked this place
and taken everything,
that that's still going on the bed."
[mechanical humming]
[dramatic instrumental music plays]
[Radha] My girlfriend and I took turns driving from Virginia to California,
and we were so high on adrenaline and so frightened,
that we were speeding and drove straight there.
[Radha] We made it from Virginia to California in crazy record time
to the point that when I got to California, I called Bhagavan
and he said, "Where are you?"
And I said, "I'm in California." He said, "That's impossible."
And I was like, well, wait till he gets the credit card receipts from the gas.
[Radha laughs]
[seagulls calling]
[Sumati laughs] She didn't even stop. She just drove all the way to California.
It was very brave! Very brave of her.
Yeah, and I always have admired her for that.
She was one of the only women who got Bhagavan,
so I was very proud. [laughs]
Here kitty cat, Radha.
Cat lovers just love you! Absolutely love you.
You're a great tiger queen.
[dramatic music plays]
[Radha] I think there might have been a side of him
that was, kind of, in some ways, almost proud of me.
And overall, I feel like he was much better to me
than a lot of the other women.
[somber instrumental music plays]
Yeah.
[birds and insects chirping]
[Sumati] She was a lot stronger than I was,
but when I got pregnant with Tilakam, that is what saved me, truthfully.
[emotionally] Because for some reason, I could tolerate the abuse
and the lying and the psychological manipulation for myself, somehow.
[Sumati] But I started realizing that I did not want that for my child.
I did not want my child
to grow up with somebody who would touch another human in anger.
He used to say, "If you leave me, I'll kill you."
He used to say it all the time.
I know why he did it, it's because he was--
he couldn't have somebody out there that knew his secrets.
I always had the feeling
that he would have no problem killing another human being.
Mark Topping's death was very suspicious to me.
You know, I just-- It was very convenient. Let's say that.
[emotionally] You know, I turned down this interview many times.
And the reason I turned it down was that
I've spent my entire life trying to forget about those people.
But it suddenly occurred to me that I owed this to Mark
and that someone had to speak for him and had to be his voice
because he can't speak for himself today.
[melancholy music plays]
[birds chirping]
[Dave Topping] I got a text message, "Oh, my God. Call me right away."
"Have you seen this show Tiger King?" I said, "No. What do you mean?"
"What's Tiger King?"
I pulled it up and I started… [trilling]
…looking for Mark,
and at 31 minutes and 52 seconds, I think, into episode one,
there's two tigers in the hot tub and Bhagavan.
And one of the tigers goes to jump out,
and there he is, there's Mark,
for one and a half seconds, coming in to grab the tiger that's jumping out.
[Becky Opalka] It was exciting to see my friend
on film after all these years.
I knew instantly and he was only in profile.
I mean, imagine-- Imagine that somebody that was your friend
and you really cared about, to see it after…
I mean, you have to understand it's been 32 years since he died.
Dah! Look, Mom, I can float on the water!
Bam!
[Becky] We never really knew the full story
of what that day even was like.
What happened.
[Mark pants]
I think I reached out to you because I was hoping you could find out.
[somber music plays]
[Steven] They had had a fight the night before and the next day,
Bhagavan is shaken.
And you can tell that something instantly was very wrong.
And I said, "What happened?"
And he said, Mark slipped and fell off the rocks,
and hit his head on the rocks below, and died instantly.
I felt in my heart that he wasn't telling me the truth
and it's been driving me crazy for 30 years.
Since the day that man died, I have said,
"This is really fishy. What happened to him?"
[man] We do have another, uh…
[music crescendos]
[moody guitar music plays]