A Cry for Help
A necropsy —— an examination of the dead bears' stomach contents —— showed that the big bear had human remains and clothing in its digestive tract. The small bear had been mostly eaten by other animals, but its remains showed no evidence of its having taken part in the killings.
Little would be known about the exact circumstances of Treadwell's and Huguenard's deaths had Trooper Hill not made a stunning discovery. Among the couple's effects was a digital camcorder； listening to the tape, Hill came upon a chilling audio sequence of Timothy and Amie's last moments.
“Come out here！ I'm being killed out here！” Treadwell screams to Huguenard. Inside the tent, Amie has had the presence of mind to reach in the camera bag and turn the video recorder on with the attack in progress. They've been filming for days, and it may be an automatic reaction. Maybe, too, she realizes, This is it, and like anyone facing death wants to reach out toward the living one last time. The tape became her message in a bottle. The sound of a zipper is evident on the tape： the noise of the tent opening. Amie screams to Timothy, “Play dead！” Obviously she understands what Timothy, in his desperation, does not： There is nothing she can do to help him. The speed and force of an attacking grizzly is overwhelming. Like being hit by a truck doing 60. Or an avalanche.
“Play dead！” Amie cries again. It must take incredible, almost superhuman discipline to lie there, ripped apart and bleeding, with an enormous animal tearing and thrashing at you. But it seems to work for a time. The bear breaks off the attack； words pass back and forth as Timothy and Amie try to determine if it's really gone. At this point Amie may have rushed to Timothy's rescue. She was a surgical physician's assistant, after all, used to seeing things that would make other people blanch, trained to keep cool under pressure. And this was the man she loved.
But the sounds on the tape indicate the bear's return. Amie is forced to retreat. Timothy shrieks that playing dead isn't working, and he begs her to get something and hit the bear. “Fight back！” she screams. There seems to be the sound of an object being thrown.
Treadwell did not die quickly. The tape runs roughly six minutes, and his cries can be heard two-thirds of that time. He was not one of those people who float off into a shock-induced dream state. He was sharply aware and struggling desperately to survive. The bear, as is often the case, is nearly silent —— no Hollywood roars, only low growls and grunts —— which adds to the horror. Dragging sounds and the fading of Timothy's cries seem to indicate he's being pulled off into the brush, his fate now sealed.
The last sounds on the tape —— Huguenard's repeated, high-pitched screams —— are “eerily like a predator call,” wrote Larry Van Daele, a wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He was referring to a device carried by hunters to produce the distress cries of a small, wounded animal, which often attracts bears. He theorized that those shrieks “may have prompted the bear to return and kill her.” After what she'd seen, enough to break anyone, it was easy to envision her rooted to the spot outside the tent, hysterical and paralyzed by fear until the bear returned.
The men played the tape again and again, paused and rewound, taking notes, blocking out scenarios, all the while trying to decipher sounds muffled by the tent walls, the camera case itself, and the incessant spatter of rain on the tent. Over and over they listened to the screams, unable to help.
