Announcer: Idaho Experience is made possible with funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation, devoted to preserving the spirit of Idaho.

From Anne Voillequé and Louise Nelson.

From Judy and Steve Meyer.

With additional support from the J.A.

and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation, the Friends of Idaho Public Television, the Idaho Public Television Endowment and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

NATURAL SOUND: Phone dialing NATURAL SOUND: Phone dialing NATURAL SOUND: Phone ringing 911 OPERATOR: Emergency 911.

Yes, this is Laurie Peters and my husband just spotted a lion up behind our house."

LAURIE PETERS, LAVA HOT SPRINGS RESIDENT: And he goes, there it is.

There's an African lion.

WONEY PETERS, LAVA HOT SPRINGS RESIDENT: And he was looking straight at me and I was looking straight at him.

And we were eye to eye.

NEWS FOOTAGE: The cats apparently broke out around ten o'clock.

Severely injuring Bob Fieber and Dottie Martin who own Ligertown.

SHERIFF LORIN NIELSEN: They don't teach that in law enforcement.

There wasn't an academy thing on what do you do when you have lions in your jurisdiction.

PETER YOUNG, FORMER KIFI SPORTS REPORTER: It's now dark and everybody's armed and everybody's on edge.

You could sense it.

You could see it on Sheriff Nielsen's face.

You could hear it in his voice.

SHERIFF LORIN NIELSON, NEWS FOOTAGE: I'm angry.

I'm upset.

PETER YOUNG: It was palpable.

SHERIFF TONY MANU: They could have been coming from anywhere.

And they were.

You'd see lions running across the street, lions in the compound.

You'd hear lions behind you.

So you weren't sure exactly what to do other than be on your guard.

JAMIE EVERSON: I do remember just the whole town being on alert and just this very unsettling feeling everywhere.

COLLEEN SMITH: He was just nasty to be around and surly and I think it was because he knew that his venture was failing, and I think that's what set him off.

TROY SCHROEDER, FORMER KPVI VIDEOGRAPHER: They kept saying, we think we've got them all.

So you're safe.

Well, then why were all the sheriffs deputies that were on duty, why did they always have their weapons with them ready to go?

LAURIE PETERS: It did change life, you know, for everybody.

I'm sure everybody was on guard just like we were.

NARRATOR: The evening of September 20th, 1995 started out like any other for those that lived in and around the town of Lava Hot Springs.

A small town in Eastern Idaho, south of Pocatello.

COLLEEN SMITH: Bruce had come home and he had tomatoes up here that he needed to cover because it was getting cold enough at night.

He was afraid they were going to freeze.

As he pulled in into the drive here, a lion just walked right past the car.

NARRATOR: A big african lion, walking a stones throw from where Bruce Hansen and his wife Colleen owned land.

It was also next door to Ligertown, a compound that housed exotics cats and hybrid wolves.

COLLEEN SMITH: Bruce came home and he says to me, the lions are loose.

And I says, what?

And he says, the lions are loose.

And I says lions?

I mean, it didn't even dawn on me.

And he says, the Ligertown lions are loose.

NARRATOR: The lion Bruce Hansen saw was one of several that escaped Ligertown.

It was the start to eight days of terror that would put Lava Hot Springs on the map with national media attention.

It even inspired a memorable scene in a famous movie.

Before it was over, at least 18 cats were killed in one of the strangest chapters in Idaho history.

SHERIFF TONY MANU: We arrived and obviously there's chaos.

It's dark, and we don't know where these cats are coming from.

NATURAL SOUND: There's one lurking on the south side.

Gun shot He's wandering the south side.

SHERIFF LORIN NIELSEN: Our plan was that we would get a hold of fish and game and get some neutralizing things.

We're used to doing 150-pound, 200-pound mountain lions.

These were double that weight if not more.

And the shots just didn't work.

NATURAL SOUND: We think one's down but there's one still looking at us.

SHERIFF LORIN NIELSEN: Our intention wasn't to kill these animals, but it was to protect the public.

NARRATOR: Deputies found Robert Fieber inside.

He had tried to stop more lions from escaping when one of the lions attacked him.

NIELSEN: My officer was on top of the compound.

And Mr. Fieber was in a kind of alleyway.

He had been attacked.

He had wounds on his face and I think on his arm.

He was very very afraid.

The officer was able to make it so that we could get him out.

NIELSEN: The biggest concerns that we had were school was starting in the morning.

We had about 4 or 5 hours.

He was out of the populated area, but we didn't know how many gotten out.

We really didn't even know how many animals they had.

NARRATOR: Lava Hot Springs is less than a quarter mile away.

Most who lived in the small town were unaware that lions had escaped.

LAURIE PETERS: The sheriffs department called like 3:30 in the morning and told all the residents in town to bring your animals inside and protect them because there had been a breakout at Ligertown.

NARRATOR: Law enforcement worked all night to contain lions that escaped.

deputies and fish and game didn't have tranquilizers that would incapacitate a full sized lion.

It was believed that for the saftey of the deputies and the public, those lions had to be put down.

15 lions were killed that first night.

The next morning, deputies were busy trying to get into the compound safely.

it was the first time most had seen it up close.

NIELSEN, NEWS FOOTAGE: It's hard to come in here and ask them to risk their lives literally.

TONI VOLLMER, RETIRED DETECTIVE: We seized it and obtained the search warrant and went in and processed it.

And at that point dealt with the animal cruelty issues and several other violations that we found once we were in there.

NARRATOR: Inside, dozens of lions were still in cages not adequate to hold these large cats.

Deputies found a maze of small hallways sandwiched between cages.

some paths led to dead ends.

Others meandered deep into the center of Ligertown.

VOLLMER: He no longer had access to some of those inner cages because they were all adjoined now.

And so I don't believe he was able to feed them or water them appropriately because he couldn't get to them all.

NARRATOR: Lions also managed to climb onto the roof overhead.

VOLLMER: And at one point, one of the female lions jumped down in the walkway and trapped us in the trailer.

And then they had to shoot that lion.

We were able to get the cubs out.

And then the process of rescuing everybody that was left inside the compound, as well as documenting all those that had escaped and were killed and documenting where they were at.

NATURAL SOUND: Where were they getting out at?

NATURAL SOUND: Yeah, that's the hole that they patched a while ago.

Yes.

VOLLMER: The lions were getting out for a period of time before the incident happened because there was trails coming from the compound down to the water in the creek down below.

NARRATOR: Trails that led directly to Fish Creek and back to Ligertown.

Inside, bones, feces, urine, broken fence, and items the large cats used as toys were scattered around the yard.

TROY SCHROEDER, FORMER KPVI VIDEOGRAPHER: The stench was unbearable of lion feces and urine.

The urine of a big cat is just so powerful.

And you're talking about year's worth of big cat urine.

Troy Schroeder worked at KPVI News 6 in Pocatello.

SCHROEDER: So you'd put your camera up on your tripod and you would shoot towards the compound.

And the first days we could see the lions, the few lions that were actually up on top.

NARRATOR: It didn't take long for the story to spread to news stations across the country.

NIELSEN: We had people from all over the world that were interested in it.

And we had to take care of that.

And that was pretty much my assignment is to work with the media.

We were able to get a cattle truck, that's a bigger truck that has slates and no top.

And we were able to have them load their cameras in.

NEILSEN: So it was kind of a horrific scene if you're not use to that kind of stuff.

And it did go worldwide.

A lot condemning us how we did it and a lot praising us for doing it and those type of things, which is normal with that kind of stuff.

NARRATOR: Sadly, this wasn't the first time lions escaped from Fieber and Martin.

The two had tried at least twice before.

once in Oregon, the Siletz game ranch in the early 80s.

KEN ANDRUS, LAVA HOT SPRINGS RESIDENT: And he was kind of an environmentalist.

He came here from Oregon.

And it's our understanding that the people in Oregon kind of shut his animal project down.

And so he was forced to leave Oregon.

NARRATOR: Fieber moved some of the big cats to Idaho County.

an area known as Clearwater, north of Grangeville.

The summer of 1986, a lion managed to escape and killed a neighbor's horse.

several other lions were in poor physical condition due to lack of food and water.

That's how Fieber ended up here.

It's believed he brought 14 cats and 6 wolves with him.

ANDRUS: His facilities were mainly old boards that he found and chicken wire.

And as his animals would increase in number.

He would just get more boards and more chicken wire and go farther out and then down the hill a little bit.

ANDRUS: His goal was to produce a white liger as I recall.

NEILSEN: He had taken that lion and mated them with a tiger.

And so we had two or three ligers.

NARRATOR: A liger is the offspring of a male lion and a female tiger.

State law in 1986 didn't require a permit to own exotic animals.

Ligertown was perfectly legal.

But neighbors weren't happy about it.

COLLEEN SMITH: If the wind blew the right direction, it smelled like a big cat box.

I mean the biggest cat box in the world.

It was just bleah, just horrible NARRATOR: Colleen Smith and her husband Bruce Hansen owned land outside Lava Hot Springs.

They had horses, goats and turkeys.

It was peaceful until Fieber and Martin moved in next door.

SMITH: They were pretty personable people when they first showed up you know.

They were nice and they were trying to get their business going.

And that was all well and good until he got so big.

He had so many animals and he just couldn't keep them fed.

ANDRUS: Bob Fieber came to our place in the spring, we were lambing sheep and quite a few sheep and of course you have some that die.

And so he wanted the lambs to feed the lions.

So we got acquainted with him and he would come frequently and then to pick up the dead animals.

NARRATOR: The carcasses would be piled in the back of his old pickup truck and dropped off at his front gate.

It wasn't long before law enforcement was asked investigate Ligertown as a public nuisance.

Toni Vollmer, a detective with the Bannock County Sheriffs office started looking into Ligertown in 1990.

TONI VOLLMER: I started investigating Ligertown due to the community complaints about dead animals that were sitting outside of the compound within a couple of feet of the roadway.

NARRATOR: The carcasses were clearly visible to kids every morning and afternoon when the school bus drove past the compound.

SCHROEDER: They did love them.

I have no doubt they loved their animals.

But it got away from them.

It got way away from them.

But They were not willing to give up.

So they did the best they could for their animals.

But by doing that, they put themselves at risk and they put the community at risk.

NARRATOR: Sheriffs deputies took the lions that weren't killed out of the facility.

They were tranquilzed and carried out in large cages to trucks for transport.

SCHROEDER: When you're standing right next to the body of a lion, then you start to realize how big these animals are.

And you see their paws and you see their claws and you see their teeth how big they are.

You start to realize just.they're huge.

NARRATOR: Many of the wolves and lion cubs were transported to local zoos.

Help with the large adult lions arrived the morning of day three.

Several large semi-trucks from Wildlife Waystation, an exotic animal refuge in California pulled into Lava Hot Springs with much needed assistance.

The owner was Martine Colette who watched the news and wanted to help.

SHERIFF TONY MANU: She just grabbed her group, says we're just going to drive out there.

She drove out on her own with all of her cages, all her equipment, and basically showed up and said I'm here to take care of these lions.

MANU: Really was a big game changer for us and she did that all on her own, coming from California.

You know, she had her own little complex, a kind of preserve for exotic animals in the Los Angeles forest.

NARRATOR: More than twenty lions were taken back to California.

The media went home while detectives continued to catalogue evidence.

It appeared the scare was over.

But on day eight, someone spotted another lion near Lava Hot Springs elementary.

Woney Peters who lived behind the elementary school was just returning home on the evening of September 28th.

Peters was driving his truck up Dempsey Creek Road toward his house when he noticed something was off.

WONEY PETERS: We were coming up from downtown, we was down there visiting and we was coming up the road here.

And I had my horses over here in the corral, and they were just really stirrin', I mean, going crazy, like I hadn't seen them before.

NARRATOR: His kids were jumping on the trampoline between the house and the horse corral.

The horses seemed spooked.

LAURIE PETERS: He had said something was wrong with the horses.

And my first thought was, yeah, right.

You think there's an African lion out there?

WONEY PETERS: I went back down and looked at my horses in the corral and they were looking up the hill now, not right here behind the house.

So I went back up on my balcony and was watching and and I seen a glimpse of a two tone animal going through the trees and I told Laurie, I said, that's a there's an African lion in our backyard.

LAURIE PETERS: He goes, there it is.

There's an African lion.

So I got right on the phone with 911 and he was on our balcony and I was on the phone talking to him through the window, giving him instructions and, you know, talking back and forth between dispatch about it.

911 OPERATOR: Okay is the lion standing there or is it moving around?

LAURIE PETERS, 911 CALL: I can't see it.

My husband says he can.

911 OPERATOR: Okay ask him if it's moving or.

LAURIE PETERS, 911 CALL: He says it's behind a dead tree.

WONEY PETERS: Finally it come through the trees there.

And I seen it and then it stepped out behind a dead cedar tree.

It was just dead branches, but its body was behind these branches.

And just this head was sticking out.

And he was looking straight at me and I was looking straight at him.

And we just eye to eye and probably seemed like forever, but it was probably 5 minutes we eyeballed each other and it was getting so dark.

I told Laurie to tell 911 that I have to take a shot.

NATURAL SOUND: Gun shot LAURIE PETERS, 911 CALL: Oh it's been shot.

911 OPERATOR: A rifle?

LAURIE PETERS, 911 CALL: Oh it's running.

I see it running.

It's gone.

WONEY PETERS: And so I took the shot and it went up the hill a little ways and it disappeared.

And and Lori was going, Oh, no, you missed, you missed.

Because she finally seen it then.

LAURIE PETERS: He wasn't happy with me.

He goes, I couldn't have, you know, and because he's hunted all his life and he's the expert shooter.

WONEY PETERS: And just seconds later I seen it dead rolling down the mountain there.

I knew I'd had it, It was the scariest shot I ever took.

SCHROEDER: The lion had escaped the first night and evidently went clear around the mountain and came back on the backside of the mountain into Lava Hot Springs.

I'll call it the outskirts of Lava Hot Springs over on the side of Lava where the elementary school was.

But it was just a little bit out of town.

NARRATOR: Peter Young was a young sports reporter.

He and a news reporter from KIFI were there the night Woney shot the lion.

PETER YOUNG: And it's now dark and everybody's armed and everybody's on edge.

You could sense it.

You could see it on Sheriff Nielsen face.

You could hear it in his voice.

It was palpable.

NIELSEN, NEWS FOOTAGE: We're going to have to regroup.

Obviously we've got lions loose, we don't know how many.

YOUNG: There are guys here who are trained and have guns on them.

And there's a bit of fear.

I mean, if one of those ligers comes running down the hill in the dark, that would have been bad.

And so was I nervous?

Yeah.

For a few minutes I was.

SCHROEDER: So immediately you start saying, well, if there was one still loose, is there still more loose?

NARRATOR: The day after Woney shot that lion on September 28th helicopters and police returned to Lava Hot Springs.

No more lions or ligers were ever found.

But life changed for those living in Lava Hot Springs.

SHAWNA LIERMAN: So for us it was exciting because we didn't have to go to school.

We got the day off of school.

JAMIE EVERSON: There were still rumors that there might be a couple of loose ones that they didn't catch or didn't know about.

YOUNG: You know, in hindsight, it was incredibly dangerous.

What those folks did that owned the ligers.

I think it's safe to say they certainly didn't mean to endanger the local community, but they did.

It's remarkable really that that didn't happen sooner.

NARRATOR: Prosecutors charged Robert Fieber and Dottie Martin, owners of Ligertown with over 100 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty.

The law was vague on animal cruelty in 1995.

Judge Mark Beebe presided over the case.

JUDGE MARK BEEBE: The prosecution would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the animal suffered some pain, some injury, some disease, some suffering, such as hunger or thirst.

BEEBE: I thought that that was probably an inadequate statute.

BEEBE: It seems to me I remember that it went from 102 charges down to about 15 or 16.

NARRATOR: Fieber and Martin were sentenced.

During the appeals process they left the state.

It was decided not to have them sent back for a handful of misdemeanor charges.

The sheriffs office doesn't know where they ended up.

The Ligertown property was torn down by county workers and set on fire on a cold, snowy morning in 1996.

NATURAL SOUND: After the remaini coals burn out.

VOLLMER: We cleaned up what we could and then we piled everything up and they lit it on fire and burned it all.

NEILSEN: If you go there now, unless you know where to look, you wouldn't know that it was there.

NARRATOR: Laws have changed since Ligertown.

A permit is required to own exotic animals like lions and wolves.

Animal cruelty laws are stricter.

But first and second offenses are still misdemeanors and animal rights groups are working to change that.

Today, nearly three decades later, memories of Ligertown are almost gone.

If you look hard enough, there are still reminders.

If you wander into a local brewery you might find the Ligertown Lager.

Penny Pink is the owner-operator of Portneuf Valley Brewing in Pocatello.

PENNY PINK, PORTNEUF VALLEY BREWING: I started the business in 1996.

So at one point my eldest son Jeremiahs said to me, Mom you've got to get the equipment to be able to brew lagers.

PENNY PINK: I need you to do a Ligertown Lager.

PENNY PINK: That's been one of our flagship lagers for many, many years.

JEREMIAS PINK, PORTNEUF VALLEY BREWING: And so it was a really easy way to get people excited about this colorful piece of local history and get them to order something just because it had a name that they could relate to a little bit.

RUSS WOOD: You know even now, you get people who may not know that there's such a thing as a liger or they've heard it from Jared Hess making Napoleon Dynamite and think that they're talking about a fantasy creature.

DEB: What are you drawing?

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE: A liger.

DEB: What's a liger?

NAPOLEON: It's pretty much my favorite animal.

It's like a lion and a tiger mixed.

Bred for its skills in magic.

DEB: Hmm.

MUSIC Announcer: Idaho Experience is made possible with funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation, devoted to preserving the spirit of Idaho.

From Anne Voillequé and Louise Nelson.

From Judy and Steve Meyer.

With additional support from the J.A.

and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation, the Friends of Idaho Public Television, the Idaho Public Television Endowment and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.