Ep. 445: “Killed by Circus Lion” - Graves From a Small Town

Bear Grease

MeatEater

Sports, Wilderness

4.9 • 7.4K Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2026

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In small towns all over America, there are remarkable and tragic stories that if not told could easily slip into oblivion. These stories must be recounted so history doesn’t get lost and the mistakes of the past are never repeated.

In Mena, Arkansas, the hometown of host Clay Newcomb there are two notable graves nearly in sight of one another. One holds a story so unbelievable and tragic that it hardly sounds true, and one story that holds some dark history.

In 1951, Maria de Campa, the 9 year old daughter of trapeze artists was killed by an unattended circus lion outside the big top as the show performance was underway. Then the following day, as the circus moved to the next town on their tour a vehicle accident resulted in the escape of some exotic and dangerous animals into the National Forest.

Rewind 50 years before, to the story of Peter Berryman, a mentally unstable African American man who was arrested for allegedly kicking a young girl. The night before he was to stand trial before the judge, a group of masked men detained the deputy on duty, entered the jail, took Berryman, and beat and lynched him. Despite town outrage, the perpetrators were never brought to justice.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:02.6	Guaranteed Human.
0:04.5	Within a few hours, 19 men found one leopard.
0:08.6	They all blasted away, but a state trooper who was using a submachine gun, he got credit for the kill.
0:15.1	At dawn the next morning, a local lumberjack stalked the other leopard with a little mongrel pup called Tony and a deer hound.
0:23.0	Tony spotted the leopard and bravely charged it.
0:25.7	He was instantly killed.
0:27.3	Fair stunned the beast with three quick shots, then clubbed it to death with his rifle.
0:32.0	By the weeks in, one black bear and one monkey had surrendered meekly, but the other animals were still at large,
0:39.3	never to be seen again. This is a story about two graves in my hometown of Mina, Arkansas.
0:46.9	One of these stories I've known about, the other I just learned about this year. The way death
0:52.7	found both of these people was tragic, brutal, even
0:56.7	bizarre, one induced by man and the other by animal. And you might ask why bring these stories
1:04.0	to light now? And the answer is I think there's something to learn and they're telling. As I
1:09.9	build these Bear Greece episodes, I really don't
1:12.3	ever purposefully build themes. I just kind of take the stories as they come, but I feel like
1:17.8	stories of tragedy have become more and more common. And I think a significant part of our lives
1:24.3	will be gauged by how we respond to tragedy ourselves.
1:29.1	And I know that if these stories reside in my hometown, I know that you have stories like
1:34.5	these and yours. The untold stories of rural America are fascinating, but mainly because they're
1:42.2	full of data for life today.
1:47.2	And I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one.
	...

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