Original subtitles

I was onstage.

We go our show through like -- like clockwork.

King: Mm-hmm.

The tiger -- and it grabbed him on the sleeve like this,

and Roy said, "Let go," and the tiger let go.

And Roy went back, and he slipped, tripped.

Oh, he fell? He fell.

Then what?

The tiger took Roy on the neck,

and he pulled him back onstage.

I say it was an accident.

If it would be the tiger would be out for killing Roy,

it would be in no time.

The tiger would be not anymore.

Do think he was trying to help him?

That's exactly what I think.

♪♪

♪♪

Hi, everyone. Welcome to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

On the night of October 3, 2003,

Montecore, a 380-pound white tiger,

took down Roy Horn, one of the Kings of Las Vegas,

shuttering the multi-million-dollar

Siegfried & Roy show forever

and sending Roy Horn to the trauma center

to fight for his life.

It was an event that shocked the world,

and Siegfried and Roy have maintained ever since

that the tiger was actually trying to help Roy.

Tonight, we will get to the truth of this dangerous illusion

and how it really happened that fateful night.

Less than 24 hours earlier,

Roy Horn had been celebrating his 59th birthday

and was on top of the world.

♪♪

Moss: Roy Horn's birthday party was a really big deal

for the people of Las Vegas.

Hello, everybody.

Siegfried and Roy -- they were the stars of the strip.

Everybody was happy, and it was a wonderful time.

And he was glowing.

Thank you. Love you all.

I remember him that night being very joyful,

in a great mood.

There's no way that Roy could have known

that the next day was gonna change his life forever.

[ Sirens wail in distance ]

And now to the spectacle in Las Vegas that ended in horror.

Entertainer Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy was badly mauled

during last night's performance at the MGM Mirage.

He was attacked by one of his famous white tigers

on the left side of his neck.

At some point, the tiger wasn't doing something

that Roy wanted him to do.

The tiger kind of dragged him down,

and so they were both down on the ground.

Man: We just noticed him pounding with his microphone

on the tiger, like, so hard.

The tiger just grabs him.

Like, it looked to be right around here in this area.

Just locks on him.

And -- boom -- he was, like, hanging.

He looked like a rag doll in his mouth.

I mean, that thing just had him.

The sound of him moaning

was, like, probably the scariest part,

'cause you could tell that he was hurt.

And it seemed impossible -- just not possible.

Jillette: One of the things that's such a tribute to Roy

is that he was so good at what he did that we're all shocked.

He did an incredibly dangerous thing

and did it with such joy,

you thought he was just dealing with giant housecats.

Love you, Roy! Love you, Roy!

Moss: It was a very emotional sight

to see that many people holding candles outside a hospital.

♪ ...his grace will live... ♪

Reporter: He had massive blood loss and trouble breathing.

As soon as he got here, he was rolled into emergency surgery.

King: What's the latest, Siegfried, on Roy's condition?

Well, I just left Roy two hours ago.

He responded excellent.

The doctors say it's magic, what's happening.

Moss: And when we knew that it was a matter of rehabilitation,

we had started to hear that,

possibly, the tiger was trying to save Roy.

It was not an attack the way --

how it always has been described.

It was the very beginning of how they spun the story,

how they created the myth.

Yuman: Montecore got distracted.

Roy got distracted.

I don't believe that this was an attack.

I don't believe that Roy was mauled.

I don't want to say there was a cover-up,

but there was certainly an effort to make sure

that what happened to Roy Horn was kept within the family.

Even to Nancy O'Dell and "Entertainment Tonight,"

they went so far as to say that the tiger was relieving

some sort of pressure.

This massive animal was, in some way,

trying to save Roy Horn?

Clearly, they had a story line

for how that night happened to Maria Shriver on NBC.

You believe that Montecore realized you were in trouble

and just picked you up and took you offstage for help.

Yeah, that's how wonderful they are.

Goldman: How big are these canines?

I mean, they're, like -- they're big.

Like 3 inches. Like, they're big.

Why did they, you know, plunge that into his neck?

I couldn't begin to understand why they would continue

to perpetuate this myth.

Baum: I think it's an accurate characterization to say

that there was a cover-up.

Bennett: Vegas has long been a town that protects its secrets.

Woman: Right here! This way!

However many years it takes,

the truth should and often does come out.

It took more than a decade

for one of the animal trainers there that night,

Chris Lawrence, to come forward on the "Today" show

and "The Hollywood Reporter"

and break that story line that Siegfried and Roy

and their team had been putting out

and try to shed some light and some truth

on what really happened behind the scenes that evening.

What I loved about the job most was my bond with the cats.

Baum: Chris Lawrence was a seasoned trainer at the Las Vegas show.

Prior to the incident,

Chris Lawrence was very much team Siegfried & Roy.

This is not somebody who was a disgruntled employee

or a dissident.

The most salient fact about him

was that he was the direct trainer

who worked with Montecore,

the tiger that was involved with the attack that night.

Initially, they had planned on using a younger cub,

but Chris thought, "Why don't we use Montecore?"

Montecore was known for being a very large cat

who could vamp a little bit more

and was also such an experienced, seasoned cat

that they thought, "You know what?

There's not gonna be any problems with this one."

Which obviously is ironic in retrospect.

The point that I realized

that things were kind of going sideways

was when Roy turned Montecore around,

and he ended up with his face in Roy's midsection.

Reporter: Lawrence, who was just a few feet away offstage,

says he could see the cat become confused and irritated,

knocking Roy to the ground.

Lawrence says he tried to pull Montecore back,

but the tiger's power threw him off his feet.

Bennett: I can't imagine going against a power

as strong as Siegfried & Roy to talk about something

that no one has dare talked about for more than a decade.

Baum: Tiger trainer Chris Lawrence reached out to me.

"The Hollywood Reporter" had published a report

about Siegfried and Roy's intention to do a biopic

that was going to apparently discuss the attack --

what he felt was a counter-narrative to the truth

about what happened that night.

He was sick of that.

He wanted to set the record straight.

I think it adds to his credibility

that he went on the "Today" show.

Reporter: Lawrence says Roy made several mistakes

that he believes were critical.

I think his actions

in trying to possibly save the routine

or rectify the situation

actually ended up complicating it.

Baum: Chris Lawrence was waiting and watching in the wings.

Things, at times in the past, could go wrong.

But Chris was always judging --

when was the right time to intervene?

Because if you intervene as a trainer,

you are cutting out the illusion.

With the right lighting, you build your sets in a way

where it disguises some of the safety protocol

that's taking place --

possible cables, leashes, ways of restraining an animal.

You just don't see it.

That's why it's called magic.

[ Applause ]

Baum: It's not very entertaining to see somebody dressed in black

who's not Siegfried and Roy coming in,

and it also undercuts the master-of-illusion aspect

of both Siegfried and Roy.

It makes it look like they don't know what they're doing.

And according to Chris,

he'd been admonished by Siegfried and Roy in the past

for coming in before he should have.

I won't call them liars. I'll just tell my truth.

Bennett: Chris Lawrence gave an interview to "Inside Edition."

Montecore leapt at Roy and swiped at his legs

and took him off of his feet.

How horrifying was that to see up close?

More than I can describe.

And Roy's yelling, "Get him off. Get him off. Get him off."

And it was right about that time

that Montecore bit him in the neck.

Do you think this was human error

that led to this tiger attack?

Yes, I do.

Miller: I'll tell you, when you see an animal attacking somebody,

it's way worse than you would expect.

There's nothing worse.

It's scary.

Baum: Chris Lawrence attempted to grab Montecore's leash.

He briefly had it,

but then Montecore attacked and lunged toward Chris.

Chris briefly ended up on his back

with Montecore on top of him.

At this point, Chris Lawrence claims

that he had an out-of-body experience

and basically saw life pass before his eyes.

I remember vividly thinking, "Here he comes."

There was no telling me he wasn't coming for me.

This is where a lot of his PTSD comes from.

It's a salient moment in his life.

But soon, Montecore left him

and went for the key moment of attack, where he bit Roy

and soon dragged Roy off the stage

with Chris running behind him.

Goldman: It's important.

I mean, it only validates what we knew back in '03,

which was, this was not some life-saving procedure

being done by the tiger.

Baum: Objectively speaking,

Chris Lawrence helped save Roy's life.

He went out there in front of a homicidal tiger

and did his level best to stop him

and came close to dying himself.

One of Chris Lawrence's key claims is that,

in the years leading up to the attack,

there had been a lot less direct contact

between Roy and all of his lions and tigers and leopards.

That kind of contact is throughout the day.

It's feeding those animals treats.

It's taking them for walks.

Behavior that creates a close companionship.

Wherever I am, they're going along with me.

So I am sort of their father figure.

So wherever I am, they are comfortable.

Hello.

Baum: Chris really thinks that this was

a heavily contributing factor to something going wrong.

He claimed that there had been

more of a treating them like props

than doing the inter-species bonding that you need

in order to really have the rapport

to successfully do this kind of program.

After my story,

Siegfried appeared on "Good Morning America."

He decided to hit back on Chris Lawrence's claims.

Chris Lawrence has come forward now, saying --

I know.

...that Roy essentially was to blame.

Was he? No way.

And that this story is just a cover

to save the brand and save the image.

What do you say to that?

Well, I feel very sorry for Chris.

He had, in his life, all these problems.

And he vaguely said, "I think he had problems

he didn't know how to address."

But he had no pointed and legitimate response

to the very specific allegations that Chris made.

One of Chris Lawrence's chief complaints

is that his testimony regarding the incident

was kept separate from the USDA.

Only his supervisor's testimony was given to them.

He believes that that was purposeful.

Neal: We relied on the attorneys for Siegfried and Roy

and their management to tell us who was working that night.

And it's a shame that we didn't get the interview

with Chris Lawrence or his statement.

Friess: It's probably very likely that one of these animals

had done something very dangerous in the past,

but nobody ever knew about it.

King: Their incredible act of illusion

has drawn tens of millions of fans.

And they're here with us -- Siegfried and Roy.

The sad part was, we see them on "Larry King."

We have 55 large cats.

King: What's your insurance like?

And they're asked a question, "Anything ever happen?"

King: You must have had accidents.

No, actually, we have been very fortunate.

Are you kidding me?

Smith: Just to say that everything was fine

because no audience members were hurt

is really an incomplete answer.

Salmoni: If you're gonna have that many cats

working with people every single day,

it's normal for people to get attacked.

I've had both of my eyes bit.

I've had my cheek bit.

I've had my nose torn out.

I've been bit through my hand.

I've been clawed through my forearm,

bit through my shoulder.

The definition of an attack can be anything.

It's really about understanding

how close to out of control it was.

♪♪

We were acrobats.

We were called The Seven Alexanders.

And I was trained from the age of 4.

The MGM, at the age of 10 -- that was my debut.

And I was so proud to be working in the show.

It was my first time.

I was really strong.

I was vibrant, just excited about life.

And then you had Siegfried & Roy,

who were headlining, in a sense.

They were kind of coming up at that time

and becoming very popular and becoming the stars on the strip.

Smith: On April 29, 1976,

as Siegfried & Roy's cat act was leaving the stage,

Sean and his family were about to go on.

There's a security guard, and he says,

"You guys have to move.

They're gonna start bringing animals in."

And I heard a crash.

And I looked.

And I'm staring at the leopard.

The cat saw him, they locked eyes,

and that's when Sean knew he was in a lot of trouble.

I ran down the hallway as fast as I could, and all it --

[ Snarls ]

...jumped my back, and it just started biting me,

just tearing into my neck.

Rajnai: He was screaming so hard.

I would run out and what I see is my son.

I mean, my God, there was so much blood.

I tried to get that animal to attack me and let him alone.

I was pulling them both.

And I was screaming, "Open the door."

All the dressing rooms -- they shut the door.

They were scared.

That cat was just now holding on,

instead of chomping down on me and eating me.

That's the only thing I can do is grabbing his hand,

with the animal.

I was pulling them both.

My son was crying and said, "Mama, am I gonna die?

Am I gonna die?"

I said, "No, you're not gonna die. You're not."

Then they came and got the animal and took it away.

And it turned around, and it went [snarls]

and it just was full of blood.

I mean, its face was just drenched in my blood.

[ Monitors beeping ]

It turned out, there was 14 bites,

14 puncture wounds in my head.

The doctor said that I was like that close to being paralyzed.

And I had tubes stuck in there

so they could drain the puncture wounds for weeks.

Yeah, it was bad.

Every little thing was, like, excruciating pain.

It was insane.

Beside my mom saving my life,

the only reason that I did not die that night

was because they'd declawed the leopard.

As it was chomping down on me,

his instinct was to pull and bite and pull and bite,

and if he had claws, he would have got to my heart.

I would have been dead.

After the accident, I was recovering and healing.

Roy never, ever came to the door, said "Sorry."

Never did that. Siegfried did.

He came to the trailer.

We lived in a little trailer at the time.

He brought me a watch.

So this is what I got.

I got a watch and a box of chocolates, okay?

Doesn't work anymore.

I still have it 44 years later.

But he came, and he apologized.

He said he was sorry.

Obviously, this is a big deal.

Obviously, there's gonna be a lawsuit.

We were all sitting in the law office for the deposition,

and he was like third or fourth down where I was sitting.

And the attorney asked everybody, "What do you think?"

And then Roy goes, "Yeah, and my animal was in shock."

I tell you, the blood just went to my head.

I got up -- I tell you,

I wanted to go and do some scratching on his eyes.

I...I...I go crazy.

Instead of saying, "I felt so bad for this kid,"

my child he's talking about, but he didn't.

Just talked about his animal.

It's just unheard of.

From our perspective, from what happened to us, he was cold.

He was a cold guy.

Because he had no remorse, nothing.

It screwed my life up horribly,

because I was afraid of everything after that.

It was psychological, man. It was that PTSD.

It was massive for me.

Afterward, Siegfried and Roy were, shall we say,

less than generous with the family, with their time,

and with any kind of willingness to settle in a genuine fashion.

There were some hardships.

You know, in the circus and stuff,

you don't work all the time.

And I remember that we had to dip into savings.

And then it took quite a long time to recoup from that.

It was like $75,000 is the lawsuit we settled on,

but that lawyer's fees, the hospital bills,

and all that, we were left with $30,000-some

at the end of the day.

But I couldn't touch that until I was 18.

But they flourished. They made millions.

It hurt us. It set us back a lot.

It did. Nobody -- Nobody reached out.

The story was -- it was a little blurb like this.

The article was literally less than 200 words long.

This story could have been a national news story.

When things can be embarrassing

and that embarrassment can cause trouble to the bottom line,

it didn't surprise me at all

that this received very little coverage.

When something traumatic like this happens to you,

you need to get over it.

At some point, I got over it.

Thankfully, I went on to be an actor.

I was able to use these experiences

and this pain for something good, I suppose.

I directed films.

I'm thankful that I'm able to do that and I'm alive to do it.

By stepping forward, Sean can remind the press

of what its job really is.

And I saw the coverage of Siegfried and Roy

being extremely soft -- that there were no accidents.

You can't keep the truth covered.

Never.

It always prevails.

Briscoe: They know the truth, and so do we,

that there was other things that have happened,

and I have my dad to show that for the truth.

Welcome back to "How it Really Happened."

Siegfried and Roy's story

about their unblemished safety record

was, as it turns out, an illusion.

We requested an interview with Chris Lawrence,

but he said he would no longer speak about it publicly

because it triggered his PTSD.

But we found someone else.

In his first national television interview, Charles Flannery,

who worked as a stagehand for Siegfried and Roy

and did some carpentry for them on the side,

reveals that he was attacked while working at their home

by a white tiger named Magic.

Briscoe: When I hear that Siegfried and Roy say

that nothing else ever happened to anybody else,

it's like them ignoring my dad.

That's like saying, "You don't exist."

Flannery: In October 30, 1985,

I was attacked by one of Siegfried and Roy's tigers.

We was working over at Siegfried and Roy's house

and we were building an ice cave.

I picked up the tools and was going home.

Siegfried -- I don't know where he was,

but he had a cat out, walking it, talking to my buddy.

Roy was holding the leash, and the leash was let go.

And the next thing they know,

the tiger had jumped on my dad's back and bit his neck.

Flannery: I didn't know it till I felt the hot breath on my neck.

I hollered at Roy,

and he came immediately and got the cat off me.

Briscoe: He had his left carotid artery completely severed,

and his right carotid artery was punctured by the tiger's tooth.

Due to the severed artery, he ended up stroking,

and that's usually what causes paralysis --

and puncturing the vertebrae in the back of the neck, too.

They had him in a medically induced coma.

Flannery: When I woke up, it was about December the 24th.

It was pretty soon after I came out of the coma,

I more or less came to terms that I couldn't move.

Siegfried and Roy came quite often

to the hospital to visit me.

The visits were kind of somber.

Roy was grieving over what had happened.

Siegfried was more just trying

to keep control of the situation.

I believe that Siegfried was angry at Roy

because the whole situation of my dad being attacked

and Roy letting the tiger loose --

he probably felt that it shouldn't have happened.

Flannery: They said nobody else ever got hurt.

I'd probably disagree with them on that one.

I was in the hospital for six months.

And it left me paralyzed on both sides, partly,

in different ways.

They really never asked me to not say anything,

but I knew that they didn't want me to.

It meant a lot to their show

that anything I said might cause difficulty for them.

In my knowledge, Siegfried and Roy

have never discussed these incidents in public.

I believe there's a nondisclosure agreement

that was signed between Siegfried and Roy

and my parents.

Flannery: I signed an agreement with Siegfried and Roy

that I wouldn't discuss any of the financial orders

that they did for me.

Neal: I would imagine that if they settled out of court

and nobody ever reported it to USDA,

USDA would never have found out about it.

Flannery: Roy is still out advertising they don't bite people,

but they do.

You're talking about a wild animal.

Moss: So, they did admit to Diane Sawyer in 1996

that Siegfried was injured by one of the big cats.

You had a chunk of your arm taken out by a lion, right?

Yes. It was not a chunk. It was just a --

33 stitches?

It was a nip, yes.

But we had, at this time, an illusion

where Roy changes to a lion, and I open up the cage.

And to make it look very ferocious,

so I had a lot of wrestling with the lion.

And went too far with going with playing.

I just got too carried away.

Not one of them has ever really turned on you?

No, I guess I'm very fortunate.

At some point, once a month, I'm sure, one of those cats

started escalating his aggression.

Roy would have seen it and either get a trainer

to get it off or figure out a way to manage that

so it doesn't become a dangerous situation.

That is the skill.

Miller: The longer you work with dangerous animals,

the odds go up that a potential problem could occur.

I've been bit a few times.

So you do this for 10 years, 20, 30 years,

you're pushing the envelope.

Something's gonna happen at some point.

It's not if.

It's when.

Salmoni: I was in a live show with my lion,

who loved audiences, loved me.

He did the same show three times a day.

I spent 13 hours a day with that lion.

For months, three times a day,

he would walk past this little red carpet,

and that day, he wanted to grab it.

When a lion is possessive -- or a tiger --

they will kill anybody or anything they think

that could take that thing from them.

He was growling at me, whipping his tail at me,

showing me all the body postures of,

"This is mine, Dave!"

He continued his charge far enough back

that I ran out of room.

And he broke my rib cage.

He was about to lunge for my throat,

so, instead, I put my arm in his mouth.

He was thrashing to try and get me off my feet,

so the muscles tore out of my forearm,

instead of him being able to keep control of me.

I told the story at least 10 times to 10 different people

within the 24 hours of me being attacked

to when I first saw the video.

You'll see there was a woman onstage with me,

who was my backup.

Her story was different than my story,

my story was different than her stories,

and both of our stories were different

from what we saw on camera,

because your memory in these adrenalized situations

is not correct.

I talked to as many as I possibly could,

and I heard the same story.

And that story was not what Siegfried and Roy claimed.

It was a very simple story.

The tiger seemed to get antagonized

and went for Roy's neck.

Roy was being picked up and tossed around like a rag doll.

And then they went offstage.

Observing the video of the attack

on Roy Horn on October the 3rd,

there's no doubt in my mind that this tiger attacked Roy,

and Montecore was just being a tiger

and didn't want to play anymore.

He was actually attacking.

Bennett: It was a huge cultural phenomenon.

Everyone was talking about it.

Everyone wanted to know, "What went wrong?"

Siegfried and Roy -- the tiger bit the man in the head.

And everybody's mad at the tiger,

talking about the tiger went crazy.

That tiger ain't go crazy.

That tiger went tiger!

Baum: If "A tiger's gonna tiger,"

as Chris Rock infamously said months later,

that doesn't go with the illusion, really,

that they had spent so many years carefully concocting.

Salmoni: Why this night?

If he's hugged and kissed Roy for seven years,

why now all of a sudden?

Baum: So, MGM taped their performances,

and MGM allowed the USDA investigators

to look at the video, but they couldn't take possession of it.

We had to make appointments,

and we had to do it behind closed, locked doors.

Observing the video...

...Roy tried to get Montecore to lay down

and tapped him with the microphone.

Montecore grabbed his hand.

Roy kicked him with his boot because he was going after him.

And then the cat grabbed Roy by the neck

and drug him off the stage.

I remember seeing someone run to the curtain

and start grabbing Montecore, trying to get him off of Roy.

The only other USDA inspector in Vegas who saw it said...

The investigators themselves

couldn't definitively say what had happened, right?

Because there was a primary witness,

and it's a tiger, and it doesn't talk, right?

But there aren't many stories, in tiger terms,

that would make sense.

Bennett: Siegfried and Roy always stuck to their story --

Montecore was protecting Roy.

Salmoni: These animals are not like domestic animals.

They just don't have that kind of behavior in them

to try and save somebody.

It's, like, against their instincts.

I'm a zoologist, animal trainer.

I trained captive tigers how to hunt.

And I've introduced myself into numerous prides of lions.

I've had big cats in my life for the last 20 years or so.

So, the story of protection doesn't add up

in any way at all.

In this case, you can't say an animal's protecting you

if he's sunk his teeth into your body.

Montecore gets up, cool as a cucumber,

leans over, and picks up Roy like a cub,

on the right side of his neck.

The tiger knows how to use his teeth.

I know that one of the canines went through his scapula.

To bite someone through their scapula takes so much pressure.

That tiger knows exactly what he's doing.

And, clearly, evolutionarily,

tigers have to know how much pressure to use in their jaw

to carry around a little cub.

They're fragile when they're born.

And the mother, who can kill a buffalo,

walks around with them in her mouth all the time.

Bennet: Roy maintained this idea of a nurturing male tiger to ABC.

So you think that he picked you up as tigers do their cubs.

With the cubs, yeah.

Miller: Dad is never around the cubs.

He'll eat the cubs.

Mom will kill Dad and keep Dad away from cubs.

So Montecore, a male tiger,

would never be walking a cub around,

because males aren't in that situation.

There's no stories that add up as easily as

tiger just wanted to challenge for dominance that night.

We know Montecore was 7.

We know for sure, at 7, that's the prime of their life.

You're the dominant one in its life, and one day,

it wakes up with just a little bit more testosterone

than it had yesterday,

and, "Now that I'm the big, strong tiger,

you're not gonna tell me what to do."

But, as a human, you won't have seen the difference

between Tuesday and Wednesday.

King: And these tigers can be dangerous, right?

Tigers can be -- of course.

It's a 650-pound --

you know, and they're very demanding.

It's a very demanding -- as you know --

They go where they want to go.

Salmoni: Very likely, the tiger was challenging for dominance.

Roy accepted that challenge by bopping it on the nose.

Then the tiger escalated, which was very normal tiger behavior.

He says, "Well, if we're gonna fight, we're gonna fight."

Once the challenge was accepted,

the tiger escalated into a bite up here.

As soon as the tiger bit Roy, Roy somehow got underneath him.

Once Roy stops fighting back, the fight for dominance is over.

The tiger is now dominant.

He's won that fight.

"I'm the boss now."

Once they get ahold of something, including a person --

and even someone they love --

they will become possessive over it.

And the longer they possess this thing,

the more dangerous they will become, and they become deadly,

and they'll hang on as hard as they have to.

They won't let it go.

And then it's on.

That tiger will fight to the death to not give up

whatever he's got ahold of and is possessive over.

It's just the way they are.

Roy's a handler, not a trainer.

So he's got his actual trainers in the background somewhere,

and they're gonna be coming out to try

and take Roy from him.

So that's when all the possessive behavior

is gonna start coming on.

At that point, according to Chris,

there was a continued mayhem, where Chris' supervisor,

the head of the animal-handling team,

had to move into, essentially, a jaw-opening exercise

that they had practiced in the past

where both index fingers are put inside of them

in order to get their mouths to open up.

Someone did grab the tail, tried to pull Montecore,

and they had another individual

trying to pry Montecore's teeth from Roy's neck.

I believe it was a fire extinguisher

that actually got him to let go.

Baum: They were able to work on Montecore,

walk him into circles, and calm him down,

and separately drag Roy into another area offstage

and begin administering first aid.

In my opinion, it was not a stroke.

It was an attack on Roy from Montecore.

And I still stand by that.

There's truth in illusion to them,

and saying that Montecore didn't attack Roy

but was actually trying to help him is itself an illusion

in the tradition of Siegfried & Roy.

Horn: This is the white-tiger cub.

They are already -- the species was extinct in the wild.

And it's Siegfried and my biggest goal --

to save this white tiger.

Friess: Siegfried and Roy positioned themselves

as these saviors of a rare species

that was somehow losing the survival battle in the wild.

That claim itself was a lie.

The white tiger was not a separate species of any sort.

Salmoni: White tigers are just a genetic recessive gene

that affects the coloration of the cat.

Being white in a jungle isn't gonna help you hide

and sneak up on things.

Friess: And the effort to save them

was actually an effort to inbreed them.

Because of the recessive genes,

they had to breed them within very close family relatives.

Many of the animals that are born have all kinds

of genetic problems --

cleft tongues and scoliosis and other medical conditions.

It's not this great, heroic feat to save the white tigers

when you're breeding an animal

that you are deliberately risking genetic chaos for.

♪♪

Basically, we have our own breeding program.

The white tiger was already extinct in the wild.

We work to get them at different zoos.

Salmoni: There is no genetic benefit,

from a conservational point of view, to saving white tigers.

This is a happy day for Siegfried and Roy.

I think that what we need to be concerned about

is genetic diversity,

which is the opposite of what comes with a white tiger.

They felt that it was sort of a lie

for a kind of a higher purpose.

One of the most important things for public figures with wildlife

is to impress upon people how amazing animals are.

People have to get involved and to appreciate nature,

because when they appreciate nature, they can defend it.

Then after you see how beautiful this tiger is or this lion is,

regardless of the color, that's how you motivate someone

to becoming interested in conservation.

I really felt like they, over the years,

did a great job bringing awareness to tigers in general.

Bennett: Montecore was not put down.

He lived on Siegfried and Roy's properties.

He continued to be cared for.

He was still very much loved, as Roy told Maria Shriver.

Roy, I know you see Montecore every week.

Yes.

How would you describe your relationship with him today?

He's my baby.

You're not mad at him?

No. He saved my life.

I think what's more important here is,

you know, these are alternative facts.

It's a distortion of what really happened,

and it undermines the truth.

Miller: They believed that was the way to protect Montecore,

and I really think that that's where it all came from.

But I think the truth is more important.

It doesn't bother me, even as a journalist, if they needed to,

in some way, tweak the story a little bit in their favor,

because they are an institution

and they had had successes for so long with wild animals.

Clearly, they had a story line for how the attack happened,

how the accident happened,

because that's what I believe Roy believes.

There could have been a very, I think, impactful

and important discussion about how, you know,

man and beast are allowed to entertain together.

[ Vocalizing ]

And I think that did a disservice

to the animals in a way.

Roy Horn has a responsibility to explain

to people that hugging and kissing tigers is wonderful,

but they're terrible pets.

You know, we take the chances.

We walk them on leashes.

They haven't evolved to walk on a leash.

They haven't evolved to hug and kiss me.

These are wild animals, and we are willing

to take the risks because we love it.

The real story should start with these are not pets.

These are wild animals doing wild-animal things.

Bennett: In 2014, Montecore died at the Secret Garden at the Mirage,

after a relatively long life -- 17 years old.

And on ABC, Roy Horn admitted how different his life is now.

Well, yeah, there's a little bit of a setback now

because of my condition.

I'm not that quick like I used to be.

Bennett: Siegfried and Roy came together in 2009 to do a final act,

and it was the first time since the accident

that they performed.

And although it was heroic and he had trouble walking,

it was that sad happy that you sometimes get

when you see something like that.

You're so happy that the person is alive

and there and standing before you,

but you're so sad

that they're so different from what they were.

By sticking to their story

that Montecore was protecting Roy Horn

on that fateful October night,

Siegfried and Roy may have perpetuated the myth

that tigers can make loving pets.

The proliferation of tigers in captivity continues

to be a national problem, with an estimated 7,000 tigers

owned privately in the United States --

more than those living in the wild in India.

We reached out numerous times to Siegfried and Roy,

their former manager, Bernie Yuman, Steve Wynn,

Feld Entertainment, and MGM Resorts.

They all declined to comment.

Roy Horn only performed publicly again one final time,

in 2009, to benefit the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute.

Despite his impaired speech and major physical challenges,

he pushed himself every day to communicate and to keep moving.

But, sadly, in April 2020, his publicist confirmed

that Roy Horn had tested positive for COVID-19.

And on the 8th of May 2020, the real tiger King of Las Vegas

lost his fight against COVID-19.

The legendary Roy Horn was 75 years old.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.