A Missouri female that starred in the HBO docudrama collection “Chimp Crazy” has actually been punished to almost 4 years behind bars after she existed that a flick celebrity primate that she was charged of abusing had actually passed away.
Tonia Haddix, 56, was additionally gotten Thursday to offer 3 years of monitored launch after her 46-month jail sentence finishes.
Haddix, that ran a primate center the St. Louis residential area of Festus, begged guilty in March to 2 matters of perjury and among blocking justice.
All of it began almost a years earlier, when individuals for the Moral Therapy of Animals filed a claim against, claiming she was maintaining a number of chimps in “constrained in confined, practically barren units” at the now-defunct Missouri Primate Structure center.
Amongst the chimps was Tonka, that showed up in the 1997 motion pictures “Pal” and “George of the Forest.” Actor Alan Cumming, the British-born star that starred in the film “Pal” together with Tonka, additionally pled for the primate to be relocated.
Haddix authorized an approval mandate in 2020 consenting to send out 4 of the chimps to a Florida haven. The order enabled her to maintain 3 others, consisting of Tonka, at a center she was to construct.
Yet after a court discovered that was not adhering to the contract, authorities got here in 2021 and got rid of the staying chimps, with the exception of Tonka. Haddix asserted Tonka had actually passed away which she had actually cremated the remains, according to court documents.
” I intended to maintain attempting to conserve Tonka if l could. Yet after that he simply passed away on his very own, so there was no conserving him,” she claimed, according to court documents.
Yet Tonka lived. In 2022, PETA eliminated him from a cage in the cellar of her home in Daybreak Coastline, Missouri, near the Lake of the Ozarks.
Haddix informed the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2022 that she existed to safeguard Tonka from “the bad clutches of PETA.” She additionally confessed what took place in the 3rd episode of “Chimp Crazy,” which premiered in 2014, claiming, “Tonka was actually on the keep up me.”
Simply last month, detectives discovered one more chimp secured in the cellar of her home in Daybreak Coastline in offense of court orders, papers in the event claimed. She was detained, and her bond withdrawed.
” Accused has actually revealed no sorrow for her criminal conduct, and has actually remained to test and resist this Court’s authority, and she ought to deal with a substantial penalty consequently,” district attorneys created.
Her legal representative, Justin Gelfand, requested grace in court filings, claiming she endured misuse as a kid and afterwards withstood a number of rough marital relationships as a grownup.
” This life educated her a clear lesson: people are unforeseeable and are not often risk-free or credible,” Gelfand created. “When faced with these rough truths threaded throughout her life, Haddix concerned develop safe and secure add-ons with pets.”
PETA commended the sentence in a press release, claiming that Haddix currently “can not harm one more primate.”
