By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, Associated Press
A Missouri woman who starred in the HBO documentary series “Chimp Crazy” has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison after she lied that a movie star primate that she was accused of mistreating had died.
Tonia Haddix, 56, was also ordered Thursday to serve three years of supervised release after her 46-month prison sentence ends.
Haddix, who ran a primate facility the St. Louis suburb of Festus, pleaded guilty in March to two counts of perjury and one of obstructing justice.
It all started nearly a decade ago, when the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sued, saying she was keeping several chimps in “confined in cramped, virtually barren enclosures” at the now-defunct Missouri Primate Foundation facility.
Among the chimps was Tonka, who appeared in the 1997 movies “Buddy” and “George of the Jungle.” Actor Alan Cumming, the British-born actor who starred in the movie “Buddy” alongside Tonka, also begged for the primate to be moved.
Haddix signed a consent decree in 2020 agreeing to send four of the chimps to a Florida sanctuary. The order allowed her to keep three others, including Tonka, at a facility she was to build.
But after a judge found that was not complying with the agreement, authorities arrived in 2021 and removed the remaining chimps, except for Tonka. Haddix claimed Tonka had died and that she had cremated the remains, according to court records.
“I wanted to keep trying to save Tonka if l could. But then he just died on his own, so there was no saving him,” she said, according to court records.
But Tonka was alive. In 2022, PETA removed him from a cage in the basement of her home in Sunrise Beach, Missouri, near the Lake of the Ozarks.
Haddix told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2022 that she lied to protect Tonka from “the evil clutches of PETA.” She also admitted what happened in the third episode of “Chimp Crazy,” which premiered last year, saying, “Tonka was literally on the run with me.”
Just last month, investigators found another chimp locked up in the basement of her home in Sunrise Beach in violation of court orders, documents in the case said. She was arrested, and her bond revoked.
“Defendant has shown no remorse for her criminal conduct, and has continued to challenge and defy this Court’s authority, and she should face a significant punishment as a result,” prosecutors wrote.
Her lawyer, Justin Gelfand, asked for mercy in court filings, saying she suffered abuse as a child and then endured several rocky marriages as an adult.
“This life taught her a clear lesson: humans are unpredictable and are not frequently safe or trustworthy,” Gelfand wrote. “In the face of these harsh realities threaded throughout her life, Haddix came to form secure attachments with animals.”
PETA praised the sentence in a news release, saying that Haddix now “can’t hurt another chimpanzee.”