A Missouri woman who starred in the HBO documentary series \u201cChimp Crazy\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Tonia Haddix, 56, was also ordered Thursday to serve three years of supervised release after her 46-month prison sentence ends. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
It all started nearly a decade ago, when the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sued, saying she was keeping several chimps in \u201cconfined in cramped, virtually barren enclosures\u201d at the now-defunct Missouri Primate Foundation facility. <\/p>\n
Among the chimps was Tonka, who appeared in the 1997 movies \u201cBuddy\u201d and \u201cGeorge of the Jungle.\u201d Actor Alan Cumming<\/a>, the British-born actor who starred in the movie \u201cBuddy\u201d alongside Tonka, also begged for the primate to be moved. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to keep trying to save Tonka if l could. But then he just died on his own, so there was no saving him,\u201d she said, according to court records. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n