A secret chimpanzee means Tonia Haddix will remain behind bars until she is sentenced in two weeks in a criminal case.
Haddix, the star of HBO’s “Chimp Crazy,” admitted in federal court Thursday that she had committed several violations of her bond. U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark was quick to agree with prosecutors that Haddix needed to stay in jail as a response.
Haddix was arrested July 19, days after federal agents found a mature female chimpanzee in a cage on her property near the Lake of the Ozarks in Camden County. She’d been ordered in 2020 to never own another chimpanzee and should have reported the search to her pretrial services officer.
Federal agents were on the property for nearly 12 hours on July 9, assistant U.S. attorney Hal Goldsmith told Clark. And while the agents confiscated her cell phone, he said, there were other phones available for her to make that call.
The court had warned Haddix multiple times of the need to follow all of her bond requirements, Goldsmith said.
“This just shows that she’s not amenable to supervision,” he said.
In addition, Haddix violated state law by failing to register the chimp. Court records indicate that she had been in possession of the ape since at least April. Prosecutors have said the chimpanzee is now safe.
Haddix pleaded guilty earlier this year to three felonies for lying about the status of a chimp named Tonka. She’d been referred for criminal prosecution by a different judge in a complicated civil case involving the Missouri Primate Foundation, which once bred chimpanzees for the entertainment industry, and the animal rights groups People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA accused the foundation of housing Tonka and six other chimps in a series of “barren and unsanitary enclosures,” which violated the terms of the Endangered Species Act.
A deal reached in October 2020 required Haddix, who had helped run the facility in Festus, to surrender the seven chimps living there. But when the time came in 2021 for the chimps to be transferred to the Center for Great Apes in Florida, Haddix falsely claimed that one of them, Tonka, had died.
Tonka was later found alive in a cage in the basement of the Camden County property. He’s now living at a different chimpanzee sanctuary in Florida. According to court documents, the female chimp was found in the same cage where Haddix had once concealed Tonka.
Criminal sentencing
Haddix will be sentenced in the criminal case on Aug. 7. Federal guidelines say she should spend 10 to 16 months in prison, and Haddix’s attorneys asked for a sentence of a year or less.
But in a memorandum filed July 23, prosecutors asked a judge for a sentence between four and five years, in part due to the bond violations.
“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,” Goldsmith wrote.
PETA has also called for Haddix to face significant prison time.
“This person clearly won’t stop hurting animals unless and until she’s facing a long stay behind bars herself, and PETA is calling for the court to issue her the harshest possible sentence,” the group’s general counsel Brittany Peet said in a statement on Tuesday.
