'Chimp Crazy' star sentenced to nearly 4 years in prison for lying that
primate had died
[August 09, 2025]
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
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.
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Tonia Haddix leaves the Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse after
entering guilty pleas to two counts of perjury and one count of
obstruction of justice on March 31, 2025, in downtown St. Louis.
(Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP)
 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.”
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