Tonia Haddix

Tonia Haddix, a 56-year-old woman from Missouri, gained notoriety as a star of the HBO documentary series Chimp Crazy. Recently, she was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for perjury and obstructing justice, after falsely claiming that Tonka, a chimpanzee under her care and a former movie star, had died. Haddix's legal troubles stem from her mistreatment of several primates at her facility, which led to a lawsuit from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Despite signing a consent decree to relocate some of the chimps, she violated court orders and was found to have lied about Tonka's fate to avoid PETA's intervention.