Who Is Tonia Haddix? All About the Animal Dealer Featured in Chimp Crazy

Tonia Haddix made a name for herself as the controversial self-titled “Dolly Parton of Chimps.”

The former nurse turned exotic animal owner is the subject of the 2024 HBO documentary, Chimp Crazy, produced and directed by filmmaker Eric Goode of Tiger King fame.

Though she has owned many varieties of exotic animals, the core focus of Chimp Crazy is her chimpanzees, as well as other “chimp moms,” per HBO’s press release. Haddix has said she raised seven monkeys at the Missouri Primate Foundation (previously known as Chimparty) and her Sunrise Beach home, taking over ownership of the animals from owner Connie Casey in the late 2010s.

The best-known of these chimpanzees is Tonka, a retired Hollywood star. Haddix had a fixation on the primate, who most famously appeared in two 1997 films, Buddy with Alan Cumming and George of the Jungle, starring Brendan Fraser and Leslie Mann. Tonka — whom Haddix described as “the love of my life” to Rolling Stone in 2022— was also at the center of her run-ins with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and law enforcement.

“Tonka and I just found each other,” Haddix said in the Chimp Crazy trailer. “It was meant to be. It was just natural. And Tonka loved me as much as I loved Tonka.”

Haddix’s saga to keep her primates — but especially Tonka, who she claimed was dead in 2021 allegedly to avoid handing him over to authorities — found her embroiled in lawsuits from PETA and run-ins with law enforcement agencies.

Here’s everything to know about Chimp Crazy star Tonia Haddix.

Who is Tonia Haddix?

Tonia Haddix in ‘Chimp Crazy’.

Courtesy of HBO

Tonia Rene Haddix was born on August 7. According to her Facebook profile, she is from Ozark, Mo., and now lives in Sunrise Beach, Mo. Before becoming an exotic animal broker, she was a registered nurse.

Haddix was married to Gary Dean Haddix, who grew up in Oklahoma and worked as a truck driver and later for Ruggles Farms. He died on Dec. 4, 2020. Following Gary’s death, Haddix married Jerry Aswegan in 2021. Aswegan is from the Kansas City area and ran a mobile petting zoo business.

The exotic animal owner has two children, son Justin Range, who is featured in Chimp Crazy, and daughter Erica Range, and is a grandmother. Haddix has claimed to love Tonka more than her own children, per the HBO press release.

“I’ve never seen her that passionate about anything in my entire life. Ever,” Justin says in the trailer with a laugh. “And that includes her own son.”

Haddix talked to Rolling Stone in 2021 about her obsession with primates. “Anybody that has an exotic has to have some sort of screw loose,” she said. Haddix regularly posts memes and chimpanzee photos on Facebook, as well as her other animals, including her sloth, Sydney.

Who is Tonka, the chimpanzee Haddix owned?

Actor Alan Cumming and Buddy the Chimpanzee attend the “Buddy” Culver City Premiere on May 31, 1997 at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California.
Ron Galella, Ltd/Ron Galella Collection via Getty

Tonka, now in his 30s, is the most famous of chimpanzees Haddix formerly owned.

“He definitely was my favorite,” Haddix told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of Tonka in 2021, at which time she claimed Tonka had died.

Now retired from Hollywood, Tonka starred in George of the Jungle and Buddy, both released in 1997.

According to Save the Chimps, Tonka was born on Oct. 5, 1991. His profile on the site states that he’s grown very close with two other chimpanzees, Jacob and Cayleb, who are also at the Florida facility he was transported to in 2021. It also says his favorite thing is sunshine and his personality is calm, kind, curious and confident.

“If anybody knows Tonka, Tonka is not a normal chimpanzee,” Haddix told Rolling Stone. “He doesn’t act like another chimpanzee; he loves people.”

Haddix told the outlet she was within her rights under Missouri state law to own Tonka, as well as any other animals she could properly take care of.

“I would give anything that I had, possession-wise, up for that child. I would give my life for him,” Haddix says in the trailer as clips of law enforcement, guns and animals in cages flash across the screen, adding, “Chimps are my whole thing. You can shape them into being you.”

How did Haddix attempt to keep Tonka?

Tonia Haddix in ‘Chimp Crazy’.

Courtesy of HBO

After years of trying to rescue the chimpanzees housed at the Missouri Primate Foundation in Festus, Mo., PETA formally sued owner Casey and the foundation in 2017 over the living conditions of the primates housed there. At the facility, young chimpanzees were rented out for events like birthday parties and photo shoots and one of the primates, Travis, purchased from Casey by a Connecticut couple, made national news in 2009 when he attacked the owners’ friend.

Haddix was added as a defendant to the lawsuit after Casey transferred ownership of her remaining chimpanzees to the former nurse. She told St. Louis’ FOX 2 that she began helping Casey in 2016, and per legal documents, Haddix became the chimpanzees’ owner in late 2018. Haddix later told FOX 2 that she had moved into a trailer on the property, which was Casey’s, in order to take care of the seven chimps. Rolling Stone reported in 2021 that her capuchin monkeys lived at her Sunrise Beach house.

“I stepped up and was willing to come out there and provide that care and provide the financial support to these chimpanzees so that they could remain at the only home that they know,” she told FOX 2.

PETA and Haddix came to a consent decree in 2020 that said Haddix could keep three of the chimpanzees, including Tonka, if she met certain conditions to upgrade the Missouri facility, while the other four would go to the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Fla. When Haddix did not meet the agreed-upon conditions, the judge found her in contempt of court for violating the agreement, and all seven chimpanzees were ordered to be transferred. Haddix told the Post-Dispatch in 2021 that she had signed the consent decree “under duress.”

“They’re not getting the chimps. They’re not getting them,” Haddix told FOX 2 in 2021. “Now I’ve decided I’m keeping all of them, just for the principal of the matter, because they don’t deserve the chimps.”

When sheriff’s deputies and U.S. Marshals went to carry out the order to remove the primates in July 2021, Tonka had vanished. Haddix claimed under oath that Tonka had died. She later told St. Louis on the Air that Tonka died of natural causes following a massive stroke, and her husband, Aswegan, signed a court affidavit claiming to have cremated the body, according to the Post-Dispatch in 2023.

In January 2022, a judge found Haddix’s testimony not credible, leading to PETA and actor Cumming’s renewed efforts to find Tonka. That year, PETA was tipped off to a recorded phone call in which Haddix revealed that Tonka was alive.

In the time between the 2021 seizure — when Haddix claimed Tonka was dead — and PETA finding him in June 2022, the chimpanzee was living in her finished basement in Sunrise Beach.

Haddix told the Post-Dispatch that she had put a 60-inch television and an iPad in the basement so Tonka could watch YouTube as she and her husband worked on building him an outdoor enclosure. She told the outlet she was keeping Tonka so he “would die peacefully and with people who loved him. I did it for that chimp.”

Haddix also told Rolling Stone that those who knew about Tonka’s situation came over for parties she held for him, including one in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, but contact with humans was limited during his time in the basement.

What happened after PETA found Tonka?

Workers from Project Chimps of Blue Ridge, Georgia, leave a Festus-area facility in Maryland Heights, MO after taking away chimpanzees under a judge’s order.

Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/AP

In June 2022, PETA announced that they found Tonka caged in Haddix’s basement.

“He could only take a few steps in any direction, he was not allowed to go outside, he couldn’t feel the sun or the grass beneath his feet, he had no companionship with other chimpanzees — something extremely important to chimpanzees’ welfare — he was overweight, likely from lack of exercise, and he was not receiving proper veterinary care,” PETA said in a statement about discovering Tonka.

While pending prosecution Haddix told FOX 2, “I still stand on my promise to Tonka, and I would do anything to protect him from the evil clutches of PETA and the hell hole they placed him in. And that if the judicial system was just, he never would have left the only home he’s ever known.”

PETA sent a complaint to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in October 2022, requesting that Haddix and Aswegan’s Animal Welfare Act licenses be revoked for “willfully and repeatedly committing perjury and submitting other false information to a federal court.”

In March 2023, Haddix was ordered to pay PETA about $225,000 in legal fees for faking Tonka’s death. The animal rights organization successfully argued that the false death claim resulted in their need to bill hundreds of hours of attorney work.

In trying to protect Tonka, Haddix told Rolling Stone that in addition to lying under oath, she had friends hide Tonka, looked for ways to fake DNA test results and offered federal marshals thousands of dollars to pretend they didn’t see anything when they entered her home for the emergency court order.

“Honey, I’ve been held in contempt of court three times,” she told the outlet in 2022 of lying under oath. “I have paid $50 a day [in fines]. I’ve been through the mill. I’m sure that there’ll be some jail time in this. Do I care? No, I don’t care. It’s because it’s about that kid. As long as that kid is safe, I don’t care about nothing out there.”

How did the recorded phone call lead to finding Tonka?

Nearly a year after Haddix claimed that Tonka had died, PETA was tipped off to a 28-minute phone call recorded on May 22, 2021, between Haddix and Dwayne Cunningham, a documentary filmmaker.

In the recording, Haddix referenced Tonka and said that he was living in her basement. She claimed she could make “a million dollars” if she showcased Tonka on TikTok but couldn’t because he was a “wanted fugitive,” according to NPR. She also claimed he would be euthanized on June 2 due to congestive heart failure.

“I’m beating myself up because if I put Tonka in jeopardy just because I was doing a documentary thinking it was going to be for the betterment of private ownership, then look at what I did,” Haddix told Rolling Stone.

Somebody who was aware of the phone call had alerted PETA, but Haddix said Cunningham denied he was the one who turned her in and did not know who tipped off PETA, though he allegedly admitted to the film crew having recorded him having the conversation.

Haddix told Rolling Stone she didn’t know she was being recorded and felt misled when she learned Goode, who was behind Tiger King, was potentially involved in the documentary. The company Cunningham said was funding the documentary, Voice of America, is an LLC that listed Goode as the manager.

When the article came out in June 2022, Haddix was quoted as saying that she was “going to stop that production” and “it’s not going to happen … it would be under false pretenses.”

After Tonka was found, Jared Goodman, PETA Foundation’s vice president and deputy general counsel for animal law, said the chimpanzee was looked at by primatologists who disputed Haddix’s claims that Tonka needed to be euthanized.

Why is Cumming involved with Haddix and Tonka?

Alan Cumming speaks while holding a photograph of himself with Tonka, his chimpanzee co-star from the 1997 film ‘Buddy’ during an announcement on June 23, 2017.

FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty

Tonka starred with Cumming in the 1997 family comedy Buddy, which is based on the true-life story of Gertrude Lintz, a 1920s socialite who raised monkeys as part of her family.

After Tonka vanished, the actor pledged a $10,000 reward to find him, matching PETA’s $10,000 reward for information.

“During the months we filmed together, baby Tonka and I became good friends, playing and grooming each other and just generally larking about,” Cumming said in a statement at the time. “It’s horrible to think he might be in a cage in a dark basement somewhere or have met some other fate, so I’m appealing to whoever knows what has become of him to please come forward and claim the reward.”

After Tonka was found, Cumming was “so emotional” about the news.

“When I met Tonka while filming the movie Buddy, I made a true friend, and I was honored that he thought of me as a fellow chimp,” he said in a statement. “I’m dancing a jig that PETA has rescued Tonka from the woman who locked him away alone in a basement and lied about it. The thought of Tonka being able to wander free and happy at Save the Chimps’ lush, spacious sanctuary for the rest of his life has me singing a happy song.”

Cumming also appears in the Chimp Crazy documentary.

“People fall in love with these chimps, and you can’t tame wild things,” he said in the trailer. “When you’re in love, your brain is out of control. There’s chemicals and hormones and things happening to you that makes you irrational.”

Where is Haddix now?

HBO/Youtube

After the July 2021 raid of the Festus facility, six of the chimps were moved to the Center for Great Apes. Haddix said the last day with the chimps was “really sad” and “just real emotional” for her and Casey.

“We spent every moment that we could with the chimps all day yesterday and got them their happy meals,” Haddix told FOX 2. “We sat with the chimps as long as we could and were able to say our goodbyes to them.”

Tonka was moved to Save the Chimp’s sanctuary in Florida in June 2022. A veterinarian at the sanctuary released a statement contradicting Haddix’s claims that Tonka was near death.

“While Tonka needs dental work and is substantially overweight, the examination did not show signs of congestive heart failure,” the vet wrote. “He shows no need for the heavy doses of medications that she was reportedly giving him or the euthanasia she was reportedly considering, and his health is likely to improve with the appropriate diet and exercise that he’s now enjoying at the sanctuary, where he regularly climbs to the top of his two-story enclosure to bask in the sun.”

Haddix told Rolling Stone she would die if PETA took Tonka from her and “if there’s anything that happened to that kid, I feel sorry for them, because they will be sued from here to yonder.”She still appears to raise exotic animals at or near her home in Sunrise Beach and brokering monkeys to “their forever homes,” according to her Facebook page. In 2023, Haddix and Aswegan opened a family-run zoo, Sunrise Beach Safari, near Lake of the Ozarks.

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