For a fee, Connie Casey, who owns a company called Chimparty, will show up at your party with a baby chimp. She's also in the business of breeding and selling chimpanzees as pets. 14 years ago, she bred and sold Travis, the now-infamous chimp that mauled a woman in Connecticut in February.
To document the business of how chimps are bred and sold, in March 2009 INSIDE EDITION set up a house in St. Louis with hidden cameras. The main attraction at the party is a baby chimp named Michaela. The 9-month-old, wearing a diaper and baby outfit, has been hired to entertain the guests. Feeding from a bottle, clinging to a blanket and surrounded by strangers, she nervously rocks back and forth.
INSIDE EDITION’s Paul Boyd took Casey aside to ask if she still sells baby chimps, which is legal in Missouri. She says the price a baby chimp could garner is approximately $65,000. “65,000 because they're an endangered species, that's just the cost of a baby,” she says.
Casey also cautioned that owning a chimp is a major commitment. “They're wonderful and they're amazing when they're little. Everyone thinks they want one. They get big and they get strong. It's a lot more work than most people can ever imagine.”
Then she invited INSIDE EDITION’s Boyd, who she still thinks is a prospective buyer, to tour her compound of 26 chimps and a menagerie of other animals outside St. Louis.
She boasts that some of her chimps are TV and movie stars. One of her chimps appeared on Hulk Hogan's reality show, Hogan Knows Best. Another was featured in last summer’s feature film Speed Racer.
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