A sickening monkey torture network filmed helpless animals being beaten, doused in acid and put in blenders.
At least 20 people were placed under investigation globally last year after a BBC undercover investigation exposed a ‘depraved’ animal abuse ring, involving two British women. The vile network involved a private online group that paid people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
Adriana Orme, 56, and Holly LeGresley have today been sentenced after pleading guilty to monkey cruelty offences. Orme, from Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire, admitted to uploading 26 videos of monkeys being tortured and causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal.
LeGresley, 37, was jailed for two years after admitting that she uploaded 22 images and 132 videos of monkeys being tortured to online chat groups, and making a payment to a PayPal account to encourage cruelty. Mother-of-three Orme, aged 56, was sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to publishing an obscene article by uploading one image and 26 videos of monkey torture, and to having encouraged or assisted the commission of unnecessary suffering by making a £10 payment to a PayPal account.
LeGresley, from Kidderminster – known as ‘The Immolater’ online – pleaded guilty to uploading 22 images and 132 videos of monkeys being tortured.Judge James Burbidge KC said Dutch-born Orme and LeGresley, from Upton-upon-Severn and Kidderminster respectively, had joined online chat groups which encouraged torture of monkeys by offenders based in Indonesia.
The judge, who said he had been left “almost in disbelief” by the evidence in the case, told the defendants: “Quite what led you two women of good character and, I am satisfied, some intelligence, to engage in such a forum is beyond comprehension by any right-thinking member of society.”
The year-long investigation, that was published in June 2023, uncovered the sadistic global monkey torture ring stretching from Indonesia to the United States. It found hundreds of online customers who would pay to suggest ways to torture and sometimes kill baby long-tailed macaques on film.
It’s thought the torture ring started on YouTube but after the appetite for more extreme abuse was realised, it moved to private groups on the messaging app Telegram. One of the monkeys who featured in some of the films became famous among the ring and was called Mini. Her owner M Ajis Rasajana would lock her in a room with him and slam her against the wall while laughing and filming the whole hideous act.
When he was eventually arrested and later released in Indonesia, he told BBC journalists that he started posting films of monkeys to earn revenue from the ads but he noticed that abuse videos got more views, so he started doing those instead. He said he set up a Telegram account and advertised it on YouTube asking people to “Message for more extreme videos”.
They did and he provided the sickening content, although he called the foreign customers “psychopaths” due to their requests. By the time he had got Mini, he’d killed 20 other baby monkeys but had made enough money to buy a new car. Ajis was what is known as a VO – video operator – which in this vile world means the person carrying out the torture.
They were reportedly paid by the monkey ring itself and the BBC investigation went undercover into one of the main groups, Ape’s Cage, which had hundreds of members, all using pseudonyms and all with the same cruel desire – to see the monkeys suffer.
According to the broadcaster, the man at the top of the group was known as Mr Ape and he apparently spent hours every day talking to other monkey haters, asking for donations for videos to be made and distributing the distressing films. He allegedly bragged he was “building an empire” and was the founder and CEO of Ape’s Cage, as well as belonging to other private torture groups.
Mr Ape, whose identity hasn’t been revealed, wanted to find his own VO and came across someone who was already using one. Stacey Storey was a 46-year-old grandmother who worked at a gas station and lived with her son in a trailer set back from the road in a rural part of Alabama. Her screen name was ‘Sadistic’ and she reportedly shared endless torture videos and fantasies involving acid and force feeding.
Her VO charged £150 per film and Mr Ape reportedly asked for a video of a baby monkey in a blender because he thought it would make him famous in the world of monkey haters. The community loved it and paid for it to happen, as well for another gruesome clip involving a power drill that proved fatal for the monkey.
The network was quickly gaining members, but some were actually animal lovers and activists who had managed to infiltrate the depraved ring. Lucy Kapetanich, Dave Gooptar and Nina Jackel, were appalled by what they had seen in the groups – which included amputations, decapitations and drownings – and were determined to publicise what they had discovered.
Nina was invited to join Ape’s Cage by one of its most prolific members, Michael McCartney, 50, who was known online as the ‘Torture King’. The former motorcycle gang member from Norfolk, Virginia, said he asked her to join because, despite his heavy involvement, he felt guilty about what they were doing and wanted to get it shut down from within. There were around 400 members in this group and as well as Americans, there were people from Europe and Australia.
He claimed he originally joined when he was sent an invite after commenting on videos of Mini. When he had access to the group he saw they had a poll set up asking what form of torture members wanted used, a hammer, a screwdriver or pliers. They would carry out whatever was voted for. The Immolater, a bird lover who lived with her parents in the UK, was said to be one of the cruellest contributors.
The group was careful to vet new members but Sadistic’s (Stacey Storey’s) VO slipped up and revealed details in his torture videos that could have led to his location in Indonesia being identified. The BBC alerted a local animal charity and together they passed the information on to police in West Java. They arrested Asep Yadi Nurul Hikmah and, according to their records, they found a blender and power drill at his property.
The BBC also spoke to Mr Ape, a college graduate in his mid-twenties who lived in his mother’s house in a respectable neighbourhood in Florida. He said he was a lonely person and explained why he wanted to watch the blood-curdling videos. “What was so appealing was to see something else suffer, essentially, that looked human,” he said. “Because I was suffering.”
Over in the US, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security were also investigating a monkey torturing ring. Agent Wolpert from the DHS, usually investigated child sex abuse gangs and could see a shocking similarity between the two networks. He said the monkey groups were “like nothing I’d ever seen”.
“It’s actually just like a child abuse investigation,” he said. “The groups, the secrecy, the way they vet people – it’s exactly the same.” Possession of animal torture videos in the US is not illegal but distributing them is and can see someone sent to prison for up to seven years.
McCartney was charged in Virginia with conspiracy to create and distribute animal-crushing footage. He told the BBC team investigating: “I was the man. You want to see monkeys get messed up? I could bring it to you.” He also wanted to highlight how he’d tried to get it shut down and said: “I tried to do the right thing but I profited. It was my mistake.”
Two others were also charged in the US. Former US Air Force officer David Christopher Noble, 48, and Nicole Devilbliss, 35. They face up to five years in prison. The BBC says more people, including Stacey Storey and Mr Ape, are expected to be charged and 20 were investigated after its findings.
Mini’s owner, M Ajis Rasjana, was sentenced to eight months in prison in Indonesia – the maximum sentence for animal torture. Asep Yadi Nurul Hikmah was charged with animal torture and the sale of a protected species and sentenced to three years in prison.
When the BBC published its findings last year, it said monkey torture videos were still easily accessible on Telegram and Facebook, where they had found dozens of groups sharing extreme content, some with more than 1,000 members. “We’ve seen an escalation in this extreme, graphic content, which used to be hidden but is now circulating openly on platforms like Facebook,” Sarah Kite, co-founder of animal charity Action for Primates said.
Facebook told the BBC it had and continued to remove animal torture groups when they were brought to its attention. YouTube said it was “working hard to quickly remove violative content,” and Telegram said its moderators could not “proactively patrol private groups” but users could report content from them.
