(3/4/02) The SPCA is called in to take custody of a lot of exotic
animals, but none more so than the one it has right now. It's a primate
that's so rare most zoos can't get one. And that's the mystery of the
monkey.

At the moment, he's called Walter -- a white-crowned Mangaby, one of the
rarest creatures in the world. Only about 200 live in the African
jungle. But for now, he's at Houston's SPCA after being caught in the
wilds of Fort Bend county at an abandoned farmhouse.
On Christmas Eve, there was a report of a monkey sitting on a front
porch beside some stray dogs. SPCA investigators thought it was a joke.
It wasn't. Walter had apparently escaped from his owner's home and taken
up with the dogs.

Jim Boller/SPCA Investigator: "They were foraging together and whatever
the dogs ate he would too, and his natural diet is vegetarian."

Word that he's here has zoos calling. Everyone's curious about the
mystery of how he wound up in Texas. There's a theory...

Jim Boller/SPCA Investigator: "Most likely is, they bought him from one
of these animals, dispersed to a dealer inappropriately and found his
way to Fort Bend county."

Like lions and tigers that have wound up in the SPCA, Walter is an
exotic animal That means he's protected by law, but not from black
market dealers who promote them as pets.

Patty Mercer/Houston SPCA: "You're finding them in homes and apartments
across this country and their numbers are disappearing dramatically in
the wild."

Walter though will be luckier than most. There are plans to send him to
a program in Europe.

Patty Mercer/Houston SPCA: "They're doing a reintroduction program. So
Walter may get to see a jungle yet. He may get to see a jungle or at
least be surrounded by individuals of his own kind."

A better life than he's had so far. Walter the monkey may also wind up
in a National Geographic production. The Geographic is planning a
program on exotic animals mistakenly kept as pets, and the Houston SPCA
will be featured.

CO-HOSTS: Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson

Lead-In

DIANE SAWYER: Tonight, 20/20 exposes a frightening practice. Monkeys, some infected with dangerous viruses, released by research labs and zoos, and sold by free-wheeling dealers as harmless pets.

Mr. RICHARD FARINATO: People think of them as babies in fur coats. And they're anything but.

SAWYER: Exposure to an infected monkey killed this 22-year-old lab worker in just six weeks. The same breed, kept as a pet, attacked this little girl when its owner brought the monkey to a campground.

Ms. ASHLEE BOLWAR: Then the monkey jumped on my leg and just bit me.

SAWYER: Is a pet owner in your neighborhood harboring a cute little killer?

Chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross uncovers a disturbing trade in potentially dangerous animals, Monkey Business.

Story:

MONKEY BUSINESS

Announcer: From Times Square in New York, Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson.

DIANE SAWYER: Good evening, and welcome to 20/20 WEDNESDAY. Charlie and I are so happy to have you joining us tonight. We're going to begin with a potential source of disease which could be moving into your neighborhood, and we suspect it's one you've never heard about before. More and more people are getting monkeys as pets, and, in most cases, it's perfectly legal to buy a monkey or to keep one at home.

CHARLES GIBSON: But the question is, where do these exotic pets come from? As you're about to see, our chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross has uncovered the surprising and disturbing source of a growing number of pet monkeys and what might be a very real danger behind those big, brown eyes.

Unidentified Woman #1: I've always wanted a monkey, ever since I was a little girl.

Unidentified Woman #2: They do everything with us. They go away with us.

Unidentified Woman #3: Can't help but love 'em. Just like having a little baby.

Unidentified Woman #4: I can't imagine somebody being without a monkey.

Mr. RICHARD FARINATO: They are dressed up. They are made into little human beings. People think of them as babies in fur coats, and they are anything but.

BRIAN ROSS reporting: (Voiceover) Richard Farinato loves animals, but what he doesn't love, as a former zoo curator and now working for the Humane Society of the United States, is what he says is going on in the monkey trade, the business of monkeys. A booming business, as 20/20 found in a four-month undercover investigation.

(Richard Farinato working)

Unidentified Man #1: Usually, I get $1,500 for the males, if they specify female, $1,800.

ROSS: (Voiceover) With potentially infected monkeys, often right out of the country's research labs and zoos, ending up in the hands of dealers like this man in Tennessee, who offer them as pets for thousands of dollars.

(Dean Olinger in shop)

Mr. DEAN OLINGER: Deposits are nonrefundable.

ROSS: (Voiceover) With scant attention paid to health risks and few laws to stop it.

(Olinger in office)

Mr. FARINATO: Every time you touch that animal, take the animal out on a leash, hold the monkey in your arm, show him to the kid next door, this is dangerous stuff, whether it's physical injury or whether it's disease transmission.

ROSS: (Voiceover) Yet they are often advertised as diaper-wearing and bottle-fed, perfect for couples who want a new baby.

(Monkeys in diapers; monkeys with pacifiers)

Unidentified Woman #5: He's part of our family. He's not really a pet.

Unidentified Woman #6: This is my late-life child.

ROSS: (Voiceover) Including, incredibly, the species of monkey known as the macaque, like these two, all possible carriers of a fast-moving and usually fatal virus called herpes B. It is the very kind of monkey that led to the death two years ago of a 22-year-old researcher at Emory University, Beth Griffin, who died just six weeks after she was splashed in the eye with body fluid from a macaque. In research labs, particularly since Beth Griffin's death, anyone getting anywhere near macaques is trained to wear extensive protective clothing and plastic face shields.

(Monkeys; photo of Beth Griffin; research laboratory; monkeys in laboratory cages)

Unidentified Offscreen Voice: (From research lab training video) Treat all macaques as if they were herpes B-positive.

ROSS: (Voiceover) None of those precautions could be seen at this picnic thrown by monkey owners in Florida, where people were kissing and sharing drinks with their macaques. These pet owners say their macaques have tested virus-free, but experts warn the virus can appear at anytime, even in monkeys once tested tested as virus-free.

(Monkey picnic)

Unidentified Man #2: No matter how you treat them, they will always turn to you for affection and love. It's something I guess every human wants to have throughout their entire life.

ROSS: (Voiceover) To date, there have been 29 known deaths from macaques and herpes B, all involving laboratory workers, and scientists at the Centers for Disease Control say the growing trade in macaques as pets in the last few years constitutes an emerging public health threat.

(Monkeys at picnic; CDC statement)

Dr. MIRA LESLIE: Macaques, actually, are the most common monkey that's sold in Arizona and probably throughout the United States. They're very commonly bred and sold in the pet trade.

ROSS: (Voiceover) Dr. Mira Leslie, the state veterinarian in Arizona, has spent the last three years pushing for a law to get pet monkeys banned altogether because of so many close calls.

(Dr. Mira Leslie working)

Dr. LESLIE: There are all kinds of different public locations where people have been bitten, a busy shopping mall at Christmas, a health club, a campground.

ROSS: (Voiceover) Almost half of the victims were children, the most recent, 8-year-old Ashlee Bolwar, bitten this summer by a pigtail macaque whose owner brought it to a popular state campground.

(Ashlee Bolwar in swiming pool)

Ms. ASHLEY BOLWAR: We were looking for crawdads, and we were just playing around, looking for them. And then the monkey jumped on my leg and just bit me.

ROSS: (Voiceover) Ashlee's parents, Karen and Andy Bolwar, first thought of rabies. But what the state vet told them was much worse.

(Karen and Andy Bolwar at home)

Ms. KAREN BOLWAR: She had told me how bad the herpes B was. And she had told me that there was a 70% mortality rate. And my heart just sank.

ROSS: (Voiceover) The Bolwars were lucky. The monkey that bit Ashlee wasn't shedding the herpes B virus on that particular day, as often happens, but it was a terrible two weeks before their daughter tested virus-free.

(Bolwar family walking)

Mr. ANDY BOLWAR: I mean, I went to bed every night crying. I mean, I lost five pounds in two days from the stress. I mean, it was horrible.

ROSS: (Voiceover) And the same horrible wait has just ended for another set of parents in Evansville, Indiana, where last month, a child visiting the zoo stuck his hand in a cage and was bitten by one of six macaques. The monkeys, since placed in a cage with a Plexiglas shield, all tested positive for herpes B, although the child has not.

(Aerial photo of Evansville; zoo; monkeys in cage at zoo)

Dr. LESLIE: When you have a disease that's that fatal, you just don't mess around.

ROSS: (Voiceover) And Dr. Leslie says the concern goes far beyond just the macaques and the herpes-B virus, that virtually all monkeys pose a serious health risk.

(Dr. Leslie working)

Dr. LESLIE: There are poxviruses, herpesviruses, salmonella, lots of parasitic diseases, hepatitis, tuberculosis. There are all kinds of diseases, a much longer list than with any other animal.

ROSS: This woman has been trying to keep secret the fact that an exotic monkey, a spider monkey, bit her.

(Unidentified woman in home)

Unidentified Woman #6: The spots started coming up right after.

ROSS: She has symptoms that her doctors in a small midwestern town cannot diagnose, repeated outbreaks of something that appears to be, but is not, chicken pox.

Woman #6: It liquefies the muscle and the flesh, and they have to drain all that out.

ROSS: (Voiceover) All from one monkey bite.

(Unidentified woman in interview)

Mr. FARINATO: We see animals now out there that we never saw before.

ROSS: And according to Richard Farinato at the Humane Society, the trade in exotic monkeys is being fueled by the country's zoos and university research centers, whose surplus monkeys have ended up in the hands of unscrupulous dealers and brokers.

(Farinato and Ross walking)

ROSS: You worked in zoos.

Mr. FARINATO: Uh-huh.

ROSS: Did you see this firsthand?

Mr. FARINATO: I did it firsthand.

ROSS: You did it?

Mr. FARINATO: When we had too many animals, especially excess males that wouldn't get along, we had to place them. We had to move them out of the zoo.

So out the door the animal goes. And in most cases, where it's going to end up is in the trade.

ROSS: So you point your finger right at the zoos and the research labs.

Mr. FARINATO: You have to. There's no other way that these animals would be out there.

ROSS: (Voiceover) Federal authorities say animals have come from some of the most prestigious zoos and universities, including Tulane University in Louisiana, now the subject of a federal grand jury investigation into how dozens of potentially dangerous and highly endangered research monkeys from their labs ended up in the pet trade.

(Monkeys in holding area; Tulane sign)

Mr. FARINATO: Tulane was the importing institution. Tulane said they wanted these animals. Tulane said they were going to use these animals and needed these animals. Simple ownership responsibility.

ROSS: (Voiceover) Tulane says it thought its monkeys were just going to a private zoo and a wildlife preserve, not the pet trade. But going undercover, 20/20 tracked some of the monkeys to the small town of Lebanon, Tennessee, and something called the Worldwide Exotics Wildlife Center, run by a convicted felon, this man, Dean Olinger, who provided a fascinating insight into how the monkey trade works. The monkeys from Tulane are called white-crowned mangabeys, a breed that can carry a monkey virus similar to HIV, something of great concern to public health officials. The mangabeys are so rare that there's only one in an accredited zoo in all of North America. But Olinger has at least nine of them.

(Brian Ross driving; Olinger at work; Olinger showing monkeys)

Mr. OLINGER: These mangabeys right here, 99% of the people in the United States will never see them.

ROSS: (Voiceover) In a cage in the rear of Olinger's property, we could actually see the identifying tattoo Tulane researchers had put on one of the mangabeys, number L688. That matched up with documents obtained by 20/20, an official roster of some 150 mangabeys, including L688, all imported by Tulane from Africa under a special exemption allowing endangered monkeys to be used only for research projects.

(Caged monkey; Tulane documents; caged monkey)

Unidentified Woman #8: Hi, Nikita.

ROSS: (Voiceover) Now, after moving from one dealer to another, their offspring for sale in Tennessee for $4,500, and the only law against doesn't involve health risks, but the fact that the monkeys are an endangered species.

(Monkey playing; Olinger at home)

Mr. OLINGER: The problem is, that, you know, I need to sell to somebody in state.

ROSS: (Voiceover) It's illegal to sell an endangered monkey across state lines.

But when a 20/20 producer, answering an ad Olinger had placed made it clear that she lived in New York and would be taking the monkey back to New York, Olinger told us he could find a way for us to acquire a mangabey he called Nikita, but only after making sure his visitors were not federal agents.

(Olinger at home)

Mr. OLINGER: Neither one of you are affiliated with any law enforcement agency anywhere, right?

Unidentified 20/20 Producer: Right.

Mr. OLINGER: You don't work for the feds?

20/20 Producer: No.

Mr. OLINGER: You're not undercover?

20/20 Producer: We're not with any law enforcement agencies.

Mr. OLINGER: You just want a pet monkey?

20/20 Producer: Right.

Mr. OLINGER: OK, we can work out a donation thing on Nikita.

ROSS: (Voiceover) Olinger has set up his monkey business as a nonprofit corporation and said he would call the sale of Nikita a donation. He said our $500 downpayment for the so-called "donation" was not refundable.

(Olinger at home speaking to 20/20 producers)

Mr. OLINGER: Put it down over there.

ROSS: (Voiceover) And while Olinger accepted our money, he would not touch it, reciting in detail the federal law on endangered animals.

(Olinger speaking with 20/20 producers)

Mr. OLINGER: There's this thing called the Lacey Act.

20/20 Agent: Lacey?

Mr. OLINGER: Yeah, and if you violate the Lacey Act, it's just point-blank, you're in the penitentiary. It's all said and done. They don't screw with you. They come get you. You go to jail and you live there.

ROSS: (Voiceover) Having said that, Olinger then described how to make it appear our transaction was not a sale, but just a donation between friends.

(Olinger speaking with 20/20 producers)

Mr. OLINGER: You and I have known each other for years. We're good friends.

And you've been thinking about getting primates ever since you've known me.

And I think you deserve something like this. You're dealing with an animal that's very highly endangered and they'll just, they'll burn you on it. That's why these had to be donated.

ROSS: What do you make of that?

(Voiceover) Richard Farinato of the Humane Society says none of this would be happening if Tulane and other research labs and zoos made sure who they were dealing with before turning over their rare and potentially dangerous monkeys.

(Farinato in interview)

Mr. FARINATO: They went out the door of the facility that had imported them, that knew what they had, a rare breed of monkey, and they simply disposed of them. And now those animals are out in the trade. It's a perfect direct example.

ROSS: (Voiceover) Officials at Tulane declined to appear in this report, but in a brief statement to 20/20, Tulane said it had followed all federal and state laws. We never did complete our "deal" for the monkey, forfeiting our deposit.

And when we went back to Tennessee to ask Dean Olinger about it, he declined to talk with us.

(Tulane statement; outside Worldwide Exotic Wildlife Center; Olinger being harassed by Ross)

ROSS: I want to show you a tape of that, if I could. Is that possible?

Mr. OLINGER: No, no.

ROSS: Why don't you talk to us, sir?

(Voiceover) Olinger later called the police to order us off the property and then pelted us with rocks as we attempted to take pictures over the fence.

(Police harassing Ross; Olinger throwing rocks)

ROSS: You're gonna hurt somebody!

Mr. FARINATO: A gold mine for those individuals that want to take advantage of it, and there's nothing to stop them. It's almost that we have to reach a threshold of injury, disease, death of humans, as well as animals suffering, before somebody turns around and says, `We need to do something about this.'

GIBSON: Nobody knows for certain, but there are estimates that, right now, thousands of monkeys are being kept as pets in this country. In Arizona, there is pending legislation to restrict the sale of monkeys, and a number of other jurisdictions have already enacted similar laws. We'll be right back.

(Announcements - End of Segment)