So one day, this woman buys a chimp, and she decides to raise it as if it were a human. Now, her name's Sandra, and she and her husband, this guy Jerry, buy this chimp for $50,000. They raise him, bottle-feed him, dress him in clothing, and he sleeps in a crib in their bedroom.
They teach him to use the toilet and eat at the table with them. He even goes out to eat at restaurants with them. Now, the chimp's name is Travis, and Travis clearly has a great life.
Everyone around town loves him; he's basically a local celebrity. But as the years go by, Travis gets a little older and goes through puberty, which starts to have an effect on his behavior. One night, Sandra, Jerry, and Travis are all out for a ride in the car, and they're stopped at an intersection downtown.
Randomly, a stranger walking past stops and throws his empty soda bottle through the car window. Travis sees this, and he flips out. He unbuckles his seatbelt, gets out of the car, and just starts going crazy.
He runs across the street, lunges at someone walking by, then starts rolling around on his back and climbing on nearby cars. No one really knows what to do, and eventually, the police show up. But Travis knows almost all the cops in this town because, like I said, he's kind of a local celebrity.
So when he sees them, he starts chasing them down, and when he gets close enough, he just smacks them on the butt because it's all a game to him. After about two hours of this chaos, he finally gets tired, goes back into the family car, and no one presses any charges because they think the whole thing was just kind of funny, and everyone knows Travis is basically harmless. But after this happened, Sandra gets a phone call one day from the town's animal control officer.
She's like, "Look, Travis is an adult now, and his behavior could get worse. He now has the strength of at least five men, and he has an adult sex drive that is not being fulfilled, and this could potentially make him violent. " Sandra hears this advice and, of course, ignores it.
Then one day, the unthinkable happens: Jerry unfortunately passes away, and Sandra is devastated. Travis is noticeably devastated too, and as they're recovering from this tragedy, they reconnect with this woman, Charla Nash. Sandra has known Charla for years, and soon enough, Charla starts working for Sandra's business.
She does some odd jobs for Sandra too, like mowing her lawn and babysitting Travis. So even though her husband passed, Sandra's life is finally getting back on track until four years go by. At this point, Travis is 14, he's 5 ft tall, 240 lb, and morbidly obese because all he eats is junk food, and Charla Nash is still very involved in Sandra's life.
But one day, it all goes wrong. Sandra and Travis are at their home, and Travis takes Sandra's car keys and walks out the front door because he wants to go for a car ride, but he's not allowed because of what happened last time. So he gets mad and starts running around the cars, acting a fool.
Sandra tells him, "Hey, come back inside," but he just won't listen. So she calls Charla Nash to come over and help her. Sometime later, Charla pulls up, gets out of the car, and is holding up this Tickle Me Elmo doll for Travis to see because that's his favorite toy, and maybe it'll help calm him down.
But calming him down is not what this does; instead, Travis sees Charla Nash and the doll, and he just snaps. He charges full speed at her, and bam! He tackles her to the ground and violently starts mauling her face over and over again, ripping her apart.
It's brutal, and Sandra sees this and freaks out. She's like, "Oh sh. .
. " and grabs a shovel. Then, pow!
She beats Travis over the head with it, but this just doesn't phase him. He's too strong, and he keeps on attacking. So then she runs, grabs a butcher knife, and goes to stab Travis in the back three times, but that still doesn't stop him.
Sandra's terrified and thinks, "Oh my God! What if he turns on me now? " So then she gets in the car, locks herself in, and calls 911.
About 12 minutes later, the police finally arrive and find Travis roaming the property. One of the officers looks at him, and Travis shows him his blood-soaked teeth. Just before Travis can attack him, blam!
The officer shoots him four times, and these wounds eventually put him down. Now, Charla Nash somehow survives the attack, but unfortunately, Travis really messed her up. He ripped off her face, her eyelids, her nose, her jaw, her lips, and he fully removed one of her hands and nearly all of the other hand.
She's had to have a ton of surgeries, and she's better now, but she's still missing both of her hands and is permanently blind. Sandra passes away about a year after the attack from heart complications, and Charla Nash ultimately gets a settlement of $4 million from Sandra's estate. Here she is in real life after all her reconstructive surgeries.
