CINCINNATI — A Cincinnati man is facing charges after prosecutors said he kept his pet monkey in terrible conditions and gave it drugs.
In a news release, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters said that Adam Kordes was indicted on charges of cruel treatment against companion animals and faces up to four years in prison.
Animal control officers had received a tip from a Florida veterinarian in February that Kordes had given his capuchin monkey, Neo, illicit drugs, WXIX reported. In the news release, Deters said that blood tests on the monkey confirmed the presence of amphetamines.
“He didn’t give the monkey any drugs,” Kordes’ attorney, Lisa Rabanus, told WXIX. “Other people got involved when he reached out for help because the monkey had gotten chocolate.”
Prosecutors described the monkey as malnourished and told WKRC that the animal looked like “he’d been in a concentration camp.”
“These monkeys are social animals,” Deters said in a statement. “If they are going to be owned, the people who own them must take their responsibility to care for them seriously.”
“He has not mistreated this animal,” Rabanus told WXIX. “He loves his little monkey as a child, as if it’s his little boy.”
Neo was first taken to a rehabilitation facility in Indiana and is now at an “undisclosed location” with other monkeys in Florida, WKRC reported.
Kordes is not legally allowed to own guns “due to a prior determination of mental incompetence,” and now faces additional charges because prosecutors said they found a gun in his home.
“The animal people went in initially and saw a lot of drugs and a lot of guns. They went back and this guy, apparently, he’s not too incompetent to clean up the apartment, because he did,” Deters told WLWT. “When they went back with the other search warrant to get the monkey, the seizure of the monkey, all they had was a shotgun left — but that’s enough.”
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