His body lying on the floor, eyes staring at the ceiling, his mouth half open, his lips and oral mucosa in bluish color. Lack of oxygen in the final minutes that sparked his life was evident. It was still early in the morning when I put his first meal, but he was not there. I saw the slices of bread in the same way they were offered the previous day, which had never happened before. Charles should not be feeling well, I thought.

I did not look for him. My voice untied in him an intense fury and transported him to some remote past where someone, probably who looks like me, hurt him deeply. On the first day of Charles the sanctuary, I leaned against the fence and put my tennis on, which generally all chimpanzees enjoy. But this time his reaction was immediate and he tried to hold it. His goal was take the tennis out and hit my foot. Quickly I managed to get rid of his immense strength. That was his welcome to me.

Since then, successive reactions of violence and repudiation multiplied when he saw me or heard my voice. One day this culminated in a more lethal attack. For a few weeks he did not react badly to my presence, stood still, let me put the trays with food in his presence, and did not show hate as he usually did. I thought the relationship was improving and trusted in that. One morning, when I was offering a juice, he put his hand through the hole, grabbed my hand and pulled my arm inside. I soon realized that his intention was to kill me, I felt in the air. I threw myself on the floor and I pressed against the wall, shouted to distract him, but he was firmly holding the sleeve of my jacket with his hands and I managed to let him pulling the jacket inside. If he got my right arm, it would be pulled off and my life would go along. The keepers who were around came to help me, but luck was on my side; fortunately the jacket was open and he, pulling it, took the jacket off and not my arm, which, even hurt, was intact. He grabbed the jacket and bit it into pieces.

When the keepers found him, I went right away. Everything indicated he had a cardio respiratory arrest, which is common in captive and wild chimpanzees. The struggle for survival and the stress from human harassment in their lives paralyze the heart, which stops flowing blood and they die asphyxiated.

Charles came from Ribeirão Preto Zoo, countryside of São Paulo. One of the few zoos in Brazil that a decade ago realized that he would not resist much more the public harassment, due to his strong personality, and asked us to receive him. Charles got along well with everyone but never accepted me. No matter what I did or the food that I gave him, my voice and my presence irritated him the most and he showed it with violence.

It was a Saturday in August when his heart gave up accompanying him on the miserable life that captivity provides. Charles would have been a chimpanzee living free and dominant. They would have taken his group through African forests, with security and independence. He was converted – by actions of men who kept him in prison – in a frustrated and unhappy being.

The only witness of his last minutes, Francis, accompanied him for years. She loved and feared him. When he had his rages, she disappeared, when he was calm, she reappeared to give him some affection.

Francis perhaps had a more troubled life than Charles. She was captured when she was a baby in Africa, brought to North America and subjected to medical torture. Then, she ended up in an unknown zoo, which had the brilliant idea of sending her and her companion Quennie to Bolivia, where they would have died for lack of food and hope if we had not rescued them. They never raised their children. They were slaughtered in medical torture plans that NIH – US National Institute of Health – set up in the 1980s to test drugs and vaccines.

We took Charles out of his dorm room. He barely had time to enjoy the reform that we did for months in those enclosures, which also host Caco, July, Simon (Sam) and Rakker. We put tiles all around it and everyone thought he was happy. He left the construction workers do their job for several months without showing animosity.

At autopsy shown an increased liver and confirmed the cause of death from cardio respiratory arrest.

The next day, Francis was awaiting the return of her mate, she had not understood that he was gone forever, just like and Quennie, her friend of misfortunes, had died a few years before also had abandoned them. With her sad eyes, she wondered by Charles and I tried to explain her that he would never return. She kept looking in the dorms, but did not find him…

The spirit of Charles still hangs over those facilities that he used for years. The sounds and his expressions of joy when he received hot food, which he loved; we still have in our memory. He enjoyed the few nice things from captivity, but the rest was degrading for him.

Now, in the place where he is, perhaps wandering free from the chains of irrational captivity, which tormented him in life, we wish he is happy. It is the rest of a nonconformist with his luck.

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian

President, GAP Project International