In February 2009, Sandra Herold called her friend Charla Nash to help her round up her agitated chimp, Travis, and bring him back into the house. Instead, Travis viciously attacked Nash, tearing off her eyelids, nose, jaw, lips, scalp, and hands.
Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions and/or images of violent, disturbing, or otherwise potentially distressing events.
Family handoutSandra Herold with her pet, Travis the chimpanzee.
Sandra Herold was a woman who once had it all: a family, a devoted husband, successful businesses, and a pet chimpanzee who loved her.
For 14 years, Sandra Herold raised her chimp Travis like a son, treating him to the finest foods, dressing him in human clothes, and even teaching him to ride a bike. But her love for Travis would go on to haunt her in many ways.
For one, he filled a hole left in Herold’s heart after the tragic deaths of her husband and daughter.
For another, his true wild nature would suddenly show itself in brutal fashion when, in 2009, he viciously mauled Herold’s friend, Charla Nash — a nightmare scenario that resulted in unimaginable loss.
This is the heartbreaking story of Sandra Herold.
The Early Life Of Sandra Herold
Sandra Herold was born in 1938 in Stamford, Connecticut. Her parents ran a bakery in town and spoiled their only daughter with horses, puppies, and fancy clothes.
She married three times in her life: first after high school, then
again in 1960 to a man with whom she’d have her only child, Suzan. Their marriage was tumultuous, however, and after just four years they divorced.
When she was 30, Sandra married the love of her life, Jerry Herold. The couple raised Suzan together and ran multiple successful businesses in Stamford that kept them comfortably wealthy, including a towing operation and an auto-body shop.
In the 1970s, Herold met her best friend, Charla Nash, while riding horses in rodeo shows across the country. The two bonded over their love for animals.
On one of these rodeo trips, Herold encountered a chimpanzee for the first time. According to New York Magazine, Herold saw the ape dressed in western wear and asked to meet him backstage, where she gave him some gummy bears. Later, when the chimpanzee was on stage performing, he reportedly spotted Sandra in the stands and ran into the audience to embrace her.
Nash familySandra Herold and Charla Nash bonded over their love of animals.
This encounter sparked a lifelong fascination with chimpanzees. And the Herolds’ considerable wealth made it conceivable for her to have one of her own one day.
As the happy family continued working and living in Stamford, Suzan grew into a young woman, married, and left home. Around the same time, Sandra’s parents passed away, leaving Sandra alone in the house with her husband.
Bitter, lonely, and aware of the fact that she and Jerry were aging, Sandra decided the time was finally ripe to make her dream of owning a chimpanzee a reality.
Adopting Travis The Chimp
In 1995, Sandra Herold received a call from Connie Casey, a chimpanzee breeder in Missouri, that an infant male chimp was open for adoption. Casey had taken the chimp from his mother, a former zoo chimp named Suzy, just the day before.
Sandra cried when she first held the chimp, and purchased him for $50,000. She took him home in baby blankets, and named him Travis after her favorite singer, Travis Tritt.
At their home in Stamford, the Herolds raised Travis as if he were their human son.
Travis accompanied the couple to work and on family outings. He would appear in the couple’s business advertisements and even in television commercials and talk shows. Before long, he became something of a local celebrity beloved by the Stamford community.
Michael GrantSandra Herold’s friend, Cindy Grant, holding baby Travis in 1995.
Sandra dressed Travis in human clothes, brought him to nice dinners, and taught him to brush his teeth and even ride a bike. She’d buy him filet mignon, lobster tails, ice cream, Lindt chocolate, and Nerds candy. At the end of the day, he often crawled into bed with Sandra and Jerry.
The first few years Sandra owned Travis were some of the happiest of her life.
Then, tragedy struck.
The Deaths Of Sandra’s Daughter And Husband
By 2000, Suzan had married a second time and moved to North Carolina with her new husband, leaving Sandra Herold feeling abandoned again.
Then, in September of that year, Suzan was traveling from North Carolina to Connecticut to pick up some of her things when her car suddenly collided with a tree off a highway in Virginia.
Her infant daughter, who was strapped in a car seat in the back, survived the crash unscathed. But Suzan tragically died.
The loss of her only child devastated Sandra Herold — and her heartbreak was only made worse when Jerry died from cancer just a few years later, in 2005. Battling severe depression, Herold found solace in the only thing she had left: Travis.
Travis came to serve as a sort of surrogate child and partner for Herold.
“He slept with me every night. He combed my hair. Everything in the house is for him,” she reportedly said, according to the New York Post. They bathed together, and even drank wine together out of long-stemmed glasses.
Public domainSandra Herold raised Travis the chimp as if he were her son.
“Until you’ve… eaten with a chimp and bathed with a chimp, you don’t know a chimp,” she said.
But as Travis got older, growing into a whopping 240-pound beast, his wild side began to show.
Travis’ Changing Disposition
Signs that there was something wrong with Travis began showing shortly after the death of Sandra Herold’s daughter.
In October 2003, Herold was taking Travis out for a drive when an unknown assailant threw a glass bottle at Travis’ side of the car.
Startled and agitated, the chimp unclicked his seatbelt, unlocked the car door, and climbed out. He began running around the neighborhood, hooting, climbing over cars, and lunging at pedestrians.
A dozen police officers responded to the scene, and it took them over two hours to get Travis back into Herold’s car. The officers, who were familiar with Travis, wrote the incident off as a playful event.
But an animal control officer warned Herold that adult chimps have the strength of several men and are known to be violent and unpredictable in the wild. The officer recommended Herold give Travis away.
Believing Travis to be incapable of violence, however, Herold chose to ignore this warning.
But things took a turn for the worse after Jerry’s death. Travis reportedly became detached and somber and was so distressed over the loss of his “dad” that he’d frequently rock back and forth for hours on end. Herold eventually had to take all of the photos of Jerry down so they wouldn’t upset Travis.
Then, Charla Nash came back into Herold’s life.
Charla Nash Comes To Stay With Sandra Herold
Public domainCharla Nash with a young Travis.
The situation improved slightly when Charla Nash came back into town. After Jerry’s death, Sandra Herold and Nash rekindled their relationship, and Herold offered Nash a spot in the loft apartment on the property.
For the next four years, the two lived and worked together, taking care of Travis and the home. Meanwhile, Herold became reclusive, rarely leaving the house. When she did, Travis stayed home. At this point, the 14-year-old chimp was five feet tall and overweight at 240 pounds.
Then, on Feb. 16, 2009, Herold noticed that Travis was agitated.
He was not interested in his television shows, his pet cat, or any of his favorite activities. The chimp’s behavior startled Herold so much that she reportedly dropped a Xanax into his afternoon tea.
At some point that afternoon, Travis slipped out the back door and refused to come back inside. Frustrated, Herold called her friend Charla Nash to help her round up the “rambunctious” chimp.
Around 3:40 p.m. that day, Nash arrived at the scene carrying a red Elmo doll she thought Travis would like. But upon seeing her, Travis became enraged — and attacked.
The Violent Attack On Charla Nash
Travis slammed Charla Nash roughly into the side of Herold’s car, then began viciously mauling her in a violent frenzy, ripping at her face and body.
Sandra Herold reportedly grabbed a shovel and smacked Travis over the head to try to stop him, but he continued the attack, unfazed.
Herold frantically ran into the house to grab a butcher knife and returned to find Travis tearing various body parts off of Nash. Desperate, Herold stabbed the chimp she regarded as a son in the back.
“He looked at me like, ‘Mom, what did you do?'” she later recalled. Then, Travis turned back to his victim.
Herold ran to her Volkswagen Passat, locked the door, and called 911. She begged the operator to send the police with a gun.
HandoutTravis the Chimp approaches a police car called to the scene after his attack on Charla Nash.
Officers quickly reported to the scene. Then, when it appeared that Travis might attack them, too, one of the officers shot the chimp.
Bloodied and bullet-ridden, Travis managed to drag himself to his bedroom, where he collapsed and died.
Sandra Herold’s Final Years
Against all odds, Charla Nash survived the attack, despite losing her eyelids, nose, jaw, lips, scalp, and hands. Blind and permanently disabled, she would go on to sue her old friend Sandy Herold for $50 million.
Meanwhile, the press swarmed Herold.
“It was a horrible thing,” she said in 2009, according to TODAY. “But I’m not a horrible person. And he wasn’t a horrible chimp. It was a freak thing.”
After the incident, Herold was officially alone. And she never quite recovered from the loss of Travis.
In the years immediately following the attack, she became more reclusive than ever, rarely leaving the house and resorting to placing a stuffed chimpanzee in Travis’ room for company. Her hoarding, which had begun after the death of her husband, became infinitely worse and threatened her ability to live safely in the home.
Gradually, Herold ventured out into public, meeting with friends and even going on dates. But many of those who knew her reported that she rarely discussed anything but Travis.
Nancy Lane/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via GettyCharla Nash underwent extensive surgery following Travis’ attack.
Eventually, Sandra Herold found another chimpanzee, Chance, to fill Travis’ place in her heart. Realizing that she couldn’t bring him home to Connecticut, Herold paid another friend to take care of the chimp and made visits to him out of state.
Meanwhile, she continued living her life in Stamford, taking care of the wild animals that would wander onto her property, shopping, and checking in on Chance until 2010, when she suffered a ruptured aortic aneurysm and died.
The news of Herold’s death shocked everyone, including her former best friend, Charla Nash.
“Sandra was a troubled woman,” Nash reportedly told her brother at the time. “And maybe she has some peace now.”
After reading about the tragic story of Sandra Herold, dive into the story of Joe Exotic and his journey from Tiger King to convicted felon. Then, discover nine stories of pets killing their owners.
