Ingrid Newkirk

Newkirk lay crouched on the back seat of a car outside, hidden under a large cardboard box with holes for her eyes, using a walkie-talkie from a toy store to alert Pacheco if anyone else entered the building. The monkeys' living conditions documented by Pacheco were graphically disturbing. Having collected the evidence, Newkirk and Pacheco alerted the police, who raided the lab, removed the monkeys, and charged Taub with 113 counts of animal cruelty and six counts of failing to provide adequate veterinary care. Taub maintained that he had been set up by Newkirk and Pacheco while he was on vacation, and that several of the photographs had been staged. The judge found Taub guilty of six counts of cruelty to animals for failing to provide adequate veterinary care and fined him $3,000. A later jury trial saw five of these counts dismissed, and the sixth was overturned on appeal due to a technicality. The National Institutes of Health, which had funded Taub's research, was among the scientists and other professionals who criticized the conditions in which Taub had kept the monkeys, though the NIH later reversed its decision when the charges against Taub were overturned.

Newkirk and Pacheco found themselves thrust overnight into the public eye. The images of the restrained animals became iconic after the Washington Post published one of them on its front page. It was the first police raid on an animal-research facility in the United States and the first conviction (subsequently overturned) of an animal researcher. Read Less