David Christopher Noble, a former Air Force officer from Oregon, was sentenced April 24, 2024, to four years in federal prison for crowdfunding overseas videos of monkeys being tortured and killed. (File)
A former Air Force officer who pleaded guilty to animal crushing charges after crowdfunding graphic videos of monkeys being tortured and killed was sentenced this week to four years in prison, the Justice Department said.
David Christopher Noble, 48, also will require supervision for three years after release as part of the sentence handed down Wednesday in Oregon federal court.
“David Noble’s depraved actions not only inflicted unspeakable agony upon innocent creatures but also tainted the very essence of humanity’s moral fiber,” Robert Hammer, special agent for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement Wednesday.
He pleaded guilty in January after investigators found that his phone contained about 50 animal abuse videos, which prosecutors described as “stomach-churning” and “horrific,” a government memo in June said.
Prosecutors said Noble administered an online group in which for at least a year, members pooled funds to produce, brainstorm and share videos showing the torture and killing of monkeys in Indonesia.
The Indonesian videographers who helped produce the videos most likely would not have done so without the funding and encouragement of Noble and others in the group, authorities said.
As the administrator of the group, Noble under the moniker of “Bones” decided on the admission of new members, changed the forum’s name to evade detection, and used his control to remove members who were perceived to be “liabilities,” an indictment against him said.
In one instance, Noble sent money to fund a 10-minute video in which an infant monkey was slowly tortured and mutilated, prosecutors in Las Vegas said in a memo.
The DOJ statement gives Noble’s place of residence as Prineville, Ore., but he moved to the Las Vegas area after police searched his home, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He was arrested in Henderson, Nev., in June, the Justice Department said.
After the video was posted to the group, Noble expressed approval and sent additional money as a tip, the memo said.
In one message cited by prosecutors in Las Vegas, he wrote, “I love the screams as his bones are shattered over and over!”
Authorities also found months of chat messages related to the videos, according to a grand jury indictment of Noble in May.
Noble served six months in military detention and was dismissed from the Air Force in 2006 after being court-martialed for fraud and an unprofessional relationship, prosecutors said. The DOJ did not list his rank at the time of his expulsion.
