The story of the Ohio man who pleaded guilty to creating monkey torture videos is even more messed up than originally reported. According to local media, the school system where Ronald Bedra worked had received reports from co-workers about his fetish but did nothing about it.
Earlier this month, an Ohio federal court unsealed a plea agreement in which Bedra admitted to conspiring with others to create "animal crush" videos and distribute them online. The videos showed monkeys being stabbed, burned, amputated, drowned, and other disturbing acts. Although federal agents began investigating Bedra in June 2021, his coworkers at Linden-McKinley STEM Academy in Columbus, Ohio, started reporting to supervisors that he was watching animals being tortured around March 2022.
In a text message to an administrator, one coworker wrote: "Every normal school district removes the threat while determining the outcome. If I have to go to war over this, I will. I have absolutely no problem fighting for our students' safety. The man is a threat."
In response, the school administrator said: "He gets due process like everyone else. It's been reported to HR. This is strictly confidential." Yet, Bedra continued to teach at the school until he resigned in March. In a statement, the school system told reporters that it was unaware of the criminal investigation into Bedra. The school reiterated that they believed in due process.
School Knew About Monkey Torture Videos
Bedra was a special education math and science teacher for grades 7 and 8, according to the Panther Press, a Linden-McKinley student publication. When asked a fun fact about himself during the January 2021 article, Bedra gave some ominous foreshadowing: "Sometimes I like to stare at the bug zapper in my backyard just to watch things die. That's fun, right?"
In Bedra's plea agreement, he admitted to conspiring with others across the country to develop, acquire, and share videos showing violent and sexual abuse of monkeys. According to the agreement, Bedra became an administrator for an online forum called Million Tears, which hosted monkey torture content, in June 2021. A month later, he mailed a thumb drive containing 64 monkey torture videos to a co-conspirator in Wisconsin.
What's more, investigators uncovered text messages in which Bedra brainstormed ways to torture monkeys. Then, he and his co-conspirators would send the ideas to a videographer in Indonesia who'd perform the acts on camera.
In one chain of messages, Bedra said he wanted to see a "white hot" screwdriver shoved up "a monkey's a—hole." But when he saw the video, he called it "so lame." In turn, he workshopped the request, asking the videographer to make the screwdriver "red hot." When he received the video in February 2022, he wrote in the chain "about to drive to work ... will watch when I get there! Big download."
For the crimes of conspiracy and distributing animal crush videos, Bedra could face up to 12 years in prison, $500,000 in fines, and supervised release. The court will sentence him following a pre-sentence investigation.
