Hey, Gloria -- it's a jungle out there

A purse snatching, a press conference and Moe the Chimp? That's right -- another Gloria Allred press conference, and Andrew Blankstein tells the tale.

There are scores of purse snatchings in Los Angeles County each week and they never make the news. Add in Gloria Allred and Moe the Chimp, though, and you've a made-for-TV event. Allred has called a press conference at her Wilshire Boulevard law office for 3 p.m. to ask for help finding whoever snatched LaDonna Davis' purse at a West Covina Target, a crime that was captured on the store's surveillance video.

LaDonna and St. James Davis, you may recall, are the couple who raised Moe the Chimp, the simian who went on to maul a police officer's hand and chomp off the tip of a visitor's finger. In 2005, St. James Davis was critically injured by two rogue chimpanzees when he and his wife tried to deliver a cake to Moe on his 39th birthday at a Bakersfield animal sanctuary.

Just last week, Allred (who has been hired by Paul McCartney's ex-wife to help burnish her image) held a press conference for a woman who was forced to remove her nipple rings before boarding an airplane. Talk about monkey business.

-- Veronique de Turenne

Photo: Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Jerry Stroud]

Veronique:

re: Davis purse snatching

Monkey business? It depends on one's perception of the story, I guess. Yet, with the TMZ loaded, UTube star studded events that choke the news daily-- including your own -- when the Lindsey, Spears, Hilton bull****t stories based more on voyeurism than humanity command the light; where clips of Hiltons Chihuahua, Brittany's spread, and Lindsey's lesbian affair are aired on the major networks and we are like...WOW'D--

Yes, I believe the Davis story absolutely shines.

Why? I mean, who cares? Everyday cowardly punks prey on the less fortunate. What makes the Davis story so news worthy? Simply this...at the end of the day theirs is less a story of voyeurism than it is one of triumph. Against all odds they have survived. Lacking glamour, their story is a testament to the strength and power of the human spirit.

Their story is as much a "monkey" story as Titanic is a "boat" story.

Jerry Stroud