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Woman Tells Her Story of Being Kidnapped at 4 and Growing Up With Monkeys in the Jungle
BY Louise Chambers TIMEAugust 14, 2023 PRINT

(Courtesy of Marina Chapman)

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A woman born in rural Colombia is telling her life story of how, after being kidnapped from her home as a child, she spent years alone with capuchin monkeys in the jungle, learning their ways in order to survive. Decades later, with the help of her daughter, she is assembling the fragmented puzzle pieces of her memory into a series of books.
Today, Marina Chapman lives in West Yorkshire, England, with her husband, retired scientist John Chapman. The couple has two daughters, Vanessa and Joanna.
Ms. Chapman believes she “should be 73” by now, but does not know for sure what year she was born. She has, however, retained her earliest memory of being stolen from her home at the age of 4.
Marina Chapman. (Courtesy of Marina Chapman)

The first book on Marina Chapman’s life, “The Girl With No Name,” became a New York Times bestseller in 2013. (Courtesy of Marina Chapman)
‘I Didn’t Do Anything But Cry’
“Somebody came from behind and covered my face with a cloth. It was so smelly, strong,” Ms. Chapman told The Epoch Times. “I became very weak. I heard some children crying, I felt they were behind my back. But I was very quiet.”
Ms. Chapman recalls a “long, speedy” drive, after which her kidnappers dumped her in the jungle. It was nighttime, she was alone and confused, but she clung to hope that the same people who left her there would return. They did not.
“I think I fell asleep a little bit,” she said. “Maybe I woke up with some light, sunshine. I woke up and it was very noisy. I don’t know if I was calling my mama, I was just calling for somebody to come for me because I had no idea where I was.”
Ms. Chapman says that she then sat down and cried. Suddenly, she saw a curious monkey. The creature approached but did not touch her and eventually left.
This is the earliest known photograph of Ms. Chapman from when she was 17 years old. (Courtesy of Marina Chapman)
“The problem is I didn’t do very much,” Ms. Chapman said. “They got bored with me. They went away because I didn’t do anything but cry.”
She recalled finding a pond with “lovely clean water” from which she drank, using leaves to scoop the water into her mouth. There was no food for “some time,” until she noticed that the monkeys had a scheme: they would sneak into jungle-dwelling humans’ homes as they slept and steal fruit.
“One day, I realized one of the monkeys was carrying too much,” she said. “He dropped a banana on the floor, and I caught it. … I had to eat very quickly because the monkey came to me and took it away.”
Surviving in the Jungle
As days turned into weeks, then months, Ms. Chapman claims she started understanding the monkeys’ unique language. A loud shriek alerted them to danger, while some whistle sounds signaled fighting between the monkeys themselves. A ticking sound of “Tttttt” accompanied grooming.
The monkeys would check on her, Ms. Chapman said, but it took a long time before they would touch her. The first was an adolescent capuchin.
“I think he was coming from the tip of the tree or something,” she said. “He sat on my shoulders and it was a comforting moment. He started to check my ears, my nose … just looking for something. Gradually, the young ones got closer to me.
“I tried to climb trees. I fell. I tried many times. … I just didn’t want to stay down there because it was solitary. They used to go to the trees, so I tried to join them. It took me a while.”
(Courtesy of Marina Chapman)
The more time passed in the jungle, the less time seemed to matter to Ms. Chapman. She learned to scale trees and find food; survival was paramount. She remembers it took “a long time” before she caught sight of her changed reflection in a piece of broken mirror on the jungle floor.
“I saw my face, and I was shocked about it because I thought I looked like a monkey,” she said. “My clothes, they disappeared, because the monkeys pulled the material bit by bit. … it was humid and hot all the time, day or night. I just had no clothes and I didn’t care, because I never felt cold.”
Meeting the Monkey Grandpa
Ms. Chapman remembers forming a special connection with one member of the monkey troupe, an older male patriarch she nicknamed Grandpa. “You had to respect him,” she said. “If he raised his eyebrows, we were in trouble.”
She had learned to copy the monkeys’ foraging behavior, but one day, she recalled, her hunger got the better of her and she gorged on a poisonous fruit. She believes Grandpa dragged her to a nearby pool of muddy water and forced her to purge by pulling her into the water.
“I just remember the pain. I just thought, ‘I’m going to die.’ I drank so much water. … I think I vomited,” she said, recalling Grandpa’s presence, “He didn’t do anything; he stood there, went back to his place. The look in his eyes, I just realized I can trust him.”
(Courtesy of Marina Chapman)
Leaving the Jungle
Ms. Chapman guesses she remained in the jungle with the monkeys for six or seven years. During this time, she would sometimes spot armed hunters through the trees and hide, hearing the “horrible screaming sounds” coming from the sacks into which they would stuff stolen animals, fearing they would do the same to her.
One day, she spotted a young woman who seemed to be “a nice person” alongside the hunters and decided to make herself known.
Ms. Chapman said: “I just walked up gradually, moved toward them, and tried to hold her hand. … she brought me to this gentleman, and this gentleman wrapped me and put me in the truck with the animals. … but it was really brutal. I felt insecure. I wanted to go back to the monkeys.”
Inside the truck, Ms. Chapman claims she tried to befriend a young monkey in a box that was screaming in fear. She recalls an hours-long journey with nothing to drink until flashing lights and heavy traffic indicated that they’d reached a city. She remembers being hustled out of the van to the house of a “huge woman,” who grabbed her arm and exchanged money with the hunter.
(Courtesy of Marina Chapman)
In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, Ms. Chapman explained that she had been sold to a brothel, where she was beaten, but managed to run away before she was sold to a punter for the first time. She ended up living on the streets, where the children of the neighborhood would mock her for not being able to talk properly.
While hungry and homeless, she found comfort in the company of street gangs “because they were like monkeys.” She stole food to feed herself and was eventually picked up by police while sleeping on a park bench.
“They asked about family, mother, parents. I said I hadn’t any,” she said. “I talked to them about the monkeys. They laughed, and couldn’t believe it. They put me into a bed at night, and in the morning I woke up and the police took me for breakfast in a local restaurant … then they let me go.”
Ms. Chapman began knocking on doors because she had already seen children doing some little jobs in the neighborhood where they also got food to eat; she too found a family in the neighborhood who agreed to take her on as a domestic aide in return for room and board. But it turned out that they were known criminals, and Ms. Chapman became a slave. Safe refuge evaded her until a neighbor stepped in, offering to send the teen by plane to live with her daughter in Bogotá.
It was in Bogotá with her new, adopted family that Ms. Chapman chose her own name and learned to be civilized.
“I didn’t want to wear clothes,” she said. “I had to watch people to copy them, how to pick up a fork, how to eat food in a proper way. … I had no discipline, no good behavior. I don’t know how they managed, really, my parents who adopted me.”
A Family Project
Ms. Chapman’s adoptive family emigrated to England, where she fell in love and made her permanent home. Marriage, two children, and a successful career as a chef followed.
Together with her youngest daughter Vanessa Ferero, 28, a film score composer, Ms. Chapman is compiling her extraordinary memories into a series of books. The first, “The Girl With No Name,” became a New York Times bestseller in 2013.
[url=https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2023/07/12/id5392001-marinachapman1-1200x812.jpeg] Marina Chapman with her daughter Vanessa Ferero. (Courtesy of Marina Chapman)
Ms. Ferero told The Epoch Times: “Many don’t believe it, which is normal. I don’t think I would, either, if I heard someone say that their dad had been raised by kangaroos.”
Talking about the book, Ms. Ferero said: “It was a family project more than anything. Mom always had snapshot memories, they weren’t really tied together until during the years we interviewed; we went back to Colombia and we did a load of interviews, found the people that Mom spoke about, and hung it together. By the end of two years, we both looked at it and it kind of looked like a book … so we released it.”
They “weren’t out to prove anything,” said Ms. Ferero, but were simply hoping to make sense of the past, and perhaps reconnect Ms. Chapman with her biological family.
As the story continues to unfold, so a second book, “Out of the Wild,” is coming to fruition. Ms. Chapman still dreams of reconnecting with the monkeys she grew up with, if they are still alive, and wonders what would come of a reunion.
“I do think about them,” Ms. Chapman said. “I think about, if I see them, they will recognize me.”

(08-19-2023, 01:30 PM)727Sky Wrote: This is a hard to believe story IMO

(08-19-2023, 02:59 PM)Snarl Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 01:30 PM)727Sky Wrote: This is a hard to believe story IMO

I tried living in the woods on my own as a grown man ... just to see ... just to test myself. It's one helluva lot harder than most people would expect.

You ever seen those survivor shows? The ones where they're dropped off in some remote wilderness area. They get to take a few tools with them, but all they manage to do is build a shitty little shelter and start slowly starving. Whoever starves-out the slowest is 'the winner'. LMAO

But ... yeah ... it's just about like that. Only a matter of time before nature gets ya. A four-year old out in the jungle? For years? The jungle is one of the most inhospitable environments no one imagines. Yeah ... you might not freeze, but anyone with half a lick of sense can build a fire and keep from freezing. So much can get ya in a jungle. Holy Toledo.

Color me skeptical as well.

(08-19-2023, 06:00 PM)Schmoe Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 02:59 PM)Snarl Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 01:30 PM)727Sky Wrote: This is a hard to believe story IMO

I tried living in the woods on my own as a grown man ... just to see ... just to test myself. It's one helluva lot harder than most people would expect.

You ever seen those survivor shows? The ones where they're dropped off in some remote wilderness area. They get to take a few tools with them, but all they manage to do is build a shitty little shelter and start slowly starving. Whoever starves-out the slowest is 'the winner'. LMAO

But ... yeah ... it's just about like that. Only a matter of time before nature gets ya. A four-year old out in the jungle? For years? The jungle is one of the most inhospitable environments no one imagines. Yeah ... you might not freeze, but anyone with half a lick of sense can build a fire and keep from freezing. So much can get ya in a jungle. Holy Toledo.

Color me skeptical as well.

Yup, I hear a lot of people say they'd love to cancel the grid and go live in the woods.  I wouldn't mind it myself.  But once you really start thinking about all you need to do to survive, it is daunting, to say the least.  Is that mushroom going to be delicious, or kill me?

Things could actually be going well, and you break a leg.  Then what?

Shelter, food, clothing.  Hunting and gathering.  Knowing how to hunt.  Knowing what you can and can't gather.  I keep meaning to buy one of those books on things you can forage and eat.  That would be your new Bible 

(08-19-2023, 09:40 PM)Ninurta Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 06:00 PM)Schmoe Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 02:59 PM)Snarl Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 01:30 PM)727Sky Wrote: This is a hard to believe story IMO

I tried living in the woods on my own as a grown man ... just to see ... just to test myself. It's one helluva lot harder than most people would expect.

Shelter, food, clothing.  Hunting and gathering.

I keep meaning to buy one of those books on things you can forage and eat.  That would be your new Bible

You're not likely to get fat off the land, but you also are less likely to starve entirely to death.

(08-20-2023, 01:29 AM)Snarl Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 09:40 PM)Ninurta Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 06:00 PM)Schmoe Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 02:59 PM)Snarl Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 01:30 PM)727Sky Wrote: This is a hard to believe story IMO

I tried living in the woods on my own as a grown man ... just to see ... just to test myself. It's one helluva lot harder than most people would expect.

Shelter, food, clothing.  Hunting and gathering.

I keep meaning to buy one of those books on things you can forage and eat.  That would be your new Bible

You're not likely to get fat off the land, but you also are less likely to starve entirely to death.

Schmoe: Your 'bible' would probably end up making fire starting easier. LOL

First best survival skill: fishing ... bar none. If you can fish, you can eat most every day. If you're fishing you've probably got a clean enough water source to work with too. Just watch them gators (they're almost as edible). 

For those who've never thought about it: Mammals can tear you to pieces. Even the little ones. And, rigging a functional snare is a skill best acquired before it becomes necessity.

(08-20-2023, 02:21 AM)Schmoe Wrote:

(08-20-2023, 01:29 AM)Snarl Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 09:40 PM)Ninurta Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 06:00 PM)Schmoe Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 02:59 PM)Snarl Wrote: I tried living in the woods on my own as a grown man ... just to see ... just to test myself. It's one helluva lot harder than most people would expect.

Shelter, food, clothing.  Hunting and gathering.

I keep meaning to buy one of those books on things you can forage and eat.  That would be your new Bible

You're not likely to get fat off the land, but you also are less likely to starve entirely to death.

First best survival skill: fishing ... bar none. If you can fish, you can eat most every day. If you're fishing you've probably got a clean enough water source to work with too. Just watch them gators (they're almost as edible). 

Probably by time we get to that point of having to live in the woods, nature will be too fucked anyway to sustain anyone.

(08-20-2023, 10:27 AM)Snarl Wrote:

(08-20-2023, 02:21 AM)Schmoe Wrote:

(08-20-2023, 01:29 AM)Snarl Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 09:40 PM)Ninurta Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 06:00 PM)Schmoe Wrote: Shelter, food, clothing.  Hunting and gathering.

I keep meaning to buy one of those books on things you can forage and eat.  That would be your new Bible

You're not likely to get fat off the land, but you also are less likely to starve entirely to death.

First best survival skill: fishing ... bar none. If you can fish, you can eat most every day. If you're fishing you've probably got a clean enough water source to work with too. Just watch them gators (they're almost as edible). 

Probably by time we get to that point of having to live in the woods, nature will be too fucked anyway to sustain anyone.

If we changed all these government employee's job descriptions to Nature Clean-Up Custodian, we could have 23 million people start to make a quick difference.

My biggest pet peeve is the ticks the government has turned into biological weapons. If I was the boss that's the shit that would get cleaned up in a big hurry ... right after a 'screaming public admission'.

(08-20-2023, 02:21 AM)Schmoe Wrote:

(08-20-2023, 01:29 AM)Snarl Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 09:40 PM)Ninurta Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 06:00 PM)Schmoe Wrote:

(08-19-2023, 02:59 PM)Snarl Wrote: I tried living in the woods on my own as a grown man ... just to see ... just to test myself. It's one helluva lot harder than most people would expect.

Shelter, food, clothing.  Hunting and gathering.

I keep meaning to buy one of those books on things you can forage and eat.  That would be your new Bible

You're not likely to get fat off the land, but you also are less likely to starve entirely to death.

Schmoe: Your 'bible' would probably end up making fire starting easier. LOL

First best survival skill: fishing ... bar none. If you can fish, you can eat most every day. If you're fishing you've probably got a clean enough water source to work with too. Just watch them gators (they're almost as edible). 

For those who've never thought about it: Mammals can tear you to pieces. Even the little ones. And, rigging a functional snare is a skill best acquired before it becomes necessity.

Of course that shit's getting used as fire starter eventually, once I've memorized it 


Depending where you live, I don't think you want to eat fish every day with how contaminated they are.  In my region they say you can pretty much safely eat one or two fish a month out of local waters.

I even hear there was something going around with deer.  Probably by time we get to that point of having to live in the woods, nature will be too fucked anyway to sustain anyone.