The story of a Yorkshire housewife who spent five years in her childhood living with a colony of capuchin monkeys in Colombia is to be told for the first time in a book and planned television documentary. Marina Chapman learnt to catch birds and rabbits with her bare hands after being abandoned in the jungle by kidnappers, it was reported.
The Tarzan-like episode was brought to an end when she was discovered by hunters but by her ordeal continued when she was sold to a brothel in the city of Cucuta, and groomed for prostitution. She escaped and spent years on the streets, sometimes being arrested and kept in a cell, but was eventually taken in by a Colombian family to work as a maid in her mid-teens, and took the name of Marina Luz, according to the account given to a newspaper.
The book about her life has already been sold in seven countries and is being published in Britain next April, while a television documentary is also being planned.