Married Dad, 39, Who Bought Videos of Men Mutilating and Sexually Abusing Monkeys Learns Fate By Chris Spargo

A New Jersey man who purchased animal torture videos depicting the sexual abuse and genital mutilation of monkeys was sentenced in federal court earlier this month.

Giancarlo Morelli, 39, will serve 48 months in a New Jersey federal prison followed by three years of supervised release, according to a copy of the criminal judgment obtained by PEOPLE. He’ll also be fined $25,000.

The defendant had initially been charged with two counts of conspiring to create and distribute animal crush videos, but prosecutors agreed to reduce that to just one count in exchange for a guilty plea from Morelli.

Morelli paid another individual — identified as his co-defendant in charging documents — 19 times for videos depicting the extreme torture and sexual abuse of monkeys, according to prosecutors.

Those videos included some featuring baby and adolescent monkeys whose genitalia were burned and cut off.

Morelli also corresponded with the man obtaining the videos for him and asked that the torture of the animals be prolonged in subsequent videos, according to a copy of the indictment filed in the case and obtained by PEOPLE.

“He needs to get a little bit better rats. These are like dollar store rats. They don’t last at all. This one barely got a beating and it’s lifeless,” Morelli said in one exchange,

He continued: “I don’t know if it’s because they are females. But damn. It seems like on the hard torture/kill vids, they tap out quick as hell.”

Brian Joslin, the attorney for Morelli, declined to comment on the case but did outline his client’s struggles in a sentencing memorandum he filed with the court.

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Morelli is a husband and father with a 9-year-old daughter and the sole caretaker of his 79-year-old mother, per the memo from Joslin, who requested a sentence of 27-33 months.

At the time of his arrest. Joslin was fighting a heroin addiction, according to the memo.

Morelli turned to the drug as a result of his growing addiction to OxyContin, which he had been prescribed following back surgery, wrote Joslin.

That addiction eventually cost him his marriage of 15 years, and now leaves his mother without a caretaker as he becomes a ward of the Bureau of Prisons.

“If you pay others to torture animals or to share images of that horrific abuse, you can expect to be held accountable as if you committed the torture firsthand,” said U.S. Attorney Dominick S. Gerace II for the Southern District of Ohio in a statement.

He added: “[This] sentence shows our resolve to punish everyone who participates in these despicable and sadistic conspiracies.”