Joe Exotic

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Joe Exotic at Santa Rose County Jail (2018)

Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage (born March 5 , 1963 in Garden City , Kansas ), better known by the alias Joe Exotic , is an American former private zoo operator and convicted criminal. He achieved international fame through the Netflix docuseries Tiger King: Big Cats and Their Predators . He has been serving a 22-year sentence since 2019 for contracting the murder of Carole Baskin and various violations of animal welfare laws.

Life

childhood and adolescence

Maldonado-Passage was born in Garden City, Kansas and grew up on a Kansas farm, the middle of five children. His parents had German roots. His surname, Schreibvogel, got him into a lot of trouble at school. When he was five years old, he said he was sexually abused several times by an older boy.

Already in his childhood and youth he felt close to animals. On the farm, the family cared for horses, cows, chickens, cats and dogs. The children also played with wild animals such as antelopes, porcupines and raccoons. In his childhood , Schreibvogel raised pigeons, but also kept squirrels and raccoons. He dreamed of becoming a veterinarian.

young adulthood

After high school, he first became a police officer and monitored the small Texas town of Eastvale with 503 inhabitants. Although Joe Exotic is open about his homosexuality today, he was in a platonic relationship with a woman at the time. According to Exotic, he was depressed at the time, told his fiancé that he didn't want to be gay when he came out and, according to his own statement, attempted suicide. After the separation and a move to Florida, he got to know a private zoo with a safari tour through a neighbor and was allowed to keep lion cubs for the first time.

After a few years, he returned to Texas, where he worked as a security guard and settled in a trailer in Arlington with his first husband, Brian Rhyne . Joe started working in a pet store which his brother Garold Wayne eventually took over with him and Joe's husband. In October 1997, Garold Wayne died in a car accident. With the large sum insured, Joe bought an old farm in Wynnewood and opened the Garold Wayne Exotic Animal Memorial Park (GW Zoo) in 1999 in memory of his brother.

As a zoo owner

Schreibvogel mostly referred to his zoo as an animal sanctuary and so the first animals he owned were a deer and a buffalo, animals that were rejected by their old owners. His zoo quickly made a name for itself among animal owners who no longer wanted or could keep their animals. A mountain lion and his first two tigers were quickly added. With these tigers, he became interested in breeding and quickly realized that tiger cubs were well received by viewers. In December 2001, his first husband died from an infection related to HIV disease . He then met JC Hartpence, an events manager. With his new life partner, Schreibvogel conceived an animal and magic show, with which he toured the country. After experimenting with different aliases, he finally adopted the alias "Joe Exotic," which would make him famous nationally. He performed as a magician in malls and at county fairs in Oklahoma and Wisconsin. A special attraction were the tiger cubs, which he gave children to pet.

Ti Ligers at the GW Zoo

As the zoo began to grow, Joe Exotic hired more staff, including his next husband, John Finlay. At the same time, he broke up with Hartpence in a violent argument, whom he had arrested when he threatened Joe with a gun. After initially refusing to breed tigers, he finally began breeding them because the tiger cubs he needed for his show were only suitable for petting when they were four to 12 weeks old. In 2003 he also bred his first Ligers as well as Tiliger and Tililiger.

As his show and the zoo grew, he called animal rights activists into action. This is how he met animal rights activist Carole Baskin for the first time . The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) also took on Joe Exotic and planted one of their activists as an undercover agent. In 2006, their efforts bore fruit: the US Department of Agriculture fined him $25,000 and suspended his license for two weeks.

At that time, his zoo held more than a thousand species of exotic animals, including more than a hundred tigers, as well as lions, leopards, chimpanzees, baboons, alligators, and many smaller reptiles. While the zoo was officially operating as a non-profit organization , Joe Exotic began marketing his name as a brand. In a souvenir shop, he sold everything from merchandise to skin care products with his likeness. He also opened a pub called Safari Bar and a pizza shop called Zooters.

Conflict between Baskin and Joe Exotic escalated when she attacked his carnival zoo and mobilized her numerous supporters against him. Among other things, Joe Exotic used the name of their charity Big Cat Rescue for his traveling show. In 2011 she sued Exotic for copyright infringement and won in 2013. But during the lawsuit, Joe Exotic had started his own show on the internet and was making anti-Baskin sentiment himself. Among other things, he accused her of killing her husband and of exploiting animals herself.

In 2013, Joe Exotic married his two partners, John Finlay and Travis Maldonado, in a (irregular) private ceremony. At the same time, he lost the copyright battle and now owes Baskin over $1 million in royalties. Debt pressures and private tensions eventually escalated. Finlay was arrested after attacking Joe in a parking lot. Joe Exotic's insults to Baskin became increasingly radical. In one of his Internet shows, for example, he shot a mannequin dressed as a Baskin and recited passages from her diary, which a former employee had stolen. He also gave himself the name "Tiger King".

In 2015, the alligator exhibit went up in flames. One of the alligators kept there was formerly owned by Michael Jackson and resided at Neverland Ranch . The police suspected arson . The television studio also caught fire. Joe Exotic suspected animal rights activists, while the police did not rule him out as a suspect. However, a perpetrator could not be identified.

Later that year, he and Baskin agreed on a payment plan. A year later, however, he had found a supposed new partner in entrepreneur and con artist Jeff Lowe, who took over the zoo so Baskin couldn't get it. However, the relationship between the two suffered increasingly.

investigations

By early February 2017 at the latest, rumors were circulating that Joe Exotic was looking for a hitman to assassinate Baskin. A former zoo employee warned Baskin via voicemail , who forwarded the voicemail to her attorney. The US Fish and Wildlife Service and the FBI began investigating. Strip club owner James Garretson, a friend of Joe Exotic, served as an informant for the FBI. While the investigation continued, a catastrophic accident occurred on the zoo grounds in which Exotic's husband, Travis Maldonado, accidentally shot himself. Exotic was devastated and lost motivation to run the zoo. In the background, Lowe became the driving force behind the company.

However, Joe Exotic continued to pursue Baskin. He offered a zoo employee, former inmate Allen Glover, money for Baskin's death, according to multiple testimonies during the trial. According to his own statement, Glover accepted, but then felt pangs of conscience and squandered the advance. The FBI knew about it but couldn't find him. Instead, via Garretson, it planted an undercover agent posing as a hitman. Joe Exotic accepted the suggestion but couldn't come up with the money.

After a falling out with Jeff Lowe, Joe Exotic precipitously left the zoo with a number of animals and went into hiding in the Yukon with his husband, Dillon Passage, whom he married shortly after Maldonado's tragic death. After being noticed everywhere, the two traveled to Florida, but scattered tracks towards Mexico. Nevertheless, the FBI was able to track him down and arrested him in 2018.

court proceedings

Joe Exotic's trial began in March 2019. He was charged with contract killing of Carole Baskin and violations of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and Lacey Act of 1900 . During the trial, a number of former associates and employees testified against him. A jury found him guilty of all charges on April 2 and the judge sentenced him to a total of 22 years in prison. He is currently serving his sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Fort Worth . He tried to get a clemency from President Donald Trump . He is also suing some of his former associates, including Jeff Lowe and James Garretson, as well as some law enforcement agencies. The total amount in dispute is said to be $94 million.

In January 2022, Exotic's prison sentence was upheld by an Oklahoma court in an appeal that Exotic was able to file after a procedural error. In his hearing, Exotic drew attention to his prostate cancer .

music

Maldonado-Passage tried his hand at country music to help popularize his Joe Exotic TV Show. He released several music videos on YouTube and produced at least two records. He falsely presented himself as a composer and singer. All songs were written by Washington-based songwriters Vince Johnson and Danny Clinton. The tracks were sung by Clinton, Joe Exotic only sang playback and a few lines of text.

2015 also saw the release of Here Kitty Kitty, a country-style disstrack against Carole Baskin. In the accompanying video, a stand-in for Baskin is shown feeding her second husband, Don Lewis, to Tiger.

In the course of the success of the documentary series, numerous covers by fans of the series emerged; the best known is perhaps an acoustic version of I Saw a Tiger by BJ Barham of American Aquarium .

Political career

At the height of the dispute with Carole Baskin, Joe Exotic tried his hand as an independent candidate in the 2016 United States presidential election, using the name Joseph Allen Maldonado . He was licensed in Colorado and received a total of 962 votes, most of them in Colorado and some write-ins.

As Joe Exotic, he ran for the Libertarian Party of Oklahoma as a candidate for the 2018 Oklahoma gubernatorial election , where he finished third and bottom on the party list in the primary with 664 votes (18.7%).

private life

Maldonado-Passage has been openly homosexual in polygamous relationships for several years. He has been married several times, with some marriages, including his double marriage to Finlay and Maldonado, not being legal. Some of his companions did not describe themselves as homosexual.

His first husband is said to have been Brian Rhyne, who did not appear in the television series. The marriage was never legally contracted because same-sex marriages were still illegal in Oklahoma at the time. With him he also found his way into the exotic animal world, the two ran the zoo together in the early years. He passed away from AIDS in 2001 . His second husband was Jeffrey Charles "JC" Hartpence, an events manager, with whom he conceptualized the basics of his road show. The couple's relationship is said to have ended in an argument in which Hartpence threatened Schreibvogel with a gun on the day of their split. Hartpence is currently serving a life sentence for murder.

After Hartpence, Schreibvogel began dating bisexual John Finlay. Another man initially played a role, but he was eventually replaced by Travis Maldonado. This threesome marriage was made at the zoo. While Finlay left Schreibvogel for a wife, Maldonado stayed with Schreibvogel until his death, who also took his name. After Maldonado, he again began a relationship with Dillon Passage, whom he eventually legally married and took his name.

documentation

The documentary series Tiger King made Joe Exotic known around the world and became an internet phenomenon that has been the subject of numerous memes . However, it was not the first show dedicated to him. He also appeared in the 2011 BBC documentary America's Most Dangerous Pets directed by Louis Theroux .

whereabouts of the big cats

In June 2020, Exotic's former private zoo, Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park , was awarded to Carole Baskin. Unaffected were the resident big cats, which were taken over by Jeffrey and Lauren Lowe that same year and relocated to Tiger King Park in Thackerville, Oklahoma . In May 2021, US authorities confiscated 68 big cats ( lions , tigers , ligers and a jaguar ) from Tiger King Park for repeated violations of animal welfare laws . The big cats were distributed to other zoos.

web links

Commons : Joe Exotic  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

itemizations

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Robert Moor: The Modern Barnum and His Equally Extraordinary Nemesis. In: New York Magazine . September 3, 2019, retrieved April 9, 2020 (US English).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Joe Exotic: A Dark Journey Into the World of a Man Gone Wild. In: Texas Monthly. 13 May 2019, retrieved 9 April 2020 (English).
  3. ↑ Netflix Documentary: "Tiger King" (Season 2, Episode 1)
  4. ^ a b c Captive tigers in the US outnumber those in the wild. It's a problem. In: National Geographic. 14 November 2019, retrieved 9 April 2020 (English).
  5. ↑ Inmate Locator (search query containing 26154-017). Retrieved April 9, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Jason Pham: 'Tiger King' Season 2 Will Be 'Just as Dramatic' as the First, According to the Producers. In: StyleCaster. April 6, 2020, retrieved April 9, 2020 (English).
  7. ↑ Brian Flood: Donald Trump Jr. says 'Tiger King' star Joe Exotic's sentence seems 'aggressive,' jokes he'd lobby for pardon. 6 April 2020, retrieved 9 April 2020 (American English).
  8. ↑ a b c Laura Jane Turner: Tiger King leaves out information about Joe Exotic and his husbands. 6 April 2020, retrieved 9 April 2020 (British English).
  9. ↑ Joe Exotic: 'Tiger King' remains in custody for attempted murder . In: The Mirror . January 30, 2022, ISSN  2195-1349 ( spiegel.de [accessed January 30, 2022]).
  10. ↑ a b Sam Adams: The Music of the Tiger King Isn't Even by the Tiger King. March 27, 2020, retrieved April 9, 2020 (English).
  11. ↑ Gabrielle Bruney: Joe Exotic's 'Here Kitty Kitty' Music Video Might Be the Best Part of 'Tiger King'. 28 March 2020, retrieved 9 April 2020 (American English).
  12. ↑ OFFICIAL 2016 PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL ELECTION RESULTS. In: /transition.fec.gov. January 30, 2017, retrieved April 9, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Julie Miller: Netflix's Wild Tiger King Is Your Next True Crime TV Obsession. In: Vanity Fair . March 10, 2020, retrieved April 9, 2020 (English).
  14. ↑ Joe Exotic, tiger breeder who appeared in Louis Theroux documentary, facing trial over alleged murder plot - ABC News. In: abc.net.au. March 14, 2019, retrieved April 9, 2020 (English).
  15. ↑ US authorities confiscate nearly 70 big cats from Tiger King Park. In: The Mirror. Retrieved May 21, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Exotic, Joe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maldonado Passage, Joseph Allen; Schreibvogel, Joe (birth name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American operator of a private zoo and convicted criminal
BIRTH DATE March 5, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Garden City , Kansas