The Covid lockdown of 2020 seems like a lifetime ago, and many people spent their time binge-watching Netflix’s hit show Tiger King, but where is Joe Exotic now?
Tiger King’s Joe Exotic is still behind bars.
2020 feels like a lifetime ago when we all had to stay indoors, hoard toilet roll and bake banana bread, and it seemed like everyone was watching Tiger King. Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin and a cast of other weird and wonderful characters became an overnight internet phenomenon, with everything from t-shirts, to memes, to scented candles dedicated to Tiger King.
Five years on, he is still locked up, and has been asking everyone from Kim Kardashian to Donald Trump for help getting him released. Exotic, real name Joseph Maldonado-Passage, has just gotten married in prison to a much younger man.
Who is Joe Exotic?
Joseph Maldonado-Passage was born on March 5, 1963 in Kansas. He shot to fame when a Netflix documentary was made about him and aired in 2021, with a second and third season following in 2021 and 2023.
In 2019, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison for 17 federal charges of animal abuse, and for two counts of attempted murder for hire of his Tiger King co-star Carole Baskin. Exotic has had an ongoing feud with Baskin, the founder of Big Cat Rescue.
He was charged and convicted of killing five tigers, for selling cubs, and for falsifying records for the animals. Exotic later had his sentence reduced by one year to 21 years when an appeals court ruled the convictions for the two murder attempts were wrongly treated as separate.
Love life
Viewers of Tiger King got to see all about Joe Exotic’s love life, and as of 2025 he has now had at least six husbands. He met his first husband, Brian Rhyne, in the late 1980s and they opened up the zoo, called the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park together in 1999.
Tragically Brian died in 2001 after suffering complications from HIV. A year later, Joe met Jeffrey Charles “J.C.” Hartpence, and they started a travelling show together. It is claimed Jeffrey wanted the zoo to become a rehabilitation centre, while Joe wanted to keep breeding tigers.
Jeffrey is now spending life in prison for murder according to the Wichita Eagle. And according to Digital Spy., he is also a convicted paedophile.
In 2003, Joe hired much younger man John Finlay, at just 19 years old. Fans were horrified when John flashed a tattoo saying “PRIVATELY OWNED BY JOE EXOTIC,” below the belt, which has since covered up.
Joe had a three-way marriage ceremony in 2014, tying the knot with both John and Travis Michael Maldonado. Less than a year later, John wanted out of the marriage and attacked Joe in a parking lot, and he later had his teeth fixed and went on to marry a woman and had a child with her.
Travis Maldonado died in 2017 after he accidentally shot himself at the zoo’s gift shop. He was messing around with the gun, claiming it wouldn’t fire after what he had done to it, but it went off.
Joe then married another younger man, then 22-year-old Dillon Passage. They wed in December 2017, before announcing their split in March 2021 while Joe was serving his sentence.
Exotic has now married Jorge Marquez, a 33-year-old from Mexico who is also in prison. Announcing the engagement, he wrote: “Meet Jorge Marquez he is 33. He is so amazing and is from Mexico.
“Now, the quest of getting married in prison and getting him asylum or we be leaving America when we both get out. Either way, I wish I would have met him long ago.”
Celebrity appeals
Over the years Joe Exotic has called upon several celebrities for help with reducing or pardoning his prison sentence. He previously lashed out at Kim Kardashian, after he hoped she would be able to get his 21 year sentence pardoned.
In 2024 he questioned whether he was “too white” for her to help him. He had previously asked her for help back in 2020.
Joe, who frequently posts on Instagram from inside prison, pleaded with Kim back in 2020 asking her to “call President Trump to pardon me” in an open letter. In 2024, he ranted to the Daily Mail: “I’ve called Kim Kardashian plain out.”
“Am I too white for her help? Because all I need is her voice, I don’t need her money, I don’t need her to spend her whole life helping me do this,” he fumed.
“All I need is for her to pick up a phone and call the White House and say, “Look, I’m behind Joe’s movement. This is good. The system is messed up.”
He also sent comments to Kendall Jenner and to Kourtney Kardashian, trying to get Kim’s attention: “Please have your sister help me get out of this hell hole.”
Unhappy with Kim’s refusal to help, Joe has now been pleading to Donald Trump directly. At the end of 2024, he wrote to Trump: “Everyone hopes you keep the promises you made during your campaign, which include pardoning everyone sooner than later in January 2025.
“Some of those very people have been stuck in solitary confinement, forced to live like rats, have killed themselves in prison, or have died. Some, like myself, have fought like hell to hang on, hoping for you to win this election.”
If released, Joe wants to take on a role in Trump’s cabinet as the new Federal Fish and Wildlife Director. Most recently he has been asking for a “gold card”, to help prevent his new husband from being deported.
There has been confusion over whether Jorge was being sent back to Mexico or not, with Joe thinking they had taken him just two days before his birthday. “I don’t do drugs, I don’t need to carry a gun, and I don’t drink,” he said.
“And hell, he’s the president as a felon, so I can finish what life I have left as a felon—I don’t give a damn. I just want to go home.”
Health battles
Joe shared that he has been experiencing health problems in prison, as he continued to appeal for a pardon or to be released. Earlier this year, the star revealed his cancer has returned.
Exotic spoke to Newsweek by phone in January, revealing: “My prostate cancer is back out of remission, I have cancer in my left lung, and I went from 209 pounds down to 171 in the last three months.”
He chillingly predicted: “I’m not going to live to carry out this sentence. I would love to go home.”
He criticised the federal prison system for the treatment he has received: “It’s hard, fighting it in here is even harder because your diet sucks, the food sucks, your medical care sucks. I’m just a number to the federal system.”
He was originally transferred from MC Fort Worth to Federal Medical Center, Butner in North Carolina in November 2021. He was later transferred back again.
What happened to Joe Exotic’s animals?
After Joe was sentenced to prison, a rescue mission was put in action to help his animals. Pat Craig is the founder of The Wild Animal Sanctuary, and he was sent to rescue the tigers.
He told an episode of 60 Seconds that the animals weren’t in a good way: “You could see their backbones and ribs, they were definitely not starving to death, but definitely underfed.” Their cages were far too small too, and they barely had room to turn around, let alone exhibit any natural behaviours.
At the sanctuary, they have enjoyed a new lease of life, and enjoying a much wider space to learn “how to be a tiger.” Joe Exotic has sworn to never keep an animal again if he is released from prison.
Career change
Despite being behind bars, Joe Exotic has made no secret of his wish to change his line of work. He insists he has no desire to run a zoo again, and even has his hopes set on a career in academia if he released from prison early.
The reality TV star’s attorney, Roger Roots, told the Daily Mail that his client is making plans: “He doesn’t seem to be depressed at all. He’s thinking about the future.”
“Joe’s one of the world’s foremost authorities on tigers for one thing, so I think he really would like to work in higher education and academia, those kinds of things,” he suggested. He praised Joe’s knowledge and said he would like to be lecturer and teach people about the animals.
In 2023 he even ran for presidency in the 2024 election, throwing his hat in the ring as a candidate for the Democrats. He said as a candidate he didn’t “give a damn what colour you are, where you came from, who you sleep with, if you have done drugs in your past, or if you have made a mistake and ended up in jail or put there because someone lied about you.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
