Joe Exotic

Joe Exotic

Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage (né Schreibvogel; born March 5, 1963), known professionally as Joe Exotic and nicknamed "The Tiger King", is an American media personality, businessman and felon who operated the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park (also known as the G.W. Zoo) in Wynnewood, Oklahoma from 1998 to 2018. Born in Kansas, Exotic and his family moved to Texas, and was enrolled at Pilot Point High School. After graduation, Exotic briefly served as the chief of police in Eastvale. He then opened a pet store together with his brother, but after his brother's death in 1997, Exotic sold the store and founded the G.W. Zoo. During his tenure as director there, he also held magic shows and cub-petting events at venues across the U.S., hosted an online talk show, and worked with producer Rick Kirkham to create a reality television series about himself, but this latter effort ended when most footage was destroyed in a fire in 2015. Exotic left the G.W. Zoo in June 2018 and was arrested three months later on suspicion of hiring two men to murder Big Cat Rescue founder Carole Baskin, with whom he had a complicated rivalry. In 2019, Exotic was convicted on 17 federal charges of animal abuse (eight violations of the Lacey Act and nine of the Endangered Species Act) and two counts of attempted murder for hire for the plot to kill Baskin, and received a 22-year sentence in federal prison at Fort Worth, Texas. In 2021, he worked with attorney John Michael Phillips to file a motion for a new trial, and on July 15, 2021, a U.S. appeals court ruled that Exotic's sentence was too harsh and that the two separate murder attempts were treated as separate convictions. Exotic is currently awaiting the re-sentencing.Exotic has an eccentric personality and has been subject to substantial criticism, especially for the controversies surrounding his feud with Baskin and the treatment of animals at the G.W. Zoo. Exotic has been featured in several documentaries, including the Netflix series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness (2020–present), a documentary about Exotic's career as a zookeeper and his feud with Baskin. The success of the first season of Tiger King amid the worldwide COVID-19 lockdowns led to Exotic receiving attention on social media and inspiring several internet memes. Exotic also appears in two Louis Theroux documentaries, America's Most Dangerous Pets (2011) and Shooting Joe Exotic (2021).

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