After Joe Exotic would open up the G. W. Animal Park home to more than one thousand animals
of all different species... we are talking Lions, Tigers, Baboons, Alligators, Puma's
Ligers and Tigons.
After Joe Exotic would drop tracks including 'Here Kitty Kitty', 'I Saw A Tiger', & 'My
First Love”.
After Joe Exotic would be arrested and convicted of two counts of murder-for-hire, eight violations
of the Lacey Act and nine of the Endangered Species Act and would be sentenced to 22 years
in federal prison.
He called himself the Tiger King and plastered his face on highway billboards in Texas and
Oklahoma, the dude even ran for President of the United States and when that didn't
work he ran for Governor.
Always the show man Joe had a bigger than life personality but even more impressive
was his private zoo. A life long animal lover the dude was living the dream, he had a staff
of friends and lovers working along side him, a profitable business and was a local celebrity.
He was even making moves to become an online star through his constant production of music
and talk show content uploaded daily
to YouTube.
Piecing this video together we dug up Joe's old Instagram account with 27K followers and
he's been posting to his YouTube channel with 78K Subscribers for nearly a decade. The man
sure knew how to produce content but nothing with him in it ever went viral. Joe always
expected to become world famous and with the release of this Netlflix documentary it looks
like it's happening. Sadly for him, the fame has come while he, just like one of his wild
animals is locked up behind bars.
What's going on guys? It's your boy Michael McCrudden back at it again with another episode
of Where Are They Now? I'm currently 2 episodes deep into this series and doing my research
I found a ton of information that has been skipped over in the doc. Recent drops on this
channel include the If You Know, You Know guy and a Where Are They Now on YouTuber Shoenice.
I somehow managed to call him Shoeface so I gotta apologize for that.
If this video does well there are plenty of other characters from this Netflix series
we could cover including Carole Baskin or her deceased ex husband Don Lewis. How about
Joey from The Circle? Let me know who is next in the comments down below. Aright, let's
get into this video.
Joe Exotic was born Joe Maldonado-Passage or Joeseph Schreibvogel
on Match 5th, 1963 in rural Kansas. It turns out his parents come from wealthy farming
families, but they didn''t spoil and of their four children, and Joe always felt that were
just born to work as farmhands. His parents weren't affectionate and never told him they
loved him. He was also sexually abused as a child when he was just five years old by
an older boy.
His mothers name is Shirley and his father, a Korean War vet, moved the family from Kansas
when Joe was fourteen. First they went to Wyoming, then they moved to Pilot Point, Texas,
north of Dallas, where they lived in an eight-bedroom house on a large ranch.
Joe wasn't close with two of his siblings but extremely close with one brother name
Garold. Joe and Garold shared a deep love for animals. A young Joe participated in Future
Farmers of America and often brought home raccoons, ferrets, and other creatures for
the two to take care of. The brothers enjoyed watching nature shows on TV.
Joe graduated from high school in 1982 and then became a police officer in nearby Eastvale.
At age nineteen, he was promoted to chief of police. It was a small department. Only
a few officers worked under him, and serious crimes were rare. Joe felt accepted by his
colleagues, but he was only beginning to come to terms with his own sexuality. He was outed
by one of siblings to his father, who made Joe shake his hand and promise not to attend
his funeral.
For Joe this was a devastating blow and one day not long after he decided he wanted to
die and veered into a concrete barrier, nearly plummeting over the edge of the bridge. Miraculously,
he survived, but he was severely injured. For physical rehabilitation he moved to West
Palm Beach, Florida, and underwent months of difficult therapy. On Instagram he posted
this photo with the caption: They said I wouldn't live 2 days. God gave
me this chance
Now in Florida he lived with a boyfriend and got a job at a pet store. His neighbour worked
at an exotic animal park nearby and would often come home with baby lions and monkeys
that he’d let Joe bottle-feed. From there on out Joe was hooked. He moved back to Texas
and began his career in the exotic animal industry.
In 1986 Joe, Garold, and Joe’s first husband—Brian Rhyne, whom he’d met at a bar in
Dallas got married in an unofficial ceremony— the three bought a pet store together in Arlington.
For the first few years they sold reptiles, birds, and small fish. When they could afford
to expand they used they would buy bigger cages for small exotic pets, like three-banded
armadillos and four-eyed opossums. All was going well, but then, in October 1997, disaster
struck. Garold was hit by a drunk driver outside Dallas and he died within a week.
His brother died in a car crash back in 1997.
The pet store wasn't the same without Garold, so Joe decided to sell it. His family inherited
$140,000 related to Garold’s death, and with it he bought sixteen acres of land about
an hour south of Oklahoma City. Joe poured cement for sidewalks and built a row of nine
cages. He named the zoo after his brother The Garold Wayne Exotic Animal Memorial Park
and it opened two years to the day after Garold’s death.
Word spread quickly that Joe had opened an animal sanctuary, and people began dropping
off exotic animals that they no longer wanted. Two of Garold’s pets, a deer and a buffalo,
were the zoo’s first inhabitants. Then came a mountain lion. Then a bear. In 2000 Joe
got a call telling him that someone had abandoned two tigers in a backyard and he named his
first two tigers Tess and Tickles. They bred, and Joe raised their cubs.
On the downside of things, he had his first run in with the law in 1999, while trying
to transport a flock of emaciated emus. Some escapade onto the freeway and Joe had to act
fast shooting and killing the wild animals for which he got a slap on the wrist. His
first husband died in 2001 from a deadly infection and was buried at the zoo. He had other lovers
over the years, one named J.C. Hartpence and another John Finlay who you've seen in the
Netflix doc.
Joe developed a traveling animal and magic show where kids could pet tiger cubs and at
the time he was playing around with different named like “Aarron Alex,” “Cody Ryan,”
and “Joe Exotic,” They would perform at malls and fairs across Texas and Oklahoma,
sometimes travelling as far north as Green Bay, Wisconsin, where a newspaper ad described
him as “Master Illusionist Joe Exotic.” Business was good but he was already picking
up
bad press.
He was increasingly buying new animals from breeders and breeding animals of his own for
profit. As Joe’s zoo grew and his traveling show booked more events. He also opened up
a zoo’s gift shop, he sold Joe Exotic–branded skin care products, alcohol, lube and condoms.
He later opened up a bar two miles down the road from the zoo called Safari Bar and then
a pizza joint named Zooters. He was building a brand.
Despite the success, he began to attract more scrutiny from animal rights groups and federal
regulators. In July 2004, the Oklahoman published an article about a crippled lion cub named
Angel that had been born at the zoo, a possible result of inbreeding.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and PETA were hot on Joe's ass and the man had one
woman to blame for all the heat he was getting – Carol Baskin.
Here is a video of him Talking shit about Carol on the news from 6 years ago.
The beef between him and Carol Baskins would kick start back in the early 2000's and she
would be a thorn in his side. As you know from the Doc she began notifying malls not
to book him, started online forums to scrutinize him. Things got messy when Joe, out of spite,
began to use the Big Cat Rescue name and logo to advertise his shows. So then in January
of 2011 she sued him in federal court for trademark infringement and won a 1 million
dollar civil suit against him.
That only added fuel to the fire and he became consumed with revenge and vowing to one day
bring her down. Joe had built a television studio at his zoo and had been regularly broadcasting
episodes of Joe Exotic TV on a website he created. On his show he would mention his
nemesis obsessively, making claims like this:
“For Carole and all of her friends that are watching out there, if you think for one
minute I was nuts before, I am the most dangerous exotic animal owner on this planet right now,
And before you bring me down, it is my belief that you will stop breathing. Got that?”
He made a music video titled Here Kitty Kitty where he hired a look alike and has her in
the video filming the woman pretending to feed her dead husband to tigers.
I also stumbled upon an old video on his channel, an interview with adult star Rachel Starr
and I actually remember using parts of this for her Before
They Were Famous video.
It turns out the two were close friends, what a waste cause Joe only has eyes for the fellas.
In his personal life, Jon met Travis Maldonado in 2013 who previous to his arrival had struggled
with a meth addiction. Joe took a liking to Trvis right away, and less than a month later,
he Travis and Finlay were wedded in a three-way ceremony in a dance hall across the street
from the zoo. Some of the “flower girls” were monkeys.
But all wasn't great for the threesome, his relationship with Finlay soon began to fall
apart. In the end he attacked Joe at the zoo and was arrested and charged with assault
and battery. There was also the incident where one of his workers lost her arm.
In 2015 the alligator compound at the zoo exploded in fire. All of the alligators but
one were boiled alive. Also lost in the blaze, was his TV studio. Joe claimed animal rights
activists targeted the studio to shut him up. Then in 2017, Travis died from a self
inflicted gun shot to the head. The shooting occurred while the zoo was open and in front
of an employee. He was only 23 years old.
On 11 December 2017, he married his third husband Dillon Passage, the two met online
and were wed almost immediately. His love life was back on track but things at the zoo
went sour fast. Joe invited a few other men into his business including Jeff Lowe and
James Garretson who were quick to push Joe out of his own business. There was also the
two employees that Joe offered cash if they would agree to kill Carole Baskin. Fast forward
the clock to 2018 and Joe, along with his new 22 year old husband and four dogs made
the move to Florida. His years of owning a zoo and being a local celebrity was all over
and he was working as a dish washer at Peg Leg Pete’s, a pirate-themed seafood joint,
while also bartending for a catering company at night. He was applying for a third job
at a hospital when four unmarked cars skidded to a stop around him. In a flash he was surrounded
by plain clothes law enforcement officers. Joe watched as they pointed their weapons
at him and shouted, “Get on the ground! Joe learned that he was being accused of attempting
to hire two hit men to kill Carole Baskin. In the end he would be convicted of two counts
of murder-for-hire, eight violations of the Lacey Act and nine of the Endangered Species
Act and would be sentenced to 22 years in federal prison.
At the time of this recording Joe is 57 years old and only 1 or
2 years into his 22 year sentence, at least he's close to home serving his time at Grady
County Jail in Oklahoma. From behind bars he hasn't given up his war against Carole
Baskins. He's also recentley sued the U.S. Department of Interior and the U.S. Federal
Wildlife Service, for nearly over $78 Million. This is for loss of personal property and
nearly two decades of “esearch and care of 200 generic tigers and cross-breeds for
365 days a year. More specifically, he claims that the two government agencies placed a
generic tiger on the endangered species list and was done for the sole purpose of targeting
and putting a stop to businesses like his.
What's even more interesting and a little sad is that it's while behind bars Joe is
finally getting the global fame and admiration he had dreamt of since he was a little kid.
Damn.
Aright, I'm gonna wrap this one up here because this is Where Are They Now? My name is Michael
McCrudden.