Joe Exotic, star of the Netflix documentary Tiger King that garnered him global attention during the COVID pandemic, told Newsweek in an exclusive new interview that he has “lost everything.”
Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Allen Maldonado, became a household name five years ago when Netflix aired a documentary centered on him, his affection for tigers, and a zany cast of characters working at his tiger sanctuary in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, from 1999 to 2018.
Prior to the documentary’s release, he was convicted of two counts of murder-for-hire against Carole Baskin—an adversary in Tiger King—and eventually sentenced to 21 years in prison. This November marks eight years that he’s behind bars.
Exotic claims to have never reaped any rewards for being the centerpiece. In fact, he said he hadn’t even seen Tiger King until about five months ago because he’s currently weighing his legal options in a battle with the streaming giant.
The 62-year-old spoke at length with Newsweek via phone from inside the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, about his health issues, how he reacted and is dealing with his husband’s deportation to Mexico, and how he has sought pardons or a commuted sentence from numerous politicians and celebrities, including President Donald Trump.
Health Issues
Exotic has prostate cancer and cancer in his left lung. The day prior to the interview, he went to the doctor and was directed to take another PET scan because it’s believed the cancer from his prostate has spread to his ribs.
Even while held inside a medical facility to do his time, he called the medical care within “pathetic.”
“My earliest out date right now is October 1, 2030,” he said. “With the medical care I get in here, I probably won’t even make it five more years.”
Deported Husband
In May, his 33-year-old husband Jorge Marquez Flores was deported to Mexico for illegal entry to the United States, after completing a federal prison sentence.
Exotic has attempted different forms of pleas and outreach to reunite and live with Flores someday in the U.S., including offering to give the government half his earnings in exchange for a post-prison—in addition to saying he would purchase one of Trump’s “gold cards” floated as a broader method to grant U.S. residency to those who invest $5 million in the country.
Exotic speaks with Flores, who he last saw in person on May 16, two to three times a day.
“He is in Mexico at his aunt’s house, praying to God and making videos, asking President Trump for forgiveness and to let [him] come home,” Exotic said. “Our plan is, I’m gonna go to Mexico. I really want to go live in Cozumel.”
He added: “I will work to do whatever I got to do, to either buy a Trump gold card for him, or to go through the asylum process to get him back into America the right way because he shouldn’t have come in the wrong way. He knows that; I know that. We don’t hold him being deported against anybody because that’s the law.”
Pleas for Pardons
In April 2019, a federal jury found him guilty on two counts of hiring someone to murder Baskin, founder of Big Cat Rescue in Florida, eight counts of violating the Lacey Act by falsifying wildlife records, and nine counts of violating the Endangered Species Act by killing five tigers and selling tigers across state lines.
Regarding Baskin, he said the documentary portrayed her as close to who she actually is.
“To this day you’ll never convince me she didn’t kill her husband because I investigated it for almost 10 years, and I have her original diary,” Exotic said. “I interviewed all of her staff and all of her past staff. She killed him.”
Baskin has denied that she had any involvement in her husband’s disappearance or death.
Exotic also takes umbrage with the Endangered Species Act charges.
“That’s my ultimate goal, to prove that generic tigers that are branded in captivity in the United States do not belong on the United States endangered species list because the endangered species list of 1973 was written to protect the native species and the habitats of our lands,” he said. “Tigers, elephants, chimpanzees, orangutans, none of that belongs on our endangered species [list]. We are spending billions of dollars regulating something in America that is protected.”
Exotic continues to try to talk to anybody who will listen in hope he can get a pardon, or at least an early release.
Representative Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican, said last week that her office received an inquiry from Exotic for help.
He’s made additional reach outs to lawmakers and celebrities including Secretary of State Marco Rubio (when he was a senator), former GOP Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, Dana White, Hulk Hogan, and President Trump.
“I’ve got a lot of big names out there asking President Trump to make this right,” Exotic said. “Why he won’t is beyond all of us. You know, he would be so popular and so praised if he would just let me go home.”
He added: “I don’t even need a pardon because I would take just a commuted sentence to time served because I don’t need to carry a gun and I don’t do drugs. I just need to be able to travel to work because I can become a millionaire with this platform and do good with my charity work as a felon.”
He said he “looks up” to Trump, who he acknowledged to also be a felon “persecuted by the very same government that persecuted me.”
Prisoners ‘Drooling’ From Drug Use
“I would never believe it if I didn’t live it,” Exotic says about his days in prison, which he says is akin more to a college dormitory than doors and bars you would see in TV or movies.
He gets up around 7 or 8 a.m., takes a shower, and then watches his fellow inmates in the low-security facility.
“Drugs in here is crazy,” he said. “You would never believe how many drugs are inside a federal prison. And that’s why when I was running for president, I was like, you are so wasting your time on drugs against the war on the border when you can’t keep them out of a fenced-in federal prison….This is nothing but a college for wannabe drug addicts.”
He said he spends days watching half the prison population “act like 2-year-olds drooling because they’re so high on synthetic marijuana.”
Fame But Being Alone
“It is it overwhelming and gratifying that the entire world knows who I am,” he admitted. “I absolutely am upset that they made me out to be a meth head and some crazy fool.”
Exotic said he gets along with everyone in prison because he honors his words and minds his own business.
His life outside is emptier. Both his parents died, one in 2019 and the other in 2020. His husband is in a foreign country and may not be able to return. His three siblings have maintained no contact with him since 1997, which he says is because he’s a homosexual.
“There is light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “But what keeps me going—I’ve never even had a speeding ticket. I have no criminal history, period. I know who I am, and my parents raised me to do right.”
He continued: “And even though I’ve lost everything I’ve ever worked for, I am so looking forward to walking out these gates—whether it’s with President Trump’s blessing or not, and making my life or what I have left of it 10 times better than the life that I had. And I had a pretty good life.”
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