‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic moved to North Carolina facility
FILE – In this Aug. 28, 2013, file photo, Joseph Maldonado-Passage, also known as Joe Exotic, is seen at the zoo he used to run in Wynnewood, Okla. A federal judge in Oklahoma has ordered the new owners of the Oklahoma zoo featured in Netflix’s “Tiger King” documentary to turn over all the lion and tiger cubs in their possession, along with the animals’ mothers, to the federal government. U.S. District Judge John F. Heil III issued the order last week in the case against Jeffrey and Lauren Lowe and the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park based on claimed violations of the Endangered Species Act and the Animal Welfare Act. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)
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BUTNER, N.C. (AP) — The former Oklahoma zookeeper known as “Tiger King” Joe Exotic, a prominent figure in a Netflix documentary series, has been transferred to a medical facility in North Carolina for federal inmates after a cancer diagnosis, according to his attorney.
Joe Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was flown on a plane to be transferred from a federal medical center in Forth Worth, Texas, to a federal medical center in Butner, North Carolina, late Tuesday or early Wednesday, defense attorney John Phillips said in a statement. Phillips, who tweeted his statement on Saturday, said the transfer originally was scheduled to be transferred later this month
Phillips said Maldonado-Passage told him that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and was getting medical treatment and tests “for a host of issues.” Phillips said prison medical care “isn’t the best and justice is slow.”
“It’s a competition of life and liberty no one wants any part of,” he added.
In July, a federal appeals court ruled that Maldonado-Passage should get a shorter prison sentence for his role in a murder-for-hire plot and violating federal wildlife laws.
He was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years in federal prison after being convicted of trying to hire two different men to kill Florida animal rights activist Carole Baskin. A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver found that the trial court wrongly treated those two convictions separately in calculating his prison term under sentencing guidelines.
The appeals court panel said his advisory sentencing range should be between 17 1/2 years and just under 22 years rather than between just under 22 years and 27 years in prison, as the trial court calculated.
Maldonado-Passage and his blond mullet were featured in the Netflix documentary “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.”
Meanwhile, Baskin, of Tampa’s Big Cat Rescue sanctuary, lost an effort to stop Netflix and a production company from using previously recorded video of her and her husband in the “Tiger King” sequel.
A federal magistrate judge issued a recommendation Friday denying the Baskins’ bid to block use of the footage as an impermissible prior restraint under the First Amendment.
