Our obsession with Netflix’s docu-series Tiger King seems like a lifetime ago, but the ongoing issues between the eccentric Joe Exotic and arch-nemesis Carole Baskin are still going strong. This week, a judge ruled in favour of Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue to take ownership of Exotic’s Oklahoma zoo.
Exotic, real name Joseph Maldonado-Passage, is currently serving a 22-year federal prison term for killing five tigers and plotting to have Baskin killed.
Monday’s judgment found that ownership of the zoo was fraudulently transferred to Maldonado-Passage’s mother in an attempt to avoid paying the judgment. The decision said the zoo animals must be removed from the property within 120 days, but it does not detail what should happen to them.
The G.W. Exotic Animal Memorial Park in Wynnewood has been under the control of Jeff Lowe, who also appeared in the series.
Following the court ruling, Exotic took to Twitter to repeat his plea for a presidential pardon.
News of Big Cat Rescue Corp’s acquirement of Exotic’s zoo comes as a new Investigative Discovery project is in the works, delving into the disappearance of Don Lewis, Baskin’s first husband.
The disappearance of Lewis will be a crime documentary series called Investigating The Strange World of Joe Exotic. The new series will be “the investigation you didn’t get to see, revealing the secrets only Joe knows and the exclusive footage that has never been shown,” according to a statement from ID.
In other words, Joe Exotic is getting another series, but in this one, he’ll get to do more of what he does best: Go off about Carole Baskin.
Baskin has been adamant that she had zero involvement with Lewis’s disappearance. (Despite Joe’s counter-arguments via music video.) She even released a statement calling the Netflix docuseries “salacious” and explaining the apparent misinformation therein.
Baskin wrote that the series “has a segment devoted to suggesting, with lies and innuendos from people who are not credible, that I had a role in the disappearance of my husband Don in 1997. The series presents this without any regard for the truth or in most cases even giving me an opportunity before publication to rebut the absurd claims. They did not care about the truth. The unsavoury lies are better for getting viewers.”
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