The whimsical zoo owner “Joe Exotic”, at the heart of a hit documentary on Netflix, failed to convince the American justice system to release him and received a new sentence of more than 20 years in prison on Friday for attempting to murder.
The “Tiger King”, whose real name is Joe Maldonado-Passage, was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years in prison for wanting to kill his close enemy Carole Baskin. Due to a procedural error, a federal court then ordered that the sentence be reduced.
“Don’t let me die in prison…”
At a hearing in Oklahoma City to determine his new sentence, Joe Exotic, 58, asked for a “second chance”, local media reported. “Don’t let me die in prison,” pleaded the 50-year-old who suffers from prostate cancer.
His rival, Carole Baskin, urged the judge to leave him behind bars, saying he still feared for his life.
The magistrate finally retained a sentence of 20 years and four months of imprisonment, according to court documents.
The journey of the exuberant Joe Exotic, who amassed a small fortune thanks to a zoo opened in 1999 in Oklahoma before losing everything in infernal schemes, had fascinated millions of confined households when the documentary “Au kingdom of wild animals” at the start of the pandemic.
The series focused on her conflict with Carole Baskin, an animal rights activist who accused her of mistreating her animals and vowed to bankrupt her zoo.
He ended up offering two henchmen thousands of dollars to kill his enemy. But one of them was an undercover cop to trap him.
A new installment of the documentary series, “Tiger King 2”, was released in November on the streaming platform and has also drawn crowds.