‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic announces engagement to fellow inmate while serving 21-year prison sentence
‘I wish I would have met him long ago,’ former Netflix star says about his fiancé
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Tiger King star Joe Exotic has announced he’s engaged to a fellow inmate he met during his 21-year prison sentence.
The media personality, whose real name is Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage, took to X/Twitter on October 28 to announce the news. In the post, he formally introduced his partner, before sharing that they’re figuring out their plans to get married.
“Meet Jorge Marquez, he is 33. He is so amazing and is from Mexico. Now, the quest of getting married in prison and getting him asylum, or we be leaving America when we both get out,” Maldonado-Passage wrote. “Either way, I wish I would have met him long ago.”
Maldonado-Passage has been married twice. In 2021, his ex-husband, Dillon Passage, confirmed he was filing for divorce from the Netflix star after three years of marriage.
“Yes, Joe and I are seeking a divorce," he wrote on Instagram at the time. “This wasn’t an easy decision to make but Joe and I both understand that this situation isn’t fair to either of us. It’s something that neither of us were expecting but we are going to take it day by day.”
Maldonado-Passage was also married for two years to Travis Maldonado, who died from a self-inflicted, accidental gunshot wound in 2017.
The former zoo owner and TV personality rose to fame through the Netflix 2020 true-crime documentary, which focused on Exotic’s rivalry with wildlife activist Carole Baskin.
In 2019, Maldonado-Passage was found guilty on two counts of hiring a hitman to murder Baskin. Prosecutors said Maldonado-Passage offered $10,000 to an undercover FBI agent to kill Baskin during a recorded December 2017 meeting. In the recording, he told the agent, “Just like follow her into a mall parking lot and just cap her and drive off.” Maldonado-Passage’s attorneys have said their client – who once operated a zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, about 65 miles south of Oklahoma City – wasn’t being serious.
Maldonado-Passage, who maintains his innocence, was also convicted of killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs, and falsifying wildlife records.
In January 2020, the former zookeeper was sentenced to 22 years in prison. At the time, a three-judge panel of the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Maldonado-Passage that the court should have treated the hitmen as one conviction at sentencing because they both involved the same goal of killing Baskin, who runs a rescue sanctuary for big cats in Florida and had criticized Maldonado-Passage’s treatment of animals.
In 2022, his sentence was reduced to 21 years during a re-sentencing trial.
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