The Misery Machine - Joe Exotic | Netflix's "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness."

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

This week, Drewby and Yergy discuss the case of Joe Exotic, recently thrust back into the spotlight as the subject of the new Netflix docuseries "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness." Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage, (né Schreibvogel; born March 5, 1963), popularly known as Joe Exotic, is an American former zoo operator. He previously owned and ran the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma. He claimed to be the most prolific breeder of tigers in the United States. He ran as a candidate for President of the United States as well as for Governor of Oklahoma, but neither campaign garnered significant public support. In 2019 he was convicted on 17 federal charges of animal abuse (eight violations of the Lacey Act and nine of the Endangered Species Act) and two counts of murder-for-hire, for a plot to kill Carole Baskin, the chief executive officer of Big Cat Rescue, an animal rescue organization for exotic cats. He is currently serving 22 years in federal prison. This week's episode was brought to you by our sponsor True Crime XS: https://www.truecrimexs.com/ Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast #truecrime #podcast #mystery #documentary #sanctuary

The Misery Machine. Oh, hey. I'm Drewby. I'm Yergy. And we're going to do something a little more lighthard this week. This was something that we had talked about doing for a little while, and then, lo and behold, the Netflix documentary just sneaks up on us. So this is going to be about Joe Exotic and the surrounding events that happened with him

and his zoo and touch on some of the experiences we've had, well, mostly Yergy. Yeah, mostly me. In animal care. In the animal care industry. So we're just going to get right to it. We're not going to do the Apple reviews first. Those are going to be at the end. All social media is in the description if you want to support us.

If you like this and like what we're doing, you can either subscribe to us on Patreon or our PayPal links below if you want to buy us a cup of coffee or some shit while we're in quarantine. Anyway, this is Joe Exotic. We had fun making this one. It was hilarious. Yes, enjoy. Joseph Maldonado Passage or Passage maybe.

I'm going with Passage. Passage. Formerly Joseph Shrive Vogel. It's a nice journey. German name. Born March 5th, 1963, but more well known as Joe Exotic is the former operator of the Greater Winwood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma. Pretty sure. It's Winniewood. Winniewood? Whatever. We don't have listeners in Oklahoma. He claimed to be the most prolific breeder of tigers in the United States. He once ran for president of the United States. He also ran for the governor of Oklahoma. In 2019,

he was convicted on 17 federal charges of animal abuse, including eight violations of the Lacey Act and nine of the Endangered Species Act, and two counts of murder for hire plot to kill Carol Baskin, CEO of Big Cat Rescue in Florida. He's now serving 22 years in federal prison. Some of us might not know what the Lacey Act is. It is a conservation law in the United States that prohibits trade in wildlife, fish, and plants that have been illegally taken, possessed, transported, or sold.

There are eight states, I believe, where you can own a tiger or any sort of jungle cat. And those states are Alabama, Delaware, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. So him being in Oklahoma, he was kind of skirting around things a little bit. I think in other states, you have to be registered as a sanctuary or something like that. Yeah. So, for example, down in Florida, where Big Cat Rescue is, you have to be designated as sanctuary. Same thing with Maine. we have a small zoo, similar to the ones we're going to be talking about here in Maine and Mount Vernon.

Dew Haven. Dohaven. That have a lot of different things that you wouldn't normally be allowed to have his pets, but they can have them based on the fact that they're a sanctuary. I wonder why that guy was allowed to walk around town with his panther, though. He wasn't. They made him stop doing it. Okay.

What's the difference between a sanctuary in a zoo? Because York's Wild Kingdom, I've never heard, called the sanctuary. So I think it falls under the same guidelines. York's Wild Kingdom is Maine's only zoo that I know of. So like zoos and sanctuaries and things of that nature are supposed to be like sanctuary I believe would go under like a rescue. You're taking in animals from zoos or circuses or things of that nature. Whereas zoo would have a breeding program and would be more of a for-profit place where I think a sanctuary will only make sense to me if they're a nonprofit organization. So zoo is for-profit.

sanctuary is nonprofit. And then the Endangered Species Act provides a program for the conservation of threatened and endangered plants and animals and the habitats in which they are found. So I don't know how he would be violating that act unless he was bringing some of these cats from other places. And from my understanding is that he wasn't.

Again, I'm no lawyer, but... But he was sending them out. He had that breeding program and was sending them out. Oh, to different places. Different places. So I'm assuming what? was happening as he was selling them and not sending him off to sanctuaries and in other such things was probably selling them for private sale to places that didn't allow it. Yeah, he said that

you can buy a tiger for $2,000. I never would have guessed that because God, my sister was looking at getting a French bulldog and it was like $6,000. Yeah, so that's my guess as to how he was violating it. The Lacey Act is pretty widespread though. But it seemed like all he wanted to do was just breed tigers because they were endangered and he wanted to turn profit on them. The problem is with what you, the problem you took with it, I don't have any problem with the breeding per se. It's what you do with the animal afterwards and can you provide the level of care and the life that it needs. Right. So what he was doing essentially where I had the problem with it is he was doing cub petting. And cub petting is a really annoying thing that sanctuaries or zoos will do where they

will breed cubs for the purpose of people taking pictures with them and petting cubs. You have a very short window of time in which you can do it up to a certain amount. It's like six weeks, I think. It's, well, it's more than six weeks, but it's not. Well, they say you shouldn't do it past six or eight weeks, but some people do it all the way up to like four months or something. Right, because they can start taking fingers off. Yeah. But what you do with it after is you then sell the cubs off to people who don't know what to do with them.

And that's where he was violating the Lacey Act selling this cub off for $2,000. Or in the case of that one facility in the Carolina's in Myrtle Beach, they said he was just euthanizing them all. Yeah, though there's no proof of that happening. That was just a rumor. That was hearsay. Right. There seems to be a lot of hearsay in this industry. If you watch the series, you'll see.

It's just so dramatic. Right. I don't think we talked about what were the series. So, Drewby and I, a couple months ago, we had talked about doing an episode. episode about Joe Exotic, but it kind of fell on the back burner. There were other things we needed to do. And then the other day I noticed Netflix had picked up the whole controversy around big cat ownership.

It's called the Tiger King. And a lot of it has to do with the Joe Exotic case and all the different players within that huge cluster fuck. I guess you could call it. I mean, it literally is a cluster fuck. There's some polygamist sanctuaries. I'm not kidding. Yeah.

This one guy in North Carolina will take girls that are teenagers, groom them to be one of his polygamous wives. Yeah. He calls him the keepers, but really he's just grooming wives. Yeah, just really fucked up. Yeah, going after Drake for him grooming people, but you won't go after this dude. This is apparently okay. Everybody likes the dude in that area. I don't get any of this.

I don't even think polygamy is allowed North Carolina. I don't think he's married to all of them. Okay, he just has them there. He has this harem of women that he picks out outfits for. I don't want to get too much into the documentary. We're definitely going to be referenced. referencing a lot because it gave a lot of information that wasn't elsewhere. A big reason I didn't cover this before was there just wasn't a ton of information.

And also the... And I think I'll take the blame for this one. I shot down doing the episode initially because nobody died. Joe Exotic didn't kill anybody. Do we really want to do this? Is this true crime? But having watched the documentary, it definitely is just in a different way. It's just insanity.

I mean, technically if you think about true crime, it's... it's that it's crime but people think it means true murder i found this case interesting and i wish we had done it in retrospect but we're doing it now we're doing it now and if you definitely want to know more about all the other key players because we're not going to probably touch on much of it other than carol baskin yeah carol baskin because obviously she's involved in this definitely she's a hot mess too oh my god maldonado passage no let's just call him what joe exotic joe exotic purchased an Oklahoma horse farm in the 1990s. Eventually the farm became a zoo with big cats.

He dedicated the zoo to his brother, Gerald Wayne, who died in 1997 in a car crash. To feed his growing zoo of big cats, he would take in horses, which were donated to him. He would shoot the horses and feed them whole to the tigers, lions, and other big cats. So there's a lot of other things with this choose. The brother died in a car crash moving, the sister, I believe, from Texas or Louisiana to Florida. Something like that. He was hit by like a drunk driver, 40 minutes in. Joe Exotic has a tattoo of him on his arm,

and he started his whole foundation off going and talking about doing like a say no to drugs type of thing at schools. Yeah. And he couldn't get high school students to pay attention to him, so he started bringing lion cubs in and tiger cubs in. And then all of a sudden they gave a shit. Yeah, and they started doing a magic show, and it just became really weird. From that, it became a side show he was bringing to malls all across the Midwest. Yeah, and then he started to.

boring everywhere. It went up into the Rockies and stuff as well. Went to the Rockies. I think he may have gone to Washington State, but he was making quite a killing doing that until Carol Baskin got involved. Right. So not only was he feeding the big cats horses that were donated to him, he was getting downed cows that were from feed lots, like several a day. Yeah, deer that were hit. Game wardens would bring them in. Right. He was getting spoiled food from Walmart, so all the meat that they couldn't put back on the shelves. He was feeding it to the cats instead. This isn't uncommon, by the way. A lot of sanctuaries have certain deals like this. You know, I don't know about the Walmart food thing, but I can speak to do 110% about this because I know it firsthand. My mom and stepdad for a while

were running a red deer farm at their house. And they live directly across the pond from Dew. Dew Haven, the sanctuary in Maine that we were speaking of. Right. So anytime my mom would have a deer die or anything pass away. her farm, she would call them up, they'd come and get it. So it was like deer, elk, buffalo, anything that would pass, you would come get the whole thing. And the Walmart thing, I don't know how many places have that deal. That's not the first time I've heard of something like that. So I don't think it's exclusive to Joe Exotic. This is not a novel thing. No, no, no. So for over 20 years, he was known as Joe Exotic. He's the owner or operator of a zoo full of big cats. He operated a kind

of online reality TV show that he streamed from a zoo. Over the years, he operated. side shows around the country where he allowed people to pet tiger cubs. He also staged shows at fairs and shopping malls, as we talked about. That TV show was on YouTube. It was on YouTube, but also it was getting produced to be a TV show by Rick Kirkham. That was his name. His name was Rick Kirkham. He was ex-inside edition. There was a documentary about him, and it was called TV Junkie, and it was about how this dude was addicted to crack cocaine through his inside edition career, and how he kept doing more dangerous and dangerous shit, where Bill O'Reilly, who we worked with, called him nuts.

He was getting shot out of a cannon and things like that. He infamously interviewed Herbert Walker Bush about drug abuse while he was high on crack cocaine. So this is the guy that was producing Joe Exotics TV show. And granted, his time in the business, I'm sure he was doing a good job. But before he could sell the series to a network that he said he was in talks with, all of his tapes, all of his videos, all of his files went up in flames and they lost all of it. Yeah, so basically they had a studio in a outbuilding that also housed their alligators.

Yeah, it was on Joe Exotic's property. Right. There was, it was like a building that was half studio, half of it was like an alligator pit. Oddly enough, Joe Exotic had went out of state for a funeral and during that time, the whole building went up in flames. They knew it was an arson, obviously, but it burned so hot, everything was. gone. It killed all of the alligators. Yeah, all of them. There was a lot of different theories as to what happens. Joe Exotic claimed that Carol Baskin had offered Rick $20,000 to do it. But Rick's response was that's ludicrous because that's my retirement fund that just got set on fire. This does not help me at all, and nor would $20,000 cover it. There was also a theory that somebody from PETA came and set the fire,

But there was some surveillance footage. Yeah, there was a theory that Joe himself did it. Yeah, because he thought that it was, well, not that he thought he was about to be subpoenaed and that those tapes were going to be pulled out. And on those tapes, he was saying about how much he wanted to kill Carol Baskin. There was some clips of animal abuse allegedly on there. There was. So there were clips of them doing veterinary medicine on the Tigers without a veterinarian there.

Yep, that's, I remember. remember that too, yeah. Which is a big no-no. You can't do that. There were clips of people getting bit. There were clips of Joe getting attacked by the tigers and shooting into the air. There was just like all sorts of things that were a bit unsavory that you really didn't want on camera. Yeah. There was one scene in the documentary that was part of the footage. They had a mother lion giving birth and they were just pulling all the cubs out as they were being born with a pole, like a rake type thing, and then pulling them under. chain link fence. I think they recorded that after the whole shebang. I mean, obviously, it's still here. So they didn't really learn their lesson on doing shitty things recording it. Around that time, Rick left and he was getting, we have to go into the Carol Basque and stuff to explain some of this, but to kind of jump ahead, he was getting sued and he had to pay for violating copyright. He had to pay $5,000 every month. And the only thing he could do was breed and do kind of. And do kind of sub-petting, so that's why he was still. And that video where he's pulling them out with a pole, that's kind of what was going on.

Right. All right. Here's something different. True Crime Excess is a podcast about a serial killer. But it's not really about the serial killer. I mean, it's actually about finding the bodies of victims of the serial killer. So a group of investigators analyze the FBI files, missing persons cases, and the interviews of Israel Keyes, who was captured in 2012 and died before revealing most of his

crimes. Investigators say they have pieced together not just a list of his likely victims, but also their likely resting places. They know where the bodies are buried. And I don't know if that's interesting or crazy, but I'm definitely hooked. You can find it on your favorite podcast service. Just search for true crime excess. And listen today. In 2006, the Greater Winniewood Exotic Animal Park was cited multiple times by the USDA for violations of Animal Welfare Act standards. In 2011, Carol Baskin, founder of Big Cat Rescue Sanctuary in Florida, organized protests against his use of Cubs and his shows. To retaliate Maldonado Passage, I like Passage better, stole the trademarks of the Big Cat Rescue

and organized shows under the Big Cat Rescue sanctuary name. Carol Baskin then sued Maldonado Passage. I mean, we should call him Joe Exotic. I mean, that's that much cooler. Like, fuck, man. So Baskin eventually won a million dollars in a settlement against Joe Exot. Yeah, and that was, that fucked him up. It really did.

That sort of was like the beginning of like things turning to shit. Yeah, because the way he had looked at it for a while. Yeah, he was always talking about I want to kill Carol Baskin, kill Carol Baskin, fuck Carol Baskin, she's going to rot in prison. But he even admitted that they made money for each other, just having this rivalry. And he just kind of accepted that that's how it was going to be. He obviously didn't like the woman, but their feud was a necessary thing for both of their businesses. And now with this happening, this put a giant squeeze on him. Yeah, but I mean,

he really did troll. So the logo he was using was pretty much spot on to their logo. Yeah, it was completely lifted. It was almost identical. And the snow leopard that he used in the logo was the same snow leopard image that they were using in like a banner. It was the same damn thing. It was definitely copyright infringement for sure. Right. So in this as well, that's one. we start getting into Jeff Lowe getting involved. Yeah, and this is the problem because had this not happened, he never would have gotten Jeff Lowe. And I mean, obviously don't know this for sure.

But it seems that Joe Exotic started to do his most sketchy shit after this lawsuit because he just felt like he really needed the money. He ramped up the cub petting. He ramped up the breeding. I mean, he really did because basically at this point, Carol Baskin and her husbands were putting the squeeze on him. Yeah. So I know we're kind of jumping around.

But the things he's convicted for later or some of those animal abuse allegations, I wonder if those things took place during this time. I would think so. Because, I mean, it was driving him insane, it seemed like. I don't want to say rightfully so because it sounds like I'm justifying animal abuse. Which we're not. But it just didn't seem like when you watch old videos of him, it didn't exactly seem like that was what was going. I'm sure to an extent some of it was because the. The documentary with Rick Kirkham, that was prior to the lawsuit.

He said that he caught some fucked up shit on camera, and I don't doubt that at all. I'll just put it out there. Any animal people who have that many animals do some fucked up shit, it doesn't matter who they are or how good of a facility they're running. There's some fucked up shit going. I can tell you from firsthand knowledge, places that shouldn't be doing veterinary care are doing that. It's just what it is, sadly. You know, we were talking about doing a episode on your experiences in the animal industry, having worked for pet stores.

So maybe you could just shed a little bit light. In some pet stores, they are doing some sort of veterinary stuff behind the scenes. I know. Without a veterinarian there. I know when I worked for the pet store that I did, I did a necropsy once on a lizard. Why were you doing a necropsy? Because I knew it was holding eggs. I took the eggs out.

I put them in a critter keeper buried an eco earth. Misted it every day and I hatched baby lizards from like a lizard that had passed away. So Yergy did a good. I did a good thing. But we used to get these mice in and I don't know if they were inbred or what was up with them, but they would get these big cysts on them. And a lot of times what they wanted you to do was just to keep them in this back room where they kept all the sick animals. And they wanted to just let you let them die.

But I wouldn't do that. So what I would do is I would basically pop it. for them. And they were pretty big. And I would clean it all out and put Neosporan. And they all recovered. They just had a little bald spot. So when animals are shipped to you, what people don't realize is that quite a few of them are DOA. Yeah, they are. So anytime a pet store gets an animal shipment, they have to go through all of it to see what's dead that they can write off. And they can usually write off with anything that dies within 24 hours. And there was this one supplier down in New Jersey. It was one summer they were coming up. And the truck broke down.

and there was no air conditioning in the truck, so it was delayed by two days. So when we finally got it, we were going through all of the animals that were in there, and there were things that were already decomposing. Jesus Christ. The grossest thing ever to count were mice, because they would come in these boxes, and you couldn't really count them with the person there. You'd have to go through them later and then claim your DOAs. But you can't just open the box of mice.

It had a hand hole. So you'd have to reach your hand in, grab, pull out, and then count your mice that way. And a lot of times you would pull out tails attached to a vertebrae or, you know, half of a mouse because they'd eat each other. And it was pretty bad. Is this standard practice? I've worked in a few pet stores and this is how it was. How is that considered humane? And it seems like a very irresponsible way to handle resources if you're going to not look at them as living creatures.

Right. I don't even know. It's really, really ridiculous. The fucked up thing that they had us do was their method of euthanasia. state law and this was in Maine at the time and granted I worked in the pet industry from 2000 to about 2004 during high school and then after high school for two years but the acceptable form of euthanasia at the time was either a neck break or complete decapitation and none of us would do that when I worked over at the pet shop they found that if you were to take whatever and put it inside of a fish bag you could put canned air inside of it

and they would eventually suffocate within like a minute. Or you could tilt it upside down if they were small enough and they would freeze to death on contact within seconds. Yeah. So when I had to do it, and granted, I didn't do it very much. Like if something was really bad off, I think I did it once or twice, but I'd usually have someone else do it for me because I was not into that. That's what we'd do.

Some people would put things into the freezer live. Yeah, I was going to say that. You said you knew there were people who were doing euthanasia by putting them in the freezer and some of these were what puppies and cats? So that was not the pet store I worked at. I know. That was like a rumor, right? Of somebody, you knew somebody that worked at another one.

So there was a pet shop in the Bang War Mall. I don't know if it's still there, but they sold dogs and cats. That was their thing. They didn't really have anything else. It was dogs and cats. There was a rumor that they put puppies in freezers. But yeah, it's, there's a lot of, like, just kind of fucked up stuff that goes along with a lot of this. So what we're saying is if this can happen in a pet store, it can absolutely have.

in a large-scale facility. I don't care that, oh, these are tigers or chimpanzees. No, fucked-up shit like this happens all of the time. This is why some people are ethically opposed to just visiting zoos, because, yeah, you see the animals for your enjoyment, but you don't know what's going on behind the scenes. And I'll admit I'm somebody that likes going to zoos, but I'm painfully aware of that when I go there.

This documentary kind of just reinforced all the fucked-up things I heard in the animal industry. And what's good about this documentary is doesn't just focus on the fucked-up shit Joe Exotic's doing, it focuses on the things like Carol Baskin's doing, or that Bagwan guy. The guy thinks he's a fucking Indian demigod. Yeah, he does. With his harem. Yeah, it was harem of women. He literally named himself like Bagwan.

Like, he gave himself a Hindu title. Yes, he did. And then said he was a doctor of like mystical arts. Yeah, something like that. So in September of 2018, Joe Exotic was indicted for attempting to hire someone to murder Carol Baskin who runs Big Cat Rescue. Allegedly. Allegedly.

On the 7th of September 2018, he was arrested in Gulf Breeze, Florida with his new husbands. Dylan Passage. Passage. It really is passage, but we like to say Passage better. I mean, it's a French name. Say it French. Just say it.

What was interesting about him getting arrested in Florida is that he got the tip off. The feds were going to be after him. He sold a whole bunch of tigers. A whole bunch of tigers to get money. Then he fucked off to some place in Oklahoma, broke his lease within a month, and then started posting pictures on Instagram that he was in Belize. But if you looked at the ocean water, it was clearly Florida,

because Florida Ocean has like a certain look about it, I guess. And so in doing that, they told the feds that they thought he was in Florida, and they also triangulated his cell phone signals, and they caught him in a parking lot. So he did not know that you tried to hire an FBI agent posing as a hitman. Yeah, that was the story. This one dude brought in a hitman's like, hey, this guy will kill a Carol Baskin for $5,000. And he's just like, oh, yeah, really?

Okay, allegedly. But he never paid the guy. So if you don't pay the guy, it's not technically considered murder for hire. Right. So basically, they got him on the murder for hire stint. Which was very flimsy. It was wicked. They couldn't do it with the FBI agent.

they had to do it because allegedly Jeff Lowe, who was his partner, if you will, but he really just stole the park from him? Yeah, so this was a guy that claimed he had a lot of capital to help keep Joe Exotic afloat. Turns out Jeff had no capital and Joe signed the

park over to him so that way the trademark lawsuits couldn't go after his business and Jeff Lowe basically stole it. And then Jeff Lowe's right-hand man who was some handyman named Alan Glover, he said that he could kill Carol Baskin allegedly. And he confessed to the feds that Joe Exotic paid him 3,000 to go to Florida and that he would get the like another 8,000. 5,000, I think it was.

5,000. Yeah, he was supposed to be 5,000 and 5,000, but Joe only paid him 3,000. Joe later told the feds that money was Jeff Lowe's money that he gave to Allen for leaving because Alan said he wanted to leave. Allen said that he just got cold feet and decided not to kill her and then went to North Carolina. So it's just a really flimsy, weird argument. It's hard to prove that Joe Exotic actually took part in a murder for hire. Right. So that's how they started tacking on all the other animal charges. Yeah, because the murder for hire alone probably wasn't going to stick. But right. And we talk about murders and assaults all the time and not care, but we never forget about animal abuse. So if you take this guy murder for hire, oh, he's an animal abuser, then he's going to get convicted on all counts.

It's incredibly slimy. Right. Incredibly slimy. Now, granted, did he do all of the animal abuse stuff? Probably. He probably did. But I don't know what he would have gotten for time frame had he not gotten the murder for higher charge.

I really don't know what that comes out to. I don't know either. I don't know many cases where somebody's been convicted for things like that. Right. I mean, he was convicted in 2019. he got 22 years. He was looking at like 80. I mean, 22 years is going to potentially do him in. He's 56. Right. He may still be alive, but some people die in prison in that time frame if you're that age.

He could get coronavirus for all I know. He's getting up there in age. Yeah, so he was convicted. Two counts of murder for hire. I don't know why it'd be two counts, but two counts. Eight violations of the Lacey Act and nine of the Endangered Species Act. So the Lacey Act violation, I did a little bit more research. That was from the interstate sale of the Cubs. And the counts he had for the Endanger Species Act was for killing a bunch of tigers. He shot them in the head. Yeah.

So when the feds actually raided his house and started digging around at the park, they found where there were graves of tigers and they unearthed all of them and found the skulls with the bullet holes in the head. Yeah. So that's where he kind of got screwed there. But he could claim that he was euthanizing them. And I believe shooting them in the head is an acceptable form of euthanasia. But it gets sticky as well because also they are an endangered species.

So it gets weird. It gets weird. Do you know what the red tape is with that? Do you have to get approval by a sanctioning body? I think you have to get a veterinarian in. To approve of it. That makes sense. Only because they're a endangered species.

Like I've known people who have allegedly put their dog down by shooting it. I think it varies state to state. I know in Maine you can shoot your dog to put it down. This being an endangered species, I guess that must be the difference. And also, not only that, it wasn't just the fact that they found bullet hole in the skull. There was a bunch of workers that testified against Joe. It didn't exactly say this in the documentary, but it sounds like some of them got pressed. Just like Jeff Lowe, Alan Glover, people who have worked with Joe said,

If you don't cooperate with us, the feds, we're going to get you on X, Y, or Z charge. They were going to include Jeff Lowe and the murder for hire plot, but he agreed to work with the feds. Yeah, they were going to include a lot of different people, like one of the keepers. One of the keepers, I can't remember for what reason. And then there was that business guy who worked with Joe Exotic and gave him funding for certain things. Derrickson. Yeah, they were going to get. Alex Gerrickson.

Yeah. Yes, thank you. They were going to allegedly get, according to him. him. They were going to get him because he owned a lemur. I don't believe that at all. I believe it was for something else. Supposedly, he was embezzling money or something like that. But this is the problem. And this is why this documentary is so brilliant. It's not just about Joe Exotic. It's about everyone who's in this business that's a player in this business is a fucked up individual. It's just a bunch of fucking scumbag people stabbing each other in the back. It really is. And that's like kind of

across the globe when it comes to things like that because when you think about people who generally own big cats they're just assholes usually they usually are they're people that either have like a lot of money God complexes

who have a God complex And in case of Doc Antle has a fucking harem of nine women and at the end you find out that he's been rated Joe Exotic rats out Doc Antel inside prison he has P to come in

and he flips on every single person impossible to try to get a reduced sentence. And you find out at the end that Doc Annal got rated, but you don't hear anything else. I think that was mid to late 2019 that that happened. So that story is still unfolding, I'm sure, depending on what they found. Allegedly, he was killing tigers by putting them in a gas chamber, I believe is what he said. We talked about this earlier. We did a little bit more research. Just kind of behind the curtain here, we had started this a couple of days ago while we were still watching the documentary. And I knew quite a bit about it anyway, because I've been kind of

following this case since it started, you know, on the radar a couple of years ago. I originally heard it on last podcast on the left. So I've been kind of following it. I wanted to cover it. We talked about that. But I did a little bit more research. We finished the documentary last night. Doc Annell was supposedly killing cubs that had aged out of the petting program and then putting

him. That's where your money is. And then rather than selling them, he would just put him in a gas chamber and then he had an on-site crematorium so there would be no evidence. From what I understand since Joe Exotic violated the Lacey Act, it was because he was selling out of state. So if you're selling these cats, you have to sell them in state. Is that correct? I believe so, or at least in states where you're allowed to have them. Yeah, which there's only nine, eight or nine.

And they were going everywhere. So they showed a map of where everything was going. One was in Maine. One was in Maine. It was in Central Maine. I'm pretty sure I know where it went. Yeah, but we can't say for certain. Can't say for certain, but I think I know where that went. Location has some beautiful tigers though.

They've been there. They really do. So I did a little research earlier today about Doc Ansel. After we had heard he had gotten rated, I wanted to see what was going on now. Yeah. Apparently he's still up in operations. He's still in business. It costs $399 per person to go to his sanctuary.

And if you want pictures with the tigers, it's $150 a person. That's crazy considering his wives work from something like 4 a.m. to midnight or something. night and they only make a hundred bucks a week completely insane yes they charge this crazy amount out of money i understand you got to feed your animals and stuff but holy shit the zoo that we go to i think it's only 30 bucks a person 20 or 30 something it's it's pretty affordable all things considered do you know if he's still pending investigation or what's going on with that or was he just raided and they're not sharing details yet i don't think they're sharing details yet and the stuff that i read it didn't seem like there was anything weird it might be hard it's that he sounds like

a guy who crosses his T's and dots his eyes. I think with the whole like gassing and then cremating, you can't prove anything, especially if he doesn't keep records of births. Yeah, because then you can't go through and be like, well, where is this tiger? Well, tiger doesn't exist because there's no proof of it, especially because he's birthing all of his own. And the crazy thing about it is my mom used to keep exotics. And when I say exotics, I mean larger animals that are not native to Maine. And there was so much red tape with that. It was ridiculous. It was elk, right? So my mom kept inbred elk, highland cow, bison, and red mule deer.

And they all had to be tagged. They had to be registered. You had to know where all of them were. You had to keep the tag if you were butchering them for meat. And if one got out, you had to shoot it. So how they can do this with tigers and they were so strict on my parents for things that are even very dangerous. I mean, the buffalo is a little bit dangerous. What I noticed about Doc Antle is that he kind of,

talked about Joe Exotic defending him kind of way, saying that he got set up, that the charges against him were flimsy and bullshit, that there were other people that should be going down for this, not him, and that it's just a whole bunch of bullshit. He always spoke negatively about Carol Baskin and just things like that, but Joe flipped on him. I'm assuming that when Joe went down for this, if there was any loose ends at Doc Handel's place, he cleaned it up because he probably knew that this was coming. So might there be anything against him such as charges in the future? I don't know.

Probably not. But we'll see. I think Jeff Lowe will end up going down, though. I think so too. I mean, because he's a prior felon, and there's just been so much shady shit around him. I think he was currently on probation. He was on probation because he got in trouble while in Vegas. The first thing was he got in trouble for strangling his wife, his first wife.

His first wife, yeah. Because she confronted him about fucking. around with this girl Lauren who he married later. Mind you. Jeff Lowe is an older man, much older man who dresses really not age appropriate. He dresses like somebody in a new metal band in the mid-aughts. Yeah. And his wives are younger than us.

Yep. You know, age gap, whatever, but he just came up as really creepy. Yeah. And I think his, if my understanding is correct, his current wife, he groomed her from a younger age, but I don't know exactly where that age line is because I don't remember how young she was when they met. I don't know. She looks pretty young. Yeah, she looks fresh out. I definitely suggest that you watch the documentary for sure in fall.

There's another good one to you that used to be on Netflix. I'm not really sure if it's there anymore, but it's called the elephant in the living room. And it touches on people keeping dangerous animals, so you're big cats. And it really kind of sheds more of a light on some of the crazy keeping that happens in the country. Down in Florida, you can get a lot of ridiculous bullshit. You can get monkeys. You can get pretty much anything. Pennsylvania, you can buy venomous reptiles.

You can go right in and buy cobras and go boon vipers. And you can get crocodilians and things like that. So it's really insane. It kind of covers the Zanesville massacre. It covers a couple other different things. But yeah, that's my kind of take on that. Did we want to kind of get into Joe Exotic's personal life? So I guess the big thing that is probably obvious to people already if you've followed Joe Exotic any stretch is that he's openly gay and he's a polygamist.

So his first husband, Brian Rhine, died of complications from HIV in 2001. That probably means they never say it, but that probably means Joe Exotic has it too. Then I worry about him even more with COVID-19. He doesn't seem like a very safe individual. He's just a giant risk taker and very self-centered. He seems like he grooms people. I'll put it out there. Yeah, it really does seem that way.

He's had two other husbands. Three other. Three other. Well, he had two other ex-ex husbands. Right, that were at the same time. So it was a John Finlay in the late Travels Maldenado. Yeah. So on October 6, 2017, Travis Maldonado accidentally fatally shot himself in the head.

The shooting occurred when the zoo was open and was in front of Joe Exotics. campaign manager when he was running for president. Yes, Joe Exotic tried to run for president. I have vague memories of this when going through the 2016 independent presidential candidates. There was a little expose on him. I think it was John Oliver. I can't remember.

It was John Oliver. But it was pretty goddamn hilarious. But yeah. And his campaign videos were fucking funny. Yes, they were really funny. But yeah, he didn't really know anything about politics. He was just basically running as a little. libertarian candidate. His campaign manager was a libertarian. He was basically telling Joe Exotic what to do. Well,

his husband Travis, high on meth, pulled a gun out on his campaign manager and put it in his face. He's like, dude, stop pulling a gun on me. And he's like, it's a Ruger. It doesn't have a clip in. That means it won't fire. And he pointed it at his own head, pulled the trigger and blew his head off. Yeah. And it got was on film, sort of. It had. So he wasn't in focus on the on the, on the of the camera. but the campaign manager was in focus. Yeah. And you see the flash go off in the background and him just sitting there with his mouth open for a few minutes. Yeah.

Yeah. It's pretty, pretty brutal. And then John Finley, he ended up testifying against Joe Exotic. Right. Because they could have gotten him too because he was like the right hand man. Yeah, he was considered the right hand man forever. So he divorced Joe Exotic, had his tattoos of him covered up, testified against him, and that was that. The interesting thing about John Finley.

was he wasn't even gay. No, so that was the thing that they talked about is that Joe Exotic liked men who were straight. And both Travis Maldonado and John Finley have never dated men before and both didn't identify as gay. They both identified as straight. So I don't know. Yeah, John Finley knocked up the receptionist. Yes, that did happen. That did happen.

John Finley also has meth mouth and it's been alleged that all of them. did a lot of crystal meth. Travis Maldonado, who looked like a young kid, aged very quickly in the time when he was with Joe Exotic, which wasn't very long. No. All things considered, it was only a couple of years. It was a short number of years.

And then after that... Two months later, he married Dylan Passage. Yeah, after the Maldonado death, he married this younger kid named Dylan Passage, or Passage. Passage. Who, from what I understand, actually identifies as gay. And I think it was that point that it really. pissed John Finley off. I think that was

the straw that broke the camels back. Because apparently after Travis died, the thing that was so important to Joe Exotic was finding companionship. But he already had John Finley and just wanted that second husband for whatever reason. So from what I understand, he's still

married to Dylan Passage, passage, what have you. And Pauls him like three times a day. Yeah. Or did before the his trial. Yeah. So I don't know how it is in the prison he's in or whatever. I don't know if they're still together now, but it seemed like Dylan Passage was very supportive of him. So I don't know.

I don't know what's going to happen with that. I really wish that I would have tried to write to him. To Joe Exotic. Back then, because I know people are probably going to try to do it now. Yeah, you're never going to get anything back. Yeah, he's going to be inundated with letters. But if you written back then, then, yeah, maybe he would have gotten back to you and that would have been crazy. It would have been wonderful to have to put up on the wall.

Okay, we really got to talk about Carol Baskin. We really do. The one part about this that seems to just not fly under the radar, this documentary is clearly about Joe Exotic. However, they keep implying that Carol Baskin killed her husband and laid out the circumstances behind his mysterious disappearance. Right. So we have to go into a little bit of history on this. So Carol Baskin was originally married to a much older man named Don Lewis, who was a millionaire. They got together when she was 19.

She was 19 years old and she was walking down the street crying after a fight with her first husband. And so really she's been married three times here, Miss Carol Baskin. And he picked her up and they hooked up in a hotel room that same night. And four years later, they got married and he left his wife and children for her. Yep. So it says years later. Yeah. So that means she was probably seen him in secret for that period of time.

Well, on the documentary, his wife remarked to the. He was referring to her as angel the whole time. So they were aware of Carol's existence. Yeah. They mentioned that his daughter, so Don Lewis's daughter, which is Carol Baskin's deceased husband, said that her father must have had a sex addiction or something like that. And they just accepted that that's how he was. And what did his wife say at the time that if you leave, I'll always love you, but I never want to see you again or something like that. It was something of that nature.

Yeah, it was kind of sad. But I guess it happens very very. very early on in their marriage. They were 14 years old and they need their parents' approval to get married. And they immediately did at 14, had the daughter, and he immediately started running around. Yeah. He immediately ran around on her and she just put up with it. Yeah. But so Carol Baskin and Don Lewis, they began purchasing baby bodcats and they started Wildlife on Easy Street, which was the first incarnation of Big Cat Rescue. They ran the sanctuary together until Don Lewis vanished on August 18th, 1997. So they were going through a rough patch in their marriage and even considering divorce when

Lewis disappeared. And Lewis's children and ex-wife think that Baskin might have fed him to the tigers or in the very least had something to do with his disappearance. Apparently the cops didn't really investigate the sanctuary very well. They did an aerial search, but they didn't go in and investigate her equipment. They didn't do any DNA scans or anything of that sort. And they had DNA technology at the time, so there was really no excuse for it. Yeah, they were implying that there was a new septic tank put into one of the facilities and she might have stuffed him there and they didn't look into that. Yeah, stuffed him underneath it, put him underneath it, then put the septic tank in. Joe Exotic accused her of that. And that's one thing that Joe Exotic

would never let go. You killed your husband. You killed your husband. And even Doc Antle said on the documentary that he thought that Carol Baskin killed her husband. And Carol Baskin, it's just weird. When she talks about this, it's so, I don't know, it's so nonchalant. It doesn't, she doesn't seem very offended at all. She's a flighty woman anyway. And I mean that in the nicest way. I don't know. Like, I don't even really understand how to really explain her, but she seems kind of just

flighty. You'd have to see it for yourself. You need to see it. It just doesn't seem like somebody who didn't do it and was mournful of it would talk about in that way. Apparently, Don Lewis filed court documents for domestic violence. violence injunction against Baskin, claiming that she threatened to shoot him. And he tried to get a restraining order, which was not approved, because apparently a threat is not good enough.

Right. It falls under freedom of speech. Yeah, which is weird because I've known women who've gotten restraining orders for men threatening them. Right. I've got a protection from abuse order for less than that. Yeah, so, I mean, this is also the late 90s. I think this was definitely. definitely a point in time where if you were a man trying to seek a restraining order against a woman, you'd basically get laughed at. So that could have been part of the issue here. But he wasn't the only one saying this. There was other ones of his friends, I believe. So in the documentary, they have his lawyer, his gardener, his handyman, his barber. You just name it, this Don guy had

because he's a rich man. Some sort of something for everything. And they were all talking about how they thought Carol did it. Yeah. And interesting things about this. She destroyed his original will because she made herself power of attorney, an executor of his will, prior to his death, not long before his death either, or disappearance, I should say. Then she destroys his will and produces a new will where she ends up getting everything and his family members get next to nothing. What I found interesting about this is that in this new will, it says, it does not say in the event of my death. It says in the event of my disappearance, which is very strange because you can, assume that your own death is coming, but who assumes their own disappearance? And even his lawyer was like, I have never once seen a will, say, in the event of my disappearance,

which is so weird, so very weird. And there was something else involving the will about him. He needed to be disappeared for five years. So, no, it wasn't that he was disappeared for five years. She wanted to declare him legally dead. So you have to be disappeared for a certain amount of years, I believe in Maine at seven. But down there in Florida, he needs to be disappeared, if you will, for five, for her POA stuff to, like, kind of fall apart and then her to become the executor of the will to then cash in on everything. So she wouldn't have been in come an executor until that five years had come up.

But while she was POA, she was putting everything into her name. Like, there were some different properties that were partially in the kids in the ex-wife's name that she was moving into hers. But yeah, there's- She declared him dead five years and one day after his statement. disappearance. So it's just those things are very suspicious. Again, not enough to convict somebody, but I find all of these things put together. It's quite suspicious in my opinion. I agree. You agree. I agree. I think Carol Baskin killed her husband. Yeah. And that was a running theme with with Joe Exotic as well. He used that as a way to kind of goad her. Yep. It was not only in his Joe Exotic TV skits on YouTube, but there were also songs. He was,

He was a country, I'm not kidding, he was a country music artist as well. And the thing about it is, I'm not totally that into country at all. It's really not my genre. I mean, I make jokes a lot because I listen to 90s country when I was a little girl with my mom. But Joe's not a bad singer. He would not. You wouldn't think that voice is coming, you know, out of him. The subject matter is a little strange.

He's always talking about his gay polygamous love and about tigers or about Carol Baskin. Or just, yeah, or Carol Baskin. Baskin. He has one where he's... Oh, hey, kitty, kitty. That's what it's called. Yeah, it's called Hey, Kitty Kitty. And he's sitting there and he's wearing what looks like a reverence outfit. And there's somebody dressed up looking almost identical to Carol Baskin. And it shows her feeding body parts to tigers. It's quite funny. You should, you should look it up on YouTube if it's still up. A lot of the Joe Exotic music videos are still up. Yeah, Joe Exotic TV is still up and someone's still posting to it. Yeah, somebody's maintaining that YouTube channel still.

And that was Joe Exotic's official YouTube channel. It's been up since 2012. One thing I'll say about this is that he, when the camera's on, he seems to just come to life. He seems to just thrive. It's the Joe show. Yeah. He seems very natural. But I'm sure he's another person when the camera's off compared to when the cameras on.

They did say that in the documentary that he would have these team meetings before they went live for the day, I guess you could say it. the park was open. He would just start getting all crazy just because the camera was on him. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, he fired somebody just because the camera was on him. It's, yeah, I mean, whether you think he deserves to be in jail or not, there's no question this dude's an egomaniac. Yeah, but he's quite a performer at the same time. He is quite the performer, and a lot of performers are problematic. Yes. But if you want to check all that out, go to Joe Exotic TV, type in Joe Exotic Music vids. You can see all this stuff. You can binge on this, for ever ever seriously there's he has so much material it's crazy to think that he has this much material

and he is four times that amount that was destroyed in a fire it's just bewildering but before we get out of here let me read the apple podcast reviews and save them to the end by popular request so this one love this podcast such a great true crime podcast yurgy and druby are so entertaining and they work so well together highly recommend from stephanie and marie and this one is from a j frosty swoop from what's the call podcast saying feel in the show definitely interesting might need to hit a true crime sports collab in the near future check them out everyone i would definitely do a true crime sports i mean we have we did uh aaron hernandez and chris ben w i guess we're going to do o j simpson or some shit i'd be so down for that absolutely hit us up so this is this podcast is truly special

it was a total surprise how i found this fantastic podcast yurgy and druby are awesome host Every episode is a gem by itself. Keep up the awesome work. Kevin from Life Plus Up. Shout us to Kevin, Life Plus Up podcast. Check them out. Here's one.

I just finished the main urban legends episode. I loved it. I love the comedic twist ad by the host. They feed well off of each other. I also used to live in Maine, and I found that episode super interesting. P.S. An older millennials called a Zenil.

An elder millennial. That's from Padlins. Okay. Last one. would say this is one of the best true crime podcast I've ever heard. Love the chemistry, very knowledgeable and very enjoyable to listen to. Keep them coming.

You have an avid listener right here. Kane from the amazingly awful podcast. Shoutouts. Check them out. If you want to get shouted out on our podcast, you can do so by leaving us a five-star in review and written review at Apple Podcasts because don't you want to be shouted out by us?

I would. And if you want to hear more of our episodes, which we should have a... Have you set up the postcards for this month. I already sent them out last week. Okay, so the postcards was sent out this month. But if you want to get them for April, you should become a Patreon subscriber and you get to hear all of our secret episodes. We should be adding one to there shortly, I believe, at least in the next week or so. The next week, I worked on one the other day that should go up shortly. And we might do like a couple other small clips. But yeah, you want to get that. You want to get some snaps, some fuzzy animals.

Of the ocean. Of the ocean. of what's going on while we're COVID COVID quarantined. Yeah. You could, if we end up in the hospital on a respirator, you could see us dying. I'll be like dropping F in chat boys as I'm death rattling. You know you want to see that. That's worth a Patreon subscription. And you get to be a part of our private discord.

So yeah, patreon.com slash the misery machine. Yeah. And thanks always to Eddie. Yeah, thanks to Eddie for being a trooper. He gave us some very spicy stuff for the Dahmer podcast, which in the works. This is going to take a while to get that together, but that will be a thing. I'm so excited for this. Dommer is a very huge, not of stature, but just a very huge personality and did a lot of things.

There's a lot to unpack here, as well as culturally in the city of Milwaukee. So that's going to be a little bit, but I'm so happy to do this. I would just want to make sure it's done right. Yeah. So do you anything else? I do not. Okay, so with that out of the way, love you guys. We'll see you next week.

Love you. Bye. Miao.