The Underworld Podcast - Tiger Traffickers, Narco Zoos and the (Even Darker) Truth Behind Joe Exotic

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

In 2019 Sean spent weeks on the road between Oklahoma and Miami, investigating roadside zoo owner—and soon-to-be American icon—Joe Exotic. The truth was way, way darker than anything Netflix's Tiger King revealed. This week's episode also dives into ancient lion hunters, tiger-wielding mafiosos, and of course Pablo Escobar's "Cocaine Hippos". Plenty to sink your claws into. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock country rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. It's the late 1960s, and British twins and vicious crooks the craze, Ronnie and Reggie, want to branch out. They've already made a name in London's underworld, and they set up a meeting with U.S. King Pim Mayolanski, the so-called mob accountant, who's in the process of establishing something called the National Crime Syndicate. Kind of loose federation of mobsters and ne'er-do-wells.

Another massive story for another episode. So Ronnie and Reggie get on a jet and they land in Sin City, alongside Scottish-born Essex boy James Campbell, their friend and PR guy. Yes, Britain's most notorious gangsters have their own travelling hype man. While there, the craze meets superstar Frank Sinatra, and they barter a deal to protect the singer's son while he's touring Europe. A good deal deal seemingly made, the twins and Campbell are invited out to a giant mansion owned by one of Vegas's many underworld figures. When they arrive, there's a shot. According to Campbell, the trio has shown a basement beneath the villa where he says, quote, there was this huge metal cage with tigers in it. There was blood on the floor. They told him this was where the enemies were disposed of. They had a bone

collector who would take any remains to the Hoover Dam and throw them in. When Ronnie came back, he was really impressed with the way they operated over there. It was on a different scale. So these being three of London's hardest geysers, the Brits lap up the experience. And in actual fact, the grizzly scene they've just witnessed, it isn't really unique at all. For centuries, criminals have used big cats to intimidate, prove their worth, or even eat their enemies. From ancient warlords, to cavalier animal traders, jungle drug dealers, and, more recently, Colombo crime family capo Joey Gallo. Ah yeah, Crazy Joe.

The schizophrenic murderer who started a mafia war. He liked big cats too, particularly a pet lion called Cleo. Cleo got folks to pay their debts even better than the barrel of a gun. She'd been part of Gallo's crew since she was a cub, and she grew up in the basement of their social club in the maritime neighborhood of Red Bull. hook. All it took was a little false visit to Cleo, and most punters emptied their pockets in moments. Said ex-mobster Frank D. Mateo, the lion would rattle the chain and roar a little bit, and that was enough. Nobody needed to know more. That was enough. They get scared and say,

come on, and they pay. Yeah, I reckon I would too, Frank. Welcome to the Underworld podcast. Welcome to the Underworld podcast. It's the show that each week delves into tales of shysters and shit talkers, flanurs, finnaglers and Flynnfan men. I'm your host in ROTROW in New Zealand, Sean Williams, and I'm joined as I am most weeks by famed reporter and filmmaker Danny Gold in New York City. We are journalists who've been all over the world. Then the pandemic hit, and now we're podcasters, and I, for one, could not be happier. Yeah, just shining beacon to positivity right here.

Never ends. Anyway, quick housekeeping, guys. on still lighting up with new stuff. I spoke to write Pete McKenzie about this Chinese plot to take over a Pacific atolls, really mad story. And I'm chatting to the brilliant Ed Caesar about his New Yorker story on Encro chat. And a week today, I'm also heading out to India for a couple weeks, leaving my partner with our monthfold baby, which is really good parenthood.

And I'll be recording a bunch of cool stuff for the pod out there too. Oh yeah, and if it's getting hotter or colder wherever you live, we've still got teas, hats, hoodies up for grabs. that's at underworld.com slash merch, so go check that out. Underworldpod.com slash merch, buddy. Underworldpod.com, yeah, I've been checking the website tons lately. And by my calculation, there is almost 11,000 miles between here and Moldova, but I am still getting some weird telegram messages, guys, so keep it up.

Yeah, and we also might be on a break for a couple of weeks while Sean is in India, as we once again try to actually figure out how to make money off this podcast, which despite it being better than pretty much, every other podcast that's ever existed in the history of podcasts. We still haven't figured out. So I don't know. I mean, I can understand why anyone listens to like a three-hour podcast

where some guy tells you that sleeping is good for you. Come on, like you know that already. And that like, don't drink coffee after 6 p.m. That'll help. Like, you don't need a fucking brain doctor from Stanford to tell you that stuff.

Okay? You figured it out. Listen to the underworld podcast instead. And, uh, yeah, let's, let's get it going.

All right, a punchy start this week. Anyway, this is a little, something a little bit different, right? So a fortnight ago, I did this show on the dying rainforest, drug cartels, mass death in the Amazon. It's all important stuff, right? But it's pretty dark.

And then you did one on the Andrangetta and Coke Kings. That was really cool too. But I think we're going to need a bit of light entertainment on this show. I mean, about as light as anything about organized crime really gets. A given I'm knee deep in deadlines and baby shit at the moment, I wanted to take you on a ride down memory. lane all the way back to 2019 when I hopped in my ex-mother-in-law's Lincoln. Cheers for that, Valerie, by the way, and took a road trip from Oklahoma City to Miami and back on the trail of

this guy named Joe Exotic, talking of shysters in the pandemic. Yeah, and I mean, true story for anyone who doubts Sean. He was on Joe Exotic way before that show and anything else. I mean, he might have broken that story wide open, but he doesn't get the love that he deserves. And we're here to give that to him. Oh, also, guys, A company I'm working with on these other podcasts just launched, I think tomorrow, if you're listening to this when it comes out. Brokers, Bagman, and Moles, go subscribe to that on Spotify. It's like a wild tale involving the FBI and criminals and stock traders and all that kind of shit. And we're going to be making a lot of good stuff there.

So go subscribe to that right away. So they get free advertising, do they? All right. Where's that? Yeah. I mean, they're paying me, dude. So they need to keep doing that. So we need to advertise for them.

you need a runner, anything, I don't know. Anyway, guys, if you don't know Joe Exotic is, well, I don't really know what to do for you, but if you watch Tiger King on Netflix, like about 99% of the global population at the time, I'm going to tell you something. A lot of it is complete BS. And I know, because I wrote the only account of the guy

that is actually true. Tell them, Sean, I'm fired up. Yeah, I'm ready. Now, you might be listening to this thinking, all right, that all sounds like sour grapes from some guy who didn't get a massive bunch of money from Netflix, right as COVID was about to kill his career, and he passed up a small fortune in the Berlin divorce courts

out some misplaced sense of pride. And to those thinking that, yeah, all right, fair point. We're really just learning a lot about you this week. The audience is, huh? Yeah, I feel like what people really want is psychodrama and a breakdown, so I can give that to you guys. But truly, like, Tiger King was this complete journalist, disaster for a bunch of reasons.

Not only did it exploit its subjects, like it lied to them and in some cases paid for really flawed information. It painted a narrative of its protagonist that gave him the Hollywood character arc that he'd been shaping for decades in which, I promise you, is utter crap. Okay, but

counterpoint, tigers are cool and it was really entertaining. Yeah, I mean, the counterpoint won, but I want to put some of that record straight on this show, which is going to be a bit of a menagerie itself, right? We're going to go into ancient gangs, and their exotic pets, Vegas, tiger cells, Miami murders,

and of course, Pablo Escobar's hippos, not big cats, I know, but you can't really pussyfoot around it. And yet, they did actually have sex with the animals at Joe Exotic Zoo. Whoa, hold on, you can't... All right, I mean, I don't even know... I wonder if you'd jump in there, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I don't even know what to say, but I'm sure you'll have plenty to add to... Yeah, I'm flustered, dude. I don't know if we can go down this direction, but okay. Well, I mean, shout out to Justin Miller for keeping some of the weirdest, most gory parts of the story out. I reckon they just wouldn't have worked. But, yeah, we'll get into some of the darker side of that story a bit later on. For now, let's have a brief history lesson, right?

It's well documented that Syrian kings love slaughtering big cats so much that their thoughts have gone extinct in parts of the Middle East, as a result. And many were kept captives as symbols of the king's might. For the purposes to the exercise, by the way, guys, I'm going to need you all to consider ancient kings as gangsters. Thank you very much. One of the greatest works of ancient art is a lion hunt of Ashabana Pau at the British Museum, where else been the palace of Nineveh, which is modern day Mosul, where dozens of Asian lions are speared or shot to death with arrows. If in London, check it out, it's like completely stolen, but what isn't? Archaeological evidence,

also shows that lions were kept and displayed in ancient Macedonia. That's Alexander the Great's backyard, of course, and warlords would amass great collections of big cats, elephants, bears, giraffes, and other creatures from the widest extents of their empires. Now, most of us are going to know that the Romans stepped it up a few notches. They collected big cats to duke it out in Rome's circus Maximus, or even feed the Christians to them, which did happen, according to this University of Washington paper I found.

Quote, were Christians really fed to the lions? Yes. So thank you, University of Washington. Christians were fed to half-starved lions, burned alive, hacked to death. But the most interesting aspect of this was that the Christians who died in the Coliseum wanted to die there as martyrs. So kind of like an ancient suicide by cop, only taunts of ribbons instead of shot. Almost as gruesome as Friday night for boy, am I right? Look, I mean, I love animals, right? And I hate big game hunting and all that. but it was back in the day and Herodicus was like, man,

I have an extra ticket to the Bears versus Lyons death match. Like, I'd probably go. Yeah, I would 100% go. How's Herodica's doing these days, by the way? But the Middle Ages, guess who is up to their necks

in all this exotic animal ship? Yeah, that's right. The Brits, in fact, the Tower of London, which is the thousand-year-old Norman Keep, that's right in the middle of the city, that had its own menagerie topped up, by a 1204 expedition by King John, who brought back three shiploads of lions and leopards.

Sounds pretty dangerous that. To the city, which, just to get really geeky, it'd only just become the capital city after Winchester, home of the round table. Sorry, I'm getting too into this. But this is going a little off-piece, right? In those early days, the English monarchy had all kinds of wild cats, mostly from race to West Africa. And by the 1700s, when the East India Company is rampaging through the Indian subcontinent, its own nabobs are nicking all kinds of exotic animals

from piratical campaigns into Punjab and beyond. Clive of India, who were definitely going to do a show on because he's like one of the biggest gangsters in the whole of history. He sent something called a caracal cat, which is kind of a big-eared link, back to the Prime Minister to let him carry on killing, starving and maiming Indians. And that cat is still in the tower, apparently. It's stuffed, obviously.

It takes another century or so for private zoos to really kick on in the West. and things go kind of across the Atlantic, right, from London to New York. There's this great slate article by Betsy Golden Kellam. It dies into this history and I'm going to quote a bit of it here. The Van Amberg Menagerie performed in New York in 1862 with a show that featured lions, tigers and, quote, performing ponies who fire off pistols. In the 1890s even, the Siegel Cooper Department store

housed a live elephant for a month until a local zoo bought it for $2,000. Is the story somehow incomplete without a good fringe leather jacket? You can have that too. John C. Grizzly Adams arrived in New York City in 1860, wearing a hunter's suit of fringe leather

festooned with the hanging tails of small Rocky Mountain animals for her sight and performed for visitors under a canvas tent in Lower Manhattan with nearly 30 grizzly bears, one of whom wore a bonnet and glasses. Who was the lucky bear? The famous PT Barnum, most people are going to know that guy is,

kept his own menagerie in the city too, but perhaps the biggest Tiger King precursor of that time is this German animal dealer called Carl Hagenbeck. He's the son of a Hamburg fishmonger, but he's got dreams a little bit more exotic than trout and salmon. Rice Kellam, the family would grab any weird creatures that came off the docks of the Elbe River, quote, seals, raccoons, or monkeys,

and show them off for additional income. Not content to simply display or resell animals already on the European continent, young Carl began to build relationships and a supply chain to bringing in itself to the animals from Africa, the circuses and menageries, and solidified his reputation with one 1870 shipment to Europe that included a rhinoceros, four buffaloes, five elephants, 14 giraffes, 30 hyenas, more than a dozen big cats, 26 ostriches, 20 crates of monkeys, and birds and 72 goats to supply the animals with milk

and meat. I mean, that is full on. But as the 20th century looms and drug barons south of the border get fame, money and power, a new kind of phenomenon appears. That is the narco zoo. And these things aren't just shoddly thrown together shitholes either.

Pablo Escobar's Hacienda Napolis, around 120 miles east of Medellin along the Magdalena River. It was home to smuggled rhinos, giraffes, zebras, and of course hippos. In fact, the narco-terrorist had over 200 beasts at the Hacienda by the time he was shot dead on a Mejijian rooftop in December 1993, and authorities haven't quite known what to do with the place since.

The biggest problem are the so-called cocaine hippos, of which there were four in the 80s when Escobar smuggled them in. But now there are 80 of the things, dangerous and prolific at mating, thriving in the jungle waterways and threatening local species. Experts fear there'll be 1,500 cocaine hippos in Colombia by 2040. So a lot of folks want to kill them. True story, hippos are the most dangerous animals in Africa.

Like they kill the most people out of everything there. Yeah, I mean, you can see how they go at small plastic balls on the table, so it's pretty scarce. Scientists, though, they've got another idea than killing them. Writes the Guardian, quote, castrating a hippo is no small fee, I mean no shit guardian, and cost about $7,000 for each animal. Hippo spent most of their time submerged in rivers, raising on underwater flora, and they only emerge at night, so the surgery would have to be performed after dark. A hippo's reproductive organs are internal, so veterinarians have to carry out invasive procedures in order to neuter the animals.

Guys, new kind of dream job just dropped. Hippo sterilizer. The Hedgardian speaks to a Colombian vet named Gina Paola Serna, who says, quote, the surgery itself isn't the most complicated part. The tricky thing is anisotizing them. She has castrated six hippos from the herd, knocking them out with tranquilizer darts that can pierce two inch thick skin.

There was a joke advice when I was there because Pablo Escobar's hippos was like the most pitch story ever in the history of the company. Like people just kept pitching that, like we had to do a story on Pablo Escobar's. I don't think we ever, they might have did later on, but when I was there, they're just like,

I can tell you from YouTube there, they definitely got past the pitching process a couple of times. Yeah, that's just like one of the, it's one of those stories that everyone's like,

oh, you hear about Pablo Escobar's hippos? Oh, yeah. And Pablo, right, he is hardly the only Latino camping with a ponchant for exotic animals. El Chapo owned a Guadalajara, Narco Zoo,

had a train to move him around the various enclosures, although not on the scale, of Southeast Asia, for example, Sonora Market is still supposedly the HQ of illegal exotic trading in the Americas. So friend of the show and like long time narco reporter Toby Mews, he actually does story on the exotic animal rehabs in Colombia. I think it's one particular one that rescues the animals drug lords have. Oh, cool. That, you know, they treat them terrible and, you know, they all get arrested or get killed. And this place like rehabilitates them. I think it was like

a woman and she has all these tigers now and like exotic animals. But it's, uh, You'd probably have to Google that because I'm not even sure who he did it for, but Toby Mews and exotic animal, narco animal, whatever. You'll figure it out. I'll tell you what. We'll do our subscribers a massive favor and I'll put it on the Patreon reading list. How about that for value ad? Quote, drug lords like charismatic animals that symbolize power and strength.

Big cats such as lions, tigers and jaguars, along with big snakes, monkeys and nice-looking birds, Mexico-based WWF expert Adrian Reuters told Al Jazeera, adding, quote, in some cases, 20 or 30 animals have been found in pretty impressive facilities. Nice looking birds. Horace cartel leader Amardo Carrillo Fuentes, or the Lord of the Skies,

and of course subject of a recent-ish episode of this show, he had a collection of pet tigers too. And when authorities raid Sinoloa Gai Jesus, the King Zambada in 2008, they confiscate over 200 animals, including monkeys, peacocks and ostriches. Oh yeah, and AKs and Berets and cocaine, but who doesn't have that kicking around on a central Mexican ranch? There are tons of stories about the Zetas feeding people to tigers too, which would be pretty much the most humane way they kill people.

University of Texas Professor Howard Campbell believes that, quote, the role models for these big drug lords are the hacienda owners from colonial times. They like to be the lord of the manor and they have huge ranches. They are rural people by and large. So there you go. It's all the rednecks for. Sorry, guys. But let's move this episode a little close as Joe Exotic,

namely to Miami, where if you watch the show, you may just be familiar with a big cat owner in the city called Mario Tabrari. Tabrari has had a pretty colorful life, to say the least. A Cuban-American, he grows up in Little Havana, where his father Guillermo works as a jeweler. But it's other valuable items the family is really interested in. And from 1976, the Subrawe's run a father and son, weed and cocaine empire, that smuggling around half a million pounds of marijuana into the States.

That's the weight, not the currency, as well as millions of dollars of powder and quailudes. Quailudes, man. I mean, they're the ones that got away. You know, we never really got to, Sean, we were just too young for them. And the way that people speak about them in such reverent tones, I just feel like we missed out, you know? Sad times. I mean, it looks so fun in the world. Wolf of Wall Street. I really wouldn't mind doing that.

You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with the world's best counterfeiter. How long does it take to print $250 million? Five months. It needs to be worthwhile. It's going to need to be perfect. 12,500 kilos or over eight Toyota Camrys or six Ford F-150s. That is multiple metric. tons of cash. You must have been stoked, man, because you knew you were going to put $20 bills all over all of that and then just never work again.

Yes. By design, there are people specifically looking for you all the time. This is all they do. You can tell them whatever you want. They're not dummies. I mean, this is as high as the go. This is the stuff of the line. For more on how Frank Barrasca printed his own fortune and got away with it, Check out episode 488 on the Jordan Harbinger show anywhere you get your podcasts. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here.

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They have yellow sales signs on ready to cook beef or chicken kebabs too. Level up with savory marinate, spices and rubs, and complete your cookout with a crowd-pleasing cherry pie and their balsamic chicken salad. Available at the prepared foods counter. Get Summer Splash Savings Now at Whole Foods Market. Anyway, here's a men's health article about Mario. Quote, in the late 1970s to Browey was reportedly distributing the drug money

to Miami police officers. By then, he had also opened an exotic animal store and ranch. He kept everything from cheaters to cobras and was later charged with illegally acquiring endangered animals. And the story goes on, quote, throughout the 1980s to Browie, according to federal prosecutors, served as, quote, chairman of the board at the drug trafficking operation. He allegedly stored 10,000 pounds of marijuana at Parrott Jungle, a Miami tourist attraction. His drug network was worth some $75 million at its height. Dude, holy fuck. I used to go to Parrot Jungle when I was a kid and we like, went on family vacations to Miami. Yeah, it ruled. There was parrots everywhere. I love that

shit. And there was like another, there was another animal theme park that we used to go to called them like Monkey Jungle or Monkey World. And, you know, it was like that except they have monkeys. But, uh, oh really? There was like a scandal. Yeah. There was a scandal because the employees train the monkeys to pickpock visitors, like tourists that were there. Like, I should you not. That was a right. God, I got to look that up. But yeah, dude, South Florida is just like out of control.

That place is the best. Oh, yeah. I mean, I saw a story quoting 79 million for Mario's Empire, but yeah, whatever. He's a big player, right? And he's rumored to be the inspiration behind Scarface's Tony Montana. Mario is barely hiding his mob tires. Like, he's just outwardly telling folks he's a cocaine importer on the street. and he's using the animals to traffic gear

by stuffing it in the bodies of rare snakes, for example. And he's paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to ship exotic tigers, lions, cheaters, leopards into his compound just outside the city, which he wouldn't let me go into, by the way, which was a shame. Yeah, we should do an entire episode on this guy. I mean, this is fantastic.

Yeah, we should actually, because he's fucking nuts. Oddly enough, there's even a broad tie to Republican Senator Marco Rubio, his brother-in-law, Orlando Cecilia, works alongside Tabrari during his most lucrative years, which is pretty nuts. Anyway, in July 1980, it gets a bit darker, a bit, very. Members of Tabrari's gang find out that one of their guys, Larry Nash, is actually informant with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the ATF.

They take Larry for a ride in Mario's car, shoot him twice with a 0.38O Beretta, and then they cut up the body and set it on fire. By 1987, the feds come down on Mario after an operation named Cobra after all his exotic pets on the ranch, of course. And when they raid it, Mario's wife allegedly tosses a bundle of 50 grand out the back window, which, I don't know, might be a bit of a red flag. Mario's given a hundred-year sentence, but he only serves 12 before a turning state witness. He gets out in 2001, and he carries on with his big cat dreams. now he's president of the Zoological Wildlife Foundation

and he lobbies hard against Tiger Big Cat Laws. So to be fair, those guys do have an incredible Instagram account. As do we, if anyone's interested. Have you seen it? I mean, it's where more, I would go. No. I mean, you can go. I mean, it's all open.

He just doesn't let any journalist in, which is fine. But those laws that he's pushing back on, they are sorely needed. There are around 10,000 tigers. in captivity in the US, which is more than double the amount of them in the wild across the world, which is pretty depressing and weird. And it's completely true that in the majority of US states, it's easier to buy a tiger than a dog. All you need in most places is a USDA conservation label, which, I mean, Joe Exotic had one, right? And a $30 license. And Bob Katzi Rossalot or something. My older brother, he used to work for political campaigns. And I remember

him telling me he was in Gary, Indiana, which for you non-Americans is south of Chicago and just has been like a really, one of the more dangerous cities in America for a long time. And I think Indiana is like one of those places that doesn't have exotic animal laws or didn't back then. And he'd be like, you know, door knocking and they'd walk around and someone would just have a tiger in their backyard, like in not a great neighborhood. Like, I'm not talking about like Vegas mansions. I'm talking like, you know, like drug dealer type shit. Yeah. Like not good drug dealer. A very low level drug dealer I think

that one of the main guys and Joe Exotic Stories based on some like sweeping part land in Indiana a guy called Tim Stark I think comes up in a bit further down this show as well but he's a absolute lunatic

yeah Indiana like low-key nuts right isn't Gary really really bad right now I've seen loads of TV shows about as well I think it was I don't think it's as bad as it was but in like in you know the Jackson's are from there

But in the 90s or I think it was like the go-to place for like dangerous America, maybe early 2000s too. Ah, okay. Maybe a trip out there for the show then soon, Danny? Yeah. Most of this, of course. And with it, the vast majority of trafficking in Southeast Asia in places like the King's Romans casino, where I also was in 2019, serves the Chinese market,

which is hungry for Tiger products in a number of traditional medicines and remedies that, well, of course they don't work. Yeah, I mean, all the exotic animal trade stuff is like predicated on grinding up their body parts for like, you know, to like help old men get erections. Like I'm serious. If you look into like what they use, no, what they use like exotic animal like the trade for and what it's all like ancient Chinese medicine that are like trying to be Viagra, which a good black market hustle is to crush up Seattle. And then sell it to, you know, people looking for Chinese traditional medicine and pretend it's like rhino horn. I'm just throwing that out there. It's a good idea. Yeah, I mean, we welcome all advertisers on the show.

A lot of private breeders, they say that they're helping to conserve the species, but, well, they're not. Quote, public contact with big cats fuels every component of the trade, says Nicole Piquette of the Humane Society. Beyond that, hundreds of these creatures, probably more likely thousands, are killed or handed over to sanctuaries. Because people love tiger cubs, right? but they don't really know how to look after a grown one. A captive tiger lives for 20 years, and it costs 10 grand for each of them. Right, it's the Guardian, quote, grown up,

they're hard to manage and less lucrative. That sounds like me. Adoptors with good intentions, but little training do not know what they're getting into and they fork over $500 for a cub. A baby mocker can star on social media for an $80 photo up at Nuzat zoo or petting venues that claim to breed tigers, but in fact encourage trafficking.

I'm going to make a call out to all journalists never to use the word as that either. It's a rubbish word. Anyway, that's how you get these crazy macabre stories of illegal tiger dealers. In 2003, a guy in Harlem, NYC, had to visit the ER for a severe wound on his arm and leg. He claimed it was a pit bull, not Ming. A 400-pound tiger, he had cooped up in his apartment. There's a really famous photo of that, at least in New York, of like, of when they raided the apartment,

and it's like an NYPD officer hanging by the window, and the tiger is just like right there. Jesus. Yeah, dude, I think there was like a story that goes back to where the woman underneath the apartment was always complaining about the noises and claiming there was a wild animal up there and no one believed her. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of times they found exotic animals

and like the projects in East New York. I think there was like a wolf once, and those little Cayman alligators and things like that. Oh, they're cute. Can you take him out on the leash? Yeah. I mean, you can, but not if they're illegal. People take snakes out all the time, though.

Like, I'll see snakes in my neighborhood around someone's neck. But, you know, I think the alligators would attract a little too much attention. Yeah, yeah. I mean, isn't the Harlem apartment going to be about 10 square fit as well? Like, how on earth are you keeping a tiger in that? Anyway, in 2005, a breeder in Colton, California, he's convicted on a bunch of wildlife and child endangerment charges when cops raid his home and find, seriously,

11 tiger and leopard cubs in his attic, two tigers on the porch, 58 dead tiger cubs in a freezer, and about 30 dead tigers decomposing on the property. And how about this one? I know, right, grim. How about this one from February 2018 as told by Wildlife Reporter Rachel Neuer for Longreeds?

Quote, a group of people had snuck into a deserted house in Texas' largest city, Houston, to smoke marijuana, when they stumbled upon a full-grown tiger in a cage. a cage secured by just a nylon strap and a screwdriver. Sergeant Jason Alderetti of Houston Police Department's Animal Crawlety Unit later told a local TV station,

it wasn't the effects of the drugs. There was an actual tiger. The animal was given a name, Loki, and sent to an animal sanctuary in the country, run by the Humane Society of the United States. And like, the Humane Society of the United States must be the most overrun, like, organization ever, because these things are flooding in.

Neuer says that the current boom of big cat ownership began in the 70s and 80s with something called zoo babies. These were commercials and in-estate billboards offering the chance for families to get their photos taken. This was lucrative stuff, of course, but the kittens then became cats, which are so-called zoo surplus, and then sold to private buyers at auction. And then just a few years later, of course, you get this giant free-for-all where any batshit three-presenter is showing up in the some warehouse buying bobcats and tigers for a few hundred bucks. It's complete madness. And even though it's illegal to sell these things across state borders, it goes on everywhere all the time. The laws are really flimsy. There's a February 2020 study in the journal

Conservation Science and Practice, I know you guys want to get up on that one, that lays the role of the US in the illegal tiger trade bear. Of 624 seizures globally between 2003 and 2012, the US accounts for almost half. Of course, Elous and your Myanmar's are going to hardly report illegal trafficking in the same number. And the true number of tigers shipped and smuggled across Southeast Asia is likely way, way higher than the figures we have now. I got to imagine two, I mean, like, you know, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, anywhere, there's crazy oil money. You know, those are the guys with like the Instagram accounts with all that stuff.

Like, that's got to be, I mean, I'm sure it's not even once they get there. I'm sure they're technically illegal, but it's definitely, definitely like way high. higher numbers, I would say, than here. Yeah, these are the guys like driving down Abu Dhabi roads on two wheels with a tiger hanging out of the back or whatever. Yeah, it's, uh, what a great place did buyers.

Anyway, it's, it's still a massive number of cases in the US, right? And even more crazy, wild tigers were listed as two thirds of exotic animals recovered during that period. I mean, my little dog gives me enough of a headache. I mean, I don't even get it. What are these idiots playing at? Experts are calling on U.S.

legislators to pass something called the Big Cat Public Safety Act. There's a bill that would improve the welfare and protection of tigers in captivity and it would galvanize the country's tiger conservation matters. But this thing has been going through iterations for over a decade now. And while Tiger King brought huge attention to the subject, the show itself didn't really do much to help the issue at large. I would have hoped a show like that, which such a large viewership, would highlight the issue of captive tigers in the year.

US, Lee Harry of the WWF has said. We've been working for 15 years to try and get the US to clamp down, but everything is up in the year because of COVID. Well, there's some other stuff too. So, it's about time to hop back in my former mom-in-law's Lincoln, and I'll tell you why Tiger King shit the bed so badly. First, and most importantly, it is not true. Expose them.

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Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV. Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free.

The truth is ours. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 N-EX-Files, may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. Yes, I wrote a follow-up piece of The Daily Beast where I first reported the story,

and it went into some of the myths about the guy that, just that. Tiger King did a terrible job. It was full of holes and lies and it allowed the guy to sell himself as some kind of a tragic figure when the truth is anything but. And I'll run through some of them. For example, Joe claimed his brother, who he named his zoo after Garald Wayne or GW, was killed by a drunk driver and that's not true. Now that might seem like a small white lie and Garrow was killed on a wreck on I-45 outside Dallas, Texas. But this alcohol thing Joe used to build a sobriety campaign and he leveraged his brother's story

to build the zoo in Winniewood, Oklahoma. Actually, Garald left it in his will that he wanted to build a soccer stadium in the town. And Joe never turned off his brother's life support machine. That is complete crap. And key to this for me was that I managed to find Joe's brother Yari, who lives in a wood cabin near the Texas-Louisiana border.

Seriously, like, it took me a day to drive to his place. He told me that Joe's like a quote. quote, God damn Charles Manson, and he's not far off the mark. So here is the true story, Joe Exotic's background. He actually gets his big break in 1999, when a Plano Texas rancher lets out 100 of his emus loose on a highway. I mean, these things are getting shipped over to the country and huge number for their oil at the time.

But then apparently the bottom falls out of the market and people are just shooting the things, letting them go. It's pandemonium. this one time Joe Joe's up with a pal and he shoots six emu's dead on this Plano highway, some of which a local newspaper says, quote, flocked and jumped requiring several shots. I don't know, I might be getting this wrong, but it's a pretty tough shot to headshot an emu, right? That thing's moving about a lot.

But Joe somehow wriggles off the hook with a grand jury, and that is when he really starts to build his zoo. And also, they dialed down the animal abuse and human abuse, massively in Tiger King like not even close. I'll quote a bit of this Daily Beast piece that I did. As drug use on the park increased

its animal abuse turned vaudevillian. Crew members tossed live animals into tiger enclosures for fun. Many exotic staff to death. Cubs were hit, a staff bit the head off a live snake and another smote a joint with a monkey. Wait, I'm sorry, can you repeat that?

Yeah, I mean that's not even the weirdest thing. I'm going to carry on. Joe ran over emus and a four-wheeler so he could sell bones to a local museum and he shot animals on camera for fun. A big cat burial pit smelled so bad Joe's father said it reminded it of killing fields during the Korean War. I saw brutality against some animals that I almost can't speak of. Rick Kirkham, Joe's one-time reality show producer told me.

Joe abused his staff too, cutting off their food or throwing them off the park altogether. Many compared it to a cult. and it definitely 100% still-plated was a cult. Here is another bit from my story. Quote, Joe escaped into fantasy worlds. He wandered about shooting animals with BB guns, that he injected them with water-filled syringes to heal them. This is a young Joe Exotic, by the way.

He turned Pamela, that's his sister's, playhouse, into a, quote, vet centre. When the family moved to Texas, he worked at a local nursing home. He wore full scrubs with a fanny pack, and a stethoscope. On breaks, he told convenience store clerks he'd emerged from successful surgery. During a stint in Wyoming, Joe hitched a flashing light to his old Buick, and he pretended to be a cop. So, yeah, the guy is far more psychopathic and pathological and crawl than the show makes out. And now, something a bit more fun, the music. I mean, I cannot tell you how many times I listen to that ridiculous here, Kitty Kitty song while I was on the road.

I kind of feel you're going a bit mad diving into a story with people like that 24-7, which I've kind of been doing the past couple months with this piece. I'm finishing up in around a week. More on that soon, but I don't think Tiger King made it clear. Joe never sung any of those country tunes. I managed to find a guy in Washington state called Vince Johnson, who Joe's hired to put them all together.

Then, of course, he'd built him on the payment. And Joe was getting up in Vince's shit about Carol Baskin the whole time, too. he told me in an email quote Joe called her a crackhead murdering two bit whore Jesus can't say this stuff in the straight face among other things but I never thought he was nuts enough to try and kill her

and he did now I'm not even going to go into Jeff Lowe who's the guy to go over the GW Zoo when Joe got done for murder for hire but let's just say he's a proper piece of work too he's stolen money from all kinds of folks to beating his ex-wife he's not a good

dude at all But basically all these zoo guys are like this. It tracks the worst men, and they are always, always men, into this weird animal trading, underbelly, underworld, whatever you want to call it. It's really, really crazy. The thing is, I can't get over how underhand Tiger King was. Besides all of this, besides making up this kind of Hollywood tale to suit the narrative, I mean, I was rocking up to people's homes all over the state in Oklahoma and beyond, actually.

and they're telling me that this doco guy some rich hotel industry air who's running around Oklahoma paying folks hundreds, thousands of dollars of pop for interviews with a specific intent on getting this Hollywoodish narrative about Joe that is complete rubbish. Typical. Very, very.

Here is Joe Exotic's ex-boyfriend John Finley who I message about doing an interview for this show but I guess he just wants to disappear which is fair enough. Quote, a lot of people don't know the truth and a lot of people don't care to know the truth. They want the nice story about the guy with the tigers. And he's right.

It's complete bullshit. And I should probably at this point tell you that, yes, there are videos and accounts. And I have it on record that people were doing things with deer and goats and other animals on the park. Jesus. That is, yeah. I don't think Netflix would have signed off on that. if they'd have been approached with that story. And hey, look, look, I haven't even got into all the bat-shick conversations I had with Doc,

Bagavan, Antal, he calls himself, Tim Stark. I mean, these other guys who featured in Tiger King, too, which I'm not going to watch. Jeff and Lauren Lowe, she screamed, actually screamed down the phone at me, Lauren Lowe, which is pretty weird. They don't own the GW Zoo anymore. In January 2021, the Justice Department shut it all down, placed the animals in care. more work for people and declared that the Lowe's head quote showed a shocking disregard for both the health and welfare of their animals.

Oh shit. But they are just the tip of the iceberg. There are literally hundreds of places like this all over America. I mean, I didn't even go into Zanesville on this episode. We could do a whole show on that as well. And nobody seems to give a shit about changing it either. So I guess more guys in Harlem are going to get half eaten by Bengals in studio apartments. I mean, sounds totally legit.

There it is. a random bunch of stuff about big cats and gangsters. A bit of a weird show. But let us know if you've got any cool ideas for episodes too, by the way. We've had some real belters lately in there. They're really fun messages to get. And yeah, look for us to do another episode about something culturally relevant, maybe three or four years after it's popular, you know?

So what, 2020? 2028, we'll do a succession episode or something like that. But, yeah, patreon.com slash underworld podcasts for bonus episodes, which we're going to keep going and subscribe on. iTunes as well. And yeah, learned a lot about you this episode, Sean. aims, please. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story.

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