Joe Exotic announced that he is engaged to be married despite being in the middle of a 21-year federal prison sentence.
“Meet Jorge Marquez, he’s 33 years old. He’s amazing and he’s from Mexico,” Exotic, 61, wrote in his post on X (formerly Twitter) this week while incarcerated at Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth.
“Now, the quest to get married in prison and get him asylum or leave the United States when we both get out,” the Garden City, Kansas, native added. “Either way, I wish I knew him a long time ago.”
Tiger King maintains that he filed a marriage application in federal prison to marry Marquez, according to the man also known as Joseph Maldonado-Passage.
Her fiancé is serving time for immigration-related issues, according to a report from CBS News.
Joe Exotic, 61, announced that he became engaged to fellow inmate Jorge Marquez, 33, while both remain incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth.
Both men are not only optimistic that the prison will approve their wedding request, but they also have “high hopes” that Exotic’s appeal of his entire case, including his conviction for hiring hitmen to kill animal activist Carole Baskin, be successful.
He claims to have evidence such as “sworn video confessions” and “700 telephone recordings of federal agents.”
In his press release, Exotic requested a presidential pardon for himself and his fiancé, as well as asylum for Márquez.
“I would like someone who was president or won the presidency to do the right thing and forgive me so that I could get over this nightmare that my own country has caused for the last 7 years of my life,” Maldonado shared. ‘All I did was build a zoo and some people were very jealous. Then I was imprisoned by my own country.
In a telephone interview with Entertainment tonight Maldonado-Passage revealed details about where the process currently stands.
“Yesterday we submitted our official documents for the prison marriage license, so we are waiting for approval,” Exotic explained. “He has chosen December 12 as the date by which we expect this to be approved.”
He states that his marriage application “has to be approved by the principal, the psychiatrist and the chaplain” before his license can be approved.
“We love each other so much, we spend every minute of the day together,” the Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness star revealed.
The so-called Tiger King says his fiancé, a native of Mexico, hopes for asylum after prison or “we’ll leave the United States when we both get out.”
Exotic, also known as Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was sentenced to 22 years in prison on 17 federal counts of animal abuse and two counts of attempted murder-for-hire for the plot to kill Big Cat Rescue founder Carole Baskin, but a US appeals court reduced the sentence to 21 years in 2019
He added: “I’ve been through some things in my days.” I buried two husbands, the third ran away with $2.6 million from Netflix and I left my ass here, but Jorge is an incredible young man.
Exotic was previously married to the late Travis Maldonado, who passed away after accidentally shooting himself in 2017, and Dillon Passage, who she hooked up with two months later. Their relationship ended when they decided to separate in 2020 and then file for divorce the following year.
In 2019, Exotic was convicted and sentenced to 22 years in prison on 17 federal counts of animal abuse and two counts of attempted murder-for-hire for the plot to kill Big Cat Rescue founder Carole Baskin.
Two years later, after filing a motion for a new trial, a U.S. appeals court ruled that the convictions for the two attempted murders were wrongly treated as separate and, as a result, reduced his sentence by one year and ultimately He was resentenced to 21 years. in prison at the end of January 2022.
The Kansas native has been pushing for his conviction to be overturned and has pushed for a presidential pardon to be granted to whoever becomes president on January 20, 2025.
Exotic has been the subject of significant criticism, especially for controversies surrounding his feud with Baskin and the treatment of animals at the GW Zoo.
He has appeared in several documentaries, including the hit Netflix series Tiger King (2020-2021), which showcased his career as a zookeeper and his feud with Baskin, and two by Louis Theroux titled America’s Most Dangerous Pets (2011) and Shooting Joe . Exotic (2021).
There has also been a television drama show based primarily on the relationship between Carole Baskin and Joe Exotic called Joe vs. Carole which aired on Peacock on March 3, 2022.
Carole Baskin was at the center of the murder-for-hire plot that sent Exotic to prison
Exotic is ‘optimistic’ that he will be released from prison in 2025, and already has ideas for his life after being behind bars that include an academic career
Exotic is “optimistic” that he will be released from prison in 2025, and already has ideas for life after being behind bars, which include an academic career.
The plan is for him to one day share his wealth of tiger knowledge in an educational setting, which could be done through lecturing.
Earlier this month, Roger filed an appeal against a denial of a motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, which was denied by the lower court.
According to his lawyer, Roger Roots, there is sufficient evidence to show that Joe’s initial trial was “fundamentally riddled with errors” that went to the “very heart of the allegations” and “had that evidence been known at the time, it would not have been condemned.”