Joe Exotic Announces Engagement to Fellow Prison Inmate: 'Wish I Would Have Met Him Long Ago'

Mar. 15, 2025

Joe Exotic.Photo:Netflix

Netflix

Joe Exoticis getting married.

TheTiger Kingstar, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, got engaged while incarcerated. He announced the news on hissocial media, introducing the man he is set to marry with a photo.

“Meet Jorge Marquez he is 33,” Maldonado-Passage wrote. “He is so amazing and is from Mexico.”

“Now, the quest of getting married in prison and getting him asylum or we [will] be leaving America when we both get out,” his statement continued. “Either way, I wish I would have met him long ago.”

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This isn’t the Oklahoma zookeeper’s first marriage. Just two months before marrying ex-husbandDillon Passage, who was also on the Netflix hit, Maldonado-Passage was married to Travis Maldonado, who accidentally shot himself and died.

Maldonado-Passage and Passage latersplit in 2021 after 3 years of marriage.

“We are on good terms still and I hope it can stay that way,” he continued. “I will continue to have Joe in my life and do my best to support him while he undergoes further legal battles to better his situation.”

Maldonado-Passage is currently serving a21-year prison sentenceafter his2019 convictionfor a murder-to-hire plotagainst his animal rights activistrivalCarole Baskin. He allegedly was charged with paying Allen Glover $3,000 to kill Baskin, a big cat conservationist, along with other charges.

According to prosecutors, starting in July 2016, Maldonado-Passage repeatedly tried to hire people — one of whom was an undercover FBI agent — to murder Baskin, who owns a tiger refuge in Florida and won a multimillion-dollar judgment against Maldonado-Passage’s G.W. Exotic Animal Memorial Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma.

Eventually, Maldonado-Passage paid Glover to travel from Oklahoma to South Carolina and on to Florida to kill Baskin, “with a promise to pay thousands more after the deed,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

source: people.com