Joe Exotic
Joseph Allen Maldonado, known professionally as Joe Exotic, is an American media personality and businessman who operated the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, from 1999 to 2018.
Born in Kansas, Exotic and his family moved to Texas, where he enrolled at Pilot Point High School. After graduation, Exotic briefly served as the chief of police in Eastvale. He then opened a pet store with his brother, but after his brother's death in 1997, Exotic sold the store and founded the G.W. Zoo. During his tenure as director there, he also held magic shows and cub-petting events at venues across the U.S., hosted an online talk show, and worked with producer Rick Kirkham to create a reality television series about himself, but this latter effort ended when most footage was destroyed in a fire in 2015. In 2016, Exotic ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, earning attention as a novelty candidate due to his eccentric persona and unconventional campaign style.
Exotic left the G.W. Zoo in June 2018 and was arrested three months later on suspicion of hiring two men to murder Big Cat Rescue founder Carole Baskin, with whom he had a complicated rivalry. In 2019, Exotic was convicted and sentenced to 22 years in prison on 17 federal charges of animal abuse and two counts of attempted murder for hire for the plot to kill Baskin. In 2021, he worked with attorney John Michael Phillips to file a motion for a new trial, and on July 15, 2021, a U.S. appeals court ruled that the convictions for the two murder attempts were wrongly treated as separate. The trial court reduced his sentence by 1 year, resentencing him to 21 years in late January 2022. In 2023, Exotic announced his candidacy in the 2024 presidential election as a Democrat.
Exotic has been subject to substantial criticism, especially for the controversies surrounding his feud with Baskin and the treatment of animals at the G.W. Zoo. Exotic has been featured in several documentaries, including the Netflix series Tiger King, a documentary about Exotic's career as a zookeeper and his feud with Baskin. The success of the first season of Tiger King amid the worldwide COVID-19 lockdowns led to Exotic receiving attention on social media and inspiring several internet memes. Exotic also appeared in two Louis Theroux documentaries, America's Most Dangerous Pets and Shooting Joe Exotic. A drama TV show based mainly on the relationship between Carole Baskin and Joe Exotic called Joe vs. Carole aired on Peacock on March 3, 2022.
Early life
Joe Exotic was born Joseph Allen Schreibvogel in Garden City, Kansas, on March 5, 1963, to parents Francis and Shirley Schreibvogel. The Schreibvogels had four other children: Tamara, Pamela, Yarri, and Garold "G.W." Wayne.The Schreibvogel family moved to Texas, where Exotic was enrolled at Pilot Point High School. After graduating from high school, he joined the Eastvale police department and was promoted to chief of the small department in 1982. He was outed to his parents as being homosexual by his estranged older brother Yarri, and in response their father made Exotic shake his hand and promise not to come to his funeral.
Exotic has said that he was badly injured in 1985 when he crashed his police cruiser into a bridge, although his claims about the wreck have changed over time: In 2019, he told Texas Monthly that the incident was a spontaneous suicide attempt, but he told The Dallas Morning News in 1997 that he was forced off the road by an unidentified vehicle during a drug investigation. A 2019 investigation by New York magazine, which included interviews of family members and local residents who knew him at the time, failed to find anyone who could recall such an event taking place, although he presented a photograph showing a wrecked car as evidence.
Career
Animals
Soon after the auto accident, Exotic moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, and managed a pet store. A friend who worked at a drive-through safari park brought baby lions to his neighbor's home and let Exotic handle them. Exotic credits these experiences with inspiring him to work with animals.Exotic returned to Texas and worked at various jobs before opening a pet shop with his brother "G.W.", who shared Exotic's love of animals, in Arlington, Texas, in 1986. In 1997, after closing the first pet shop and opening a new one nearby, Exotic came into conflict with Arlington officials over repeated code violations for decorations and signs: He had been hanging gay pride symbols such as a United States flag with rainbow stripes in the shop windows, and he accused city inspectors of homophobia and of targeting the business because of his sexual orientation. In 1997, his brother was killed in an auto accident, and Exotic sold the pet shop and purchased a Oklahoma farm with his parents. Two years after his brother's death, the farm opened as Garold Wayne Exotic Animal Memorial Park in dedication to his brother. Two of Wayne's pets were the zoo's first inhabitants.
In 2000, Exotic acquired his first two tigers, which had been abandoned. He said that the first animal rescue in his career as a zookeeper was an eleven-foot alligator with a severe eye infection. According to Exotic, he spoke by phone to Steve Irwin of Australia Zoo, whose vets provided advice on appropriate antibiotics for alligators and on treating an injured kangaroo. In 2006, after Irwin was killed by a stingray, Exotic dedicated a large indoor alligator complex inside the G.W. Zoo in his memory, naming it the Steve Irwin Memorial. Some of the alligators in the complex came from Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch.
In 2002, seeking to earn money to feed his growing menagerie, Exotic partnered with a traveling magician to provide and handle tigers during stage illusions. The experience taught Exotic that traveling magic shows could be lucrative, and after parting with the magician, he began staging shows himself and adopted "Joe Exotic" as his stage name. He soon found that attendees would pay to pet and have their picture taken with tiger cubs, and these activities were often more profitable than the magic show itself. His magic shows evolved into dedicated cub-petting events and he began breeding his cats to ensure that cubs were consistently available. The money he earned allowed him to increase the number of adult cats at his park and feed them. To benefit his stage persona, Exotic began behaving more flamboyantly, wearing flashy clothing and jewelry and adopting his trademark bleached mullet hairstyle.
Exotic worked as the owner and operator of the G.W. Zoo for over 20 years. He left the zoo on June 18, 2018, three months before his arrest. In 2021, Exotic stated that his whole outlook on animals in captivity has changed while he's been in jail, and he now believes that "no animal belongs in a cage". He also said that he never would have had a zoo if he had known what life inside a cage was like 20 years ago.
Music
During his career as a zoo owner, Exotic was also an aspiring country music singer, although music credited to him was recorded by others. Under the pretense of obtaining music for a planned reality television series, Exotic commissioned country songs from other artists, with his creative contributions reportedly being limited to suggesting song topics and singing some backing vocals. He produced music videos for the songs and posted them on his YouTube channel, depicting himself as the main performer and taking full credit for the music, allegedly without having notified the actual artists. One of Exotic's best-known songs is "I Saw a Tiger", which was featured in Tiger King and has been covered by numerous bands and artists.Exotic's two studio albums, I Saw a Tiger and Star Struck, are featured in the Tiger King episode "Not Your Average Joe". In April 2023 "My Best Friends" was released, the first single from Jungle Rhapsody: A Tiger King Experience - Exotic's third studio album that was partially recorded in federal prison and produced by JT Barnett, Jonathan Hay and William Moseley.
Appearance in documentaries
Exotic first appeared in Louis Theroux's 2011 documentary America's Most Dangerous Pets. Five years later, he appeared in J.D. Thompson's documentary The Life Exotic: Or the Incredible True Story of Joe Schreibvogel. Theroux stated that Exotic initially struck him as likeable and friendly, and that, owing to Exotic's emotional volatility, Theroux was inclined to be protective of him.The Netflix documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is centered on Exotic and his rivalry with Carole Baskin. The first season of the series was released in March 2020, coinciding with the worldwide COVID-19 lockdown following the COVID-19 outbreak being classified as a pandemic by the World Health Organization. A week after the release of Tiger King, both the series and Exotic himself went viral, with numerous internet memes about both Exotic and Baskin being made. In a Netflix interview in prison, Exotic stated that he was thankful for the fame and that he was "done with the Baskin saga".
In July 2020, Discovery released the documentary Surviving Joe Exotic, which is focused on the animals at the G.W. Zoo. The documentary features interviews with Exotic and former G.W. Zoo employees, with the Exotic interview scenes having been filmed four months before his arrest.
In April 2021, Louis Theroux released a new documentary on Exotic, titled Shooting Joe Exotic, on BBC Two in the United Kingdom. The documentary contained unseen footage of Exotic from a previous documentary by Theroux as well as new interviews of other people associated with Exotic, including Exotic's legal team and Howard and Carole Baskin, his estranged niece and brother, as well as a tour around the abandoned and extensively vandalized former G.W. Zoo property.