Courtesy of Netflix
With people everywhere shut inside their homes, Netflix’s docuseries “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” has provided audiences with seven jaw-dropping episodes about Americans who own big cats. According to entertainment metrics company Nielsen, “Tiger King” drew in 34.3 million more American viewers within the first ten days of its release than the second season of another Netflix hit, “Stranger Things.”
The series focuses on Joseph Maldonado-Passage, also known as Joe Exotic, who owned a popular exotic animal park in Oklahoma until he shot and killed five tigers, sold baby lemurs and fabricated paperwork to say the animals were donated to another organization. On delivery forms and veterinary inspection certificates, Exotic would label the animals as currently being donated or transported for exhibitions. Instead, they were sold in interstate commerce, the court said.
“Because tigers are an endangered species, these alleged killings and sales violated the Endangered Species Act,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Oklahoma said in a January 2020 release. Exotic was hit with another charge when the courts found that he had paid a hitman $3,000 to kill his rival, Carole Baskin, who owns a tiger sanctuary in Florida and had secured a million-dollar judgment against Exotic.
In 2018, a federal grand jury found Exotic guilty of trying to hire someone to kill Baskin, an animal rights activist who was extremely vocal against Exotic’s animal park.
The court papers indicate that Exotic was willing to pay a man $3,000 to travel from Oklahoma to Florida to kill Baskin, with a promise to pay thousands of dollars more once she was dead. In the documentary series, the alleged attempted hitman talks about his encounters with Exotic, who vividly described how he wanted Baskin to die. The hitman also said that Exotic aimed to pay him by selling baby tiger cubs. Meanwhile, as seen in the docuseries, the FBI was already investigating Exotic and had an undercover FBI agent set up to meet with him and discuss details of the planned murder.
“Because of [Exotic’s] constant threats to kill me, I have found myself seeing every bystander as a potential threat. There is nowhere that I have felt safe, and worse, no way that I feel I can safeguard those around me,” Baskin said in a statement. “So many of his threats involved blowing me up so that he could thrill over seeing me burn to death.”
U.S. Attorney Timothy J. Downing said that the jury convicted Exotic on two counts of murder-for-hire, eight counts of violating the Lacey Act by falsifying wildlife records and nine counts of violating the Endangered Species Act. On Jan. 22, 2020, Exotic was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison.
“Tiger King” ultimately tells the story of how Exotic devolved from a man with a complex love for animals to a power-hungry, resentful criminal who eventually ended up in prison. For those who love Netflix’s crime documentaries and docuseries, this is the show for you. However, watch the show at your own discretion, as it has strong language and material relating to animals being harmed. It is filled with wild characters and its addictive pace will keep you stuck on the couch. Praises should go to executive producers Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin for giving the world this outrageous story.
