Tiger King star Joe Exotic announces engagement to fellow inmate from federal prison

Joe Exotic announced he's engaged to be married despite being in the midst of a 21-year federal prison sentence.

'Meet Jorge Marquez he is 33. He is so amazing and is from Mexico,' Exotic, 61, wrote in his post on X (formerly Twitter) this week while being incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center, Fort Worth.

'Now, the quest of getting married in prison and getting him asylum or we be leaving America when we both get out,' the Garden City, Kansas native added. 'Either way, I wish I would have met him long ago.'

The Tiger King maintains he submitted a marriage application to the federal prison to wed Marquez, according to the man also known Joseph Maldonado-Passage.

His fiancé is serving time for immigration-related issues, according to a report from CBS News. 

Both men are not only optimistic the prison will approve their wedding application, they also still have 'high hopes' that Exotic's appeal of his entire case, including his conviction for hiring hitmen to kill animal activist Carole Baskin, will succeed. 

He claims to have evidence such as 'video confessions under oath' and '700 phone recordings of federal agents.'

In his news release, Exotic has requested a presidential pardon for himself and his fiancé, as well as asylum for Marquez.

'I wish someone that is President or wins the Presidency would do the right thing and pardon me so I could move past 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 put into prison by my own country.' 

In a phone interview with Entertainment Tonight Maldonado-Passage disclosed the details about where the process currently stands right now.

'We filed our official papers for the marriage license from the prison yesterday, so we're just waiting for an approval,' Exotic explained. 'He has picked out December 12 as the date we’re hoping to get this approved by.' 

He claims their marriage application 'has to be approved by the warden and psychiatry and the chaplain' before their license can be approved.  

'We love each other very much, spend every minute of the day together,' the star of Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness revealed. 

He added, 'I've been through some s**t in my days. I buried two husbands, the third one ran off with $2.6 million bucks from Netflix and left my a** here, but Jorge is a very amazing young man.'

Exotic was previously married to the late Travis Maldonado, who passed away after accidentally shooting himself in 2017, and Dillon Passage, whom he hooked up with two months later. Their relationship ended when they decided to part ways 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 charges 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 murder attempts were wrongly treated as separate, and as a result reduced his sentence by one year, and ultimately resentencing him to 21 years in prison in late January 2022.

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.

He has been featured 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 from Louis Theroux titled America's Most Dangerous Pets (2011) and Shooting Joe Exotic (2021).

There's also been a television drama show based mainly on the relationship between Carole Baskin and Joe Exotic called Joe vs. Carole that aired on Peacock on March 3, 2022.

Exotic is 'optimistic' that he will be freed from prison in 2025, and already has ideas for life after being behind bars that includes a career in academia.

The plan is for him to one day share his wealth of tiger knowledge in an educational setting, which could play out by him giving lectures.

Earlier this month, Roger filed an appeal from a denial of a motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, which was denied by the lower court.

According to his attorney Roger Roots, there is sufficient evidence that shows that Joe's initial trial was 'fundamentally riddled with errors' that went to the 'very heart of the accusations, and 'had that evidence been known at the time, he would not have been convicted.'