Carole Baskin enjoys sweetest victory of all over Tiger King’s Joe Exotic
Carole Baskin has enjoyed the sweetest victory of all in her long-running feud with Joe Exotic, selling his zoo and adding one major kicker.
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Joe Exotic’s former animal playground will be a zoo no more.
His longtime enemy, Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue, has sold the Oklahoma property and one of the provisions is that the land can’t be used as a zoo for 100 years, TMZ reports.
Big Cat Rescue was awarded control over the animal park in Wynnewood by a judge in 2020, part of the settlement in her longstanding trademark lawsuit against the flamboyant former zookeeper, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage.
The lawsuit was filed in 2011, long before “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” became the No. 1 show on Netflix and propelled both Maldonado-Passage and Baskin to freakish stardom.
Baskin registered the trademark for Big Cat Rescue in 2005. Maldonado-Passage used the similar name Big Cat Rescue Entertainment and allegedly boasted on social media that he purposely used the name to “ruin” Baskin and her non-profit company.
Maldonado-Passage’s Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park was purchased for $140,000 in June by Francisco and Nelly Vazquez, according to the TMZ report.
The last remaining animals at the zoo, which once housed as many as 1400 big cats, were turned over to the Justice Department earlier this month.
The pair have taken contrasting paths since the hit streaming series.
Last year, Maldonado-Passage was sentenced to 22 years in a federal jail following his conviction on charges he hatched a murder-for-hire plot to rub out Baskin.
Prosecutors said he paid a man $3000 in 2017 to go to Florida to kill Baskin — who has been accused of murdering her ex-husband Don Lewis in 1997. She has denied the claims.
Maldonado-Passage was also convicted of multiple wildlife violations related to killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying records.
Maldonado-Passage and his supporters begged former President Trump to pardon him before leaving office — even going so far as hiring a limousine and a hair and wardrobe team on January 20.
But despite a federal appeals court ruling the foul-mouthed mullet lover should get a shorter sentence, he is still expected to spend most of the next two decades behind bars.
It was also revealed he is currently battling cancer at a medical prison in Fort Worth, Texas.
Baskin meantime has leveraged her notoriety by appearing on Dancing With The Stars — where she performed to the song Eye of the Tiger — and featured in the 2021 documentary The Conservation Game, which investigated the exotic big cat trade.
— New York Post
Originally published as Carole Baskin enjoys sweetest victory of all over Tiger King’s Joe Exotic
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