Supreme Court declines to review murder-for-hire conviction of Joe Exotic

Joe Exotic has lived many lives two decades ago, we first introduced you to him as the owner of GW Exotic Animal Memorial Park here. He’s helping *** lion cub with *** mobility unit. Now, fast forward to 2017, we covered his husband’s accidental death at the zoo and then the focus became the zoo escalated into controversies that led to his 2018 arrest after accusations that he tried to hire someone to kill the then big cat rescue owner, Carol Baskins just hoping that he’s never back on the street because I believe he is *** very dangerous person. And since then his life has gone from zoo owner to cellmate. This call is from *** federal prison. He’s doing time in Fort Worth. I’ve lost, I’ve lost my life all for violating the Endangered Species Act and aiding and abetting. Like I was supposed to apply for *** six or 10 month permit to let these animals suffer for another 10 months. Ok. My, he said I could euthanize cats with *** gun and that’s what I did because that’s what Joe’s still fighting to get out though. His lawyers filed an appeal claiming he was set up on that murder for hire scheme and claims people like James Garretson who now lives in the Florida keys ratted him out. The Tiger King made everybody *** target that had animals and you know, all of us were pretty much targets. You may remember Garretson as the one riding the jet skis in the dock while he previously did have run ins with PETA. He’s for the most part moved on all. After being an FBI informant and helping land, Joe and Joe, I got involved because Joe was doing *** lot of evil stuff with the animals. They were uh selling tiger hides and they were doing all kinds of stuff. But other business partners like Tim Stark aren’t as lucky. It was Tiger King two that took me down, you know, that destroyed me Stark teamed up with Jeff Lowe back in 2021. That’s the man who took the property over after Joe’s legal trouble first began. We introduced you to him and his wife back in 2020. She’s so easy going. He’s *** wonderful dad. I mean, it’s so cute watching him interact with her. He’s great father. That’s when the transfer was happening from GW Zoo to Thacker Stark moved his animals with him to Oklahoma. I left Oklahoma. I thought me and Jeff were still friends but I was having mental problems. I had to, I was getting divorced. I was going through *** bunch of, I wasn’t going to stay there and be lied to. I didn’t want nothing to do with running up and I lost everything. And as for the lows after the Department of Justice went after the Lowe’s animals in 2021 they moved to Mexico where they run *** private zoo in Play, Del Carmen, we knew we wanted to still work with animals and the hypocrisy and the prejudice that was kind of inflicted upon us um by the United States government we thought was unfair and they never did get those animals back. I missed them. I I we all miss them so much. Even our former staff, they miss them too. Those were their kids and missing the animals was even worse for former zookeeper, Eric Crowe can’t wait to get out of here. Man. Looking forward to the new zoo investigators say Crowley died after chronic alcohol use, which the lows say was in part from depression from being away from the animals. Former manager, Jeff Ranke now lives in Texas. I’m still fighting to try and get Joe out. It’s just, it’s just been *** battle and he says his life is quiet now living with *** couple kangaroos on the property happy but also missing. What once was, it’s been hard uh trying to get over some of the animals that you took care of and you hear the horror stories and I know for *** fact that most of them dead and most of them didn’t survive when they left Reville and I can’t find my camel, I can’t find my monkey. Um, because those were my personal animals. Sean T Navarro Koco Five News.