Featured Image Credit: Santa Rosa County Sheriff/Netflix
Topics: Tiger King, Joe Exotic, Crime, US News, Health
Britt Jones
Topics: Tiger King, Joe Exotic, Crime, US News, Health
Tiger King star Joe Exotic has been isolated from other inmates in prison following a ‘contagious’ diagnosis.
After previously announcing his plans to wed in prison to his latest beau and sixth hubby John Graham in 2022, the 'Tiger King' is back in the news.
For those of you who don’t know, Exotic is currently serving a 21-year prison sentence and has been pretty active on social media.
Exotic has been in the process of getting a divorce from his fifth husband, Dillon Passage, who was his boyfriend of nine months before he was arrested and convicted in 2020 of two murder-to-hire counts of Big Cat Rescue CEO Carole Baskin, and multiple wildlife violations.
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Then, in 2022, he was re-sentenced from 22 years in prison to 21 years, which left him begging the judge: "Please don’t make me die in prison waiting for a chance to be free."
Since then, he’s been more or less out of the public eye.
But now he’s back and this time Exotic, real name Joseph Maldonado-Passage, has been infected with scabies.
His legal team told The Dallas Morning News that he has been isolated from others due to developing the highly contagious skin rash condition, which the Mayo Clinic describes as ‘a mite that burrows under the skin and lays eggs.’
The 61-year-old is currently at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, where a representative for the prison confirmed that there was an outbreak of scabies in a housing unit.
For those living in the unit, visitation is temporarily suspended to contain the spread.
According to The Post, the prison has put in place some precautions to reduce the risk of exposure to other people, and said they take ‘communicable infections seriously.’
A representative shared that the unit ‘is currently in a state of crisis with staffing, and that includes medical employees.’
They said: “We make every effort to ensure the physical safety and health of the individuals confined to our facilities through a controlled environment that is secure and humane.”
Exotic’s attorney, Roger Roots, revealed that his client had been dealing with a rash as well as itching for over six weeks, and that he had allegedly observed ‘very unsanitary’ living conditions, which included rats in prisoner’s beds.
However, The Post shared that the prison denied the allegations of rats.
UNILAD has contacted Fort Worth prison for comment.
Even though Exotic now has scabies, Roots claims the former zookeeper is ‘optimistic’ that he might be allowed to go home next year and wants to get into academics.
Recently, Exotic spoke to Radar Online about his feelings towards the Menendez brothers possibly being freed, while he believes he’s going to die in prison.
He shared: "When I was running for office, that was one of my biggest complaints is our judges – our federal judges are appointed by Democrat and Republican presidents.
"The system is already broken, it's not fair. I got sentenced by a Republican judge – got 21 years.
"So if you have a president appointing judges based off their political beliefs, the system is already broken."