Tiger King Joe Exotic gets married behind bars as romantic wedding gesture & new husband's rap sheet revealed

The Sun

22-04-2025

FORMER reality TV star Joe Exotic has tied the knot with a fellow inmate after proving his love with a romantic gesture.
The Tiger King star, Joe Exotic, 62, whose real name is Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage met Jorge Marquez Flores as they serve time in federal prison.
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The wedding took place at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, where both men are locked up.
The reckless former zoo keeper, was convicted in 2019 for a murder-for-hire plot against his longtime rival Carole Baskin.
Exotic is currently five years into a 21-year sentence.
Exotic announced the wedding news Tuesday on X with a photoshopped image of the couple in suits.
"Never been more proud of someone. Meet my husband Jorge Flores Maldonado," he wrote.
He first shared their engagement back in October, calling Jorge "so amazing" and revealing he's from Mexico.
Jorge, 33, is serving time on immigration-related charges.
He was working as a driver when he was arrested and charged in 2024 with illegally re-entering the US after previously being deported, according to federal court documents filed in Texas.
Exotic submitted a formal application to prison officials to marry Jorge.
He claimed their marriage license needed approval from the warden, psychiatrist, and chaplain.
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"Now, the quest of getting married in prison and getting him asylum or we be leaving America when we both get out," Exotic wrote on social media.
"Either way, I wish I would have met him long ago."
'Whether it helps his immigration status or not, we love each other enough to get married. We even got tattooed matching wedding bands already on," Exotic told Radar.
"What it would do is, it would assure him, and it would show the court, that he has a little bit of financial stability to stay in America."
"It's gonna look better for his asylum case to be married. We're just hoping that the prison will allow us to get married and stay in the same prison," he added.
'He gets out in May of next year so that gives us seven months to get my appeal done and find out where I'm at. We're hoping to be able to walk out the door close to the same time."
During an exclusive interview with The U.S. Sun Exotic sobbed claiming he wants to "die immediately behind bars" if he is separated from Mexican inmate Jorge Marquez.
Crying down the phone from his Texas jail, Exotic admitted: "All I pray for today is just let God end this for me."
EXOTIC DATING HISTORY
Exotic has previously had multiple partners, and he didn't shy away from discussing them.
"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," he said.
"But Jorge is a very amazing young man."
Exotic was previously married to Travis Maldonado, who died in 2017 after accidentally shooting himself.
Maldonado was 19 when he arrived at Exotic's zoo in 2013, hoping the animal work would help with his drug addiction.
The two tied the knot alongside John Finlay in a three-way wedding shortly after Travis' arrival.
Travis was 32 years younger than Exotic and died at age 23.
Just two months after his death, Exotic began dating Dillon Passage.
Exotic and Dillon married in December 2017, but parted ways in 2020 and filed for divorce the following year.
In December 2022, Exotic said: "Just waiting on the final order from the judge!"
Dillon, a Texan bartender posted that it took 'four drafts' for Exotic to finally sign the paperwork.
"It's been a battle and tens of thousands of dollars spent over the past year and a half trying to be released from my own kind of prison," Dillon wrote.
TMZ reported that Dillon is now barred from using or profiting from Joe's likeness and is under a non-disparagement order.
EXOTIC COURT APPEAL
The couple is still holding out hope Exotic's appeal will overturn his conviction, Daily Mail reported.
He insists he has new evidence including "video confessions under oath" and "700 phone recordings of federal agents."
He's also made multiple public pleas for a presidential pardon.
'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,' Exotic said.
"All I did was build a zoo and some people were very jealous. Then I was put into prison by my own country."
Exotic rose to fame through the hit Netflix series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, which spotlighted his wild lifestyle and bitter feud with animal rights activist Baskin.
In 2019, he was convicted on 17 federal charges of animal abuse and two counts of attempted murder for hire targeting Carole Baskin.
His sentence was later reduced to 21 years after a court ruled the murder counts were wrongly treated as separate.
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