‘Tiger’ King Joe Exotic makes shock revelations from prison – including fascinating new development with Carole Baskin

‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic admitted he wanted rival Carol Baskin to disappear during an exclusive interview from prison while he was serving 21 years for murder on assignment.

The 55-year-old said NBC’s News Channel 8 He still hopes for a new trial, over the phone from a prison in the Florida Panhandle.

“I just wanted her to get out of my neighborhood and leave me alone,” he said of big cat activist and opponent Carole Baskin.

The zookeeper said he has prostate cancer and possibly lung cancer, and is also seeking a presidential pardon. His alleged brand, Baskin, was not interviewed, but her third and current husband, Howard Baskin, was.

Exotic accuses Baskin of murdering her second husband, Don Lewis, and feeding him to her own tigers, allegations he repeated in his videotaped phone call Tuesday.

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“I still think she’s completely crazy and that she killed her husband,” Exotic said of his tiger-loving rival.

“But Carol and I have been making money off each other for years,” he quickly added.

He was, of course, referring to the Netflix film that became a guilty pleasure for more than 30 million Americans, giving bystanders a glimpse into the unconventional life of the tiger’s owner.

It also told how multimillionaire Lewis, who co-owned a nature reserve in Florida with Baskin, disappeared without a trace in August 1997 at the age of 59.

He has never been found and there is no evidence that he was murdered, but authorities have stated that they do not believe he disappeared on his own.

Shortly after his disappearance, Baskin, then his wife and the last person to see him alive, produced his will and power of attorney, giving her full control over his $5 million estate.

Baskin has never been charged in connection with Lewis’ August 18, 1997 disappearance, but the case remains open and gained worldwide notoriety following the release of Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness in March 2020.

The series focuses on the long-standing feud between self-proclaimed animal activist Baskin and Exotic, a flamboyant polygamist and then-owner of a private petting zoo in Oklahoma.

After the backlash, Exotic was arrested for assaulting Baskin, repeatedly accusing the sanctuary owner of killing Lewis and feeding his body to one of her tigers.

After Lewis was reported missing, officers found his van abandoned at a nearby airport, where he was reportedly planning to travel to Costa Rica.

Police found no signs of a struggle or blood inside, and no evidence that Lewis ever left the country.

He was officially declared dead in 2002 and the case was closed. Baskin, the owner of Big Cat Rescue, was never considered a suspect.

She later married Howard Baskin, both of whom appeared in the popular Netflix series.

She claims the producers misled her about the content of the show because the feud between her and Exotic was presented in an intriguing and flashy manner.

Her husband, Howard, has never given an interview until News Channel 8 tracked him down on Tuesday.

He wouldn’t talk about Exotic, but did talk about his wife’s activism, which got her involved in the scam in the first place.

“It was just a horrible industry,” he said of roadside petting zoos like the one Exotic had in Oklahoma.

‘The cubs are taken away from their mothers at birth, which is agony for any mother.’

He added that he and his wife have since sold the property where they built Big Cat Rescue in Citrus Park in Florida and have moved the animals to another facility.

He also touted the Big Cat Rescue Public Safety Act, which he and his wife want to pass in Congress, which would close down all unlicensed petting zoos.

Exotic, who was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison in 2019, previously teamed up with attorney John Michael Phillips to file a motion for a new trial.

On July 15, 2021, a U.S. appeals court ruled that the convictions for the two attempted murders had been improperly treated as separate cases and reduced his sentence by one year.

On Tuesday, Exotic announced that he is not satisfied with the outcome and that he plans to appeal the entire case.

“I am going to appeal my entire case, to overturn my conviction,” he told News Channel 8 from prison.

Of the past five years, he said with a laugh, “It’s just like prison, you know.”

“It was tough, it really was.”

He said he has prostate cancer and he thinks it’s lung cancer. He never offered his friend Allen Glover $3,000 to have Baskin killed.

Prosecutors proved this at his trial and that he offered money to an undercover FBI agent to have Baskin killed.

Exotic continued to deny that it all happened and claimed that Glover made it all up to get back at him.

“At my trial they showed the undercover video and Joe never offered him anything,” Exotic said, referring to himself in the third person.

‘Joe just asked a question out of the blue, to get him out of my office.

“Well, how much do you charge? And he said $10,000 and if you watch the video that was played at my trial, Joe says, well, Joe doesn’t have $10,000.”

Exotic announced his candidacy for president from prison last year as a Democrat.