TALE THAT’S A
after, he was approaching a bridge in his police car when he veered into a concrete barrier. He was severely injured and moved with his older brother Garold to West Palm Beach, Florida, for therapy.
There, he married his first husband, Brian Rhyne, in an unofficial ceremony in 1986 and bought a pet shop with Garold, selling reptiles, birds and fish, and later armadillos and opossums.
Disaster struck in 1996 when Garold died after being hit by a drunk driver.
Exotic sold the pet shop and with the help of £100,000 he had won in a lawsuit over Garold’s death, bought 16 acres of land an hour’s drive from Oklahoma City.
He opened the sanctuary and it was not long before people started dropping off animals they no longer wanted, including his first tigers, Tess and Tickles. In 2000, his husband Brian died of an infection. Within a year, he was remarried to 24-year-old JC Hartpence, but fell in love with a 19-year-old he hired, John Finlay.
In 2003, when he wanted to break up with JC, he left a photo of his largest tiger, Goliath, baring his teeth over meat along with the words, “JC’s remains”.
Attached was the note: “If you don’t get your sh** together, this is gonna be your reality.”
He built a name for himself as a “gay, gun-toting cowboy with a mullet” and fans saw him as an eccentric animal rescuer. As his zoo grew to hold more than 1000 animals, with annual donations of more than £400,000, his Joe Exotic TV channel was getting hundreds of thousands of hits online.
He sold branded skin-care products, booze and condoms, and opened a bar and pizza joint.
Exotic also appeared on a Louis Theroux show, America’s Most Dangerous Pets in 2011.
It was at the height of his success when animal rights activist Baskin, owner of the Big Cat Rescue sanctuary in Tampa, began to criticise his conservation credentials. She accused him of mistreating his animals and overbreeding and even inbreeding tigers for money. When she found out he was taking animals on tours of shopping malls, she mobilised her supporters to write to the malls.
He then began using the Big Cat Rescue name and logo to advertise his animal show, and in January 2011 Baskin sued him in federal court.
DONALD TRUMP JR ON EXOTIC’S 22-YR JAIL TERM