Daily Star

ND A DOUBLE PLOT TO MURDER HIS RIVAL, IT’S...

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uate veterinary care animals. mal rights group also published a in which it alleged ig cats were being eated, with one tiger struck with the f a rifle by one of mployees. e activist, Carole n, was quoted in a paper about one of ons being crippled to inbreeding. “No mate animal sanctuwoul­d allow that to en,” she said. was the start of a rivalry between f and Joe. ole owned her own al sanctuary – Big

Cat Rescue, which based in Florida. Though on the face of it their businesses seemed similar, Carole was focused on the conservati­on of tigers and lions and she was determined to bring Joe down.

Hit

was

In 2011, she took him to court, winning an £850,000 lawsuit after accusing him of using similar trademarks to her own company. Financial difficulti­es meant Joe had to eventually give up the zoo in June 2018. Thinking

Carole was the cause of all of his problems, he had long been trying to follow through on a threat he’d made in a video. In July 2016, he put out a hit on her, but it didn’t happen.

Then he paid another contract killer £2,500 to go from Oklahoma to Florida to kill her at her sanctuary, promising the hitman “thousands more” once the deed was done.

Unfortunat­ely for Joe, the original hitman’s middle man had put him in touch with an FBI agent, and he was arrested in 2018.

In January this year, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison for murder-for-hire charges, as well as 17 charges for abusing animals, including killing the five tigers, and animal traffickin­g.

● Tiger King:

And Madness

Netflix today.

Murder, Mayhem is released on

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 ??  ?? DOCUMENTAR­Y: Louis Theroux with Joseph Maldonado-passage
DOCUMENTAR­Y: Louis Theroux with Joseph Maldonado-passage
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