The 'Tiger King' star is currently in jail for a murder-for-hire plot against Baskin.
Joe Exotic is calling for an end to his feud with Carole Baskin. In a jailhouse interview with ABC News, the Tiger King star, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, spoke out against his longtime rival.
"I am in prison and she can't leave me alone," Maldonado-Passage told Juju Chang, referencing his 21-year sentence for the 2017 murder-for-hire plot to kill Baskin. "... Carole, go find another reason to live other than Joe Exotic. Because enough is enough."
As for the reason he's in jail, Maldonado-Passage denied that he paid two people, including an undercover FBI agent, $3,000 to travel from Oklahoma to Florida to kill Baskin. He additionally denied that he abused animals in his care.
"Absolutely not," he said, denying his participation in the murder-for-hire plot. "How can you even expect somebody to go from Oklahoma to Florida to scope her out, however long that would take, and back on $3,000? That is absurd."
Maldonado-Passage also spoke about his health, after revealing in November that he'd been diagnosed with an "aggressive" prostate cancer, and suffering from COVID-19 earlier this month,
"I'm losing weight real bad and the sores in my mouth are unbearable to live with all the time. In the three and a half years I've been in custody, I've been taken to the hospital 43 times," he said. "I have little to no immune system and then they have to give me blood infusions every four weeks. I don't see me walking out of here alive."
The conditions in jail, he claimed, are not helping matters.
"You have no windows. It's a concrete room with no enrichment and no TV, no radio, no nothing," Maldonado-Passage said. "You cannot in America put a monkey in a cage, according to the Animal Welfare Act, and treat them like this."
Maldonado-Passage expressed similar concerns when ET spoke to him in an April 2021 jailhouse interview.
"I have... a common variable immune disease, which means I have no immune system, and I have to get blood infusions every three to four weeks, and I've only been getting them every three months," he claimed. "I was weighed again last week and I lost another 10 pounds, last week alone."
"I have hemoglobin anemia, which is another blood disease," he added. "They used to take me downtown to the cancer center for treatment but we stopped doing that. I refused treatment for tuberculosis last week, I'm dealing with another disease, my mouth is full of ulcers. I cannot eat. I look bad."
Despite his conviction, Maldonado-Passage still has fans on his side. He told ABC News that he believes that is the case "because I was unapologetic, I stood up for what I believed in, and because I'm not ashamed of who I am."
"Keep believing in me," he told his supporters. "I'm not going to let you down. I love each and every one of you people."
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