‘Tiger King’ Star Joe Exotic, 61, Reveals He’s Engaged To A Fellow Prison Inmate, Jorge Marquez, 33

Joe Exotic, the star of Netflix’s hit documentary Tiger King, announced his engagement to a fellow prison inmate, Jorge Marquez

“Meet Jorge Marquez, he is 33. He is so amazing and is from Mexico,” Exotic, 61, posted on X earlier this week. 

“Now, the quest of getting married in prison and getting him asylum or we be leaving America when we both get out. Either way, I wish I would have met him long ago,” he continued.

The post featured an image of Exotic—whose real name is Joseph Allen Maldonado—with his soon-to-be husband, appearing to be a screenshot from his website. 

Exotic, who is currently being held at the Federal Medical Center, Fort Worth, claims that he submitted a marriage application to the federal prison to wed Marquez.

According to reports, Marquez is serving time for immigration-related issues. 

“We love each other very much, spend every minute of the day together,” Exotic said in a phone call from prison. “We filed our official papers for the marriage license from the prison yesterday, so we’re just waiting for approval. He has picked out Dec. 12 as the date we’re hoping to get this approved by.”

Both men are not only remaining hopeful that their application will be approved, but they are also confident that Exotic’s appeal of his entire case, including his conviction for hiring hitmen to kill animal activist Carole Baskin, will succeed. 

The Tiger King claims to have evidence to support his appeal, such as “video confessions under oath” and “700 phone recordings of federal agents.”

In 2019, Exotic was convicted and sentenced to 22 years in prison on 17 federal charges of animal abuse and two counts of attempted murder for hire in order to kill Baskin, the founder of Big Cat Rescue. 

However, after filing a motion two years later for a new trial, a U.S. appeals court ruled that the two convictions for the murder attempts were unjustly treated as separate. As a result, Exotic’s sentence was reduced by one year in January 2022. 

Exotic is optimistic that he will be released in 2025. He already has ideas on how he will live life as a free man, including sharing his tiger knowledge in an educational setting. 

His attorney, Roger Roots, claims that there is ample evidence that Exotic’s initial trial was “riddled with errors” and that if the evidence had been known at the time, “he would not have been convicted.”