By Caitlyn Somers February 2, 2024
Joe Exotic wants Kim Kardashian to get him out of prison so badly that he’s resorted to commenting on her family members’ social media accounts.
After Kourtney Kardashian shared a picture of her and baby son Rocky on Sunday, January 28, the Tiger King star took to the comments section to beg Kourtney to ask Kim to help him out.
“Awwww cute, also please have your sister help me get out of this hell hole,” wrote Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage.
The Netflix personality, 60, was previously convicted on 17 federal charges of animal abuse and two counts of attempted murder-for-hire after he allegedly hired someone to kill Big Cat Rescue founder Carole Baskin. Maldonado-Passage was originally sentenced to 22 years in prison in January 2020, but a federal judge resentenced him to 21 years in January 2022.
This isn’t the first time Maldonado-Passage has tried to get help from Kim, who is a criminal justice reform activist. In December 2020, Maldonado-Passage wrote a letter to the Skims cofounder, 43, asking her for help in getting a presidential pardon from former President Donald Trump.
I know you have never met me and may never want to, however I do believe that you hold the values of our justice system dear to your heart,” he wrote at the time. “I am writing you this letter not as Joe Exotic but as the person Joseph Maldonado-Passage, asking you to please help me by just taking 10 minutes out of your life and placing a call to President Trump to look at my 257 page pardon it’s all the evidence I’m innocent and ask him to sign my pardon so I can return home to [my husband] Dillon [Passage] and my father.”
Maldonado-Passage went on to say that he lost “57 years of his work” and that his “mother has died and [his] dad is dying.”
“Everyone is so busy making movies, getting interviews, selling stuff and dressing up like me that everyone forgot I’m a real live person in prison and kept from even telling my own story for something I didn’t do,” he continued, advising Kim that “no one even has to know you did it.”
Maldonado-Passage has been through a lot in prison, including a cancer diagnosis in November 2021.
“Doctors called me in today to break the news that my prostate biopsy came back with aggressive cancer,” he tweeted at the time, adding that his longtime rival Baskin, 62, “will have her own party” over the news.
Amid his cancer diagnosis, the Tiger King star filed for divorce from Passage in March 2022 after four years of marriage.
One month later, Entertainment Tonight reported that Maldonado-Passage had another man in his life named John Graham.
“The prison romance is the reason Exotic recently filed divorce docs from jail,” his attorney told the outlet in April 2022.