WASHINGTON: Jailed former private zoo owner Joe Exotic, who rose to fame as the star of the series "Tiger King", on Friday failed to persuade a US judge to release him and charge him with attempted murder. Got a new sentence of 21 years.
Alien, whose real name is Joe Maldonado-Passage, was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years in prison for attempting to kill a rival animal shelter owner, Carole Baskin.
Due to a procedural error, a federal court ordered that the sentence be commuted. Local media reported Friday that the 58-year-old impresario sought a "second chance" during a hearing in Oklahoma City to decide his new sentence.
Exotic, suffering from prostate cancer, pleaded, "Please don't let me die in prison waiting for my freedom."
Baskin urged the judge to leave him behind bars, saying he still feared for his life.
According to court documents, the judge ultimately upheld the sentence of 21 years in prison.
The journey of the flamboyant zookeeper, who made a small fortune in 1999 from his Oklahoma big-cat facility that opened before losing everything in a series of complicated plans, left millions of Americans isolated in their homes when The Netflix series debuted. of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020.
The series centered on Exotic's conflict with Baskin, an animal rights activist who accused him of abusing his animals, and vowed to force him to close his zoo.
Exotic offered two operatives thousands of dollars to kill Baskin, but one of them was an undercover FBI agent trying to trap him.
A new series, "Tiger King 2", was released on the streaming platform in November and attracted a large number of viewers.