Joe Exotic’s old playground will no longer be a zoo.
Its longtime enemy, Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue, has sold the Oklahoma property and one of the provisions is that the land cannot be used as a zoo for 100 years, TMZ reported Saturday.
Big Cat Rescue received control over the Wynnewood Animal Park by a judge in 2020, which was part of the deal in its long-running trademark lawsuit against the flamboyant old zoo keeper, the real name of the which is Joseph Maldonado-Passage.
The lawsuit was filed in 2011, long before “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” became Netflix’s No. 1 show and propelled both Maldonado-Passage and Baskin to a strange stardom.
Baskin registered the Big Cat Rescue trademark in 2005. Maldonado-Passage used the similar name Big Cat Rescue Entertainment and allegedly boasted on social media of using it on purpose to “ruin” Baskin and his non-profit company.
Francisco and Nelly Vázquez bought Maldonado-Passage’s exotic animal park Greater Wynnewood for $ 140,000 in June, according to the TMZ report.
The last remaining animals at the zoo, which once housed up to 1,400 large cats, were handed over to the Justice Department earlier this month.
Last year, Maldonado-Passage was sentenced to 22 years in federal confinement following his conviction on charges of plotting a murder for hire to end Baskin. Prosecutors said she paid a man $ 3,000 in 2017 to go to Florida to kill Baskin, who has been accused of murdering her ex-husband Don Lewis in 1997. He has denied the allegations.
Maldonado-Passage was also convicted of several wildlife violations related to the slaughter of five tigers, the sale of tiger cubs and forgery of records.
He is currently battling cancer at a medical prison in Fort Worth, Texas.
Last month, a federal appeals court ruled that the saliva lover should receive a shorter prison sentence, ruling that a trial court dealt with these two sentences separately to calculate his punishment. .
Maldonado-Passage and his supporters previously asked former President Trump to pardon him before he left office, even going so far as to hire a limousine and a hair and closet team on Jan. 20.
He is currently battling cancer behind bars.