Tiger King is a 2020 American true crime docuseries about the life of zookeeper and convicted felon Joe Exotic. It was released on Netflix on March 20, 2020. The series focuses on the small but deeply interconnected society of big cat conservationists such as Carole Baskin, owner of Big Cat Rescue, and collectors such as Exotic, whom Baskin accused of abusing and exploiting wild animals.
Episode 1: Not Your Average Joe
Tiger King is a 2020 American true crime docuseries about the life of zookeeper and convicted felon Joe Exotic. It was released on Netflix on March 20, 2020. The series focuses on the small but deeply interconnected society of big cat conservationists such as Carole Baskin, owner of Big Cat Rescue, and collectors such as Exotic, whom Baskin accuses of abusing and exploiting wild animals.
James Garretson said, “The monkey people… they’re out there. But the big cat people.. They’re backstabbing pieces of shit.”
We start the doc with one of Joe’s friends and former coworker, Reinke, saying that it’s not everyday a zoo keeper goes to jail for murder for hire. Then we hear Joe Exotic on a call from the jail saying, “you know what they threatened me with? 79 years. I went to work every day prepared to die in a tiger cage. Dying doesn’t scare me. At all.”
5 year earlier, 2014, Homestead, Florida. Eric Goode, says that when he started making the documentary he had no idea it would get so ugly or take up 5 years of his life. He started it by investigating a notorious reptile dealer in South Florida. A guy had a clouded leopard in the back of his hot van on a 100 degree day, and it got him started on why people collect these rare animals.
Wynnewood, Oklahoma. We meet Joe Exotic. He said that he started his zoo 16 years ago at that point. He’s talking about the park and himself. Saying that he raised almost all of the animals himself. We meet the keepers and managers, Erik Cowie – head keeper, John Reinke – head manager, Kelci “Saff” Saffery – keeper. Saff said that Joe was in control of everything. That he liked to be in control and that from the beginning to the end of the day he recorded everything. He had a live show that he did for some of his followers. He did internet shows every night at 6pm. Rick Kirkham said that Joe was doing his show for probably 10 years before he came along and never had more than 80 people watching at a time. Reinke said that 90% of the stuff that they did was about the Animal rights people and Carole Baskin.
Oh… Carole Baskin. Carole Baskin is an animal rights activist who owns and runs Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Florida. Joe said that since 2006 they had been in this pissing match over big cats. Carole is on the screen, and she is saying that she doesn’t believe that big cats should be in captivity or in cages. Yet… her cats are in cages. She said that hers are in cages to protect them. Which is fair I guess. Then we get a little bit of background on Carole. She said that she never really had friends so she had 2 imaginary white cats. Everything in her house is cat related. It’s like “the Nanny”, Fran Fine’s momma’s house on steroids. She only wears cat prints. Head to Toe. She’s insane.
We go back to Joe and his gift shop. He shows off his wares. They have lotion, sex gel for him and her, shirts, underwear, his full length ALBUMS. 28 songs and 16 music videos
Then we meet John Findlay. He said that he first met Joe when he was a month out of high school. He was with Joe from 2003-2014. 11 years. Joe then says that at the age of 13 he knew he was gay. He says that his dad made him shake his hand in front of his mom and promise not to come to his funeral. He said that he had a neighbor that worked for Lion Country Safari and would bring home baby lions and baby monkeys to bottle feed, and that’s where his love of exotic animals started.
Howard Baskin, Carole’s husband says that in addition to Joe Exotic there’s Doc Antle in the cub breeding/petting world. We then meet Doc Antle. His full “name” is Doctor Bhagavan Antle. He runs Myrtle Beach Safari. John Reinke said that Joe wanted so badly to be like Doc Antle that he sent a few people up to his place to see how he does it and try to emulate that. He said that Doc Antle helped him learn how to market and make money at his zoo, and that people only care about what’s in front of them. So petting tiger cubs and holding them helps them care.
Doc Antle says that the price of admission and to pet a tiger is $339, but some people paid $665. Some families would go twice a day. Doc says it’s a minimum of $10,000 a year to feed each tiger. Joe Exotic says he can feed a tiger for $3,000 a year and he has 227 tigers. They are constantly trying to drop that price and by doing so they get cows from a feedlot, 5 to 7 a day, the game warden calls them anytime a cow or deer is hit on the highway. He says if he was to feed nothing but cows, he’d need 30 cows a day.
Joe says that he started going around to schools and talking to people about drugs and drunk driving after his brother was killed in a drunk driving accident, but talking wasn’t enough to keep their attention so he started bringing animals with him. Then he moved on to magic. And our cousin, John posted a statistic that every 2 out of 3 tiger owners are magicians. And that’s just a fact. JP Wilson was 12 and in the 8th grade and met Joe and showed him how to do magic. He was taking animals, putting them in a semi and bringing them to the mall to do his shows.
Howard and Carole Baskin hired Susan Bass at the beginning of 2011 to track Joe and contact the malls and get them to stop letting Joe exploit animals. Then we see some of the appearances that Joe Exotic, Doc Antle and Jack Hannah have made over the years, on David Letterman, mentioned on Stephen Colbert, and Shaq has a segment where he said that he visited the GW zoo, shouts out Joe Exotic and says that he got 2 more tigers that day.
Then we get some background on Doc Antle. He said that he grew up a professional cowboy with his whole family being professional cowboys. He also did magic, (see. That stat is correct.) then moved to Yogaville in Buckingham, West Virginia. He says that that’s where he learned to showcase them and present them without barriers without caging so that you can see them with all their power and glory. He says he made 500 movies with animals.
Joe says that from the time the cubs are 4 weeks old to 16 weeks you can profit $100,000 on one cub. Carole brings up that there are enough ignorant people who will take those cubs in and not realize what they’ve gotten themselves into. And there’s almost no government regulation of private ownership of wild animals.
Then we are reminded of the incident in Zanesville, Ohio. In that town in 2011, 50 wild animals were deliberately let loose. 1 baboon, 3 mountain lions, 17 lions, 2 wolves, 1 macaque, 18 tigers by zookeeper Terry Thompson. 48 of the 50 were killed. It woke people up about the laws in place for privately owned zoos.
Sheriff Rhodes, Wynnewood Sheriff. He says one of the things that keeps him up at night is the park. He recalls a time when Joe Exotic said that if someone tries to come in and take his animals it’s going to be a small Waco. He said he took that as a direct threat. John Reinke said that after the Waco deal they made a pact to kill each other or themselves if something went wrong. Joe says that he’s defended himself against animal right activists like PETA.
Doc Antle said that Carole and PETA are one entity. There can be only one. Joe Exotic said she’s open to the public doing day tours, night tours, kid tours, kid camps, weddings. And she definitely does open the zoo to the public. There’s a huge line for a tour that they show. They both take advantage of animals to make money. And they used social media to attack each other. He said “I feel like this bitch Carole is a terrorist in the animal rights world.”
Joe Exotic is seen in videos that he made himself that said “It’s my belief that before i’m dead, you will stop breathing.” He made a video saying that for her birthday he wanted to send her venomous snakes. Then we see Joe buying a ton of bullets, and he’s asked if he needs any explosives. And he shoots into the water and says that he got all of the animal rights activists. We then fast forward to 2019 to Grady County Jail. Joe says, “I’m in a cage. I’m not gonna be accused and go to prison and lose everything I have for things that other people did. Before this is over with, I’m gonna shut down everybody.”
episode 2: Cult of Personality
Opening of episode 2 G.W. Zoo. Oklahoma, 2013. It opens to a tiger attack. One of the employees, Saff, was attacked by a tiger and put his arm through the cage and had his arm torn off. His arm and hand worked at first, just was super painful and the doctor came in and said it would take 2 years of reconstruction to get it back to normal or they could amputate it, and he said amputate it. He said that Joe’s statement of “Our mission is to give these animals a fighting chance.” caused him to return to work immediately. Otherwise the media wins.
Saff was back in the park 5 days after the amputation, with 7 days being in the hospital. Then they talk about the power that holding a big cat, or being with an exotic animal has on you. Which I think is bat-shit crazy. But I guess on a smaller scale, people have snakes that they love and other things like that. Then Doc Antle is riding his elephant down the road and walking her into the lake to take a bath, and you can see that he’s so fucking proud of himself. Then we’re in his living room and on his couch there are 2 baby tigers. The zoo keepers bring in 2 more. He says “there’s nothing cooler, sexier and more significant to the world we live in today than a tiger. It has this primordial calligraphy that tells a message just in it’s very image. Everyone loves them and anyone who says they don’t is just insecure and broken.”
Joe was the top breeder in the country. Rick Kirkham said that breeding was his whole thing. The whole idea was to always have baby tigers coming in. He had so many animals that he sold them to little parks around the country. It was a big money maker for him. When asked how much it would cost for him to get a baby tiger he said without even blinking, $2000. But it’s illegal now. John Reinke says that it’s illegal under the Endangered Species Act, you can’t buy, sell, trade or barter anything endangered, but there’s not a damn zoo out there not buying tigers when they don’t have them.
Then we meet Tim Stark, Wildlife in Need. He’s a rough, crass, trashy man. He’s holding a monkey while he’s giving the interview. He said, “They’re endangered, DUH. What’s the first thing you should do with an endangered species? Make. More. Not eliminate the source.” He said he bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth from Joe. Carole is trying to help law enforcement take cub breeding seriously by starting a website called 911 animal abuse with info on cub breeders. One of the cub breeders is Mario Tabraue. He was one of the biggest drug dealers in Florida. Despite having a criminal past he runs a huge animal park.
Mark McCarthy worked for Mario around 1982. He said he had people come up to him often and ask him how he worked for someone like that. And he said “Because he has the coolest animals.” He said that Mario would basically smuggle animals. The way you’d smuggle drugs in it’s just the penalty for smuggling animals is way less. He said that Mario would open snakes up, stick bags of cocaine inside them, stitch them back up and not care if they lived or died. Mario said that he is giving his animals what they need. Then Mario takes us back in time when he was a cocaine dealer and smuggler. He said that he operated out of a business called Zoological Imports Unlimited.
Mario was also accused of covering up the murder, mutilation and cremation of a drug informant. He said, “His name is Larry Nash, he was an ATF informant. The guy that worked for me shot him and they panicked and dumped him on my farm. I had a crazier partner than me who said, “Let’s just cut him up and burn him.” So we burned him. You know I really didn’t do most of the stuff, but I carry the stigma of it. He said, what am i gonna say to the judge? I did not kill him, I did not use the circular saw on his neck. It was someone else. What difference does it make? I was still there.”
The judge gave him 100 years, but he won an appeal. He only served 12 years. He starts talking about how he acquired his animals at first. He said he got 3 great danes, then a cougar from a pet shop, then a man who was killed by 6 lions, he got those, then a woman had a tiger on a houseboat so he got that. He said he got a bunch from Doc Antle. He has known Doc Antle since 1982/1983. He said he came to visit him and they just became friends. They learned a lot from each other.
We meet Maria Tabraue, Mario’s wife. She talks about raising baby monkeys and having at time 7 or 8 to bottle feed. She shows a book of Doc Antle’s and one of the crew asks what he’s a doctor of and she replies that he’s a doctor of Mystical Science. She talks about Doc Antle’s wives saying that he has 3 wives. Then there’s like a poll of different people saying how many wives he has. Some say 3 some say 4 or 5 some say 9. Doc says that he has an internship program which you can join and some people decide to stay. One of his “longtime girlfriends, China, was 17 when she came to the property.
We then go to Ames, Iowa and meet Barbara Fisher. She said that she worked at the zoo from 1999 to 2007. She said when she read about it there it sounded like a utopia. People were vegetarian and used principles or yoga to train these animals. She’s asked what Bhagavan means and she said “Lord.” Doc Antle says that it means you’re a friend of god. Doc Antle is so full of himself it’s not funny. Barbara said that they lived in these awful horse stalls. Full of cockroaches. That he has this level of enlightenment and if you wanted to get close to that you should sleep with him. That he had a personality type that he preferred, virgins or close to virgins. He would become bonded to them after the first time they had sex. According to them it was their shock dee pahh. A concept where a guru will touch you and you become enlightened. So essentially it’s a shock dee pahh with penis. Lol. His touch brings them up to his level of enlightenment. Doc Antle had 3 wives and Joe had 2 husbands.
One is John, a muscled up guy who John Reinke didn’t think came across as gay, and then there was Travis, another muscled up buy that was into skateboarding. He was 19 when he went to the zoo. Joe was immediately lovestruck. They were in the back of a trailer one day and Joe asked Travis, “How straight are you?” And Travis responded with, “Pretty straight.” Joe asked if he watched porn and Travis said yes. Joe said, “When you’re watching, do you enjoy watching the guy with the little one doing her or the guy with the big one?” and Travis said the big one and Joe said “Well, then you’re not that straight then.” Joe asked John if he could bring Travis into the relationship with them and John said yes. The three were married in a ceremony.
There’s footage of Travis interviewed throughout the doc. Travis said that he liked being around Joe and John and the animals. Carole said that a lot of times people use these animals as a way to entice young people into relationships that end up kind of being labor camps. Doc Antle said that everything else in your life has to fade away, because working the zoo supersedes that. There are no holidays. Moksha Bybee, Doc’s partner said that she just works all the time. 8am to midnight. Barbara Fisher said that people at Doc Antle’s zoo only got paid $100/week.
Carole Baskin said that she doesn’t pay anyone to do animal care, because people will do that for free. They have a color coded system they do with tshirts. Red shirts are beginner keeper trainees. Get all your classes done, then you can apply for your yellow shirt. After a year, you can go to your green shirt, but you have to have been there for a minimum of 2 years. After about 5 years you can graduate to master keeper which is navy blue. Joe said, “How does she brainwash all of these volunteers into working for free and convincing everyone that she’s not abusing those animals?”
Big Cat Rescue has a huge social media following. They have like 2 million likes. She makes a ton of money just off of facebook. Then there’s a TERRIBLE video that we watch of a woman doing a music video called “Beautiful, Wild and Free.” Joe talks about going on a tour of Big Cat Rescue. He takes a video. He says that it’s worse than most people’s backyard. He said that they boast that they have over 100 big cats, but during the tour they only show 12 and he wanted to see where the other 100 cats were. So he rented a helicopter and flew over and took pictures. Joe was talking about dropping grenades over Big Cat Rescue.
Tim Stark said that he knew Doc Antle for years and that he kind of idolized him. Not just because of the animals and stuff he had, the way he had them women trained. For his own damn, y’know harem and shit. He said the first thing he ever told him was, “I don’t need you to teach me a damn thing about animals. How the fuck you got these women trained?” Barbara said that Doc Antle is good at getting what he wants out of the women and the animals. He chose all the women’s outfits, they were supposed to be sexy. She said that China came after her, and her name was Michelle, Moksha was named Meredith, Rajnee was Renee and Barbara had her name legally changed to Bala for many years. He was grooming these women. He controlled every aspect of their lives. What they were allowed to do, eat, they were pushing her to get implants. She said that she doesn’t remember agreeing to that, the appointments were just made. She said it was nice because she got to sleep for a few days after working so much.
The director tells Doc Antle, “It’s not every day people have jobs where there not allowed to take time off for things,” and Doc Antle interrupts him and says, “You’re leading me down a road where people are just gonna say you have to join a fucking cult to be a tiger trainer. Been here 30 plus years, I’ve heard it all.” And Barbara says, “you’re free to leave. That’s what they say in all cults though. No one is making you stay. They’re being held by a thousand social ties and they’re afraid of losing it all. And they don’t know where they will go if they leave.” Joe says “He’s got his little cult, and I’ve got mine.”
Joe liked to hire people who were at the end of their rope. People who were ex-criminals. He paid his staff $120 a week for 12 hour work days. The employees would eat off the meat truck that they had come in with expired meat from Walmart to feed the animals, and the employees would go through it first. So they would carry bags of expired meat and food back to their mobile homes because that’s all they had. There were 4 mobile homes on the property. The washing machines didn’t work, the water didn’t run in the bathroom, there was one AC unit for the whole thing, and that was the good mobile home.
Barbara said that she was really looking for someone to tell her what to do. Doc said that men are pigs and women are sheep. She said what she did basically while she was there was raise tiger cubs. At first there were only a couple of litters a year for a certain time. By the time she left there were always litters around. She talked about one tiger she was super bonded with named Lockshma, and she said that he was such a sweetheart and totally trusted her. When asked what happened to him she said that they just knew not to really ask where they went, that Doc Antle said he knew what happened to them and where they were.
Tim Stark said that one of the things that Doc Antle told Joe was you can’t keep them all. It’s a bad business decision. Once they get out of the stage that you can handle them they become a bill. John Reinke said that there’s been a rumor that Doc Antle euthanizes his cubs when he’s done with them. Carole said that they’ve had whistleblowers that have come to her and said that they heard a gunshot at night and the next day there’s no big cat.
Mark McCarthy said that Carole thinks of herself as the Cleopatra of big cats, and she’s not that great. That she goes after people with her millions that she inherited from her husband who went missing. That he just vanished. Mario said that in his opinion Carole Baskin is full of shit. That she’s got a missing husband that’s supposedly buried on her property. That’s a real true story. Joe said that her husband is missing, and that they believe that she fed him to the tigers. There’s a news story on it and it, says that Carole’s husband’s children said that they suspect that she fed him to the tigers as well. And that’s the end of episode 2.
