Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness

Where do you want to start?

I guess at the beginning somewhere.

It was a crazy beginning.

Mmm.

- Crazy. - What was the beginning?

Animal people are nuts, man.

And I might be one of them people.

I don't know,

but they're all half-out there, man. They're crazy.

You know, the monkey people are a little bit different.

Okay, good boy! Good boy!

You know, they're kinda strange,

but the big cat people are back-stabbing...

pieces of shit.

A decades-long feud comes to a bizarre end...

Tiger King stands accused of trying to have a woman killed.

You know, there's not every day that a zookeeper went to prison

for murder-for-hire.

So, I'm sure...

I'm sure y'all got a story to tell.

This is a prepaid call from...

Joe Exotic.

...an inmate at the Grady County Jail.

Do you know what they threatened me with?

Seventy-nine years.

I went to work every day prepared to die in a tiger cage.

Dying doesn't scare me.

At all.

Here is a fact that may make you stop for a second.

There are more captive tigers in the US today

than there are in the wild throughout the world.

Come here, you sexy beast!

Hi, little man.

Look at that big smile. There you go. Show them claws.

You would not believe how many sheriffs told me,

"Oh yeah, just down the street,

there's a guy that has a lion,"

or, "A guy down there that has a tiger."

They just feel very strongly that these are mine

and nobody's gonna take 'em from me.

I'll tell you, it's real simple.

Don't own big, dangerous, exotic animals 'cause it's a time bomb.

Everybody has a story.

Everybody that's owned one, it's always been a bad, bad ending.

I've been doing this 20 years. Never even been bit.

It's okay.

Our mission is to ban the private possession

of these magnificent animals.

She wanted to shut down the zoo.

And he wanted her gone.

The so-called Tiger King...

He is on trial, accused in a murder-for-hire plot.

Joe Exotic is accused of paying a person

to murder Carole Baskin.

Long before he was ever indicted in these charges,

Joe Exotic was someone that makes good TV, makes good news.

Even if it's a train wreck, you can't help but look.

He's a completely insane, gay, gun-toting, drug-addict fanatic.

He wasn't real.

He was like a mythical character,

living out in the middle of Bumfuck, Oklahoma.

The well-known zoo owner was taken into custody.

He could be looking at nearly 80 years in prison.

When I leave this park, I wear a bulletproof vest.

That is how bad this has gotten.

There are so many strange twists in that story.

You would have to write books,

volumes of the stuff that went wrong there.

Let me show and tell the whole thing.

Because then you'll get it.

Then you'll say, "Jesus fucking Christ! Why are you in jail?"

Okay, this is good. All right.

And how old is she?

She's 23 years old.

When I started this project,

I had no idea it would consume five years of my life

It all began when I was investigating

a notorious reptile dealer in South Florida.

See how the snake stresses? That's when the venom shoots out.

That's enough to kill everybody in this room three, four times over.

A guy showed up one day wanting to buy a venomous snake.

We haven't even offered them for sale yet. These are those real young ones, you know.

When he was leaving, he said,

"Check out what I just bought."

In the back of this guy's van was a snow leopard.

Oh, shit!

It was 100 degrees outside.

Do they need to be refrigerated? You know, 'cause they...

Not if they're acclimated in Florida,

if they're born and raised here.

Are these as rare as the clouded leopard?

These are rarer than the clouded leopard.

It just blew my mind.

What is a snow leopard doing in the back of this guy's hot van?

That set me on this journey to really understand what is going on

with people keeping big cats in this country.

Oh, little girl.

- Maybe take it off? - Oh, you don't want me to take it off.

I like it off.

Your whole audience will say, "Oh my god, that guy has a mullet!"

No, I like it. I like it!

Jamotti! Jamotti, my sexy tiger!

You raised these from babies?

These were grown up in my house, yup.

We've got, like, eight of 'em in there now.

People, every day, they're like...

"You must have the most incredible life, to live with 187 big cats."

I started building this in 1999.

Believe it or not, this was a completely empty field.

In over 16 years, it's grown into this.

My name is Joe Exotic

and this is Thunder and Lightning!

The only difference between my pet and your pet is

mine have three-inch teeth, and they weigh 400 pounds.

Does it feel good to stand on my stage

with 500-pound tigers and everybody envy you?

Absolutely. Okay?

I would be the biggest liar if I said no.

Now, stop.

That's a brand-new shirt, now quit it!

Do you have a sense of bonding with them, or do you have a... Ooh.

Is there, like an emotional connection between you and these cats?

There is a very emotional connection between me and these cats. Extreme.

That's his deal right now.

I mean, his whole deal is about just wanting...

Petted and loved on, you know?

- They're so affectionate and fond... - Are these trying to mate?

Well, they're two boys.

- Oh, they're two boys. - We have a very open relationship here.

We do not discriminate here.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

I'd like to welcome you

to the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park.

I can assure you're going to get closer to tigers and lions here

than you would anywhere in the world. Matter of fact, you're gonna get so close

I can almost promise you some of you will be urinated on.

If that happens, we have t-shirts in the gift shop

that says, "I got peed on by a tiger."

All right, everybody, what I need you guys to do

is walk down the fence line here.

Follow Katrina. We're gonna introduce you to your first dangerous animal.

I'm kind of embarrassed to say it, but when I got here,

I was on kind of the end of my ropes.

and I was like, "Man! I never done this shit before!

What the fuck? Let's go!"

And now look at me! I'm doing tiger shows!

I've been the manager at the G.W. Zoo for 14 years now.

Most of the staff was unique.

That's what I thought was really cool about the zoo.

And then there's Joe.

Do the dance!

I love you so much!

The people who worked for Joe were misfits,

and they were a family.

It was a place where all these misfits could come together

and be with the King of Misfits, who reigned over them.

Joe is an entertainer by nature.

No. Come on.

He was pretty much the star of his own show.

I'm going to try and get some good shots.

So make sure ya'll get me some promo pictures in there.

Want me to go up?

No, I want you up front with a still camera.

Meeting him in person definitely solidified that.

For Joe, the zoo was his stage.

It was the one place he could shine.

He could control every aspect of it.

From the start of the day to the end of the day, he filmed everything.

Come here, love me! Come here, love me!

He had this live TV show that he would do

for a number of his followers.

Where does your TV show air?

On the internet. Worldwide. Every night at six o'clock.

Pretty cool. Come on in.

Joe had been doing these internet broadcasts,

either on a regular basis or periodically,

for probably a decade or longer before I got there.

Didn't Johnny Carson used to smoke on the set of the Tonight Show?

Yeah, years ago!

He never had more than 80 people watching the thing live.

See ya Monday night, right here!

When I walked in, I had all this experience.

I had a national reputation.

If you watch us often, you know one of our reporters, Rick Kirkham, is nuts.

With a mere touch of a flame, it was instant Kirkham kabob.

Hey, Mike, get the charcoal!

You know, I've done a lot of shit in my life,

but I've never experienced anything like Joe Exotic.

He knew that I could make him famous.

I took it to a new level

because I made it look like a real TV show.

We did a show every night

and I want to say nine out of ten shows

was about the animal rights people and Carole down in Florida.

One thing you're forgetting out there, you animal rights people,

and especially Carole Baskin...

And that's Carole Baskin down at Big Cat Rescue.

It was all part of Carole Baskin's plan when...

...paid it to Carole Baskin.

Carole Baskin is so influential.