Joe Exotic has begged his archenemy Carole Baskin to "leave me alone".
Joe Exotic sends a message to Carole Baskin from behind bars
The infamous 58-year-old former zookeeper shot to global fame alongside his rival in Netflix documentary series 'Tiger King' which told the story of their feud and ended with Joe being found guilty of a murder-for-hire plot against the Big Cat Rescue founder and violations of animal welfare law.
Speaking in his first interview since being resentenced to 21 years in prison on the murder-for-hire conviction, Joe has now told Carole - who went on to feature in a second series of 'Tiger King' and compete on 'Dancing with the Stars' - to "find another reason to live".
Talking to 'Nightline', he said: "What would I say [to Carole]? I am in prison and she can’t leave me alone. So what would I like to say? Carole, go find another reason to live other than Joe Exotic. Because enough is enough!"
Joe - real name Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage - went on to complain that the whole world is profiteering off his name and his now closed Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, known as the G.W. Zoo.
He added: "Get on the internet and Google ‘Joe Exotic’ and hit the shop button and look. Everybody in the world is making money off of me but me!"
The Tiger King then went on to reveal that since being incarcerated he has been hospitalised a total of 43 times and believes he will die in prison from cancer.
He shared: "I’m losing weight real bad and the sores in my mouth are unbearable to live with all the time. But you know, in the three-and-a-half years that I’ve been in custody, I’ve been taken to the hospital 43 times. I have little to no immune system and then they have to give me blood infusions every four weeks. Juju, I don’t see me walking out of here alive."
Talking about his experience of prison, Joe said inmates are treated much worse than animals.
He said: “You have no windows. It’s just a concrete room with no enrichment. No TV, no radio, no nothing. You cannot in America put a monkey in a cage, according to the Animal Welfare Act, and treat them like this."