BUTNER, N.C. — Joe Exotic, suffering from an aggressive form of prostate cancer, was transferred last week to a medical facility in North Carolina, his attorney said.
The star of the Netflix series “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness,” whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was flown from a federal medical facility in Fort Worth, Texas, to a similar facility in Butner, North Carolina, his attorney, John Phillips, said in a statement.
Maldonado-Passage was transferred to the North Carolina facility earlier this week, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported. Phillips told The Associated Press that Maldonado-Passage had originally been scheduled to transfer later this month.
“The last few years has taken everything from Joe Exotic,” Phillips said in the release. “His property, his freedom, his husband sold his clothes, his parents have passed away and now he faces cancer. Please keep Joe in your thoughts and prayers.”
According to Phillips, Maldonado-Passage told him that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and was getting medical treatment and tests “for a host of issues.” Phillips said prison medical care “isn’t the best and justice is slow.”
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Maldonado-Passage is in prison for a murder-for-hire plot. In 2019, a federal jury found him guilty on two counts of hiring someone to murder Carole Baskin, an animal rights activist, the News & Observer reported. He was also found guilty on multiple counts of falsifying wildlife records and violating the Endangered Species Act.
He was sentenced to 22 years in prison in January 2020, according to the AP. A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver found that the trial court wrongly treated those two convictions separately in calculating Maldonado-Passage’s prison term under sentencing guidelines, the AP reported.
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Season 2 of “Tiger King” premiered Wednesday on Netflix, the News & Observer reported.