Joe Exotic From 'Tiger King' Is Reportedly Still Married To His Fifth Husband
Netflix's Tiger King star Joe Exotic has had five husbands.
Two of his husbands, Brian Rhyne and J.C. Hartpence were not shown in the series.
Joe also practiced polygamy and was married to John Finlay and Travis Maldonado at the same time.
Netflix released a bunch of new binge-able content in March, and everyone is oh-so grateful. The streaming platform's latest wild true crime docuseries, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, became an instant hit and nobody is surprised. It's a seven-part series covering the life of Joe Exotic, a zookeeper and roadshow entertainer who was convicted on a murder-for-hire charge against his rival and self-proclaimed animal activist Carole Baskin. Now, Joe's serving 22 years behind bars. (You can't make this stuff up!)
Joe was also a polygamist who lived with his (very young) husbands at the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma, which he opened in 1999. Here's everything you need to know about all four of Joe Exotic's husbands.
Brian Rhyne was Joe's first husband.
Joe met Brian in the late 1980s, while working as a security guard at a gay cowboy bar in Texas called the Round-up Saloon, according to a New York Magazine profile. Brian was 19 years old at the time, but he soon moved into Joe's trailer, where they shared several poodles. Soon, they "grew to resemble each other, with mullets and horseshoe mustaches and dressed in jeans and boots," the profile says. "On Saturdays, they would snort pink-tinged meth and go out to the bars."
Joe opened the zoo with Brian, who died of complications from HIV in 2001.
J.C. Hartpence helped Joe start his traveling show and became his second husband.
Within a year of Brian's death, Joe met a 24-year-old events producer named Jeffrey Charles "J.C." Hartpence. Using Hartpence's experience in the events industry, they developed Joe Exotic's traveling tiger/magic show, where he would let kids pet tiger cubs. They performed at malls and state fairs in Texas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. Within a few years, their relationship took a dark turn, according to Texas Monthly. (The publication doesn't refer to Hartpence as a husband, but a "life partner." New York Magazine, however, calls him a husband.)
Hartpence reportedly wanted the zoo to become a rehabilitation center for big game, while Joe continued breeding his cats. In 2003, Joe reportedly threatened Hartpence with a photograph of their tiger, Goliath holding a piece of meat labeled "J.C.'s remains," along with a note reading, "If you don’t get your shit together, this is gonna be your reality," per Texas Monthly.
Hartpence later held two guns to Joe's head while he was asleep and told him he was leaving the zoo. After talking him down, Joe called the police, and Hartpence was arrested. Hartpence is now serving life in prison for a murder unrelated to the Joe Exotic saga, The Wichita Eagle reported. He is also a convicted pedophile, according to Digital Spy.
John Finlay became Joe Exotic's third husband.
In 2003, Joe hired 19-year-old John Finlay to help run his zoo and road show. Finlay even got a tattoo reading, "PRIVATELY OWNED BY JOE EXOTIC," just below the belt. Joe paid for it, and the now covered-up ink makes a cameo in Tiger King.
By early 2014, Joe Exotic marries Finlay and Travis Michael Maldonado in a three-way ceremony. Less than a year after their unconventional ceremony, Finlay wanted out of the relationship. Per Texas Monthly's deep dive into Joe's life, Finlay believed Joe was becoming domineering, controlling, and obsessive. He attacked Joe in a parking lot, and was charged with battery.
Finlay later married a woman and had a child, according to NY Mag. He also has a new set of teeth, according to a recent Facebook post on his "The Truth About John Finlay" fan page. "Yes I have my teeth fixed," he wrote, alongside a photo of himself with perfect-looking teeth. "The producers of the Netflix series had video and pictures of this, but chose not to show it."
Finlay also said he started his Facebook page to try to change the narrative about how his polygamist marriage to Joe and Travis Maldonado was portrayed.
Travis Michael Maldonado started a job the G.W. Zoo and became Joe's fourth husband.
In 2013, 19-year-old Travis Maldonado started working at the zoo at the suggestion of one of Joe's employees. He, Finlay, and Joe Exotic were married in a three-way ceremony that took place in a dance hall across the street from the zoo, with several of the animals as participants.
Joe and Maldonado were together until Maldonado's accidental suicide. Maldonado passed away in 2017 after accidentally shooting himself at the zoo's gift shop. According to witnesses, he took the magazine out of his Ruger pistol to prove a point about how it wouldn't fire without the magazine. However, there was a bullet in the chamber, which killed him. At the time, Joe was running for Oklahoma governor and held a press conference at the park the next day, per the Oklahoman.
Joe shared an Instagram post in honor of the one-year anniversary of Maldanado's passing. (That post has recently been archived, according to Dillon Passage's comments to a fan on the social media platform.)
Dillon Passage is Joe's fifth husband—and they're reportedly still married.
After Maldonado died, Joe told his associates to look for new prospects for him on Grindr and Tinder, and soon found Dillon Passage. They married two months after Travis's death, and when Dillon was 22, they moved to Gulf Breeze, Florida, where Joe found work washing dishes at a pirate-themed seafood restaurant. (Dillon appears to stills live in Florida, according to his Instagram.)
Because Joe was paranoid about being followed, he posted a series of Instagram posts from "California," "Belize," and "Mexico," which were actually posted from Florida.
A post shared by Dillon Passage ♌️ (@dillert_lclm) on Apr 1, 2020 at 4:12pm PDT
The couple are reportedly still married, according to an article in the Daily Beast. Dillon has also answered some fan comments related to Joe's whereabouts and the docuseries on his recent Instagram posts.
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