Joe Exotic Found Guilty Of All Charges In Murder-For-Hire Trial

A federal jury has reached a verdict in the murder-for-hire case against Joe Exotic.

Tuesday, April 2nd 2019, 2:40 pm

By: News 9

Joe Exotic Found Guilty Of All Charges In Murder-For-Hire Trial

A federal jury has reached a verdict in the murder-for-hire case against Joe Exotic.

Joe Maldonado-Passage, aka Joe Exotic, was found guilty of all charges by a federal jury Tuesday.

Joe Exotic formerly ran an exotic animal zoo in Wynnewood and was accused of trying to hire at least two people to kill a woman in Florida.

Carole Baskin owns Big Cat Animal Rescue in Florida, and according to prosecutors is the focus of a decade-long feud with Joe Exotic.

Baskin's feud with Joe Exotic began over her adament opposition to cub petting, and she later won a $1 million judgement against Joe Exotic after he changed his name to Big Cat Rescue, the same as Baskin's organization.

Joe Exotic posted several videos where he threatened violence against Baskin.

More: The Woman Allegedly Wanted Dead Takes Stand In Joe Exotic Trial

An FBI agent testified last week and said those online threats were not serious enough for them to take action. But when they received information about a murder-for-hire plot, they started investigating.

The FBI agent said through recorded conversations, they gained details of the plot where Joe Exotic planned to sell tiger cubs to pay another man to travel by bus to Florida to kill Baskin.

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