There’s no sympathy in this jungle.
Joe Exotic said he was “not shocked” to learn fellow “Tiger King” star and zookeeper Erik Cowie had died of unknown causes in Brooklyn at 53 Tuesday.
Exotic, 58, told the Daily Mail that Cowie suffered from chronic alcohol abuse and had sought treatment and also detailed his catty falling out after Cowie testified against Exotic.
“Erik Cowie got what he deserved,” Exotic said of his former right-hand man at Oklahoma’s Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park.
“Never wish evil upon anyone else,” Exotic added. “God is watching.”
Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, also said he’s not surprised that Cowie died, either.
“So am I shocked he is gone? No, not a bit. I put him through rehab in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and still [gave] him a home and a job,” Exotic said, adding that the last time they spoke Cowie had been fired for being drunk and not showing up to a job Exotic arranged for him.
“The next time I saw him was at my trial when he was [sitting] up there lying his ass off because he needed to kiss Jeff’s ass to stay at my zoo and to be the big cat hero on Netflix,” he added.
Their relationship hit a hairball when Exotic learned that Cowie laughed off the likelihood of the Tiger King’s life sentence after Jeff Lowe took over the zoo in a special episode of the documentary.
“Twenty-two years doing federal time – that guy’s gonna die in there. Good riddance,” Cowie said in 2020 about Exotic’s sentence for allegedly hiring hitmen to kill Carole Baskin, euthanize tigers and falsifying zoo documents.
“The last words he spoke about me backfired,” Exotic told the Mail.
Exotic also believes Cowie’s death will make his own criminal case “stronger” as he remains jailed in Fort Worth, Texas.
“I can prove Erik perjured himself … The government, Carole Baskin and a few others should be ashamed that they put this all in motion to fabricate this whole thing to steal my zoo and shut me up,” Exotic said, adding that “Erik’s blood” is on the agents who he, himself was imprisoned by.
“The truth is coming. The world will hate the America[n] Department of Justice.”
