In a story that feels like an elaborate April Fool’s joke dreamt up by a viral news algorithm, Joe Exotic — real name Joseph Maldonado-Passage — has been placed in coronavirus quarantine in prison after inmates at a jail he had been held at tested positive for the virus, according to his husband Dillon Passage.
Passage, 24, revealed the news on Wednesday in an interview with Andy Cohen on SiriusXM, but he did not say whether Exotic himself tested positive for COVID-19, simply saying that the former big cat breeder is currently in isolation because “the previous jail he was at, there were cases.” NBC News reports that Exotic is currently at FMC Fort Worth, a federal medical center in Texas operated by the Bureau of Prisons.
The Tiger King star is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence for a murder-for-hire scheme and various wildlife law violations. Passage also told Cohen that he “has no intention of leaving” his husband, adding “I do love Joe.” He also revealed in the interview that while Exotic has not been able to watch the popular Netflix docuseries profiling him while locked up, he’s “ecstatic” about the response it’s been getting, and he “was getting hundreds and hundreds of emails to his jail mail.”
There’s no word on how long Exotic is expected to remain in quarantine.
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