Joe Exotic Wrote a Book in Jail About His Abusive Childhood, Dillon Passage Claims
John V.
Posted On April 14, 2020
Joseph Maldonado-Passage, a.k.a. Joe Exotic is ready to open up about his past.
The star of the Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is serving 22 years behind bars, but that will not stop him to tell all in a memoir about his life.
Joe Exotic’s husband Dillon Passage revealed that the former Oklahoma zookeeper wrote a book while in prison that details his “tragic” and “heartbreaking” childhood.
“He wrote a book while he was in jail and told his whole childhood, everything. You’re going to understand a lot more, which I can’t speak on because it’s not my story to tell. But the book will be published at some point and a lot of things will be made sense of,” Passage, 24, told PEOPLE.
While Passage said he’s “not going to give any spoilers” about details of the book, he did reveal that Joe Exotic, 57, endured “a lot of mental, physical abuse, sexual abuse. It was not good. I’ve read all of it. It’s very heartbreaking. And he did not have a very good childhood.”
“And he’s really been through a lot. I mean, I studied psychology in college — and it makes a lot of sense about who Joe is now and it really affected him and the way he thinks and the way he deals with things. So it’s a very tragic story. It’s super traumatic to Joe. And once it comes out then everybody will see a different side of Joe,” Passage said of his husband, whom he married on Dec. 11, 2017.
Reading the book brought Passage to tears.
“It’s a really heartbreaking story and a lot of people are going to see a different side of Joe because of this,” he said. “I cried. I cried and cried and cried. It was so tragic because it’s nothing he ever spoke to me about in person. It’s very personal and it’s definitely a story that nobody thought would have happened. It’s absolutely tragic. And Joe really gets his story out there and lets people know what happened to him.”
According to Passage, Joe Exotic wanted to share his story “because he didn’t know if he was ever going to be out of jail.”
“I mean that sentence is 22 years, his whole life and reputation was absolutely destroyed. So he wanted to get his story out there and write and let people know exactly what’s happened in his childhood and the person he is and what’s affected his choices and decisions,” Passage explained.
