BUTNER, NC. (KFOR) — Joseph Maldonado-Passage, aka Joe Exotic, says he will marry a former fellow inmate pending his divorce from current husband, Dillon Passage.
TMZ reported in March that the pair had filed for divorce, but fans have been aware of their love troubles for quite some time after Maldonado-Passage announced their plan for divorce a year earlier.
In July 2021, Maldonado-Passage announced plans for a “Bachelor King” contest to search for a new husband.
This month, Maldonado-Passage announced his engagement to John Robert Graham, a former fellow inmate Exotic met in federal prison.
“We were together over one year in prison, and he is home now with our son,” said Maldonado-Passage on his social media.
According to court documents, Graham was in prison for burglary of a controlled substance and possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to more than 12 years in 2012 but was released early in March 2022.
“John is such an amazing man, I can’t wait to get home and share our lives together and with our son,” said Maldonado-Passage in another post.
In 2018, Maldonado-Passage, the former owner of the Greater Wynnewood Animal Park, was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of murder-for-hire for trying to have activist Carole Baskin killed.
He was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years in prison. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver determined the trial court wrongly treated two murder-for-hire convictions separately in calculating his prison term.
Maldonado-Passage was resentenced to 21 years in federal prison in January 2022 for his 2020 conviction on 19 counts, including murder for hire.
In November 2021, Maldonado-Passage announced his “aggressive” diagnosis of prostate cancer and was transferred from Ft. Worth Federal Medical Center to the Butner Federal Medical Center.
Now, he says he has 25 more radiation treatments at the Butner medical center to treat his recent diagnosis.