Carole Baskin is an American animal rights activist and CEO of Big Cat Rescue, a non-profit animal sanctuary based near Tampa, Florida. She featured along side Joe Exotic in Netflix docuseries ‘Tiger King’. The latter, who hired two men to kill Baskin, was resentenced to 21 years in prison. 

Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as Joe Exotoc, was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years in prison. But the appeals court said the court should have calculated his advisory sentencing range between 17 1/2 years and just under 22 years in prison, rather than between just under 22 years and 27 years in prison.

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He maintains his innocence and was also was sentenced for killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife records. In November, he revealed that he has prostate cancer. 

Who is Carole Baskin?

Animal rights activist Carole Baskin drew public attention when she was shown in the 2020 Netflix documentary series ‘Tiger King’. The show puts forward her escalating feud with Oklahoma-based private zoo owner Joe Exotic. 

Baskin has also featured in ‘Dancing with the Stars’, dancing to a cover of the song “Eye of the Tiger”. She and her husband Howard also appeared in the 2021 Louis Theroux documentary ‘Shooting Joe Exotic’.

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The 60-year-old first showed interest in cats when she was nine. She did not study veterinary medicine after she learned that veterinarians euthanize animals. As per media reports, Baskin was sexually assaulted when she was 14. 

Baskin is the chief executive officer of Big Cat Rescue. She was accused online of being involved in her second husband Don Lewis’s disappearance in 1997.

She is currently married to Howard Baskin and has one child.