Following the debut of Netflix‘s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, Jeff Lowe and his wife, Lauren Lowe, are continuing to speak out. In an interview with TMX.news, Lowe, Joe Exotic’s ex-business partner who now runs his Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, slammed his portrayal in the series, which seemed to suggest that he duped Exotic into giving up his zoo.
“They touched on about 10 percent of the story and, you know, the portrayal of us stealing the zoo from Joe was very unfair because we came here to help him, we got it back on its feet,” Lowe explained, according to PEOPLE. “We left to move away because we didn’t want to be in a zoo in Oklahoma, so the notion that we tried to steal the zoo from him is just ridiculous. But, you know, here we are in a zoo in Oklahoma.”
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“I’m an easy to get along with guy. And I’ve always been the person that when you needed help, I was the one whose going to help you. So it just really upset me to find out that the guy I was trying to help avoid the claws of this woman in Tampa that he would, once I turned my back, that he would stick so many blades into it,” he added of Exotic, who has filed a federal lawsuit against him alleging that Lowe “was the main person in this entrapment scheme to take my zoo for free.”
In the interview, Lowe also opened up about why he decided to assist the federal government in their case against his former business partner.
“We were being looked at by the feds just like Joe was, so we knew that and we had to protect ourselves,” he said. “And if it means turning over a guy to the federal authorities that killed not just five tigers — five tigers was just the tip of the iceberg. You know, he’s killed a hundred tigers here that were not beneficial to him monetarily, and you know it’s just the five that they picked, we knew exactly where they were buried and we knew exactly how they died, so it was the five easiest to prosecute him and convict him on.”
Addressing Exotic’s murder-for-hire scheme that landed him in jail, Lowe said that Exotic talked about having Carole Baskin killed “every day” and that “it was a constant.”
Still, both Lowe and Lauren remained firm on the stance that they believe Baskin isn’t completely innocent either.
“Without question,” Lowe said when asked whether he believes Baskin killed her second husband, Don Lewis, who went missing in 1997.
“We do believe she did kill her husband, but she had help, she had to have help,” Lauren added.
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is currently available for streaming on Netflix.
