Tiger King's Jeff Lowe – the story only gets more disturbing
To say the people featured in the Netflix documentary Tiger King are 'characters' is a vast understatement. Besides the titular Tiger King himself, Joe Exotic and the object of his hatred Carole Baskin, there are countless other private zoo owners, business people and staff who populate this bananas-but-true-crime docuseries.
One of the so-called animal lovers who played a major part not only in the series but also in Joe Exotic's eventual incarceration was Jeff Lowe. Lowe was his one-time business partner and a formidable voice in the private-zoo world.
He comes onto the scene about half-way through the documentary, an apparent saving grace for the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park. But all is not as it seems with Jeff Lowe (or with anyone in this documentary, it has to be said).
Prior to joining up with Joe Exotic, Lowe was already embroiled in legal battles. In 2007 he was even sued by Prince for allegedly selling clothes with his trademarked symbol on them.
Lowe's version of this story, according to his own website, was that he worked with Prince. However, Dale Atkins from Prince's legal team told the City Pages: "The thing about him [Lowe] working with Prince... I’m not gonna call him a liar, but based on any information I have, he never worked for Prince – unless you call getting sued working for him."
This wasn't his only non-cat related legal battle. In 2008, Lowe pleaded guilty to federal mail-fraud charges in the USA for posing as an employee of the Citizens Opposed to Domestic Abuse charity in order to obtain $1 million worth of merchandise that he later resold (via The Beaufort Gazette).
In 2015, before teaming up with Joe, he came under scrutiny for showing off big cats at his market, Beaufort Liquidation, but was found not guilty. Regardless, he soon shuttered and upped sticks to Oklahoma.
Upon teaming up with Joe, Lowe moved on to the property while his own home was being built, but this only caused tensions between him and Joe to spike. As the docuseries portrays, Joe was required to pay Carole Baskin $1 million as part of a judgement in Baskin's favour.
To prevent her being able to get the park, Joe transferred ownership to Lowe. But Lowe wasn't as flush with cash as his lifestyle made him seem, a trend that would follow him in his later business deals.
The Netflix series goes into Lowe's private cub-petting parties in Las Vegas, in which he wheeled cubs in suitcases through hotels, even creating a jungle party bus to ferry people back and forth with cubs. It frames his eventual arrest via footage of him in jail as a direct result of those activities.
In fact, Lowe was arrested for previously failing to appear in court for the case, which he had initially pled out. He had agreed to surrender the animals and pay $10,000 in restitution for their care.
He further claimed that animals that grew out of the cub-petting parties were retired to the GW Zoo. However, according to KTNV, in 2017: "The USDA documented an incident at the Greater Wynnewood Zoo in Oklahoma when a female tiger got loose from an enclosure and was shot and killed to prevent her from escaping the facility."
This is in stark contradiction to his claims that the cubs he retired to the GW Zoo led happy, healthy lives. Las Vegas city veterinary records revealed the cubs had a variety of medical issues: being underweight, severe diarrhoea, urinary tract infections due to faecal contamination, Giardia (which can be passed on to humans), and pancreatic conditions requiring lifelong treatment.
Tiger King may focus most of its attention on Joe, but it does connect a thread between the murder for hire plot and Jeff Lowe, who was never called on to testify in the eventual trial. Texas Monthly echoed claims made in the documentary.
"In late August, James Garretson [a local business owner] stopped by Joe’s office, where Lowe pulled up a map on a computer that detailed Baskin’s property in Tampa. 'He [Lowe] started showing me easy ways to kill her,' Garretson said later.
"Lowe noted Baskin’s favoured bike paths, pointed out the location of the gift shop at her sanctuary, and showed images of her house, which sat isolated at the edge of an inlet... Later that same month, according to Garretson, Lowe suggested he call Baskin behind Joe’s back and ask if she wanted to purchase the zoo. Lowe said that if the zoo sold, he’d give Garretson $100,000."
But, as we know from the series, despite his name being mentioned frequently during the trial Lowe was never called to testify. Lowe declined to comment to Texas Monthly on the story they wrote, from which some of our insight is gleaned.
They added: "Lowe declined to comment for this story, claiming he had sold his exclusive life rights to Netflix. (He hadn’t.)"
Lowe consistently denies involvement.
Joe Exotic has filed a $94 million lawsuit against various US government departments and also private citizens, including (not surprisingly) Jeff Lowe. The suit has 14 charges, including misleading a grand jury, perjury, pain and suffering, discrimination, and the misrepresentation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
The Tiger King series showed Lowe's next business relationship. He teamed up with another docuseries guest, Tim Stark, to open a new zoo on the Texas border, away from the Joe Exotic's site and the stigma associated.
However, as Tiger King showed, that partnership soon soured. Stark claimed that he was doing all the work and, presumably, putting up most of the money (which many series participants claimed was Lowe's MO).
Stark was often pictured on his property, called Wildlife in Need, but in February 2020, the USDA revoked Stark's facility's license. The USDA administrative judge ruled that Stark, and his park, had "willfully violated the AWA (Animal Welfare Act) on multiple occasions" and that "the gravity of such violations was great" (via the Courier Journal).
Perhaps not unpredictably, Lowe and Stark's relationship has completely disintegrated, the point that Lowe has taken aim at him via the Zoo's Facebook page. Lowe wrote in a now-deleted post: "I will always believe that our biggest contribution to the animal kingdom was helping the feds take down monsters like Joe Exotic and Tim Stark."
The statement is ironic, and also quite sad. As the docuseries reveals, there are more tigers privately owned in the US than remain in their natural habitat. There is no excuse for the mistreatment of these animals, and as Tiger King points out, the only victims in this case are the big cats, left at the mercy of the humans in charge.
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is available to stream on Netflix.
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