'Tiger King' Joe Exotic Had A Secret Ex-Wife And Son, Says TV Producer

A former producer following Joe Maldonado-Passage, better known as Joe Exotic, said that the controversial exotic zookeeper’s alleged secret ex-wife and son appeared in the Netflix documentary “Tiger King.”

“Very few people realize Joe was married to a woman years before,” producer Rich Kirkham said in an interview posted Saturday on All Things Live about the hit documentary series.

Kirkham, a former reporter for the program Inside Edition, appeared in the documentary to discuss the show he was making about the world of Exotic. However, the show never came to fruition after all the footage of Exotic, his crew, and his zoo was destroyed in a fire.

While Kirkham doesn’t outright say who it was, he teases that Exotic’s secret ex-wife was his ex-girlfriend Kim. Kirkham went on to say that Exotic fathered 38-year-old Brandon Chappell, who now has three children of his own. Kirkham said Chappell was working at Exotic’s zoo the summer he was getting footage for his ill-fated show and would appear in “Tiger King.”

“His son Brandon is in the documentary and I’m surprised that the documentary didn’t bring that up,” Kirkham said. He then said that Exotic treated Chappell worse than anyone else working at the zoo during his time filming with the crew.

“Joe treated his son worse than he treated the other employees. He expected more out of him, he expected him to take more leadership and do harder work,” Kirkham said. “He had his son sweeping the park instead of giving him a decent job, feeding the animals or something like that. It was almost as though he regretted having a child, that he regretted having been married.”

Exotic’s niece, Chealsi Putman, had discussed Chappell in a DailyMailTV interview that was posted on April 7. She said Exotic fathered Chappell with Kim while Exotic was serving as the chief of police in Eastvale, Texas.

“Joe was in and out of Brandon’s life when he was growing up, at one point just a few years ago Brandon and his then wife, both worked at the zoo with Joe,” Putman said. “Joe would go around telling everyone this was his son, he made no secret about it. Brandon was even in a few scenes in the Netflix show.”

Putman said things turned sour between Chappell and Exotic after the latter asked Chappell’s wife to make some allegedly fraudulent changes to the zoo’s books. This would lead to an argument and a falling out between the two before Chappell moved with his family to Texas.