Joe Exotic renews request for pardon to attend his father's funeral in Oklahoma

American zoo owner Joe Exotic, who is currently serving a 22-year sentence behind bars, has renewed his request for a pardon after his father died of COVID-19. As per a TMZ report, Joe's legal team is set to fly to Washington D.C. to meet with an official in a bid to get the Netflix star out of jail before Sunday. Joe's father, Francis Schreibvogel, died following complications from coronavirus. And, Joe desperately wants to attend his funeral, which is set for Saturday in Oklahoma. 

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Joe Exotic's father dies

Interestingly, this comes after Joe contacted Kim Kardashian West to ask for help getting out of prison, earlier in November last year. As per Entertainment Tonight, Joe wrote a letter to Kim Kardashian West requesting her to call President Trump and ask for a pardon. "I am writing you this letter not as Joe Exotic but as the person Joseph Maldonado-Passage, asking you to please help me by just taking 10 minutes out of your life and placing a call to President Trump to look at my 257 page pardon it's all the evidence I'm innocent and ask him to sign my pardon so I can return home to [my husband] Dillon [Passage] and my father," read an excerpt of the letter. In his letter, Joe urged Kardashian to call him, saying: 'No one even has to know you did it.'

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Joe Exotic jailed

The former wildlife park owner, who's real name is Maldonado-Passage, was sentenced, last year in January, in federal prison for his role in a 2017 murder-for-hire scheme to kill a prominent animal rights activist. Joe was found guilty in April of attempting to hire someone to murder Carole Baskin, a prominent animal rights activist. Reportedly, Maldonado posted numerous threats against her beginning, in 2012 on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. He then promised in November 2017 to pay $3,000 for Baskin's death and promised thousands more after her death. He was convicted on another eight counts of violations of the Lacey Act for falsifying wildlife records for "interstate" transactions.

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