With the recent release of Netflix’s new documentary, TigerKing: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness, many theories have been brought forth regarding the characters.
Now in a recent interview with ET, Jeff Lowe is attempting to clear his name after he and his wife, Lauren Dropla, have been accused of setting Joe Exotic up.
“We did not do anything. We did not rat on Joe. We did not snitch on Joe,” he told ET‘s Lauren Zima via video chat. “It’s sad that people think that we set him up, but what we did was we protected ourselves.”
Due to their portrayal in the documentary, many believe Lowe and Dropla set Joe Exotic up after Lowe purchased and took over Joe’s zoo prior to his arrest and conviction. But, Lowe says they’ve done nothing wrong in the process.
“Lauren and I didn’t do anything wrong, so I’m not about to take the fall for Joe’s crimes,” he explained.
“When the feds started investigating Joe, and we were tipped off by the confidential informant, we knew that we had no choice. We had to tell them what we knew,” he explained. “We handed them over our cell phones, our bank accounts, whatever they asked for we gave them, cooperated fully.”
Lowe and Dopla moved to Las Vegas following a falling out with Joe Exotic but later returned to the zoo in Oklahoma after Joe reportedly changed their passwords on their bank accounts.
“We came in, we snuck back into town, went to the bank to get our bank statements, and the teller said, ‘You know, I am probably not supposed to tell you this, but the feds are watching your bank account,'” he continued. “So we knew at the time that they had been monitoring the bank account, looking for money coming in from Joe selling tiger cubs. …We did not say anything, we just went over those bank statements, and that’s when we found out that Joe was embezzling [while also] forging my name 50 times on $50,000 worth of checks.”
Lowe also explained his confrontation with Joe Exotic, as seen in the documentary. He revealed the moment was caught on camera by his wife because she “records everything” and was actually hours long despite the film using “just a tiny, tiny clip of that entire situation.”
“We were already planning to confront Joe that day. As soon as I opened the door, Joe came busting in, and he actually pushed me up against the wall with the door, and it just went off from there,” Dropla revealed. “So I just automatically started recording. I said, ‘We need to cover our ass.”
Lowe added that that clip helped clear their name.
“That is, I think, effectively what saved us from the scrutiny of the federal investigators. Because, initially, I would have been a suspect in cub trafficking because my name was on the park, and Joe was breeding all these cats here and selling them,” Lowe said. “We were in Las Vegas. We knew he was selling tiger cubs, everybody in the industry knew, but I couldn’t say anything. He was breeding his own tigers. They weren’t mine. It was none of my business.”
Despite their issues and falling out, Lowe said he and Dropla never intended to hurt Joe.
“[We] never set to hurt Joe,” he said. “We came here to actually save Joe. We came back, and we bailed him out. We got the park back on its feet. … It’s a very small family, the exotic animal industry.”
Lowe also confirmed that Carole Baskin was exploiting the animals.
“You see all these beautiful animals, knowing that someone like Carole Baskin was going to possibly get all of them,” Lowe said. “I didn’t want that to happen. We did not want her getting a hold of these tigers because she would have either made money or figured out a way to put them down.”
Most importantly, though, Lowe and Dropla said they were “absolutely” exploited by the documentary and “not at all” showcased in the correct light due to the fabrication of the events that occurred for viewers.
“It’s aggravating because we lived it. We know where the mistakes were. You wanna get up and hit the TV,” he added. “They misled all of us. They just twisted around on us. They tried to make us look like we were complicit.”
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