They found dead a figure of Tiger King, the documentary series that was all the rage on Netflix

09/07/2021 4:29 PM

• Clarín.com

• International

• shows

Updated 09/07/2021 4:29 PM

Eric Cowie

, the zookeeper on the Netflix series Tiger King, was found dead in New York.

He was 53 years old.

A friend of his found the body face down on a bed.

According to TMZ, it is unclear why Eric was in the Big Apple as a resident of Oklahoma.

The find was on September 3.

There were no drugs at the scene and a toxicology report is still expected to be released.

Cowie appeared in the famous 2020 Netflix documentary as one of the animal caretakers for

Joe Exotic

, the strange protagonist of the show.

This is how Tiger King Park's Instagram fired him.

When Joe was arrested,

Eric stayed with his felines at the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park

.

He would later testify against Exotic for allegedly abusing and killing some of his animals.

However,

Cowie's life was not without problems and encounters with the law

.

Earlier this year he was arrested in Oklahoma for being involved in a car accident.

He was supposed to be sentenced after the incident, but he never appeared for his hearing and the situation was stalled.

In turn, after the success of the series, he had to go out and clarify that he did not use methamphetamine.

Many of his fans speculated it upon seeing his crooked teeth.

Cowie, after hearing these rumors about his drug use, said that his teeth were like this from old age and last year he resorted to implants.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tiger King Park (@tigerkingpark)

Eric also had a problem with alcohol.

According to TMZ, he was "at the end of the rope" with alcoholism before meeting Exotic, whom he considered a savior.

The controversial Joe

Joseph Maldonado-Passage is serving a 22-year sentence

in a federal medical prison in Fort Worth, Texas, after wanting to hire two hitmen to kill his commercial rival

Carole Baskin

.

He was also penalized for having killed five tigers, selling cubs of those animals and falsifying wildlife records.

Maldonado-Passage has always pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Control of the Exotic animal park was left to

Baskin's Big Cat Rescue

 as part of the settlement in a trademark lawsuit against Joe.

Exotic is currently in prison.

Photo: AFP

Baskin sold the Oklahoma property and one of the provisions is that the land cannot be used as a zoo for 100 years.

In July this year, a federal appeals court ruled that Exotic

will receive a shorter prison sentence

for the role it played in a contract murder plot and for violating federal wildlife laws.

A three-member jury at the Federal Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver found that the trial court treated those two separate convictions wrongly when calculating their sentences.

In this sense, they agreed with Maldonado-Passage that the court should have treated them as a single sentence at the time of sentencing because both had the common objective of killing Baskin.

According to the ruling, the court should have sentenced Maldonado-Passage to between 17 and a half years and just under 22 years in prison instead of between just under 22 and 27 years.

The court ordered the trial court to issue a new sentence.

Look also

They reduce the sentence of Joe Exotic, the "King Tiger", who is imprisoned for killing animals and trying to assassinate the woman who betrayed him

69 big cats seized from Jeffrey Lowe, a character from 'The Tiger King'