Cancer-Stricken Joe Exotic Determined to Expose Gross Prison Conditions If Released Next Year: '140 of Us Have Scabies' From Rats

Joe Exotic hopes to "live" long enough to potentially get freed from prison next year and expose the disturbing conditions he's experienced living inside of his jail cell for almost half a decade.

In a new interview published Friday, November 8, the former exotic animal park operator — best known for being the subject of Netflix's viral 2020 documentary Tiger King — opened up from behind bars about his prison's apparently poor living quarters and the various health woes he's experienced since being convicted in 2019 of hiring hitmen to kill Carole Baskin and committing several wildlife crimes.

Currently incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, the 61-year-old — whose real name is Joe Maldonado-Passage — said his "biggest goal is not only to get out of here and move on and live a life."

This could be possible in 2025 if the court overturns his alleged murder-for-hire conviction on Baskin, the CEO of his rival Big Cat Rescue animal sanctuary. Maldonado-Passage is currently serving a 21-year prison sentence, which doesn't end until 2041.

Maldonado-Passage also wants "to testify in front of Congress about the prison and justice system [and] what really goes on in here," he declared before reflecting on the "tough" situation life dealt him.

"I’m in a medical facility. Part of the roof is missing, and we have plastic bags above our beds taped to the ceiling to guide water out the window. In the last week, I caught 15 rats on sticky boards under my bed. Now 140 of us have scabies," he claimed of the revolting living conditions he's allegedly experienced inside of the prison.

Maldonado-Passage continued: "I run a soup kitchen in here. That’s something Carole and nobody [else] can take away from me, that I gave back to society."

It’s been four years since Tiger King became a sensation, but Maldonado-Passage recently watched the docuseries for the first time — and he wasn’t too thrilled.

While behind bars, Maldonado-Passage was also able to watch Tiger King more than four years after it caught worldwide attention at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

“We’re working on a lawsuit, so the prison let my lawyers come in with it on a computer. I was disgusted with the way [director] Eric Goode portrayed [the situation]," he explained to the news publication. "Carole and I never had a deadly fight going on — it was blown out of proportion. I never saw Carole’s face until my trial."

Going forward, the former zookeeper insisted he doesn't "want that to define [me] anymore," in reference to his feud with Baskin.

Maldonado-Passage is mentally prepared to leave lockup, he just hopes his health allows him to make it out alive.

"My prostate cancer is in remission, [but] they believe I have cancer in my left lung. I have to take it as it comes," he expressed. "I still have faith that I’m going to walk out of here — I just need to live for the next five or six months and hope for the best."

When asked what Maldonado-Passage misses most about being a free man, the media personality shared: "My music, my nonprofit stuff that I did with sick kids, and feeding the homeless on Thanksgiving and Christmas. That was my life. I did that my whole life."