Tiger King’s Joshua Diale, one of the last people to see Joe Exotic’s late husband Travis Maldonado alive, never received counselling. (Netflix)
Tiger King‘s Joshua Diale, one of the last people to see Joe Exotic’s late husband Travis Maldonado alive, never received counselling.
Exotic’s former campaign manager witnessed the traumatic moment that Maldonado shot himself in 2017.
He bolstered into the office with a gun before, believing it wouldn’t fire, he shot himself in the head.
Diale described in detail the “once in the lifetime” moment he worked with Exotic, but the tragedy has tangled with his mental health for years. Instead of receiving counselling or a form of therapy, he revealed in the aftershow The Tiger King and I, which dropped Sunday, he received “no support”.
‘Joe didn’t help me [get counselling]’, claims Tiger King’s Joshua Diale.
“The thing is, I had to go to that office every day and sit in that same chair and look at that bullet hole in the wall every day for a year and a half after Travis killed himself,” he told host Jole McHale.
“And I never was able to get counselling,” he claimed, “’cause Joe didn’t help me and neither did Jeff Lowe.”
“What my plan is, hopefully, I am able to raise some money, enough to get me some counselling,” he added.
“Once I’m stable and ready to go I want to jump back into campaigning for sure.”
A GoFundMe page was made to rally for money for Diale’s counselling and, at the time of writing, it has rasied more than $5,300 of its $10,000 target.
Joshua Diale described the final moments of Travis Maldonado’s life.
Diale also described the minutes leading up to Maldonado’s passing and said that it was accidental.
“We were talking, he was telling me about his gun,” Diale said.
“Joe just bought him a ruger. He said, ‘You now ruger won’t fire without a clip’, and I said, ‘Really?’, and he said: ‘Yeah’.
“Right then, he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, to prove to me it woudn’t fire without a clip. However, it must have had one in the chamber.
I was looking at him in the eyes when he did it and I could see the surprise and the fear in his eyes.
“Basically translated, he’s like: ‘Oh crap, what did I just do.
“Maybe five seconds of his eyes I could read it and then he was gone.”
Joe Exotic’s type was ‘young and dumb’.
Diale also joked that Exotic’s type is “young and dumb” after McHale wondered whether Exotic ever made a move on him.
“He wants them 17, 18 years old. And me, as a 31-year-old person, aged out about 12 years ago.”
He implied that Exotic was disliked in Oklahoma not for his brutish mannerisms and habits, but for his sexuality.
“This is a very red state and us gay folk are almost an engendered species here,” he said.