One of Joe Exotic's husbands Travis Maldonado died in a tragic accidental suicide.
Travis was just 23 when he shot himself in the head in shocking scenes shown in Netflix documentary Tiger King : Murder, Mayhem and Madness.
It happened on October 6, 2017, while he was in the gift shop office at the GW Zoo.
Joe said in a news conference that Travis had been fooling around with his Ruger pistol, and didn't believe it would fire as he had taken the magazine out.
But when he tried to demonstrate that to other staff members, he actually shot himself in the head.
Travis' life was shrouded in tragedy even before he met Joe.
Travis, who married Joe and his other partner John Finlay in a three-way ceremony that obviously wasn't legal, had started working at the zoo in 2013.
Travis was just 19 at the time, and Joe was 32 years his senior.
After John left to be with a woman, a zoo worker he got pregnant during a secret affair, Travis stayed with him and was described as Joe's "saving grace".
He told Joe he was straight, but Joe set his sights on him anyway.
Travis had struggled with a meth addiction before arriving at the zoo.
In the scenes covering Travis' death, Joe's political campaign manager Joshua Dial, is seen on CCTV gasping in horror after the gun goes off.
He said in the documentary: "Neither Travis nor John Finlay were gay, and Joe admitted that to me."
In a cutaway clip, Joe was seen telling someone: "I fell in love with straight guys."
And Travis was seen angrily trashing one of Joe's lorries, telling the camera crew he wanted them to show it to Joe.
He fumed: "It's pretty f**king sad, he doesn't give a f**k about any of my problems.
"Is he trying to make me blow my top? I don't know. I don't know what he wants."
Joshua believes Joe manipulated Travis, who was also a heavy marijuana user, into marrying him by supplying him with meth, keeping him hooked and coming back for more.
Joshua continues: "There are people out there, they will look at a person who is in desperate, dire need of something. In Travis' case he was addicted to meth.
"And they take that need and they fulfil it until they become the only person who can fulfil that need, and in exchange, that person gives them whatever sexual or any other favours they want, that's the relationship Joe had with Travis."
Joshua goes on to explain exactly what happened on the day Travis died.
He says: "Travis came into the office and started complaining to me.
"Travis was sitting underneath the camera but it was pointing directly at me.
"He complained that he was a prisoner, that he was never allowed to leave the park, he wasn't allowed to get a job, all this was true, and frankly he was upset that he didn't have enough pot.
"He's always pointed guns at people all the time out there at the park. Sometimes he'd wake you up pointing a gun at you, he'd done that to me on multiple occasions, so he had done that to me again in the office that morning and said, you know, 'Freeze motherf**ker', which is just what he did.
"And I told him, 'Dude, you know not to point guns', because I've told him before, 'Don't point a gun at me'.
"And he said, 'Oh man, this is a Ruger, there's no clip in it, and you know a Ruger won't fire without a clip.'
"I was sitting in a chair looking at him when he put the gun to his head."
CCTV images show a flash of light just off camera and Joshua jump and hold his hands up to his face in utter shock as he sits frozen in fear.
He added: "It's not like on the movies, I knew he was dead the second he pulled the trigger, but at the same time I didn't."
Joshua said he thought it was a joke because Travis was such a prankster.
Travis' mother, Cheryl Maldonado also spoke in the documentary, claiming Joe was 'putting on a show' at the funeral.
Speaking about losing her son, she says: "It was the worst thing ever in my whole life. My son being gone. I miss him greatly."
Cheryl, who is a year younger than Joe, admitted she "didn't think it was right" when they married.
But she said she would accept it as long as Travis was happy.
It wasn't long after Travis' death that Joe started dating Dillon Passage, who he married two months later.
Joe said he believed Dillon was "sent" to him.
Cheryl said: "Two months after my son died, he married Dillon."
She also says she felt tricked into publicly blessing the marriage.
She said: "Invited me to the wedding, okay I thought it was going to be a wedding. No, it was the camermen, me, and the flower girl.
"So on the social media, 'Well, Travis' mom is fine with it, so everybody else should be'.
"Then I didn't hear anything from him again, he was done with me."
Joe is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence for attempting to facilitate the murder of his nemesis Carole Baskin, who runs Big Cat Rescue, as well as a string of animal cruelty charges.
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