![\"Karl](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.animals24-7.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Picsart_25-04-02_18-41-59-488-e1743644547210.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\n(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 PAHRUMP,\u00a0 Nevada\u2013\u2013<\/strong>Nye County,\u00a0 Nevada sheriff\u2019s deputies and animal control officers on April 2,\u00a0 2025 impounded seven tigers from sometime trainer Karl Mitchell,\u00a0 71.<\/p>\n \u201cNye County Sheriff Joe McGill told 8 News Now that the operation, which involves code enforcement and animal services, \u00a0began around 7:00 a.m. at property owned by Karl Mitchell,\u201d\u00a0 reported Madina Ansary and Caroline Bleakley of KLAS television in Las Vegas,\u00a0 63 miles east of Mitchell\u2019s property in Pahrump.<\/p>\n \u201cMitchell, who is a Pahrump exotic animal owner, \u00a0is also in custody for fighting a sheriff\u2019s deputy and illegally possessing a gun, \u00a0McGill said,\u201d\u00a0 according to Ansary and Bleakley.<\/p>\n Karl Mitchell<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMitchell, \u00a071, \u00a0has reportedly been violating special condition permits and ordinances related to the ownership of his tigers for several years,\u201d\u00a0 updated Emma Richter for DailyMail.com<\/em> as the day-long tiger confiscation concluded.<\/p>\n In particular,\u00a0 Mitchell is suspected of breeding tigers for sale and personal exhibition,\u00a0 under the business name Big Cat Encounters.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring a dispute over the ownership of his tigers in 2015,\u201d\u00a0 Richter recalled, \u00a0\u201cMitchell said that the judge who ruled against him keeping them was driven by ‘racial hatred,’ \u00a0according to the Pahrump Valley Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Alleged Mitchell,\u00a0 who claims to be African-American,\u00a0 \u201cRacial hatred and animus is behind all of this. \u00a0I’ve been trying to be a good man, \u00a0but I’m continually picked at and probed.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople need to understand,\u201d\u00a0 Mitchell asserted, \u00a0\u201cthat there are four other facilities in town that are not required to have conditional use permits. \u00a0There is one facility one mile from here and they have cats but they are not required to have a conditional use permit.\u201d<\/p>\n But Mitchell himself appears to have attracted at least 16 other highly problematic owners of big cats and other highly dangerous animals to Pahrump during his own tenure as Pahrump animal control director,\u00a0 almost all of the others of European descent and all of them in trouble with the law before Mitchell’s seven tigers were confiscated.<\/p>\n Trisha Meyer<\/strong><\/em> Case histories of those 16 dangerous animal owners are summarized in previous ANIMALS 24-7<\/strong> coverage of Mitchell.\u00a0 (Click \u201cTiger King\u201d associate Karl Mitchell was Nye County animal control chief<\/a> and scroll down.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Nye County in 2000 hired Mitchell as animal control director exotic despite at least 15 years of animal-related history that should have disqualified him from any such employment.<\/p>\n The previous Nye County record on animal care and control issues may have been questionable,\u00a0 but after that it markedly deteriorated.<\/p>\n Over the next 25 years unincorporated Pahrump,\u00a0 a city of 25,000,\u00a0 and Nye County,\u00a0 surrounding it,\u00a0 hosted more animal hoarding situations,\u00a0 more breeders and keepers of dangerous animals,\u00a0 and more fatal and disfiguring attacks by dangerous dogs and exotic pets than any other U.S. jurisdiction of comparable human population.<\/p>\n (See\u00a0Pahrump dog breeders Platunov & Higgins allegedly starved 300 Ovarchkas<\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Vasili Platunov & Oksana Higgins.<\/strong><\/em> Mitchell had in 1985\u00a0copped a plea bargain to lesser charges after allegedly ramming a vehicle\u00a0driven by two California Fish & Game officers who were trying to arrest\u00a0him for alleged poaching.<\/p>\n Becoming a law enforcement officer himself does not have appeared to changed Mitchell much,\u00a0 if at all.<\/p>\n In April 2001 the USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service fined Mitchell $27,500\u2014then the maximum\u2013for repeated violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, \u00a0and revoked his permits to exhibit exotic cats.<\/p>\n Silky terriers.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n At about the same time,\u00a0Pahrump resident Kathy Diaz charged Mitchell with theft for allegedly\u00a0taking her two silky terriers from her porch.<\/p>\n Mitchell told Nye\u00a0County sheriff\u2019s deputies that the silky terriers died.<\/p>\n Skeptical, the deputies and two other county employees\u00a0excavated a landfill and inspected 40 to 50 dog carcasses before\u00a0determining that the silky terriers were not among them.<\/p>\n Returning to Mitchell\u2019s house,\u00a0 they found both silky terriers.<\/p>\n Mitchell was additionally charged in May 2001 with allegedly\u00a0stealing a cockatoo and three pit bulls.<\/p>\n Altogether,\u00a0 Mitchell was eventually charged with 14 alleged offenses during his 18-month tenure as animal control director,\u00a0 including some involving firearms,\u00a0 use of illegal drugs,\u00a0 and annoying a minor with unwelcome touching, \u00a0solicitation of prostitution,\u00a0 and open and gross lewdness.<\/p>\n Leopard at Big Cat Rescue.<\/strong><\/em> Yet Mitchell kept his\u00a0job until June 2001, when the Nevada SPCA evacuated many of the estimated\u00a0200 dogs he was said to have held in a kennel built for 50.<\/p>\n Helping to look after Mitchell\u2019s animals while Mitchell himself spent three years in prison for offenses allegedly committed as animal control director were a man named Steve Benson and a woman named Sandy Alman,\u00a0 identified by USDA inspection reports as Mitchell\u2019s girlfriend.<\/p>\n Six African lions and three leopards were removed from their premises,\u00a0 which belonged to Alman according to the USDA reports,\u00a0 after a leopard bit off one of Alman\u2019s fingers in March 2005.<\/p>\n The International Fund for Animal Welfare paid for transporting the big cats to the former Wild Animal Orphanage sanctuary near San Antonio,\u00a0 Texas,\u00a0 closed in 2009,\u00a0 after which the surviving Mitchell animals spent the rest of their lives at Big Cat Rescue,\u00a0 near Tampa,\u00a0 Florida.<\/p>\n “Joe Exotic” & prison visitors.<\/strong><\/em> Karl Mitchell upon release from prison continued to find Pahrump a congenial place to do business,\u00a0 beginning by purchasing animals from Joe Schriebvogel Maldonado Passage,\u00a0 the notorious “Joe Exotic” and \u201cTiger King\u201d himself.<\/p>\n (See\u00a0Carole Baskin & Big Cat Rescue win custody of \u201cTiger King\u201d Joe Exotic\u2019s tigers.)<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The Pahrump Regional Planning Commission on December 11, \u00a02009 refused to grant Mitchell a conditional use permit to keep seven\u00a0Bengal tigers, \u00a0but he was still in the vicinity,\u00a0 still keeping exotic cats,\u00a0 when the Netflix television documentary series\u00a0Tiger King\u00a0<\/em>debuted on March 20,\u00a0 2020.<\/p>\n Mitchell had further history of note,\u00a0 exposed by George Knapp of KLAS on May 20, 2020.<\/p>\n \u201cAs far back as a 1996 interview,\u201d\u00a0 Knapp mentioned,\u00a0 \u201cKarl Mitchell felt he\u2019d been unfairly targeted by\u00a0the government, \u00a0police, \u00a0animal welfare groups, \u00a0and the media.<\/p>\n Kari Bagnall and friend.<\/strong><\/em> \u201cMitchell has moved from place to place in Nye County over the last 25 years,\u201d\u00a0 Knapp summarized, \u00a0\u201cbut there are\u00a0common threads. \u00a0He always has a caged menagerie of exotic animals, \u00a0in particular big cats,\u00a0 in facilities that fail to meet even the bare minimum standards.<\/p>\n \u201cAccording to one of his former wives,\u00a0 Kari Bagnell,\u00a0 he was banned from working on Hollywood sets because of animal cruelty. \u00a0Mitchell was accused of breaking her ribs.\u201d<\/p>\n Leaving Mitchell,\u00a0 Bagnall went on to found the Jungle Friends sanctuary for exotic primates in Alachua County,\u00a0 Florida.\u00a0 Housing about 250 monkeys as of October 5,\u00a0 2021,\u00a0 according to Bryce Brown of the\u00a0Florida Alligator<\/em>,\u00a0 Jungle Friends has itself struggled to meet Animal Welfare Act facilities standards.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage.)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Continued Knapp,\u00a0 \u201cTiger owner and former\u00a0heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson hired and then fired Mitchell.\u201d<\/p>\n Hair stylist Katie Taylor told Knapp that Mitchell beat a chimpanzee on the set of a Super\u00a0Dave Osbourne TV shoot.<\/p>\n In February 2019,\u00a0 claiming his tigers were \u201ctherapy animals,\u201d\u00a0 Mitchell won a conditional use permit from Nye County to keep ten tigers.<\/p>\n Allegedly repeatedly violating that permit brought the April 2,\u00a0 2025 tiger impoundments.<\/p>\n Beth & Merritt Clifton<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The post Seven tigers impounded from Nevada “Tiger King” pal Karl Mitchell<\/a> appeared first on Animals 24-7<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Beth Clifton collage) Former animal control officer attracted fellow exotic cat trainers & traffickers who may have brought Pahrump more notoriety than the alleged UFO remains at the nearby Area 51 military base \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 PAHRUMP,\u00a0 Nevada\u2013\u2013Nye County,\u00a0 Nevada sheriff\u2019s deputies and animal control officers on April 2,\u00a0 2025 impounded seven tigers from sometime trainer Karl […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":172684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12022],"tags":[69090,7644,780,5544,14306,40275,4774,9867],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-172683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activist","tag-impounded","tag-karl","tag-king","tag-mitchell","tag-nevada","tag-pal","tag-tiger","tag-tigers"],"yoast_head":"\nFormer animal control officer attracted fellow exotic cat trainers & traffickers who may have brought Pahrump more notoriety than the alleged UFO remains at the nearby Area 51 military base<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nViolating permit conditions<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n“I’m continually picked at & probed”<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
(Beth Clifton collage based on Nye County jail photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nCase histories<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nWhy was Mitchell hired?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nDog theft<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
(Beth Clifton photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nLeopard bit off helper\u2019s finger<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nBought animals from \u201cTiger King\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nKari Bagnall<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nFired by Mike Tyson<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nPlease donate to support our work:<\/strong><\/h2>\n
www.animals24-7.org\/donate\/<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n