Jeff Lowe, another roadside zoo owner who took over GW Exotics before Joe Exotic went to prison, will keep the animals, including an estimated 80 big cats and other wild animals. Photo by the HSUS

In yet another twist in the continuing saga of Joe Exotic, a court has awarded his roadside zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, to the leader of a big cat sanctuary whom he once hired a hitman to kill.

A federal judge on Monday gave the GW Exotics zoo—the site where Joe Exotic abused and exploited big cats and other animals for decades and the subject of an HSUS undercover investigation—to Carole Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue. The ruling ended a seven-year legal battle over trademark infringement that played out in public, on the internet and most recently in a Netflix series, “Tiger…