(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
PAHRUMP, Nevada––Nye County, Nevada sheriff’s deputies and animal control officers on April 2, 2025 impounded seven tigers from sometime trainer Karl Mitchell, 71.
“Nye County Sheriff Joe McGill told 8 News Now that the operation, which involves code enforcement and animal services, began around 7:00 a.m. at property owned by Karl Mitchell,” reported Madina Ansary and Caroline Bleakley of KLAS television in Las Vegas, 63 miles east of Mitchell’s property in Pahrump.
“Mitchell, who is a Pahrump exotic animal owner, is also in custody for fighting a sheriff’s deputy and illegally possessing a gun, McGill said,” according to Ansary and Bleakley.
Karl Mitchell
Violating permit conditions
“Mitchell, 71, has reportedly been violating special condition permits and ordinances related to the ownership of his tigers for several years,” updated Emma Richter for DailyMail.com as the day-long tiger confiscation concluded.
In particular, Mitchell is suspected of breeding tigers for sale and personal exhibition, under the business name Big Cat Encounters.
“During a dispute over the ownership of his tigers in 2015,” Richter recalled, “Mitchell said that the judge who ruled against him keeping them was driven by ‘racial hatred,’ according to the Pahrump Valley Times.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“I’m continually picked at & probed”
Alleged Mitchell, who claims to be African-American, “Racial hatred and animus is behind all of this. I’ve been trying to be a good man, but I’m continually picked at and probed.
“People need to understand,” Mitchell asserted, “that there are four other facilities in town that are not required to have conditional use permits. There is one facility one mile from here and they have cats but they are not required to have a conditional use permit.”
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, almost all of the others of European descent and all of them in trouble with the law before Mitchell’s seven tigers were confiscated.
Trisha Meyer
(Beth Clifton collage based on Nye County jail photo)
Case histories
Case histories of those 16 dangerous animal owners are summarized in previous ANIMALS 24-7 coverage of Mitchell. (Click “Tiger King” associate Karl Mitchell was Nye County animal control chief and scroll down.)
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.
The previous Nye County record on animal care and control issues may have been questionable, but after that it markedly deteriorated.
Over the next 25 years unincorporated Pahrump, a city of 25,000, and Nye County, surrounding it, hosted more animal hoarding situations, more breeders and keepers of dangerous animals, and more fatal and disfiguring attacks by dangerous dogs and exotic pets than any other U.S. jurisdiction of comparable human population.
(See Pahrump dog breeders Platunov & Higgins allegedly starved 300 Ovarchkas.)
Vasili Platunov & Oksana Higgins.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Why was Mitchell hired?
Mitchell had in 1985 copped a plea bargain to lesser charges after allegedly ramming a vehicle driven by two California Fish & Game officers who were trying to arrest him for alleged poaching.
Becoming a law enforcement officer himself does not have appeared to changed Mitchell much, if at all.
In April 2001 the USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service fined Mitchell $27,500—then the maximum–for repeated violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, and revoked his permits to exhibit exotic cats.
Silky terriers. (Beth Clifton collage)
Dog theft
At about the same time, Pahrump resident Kathy Diaz charged Mitchell with theft for allegedly taking her two silky terriers from her porch.
Mitchell told Nye County sheriff’s deputies that the silky terriers died.
Skeptical, the deputies and two other county employees excavated a landfill and inspected 40 to 50 dog carcasses before determining that the silky terriers were not among them.
Returning to Mitchell’s house, they found both silky terriers.
Mitchell was additionally charged in May 2001 with allegedly stealing a cockatoo and three pit bulls.
Altogether, Mitchell was eventually charged with 14 alleged offenses during his 18-month tenure as animal control director, including some involving firearms, use of illegal drugs, and annoying a minor with unwelcome touching, solicitation of prostitution, and open and gross lewdness.
Leopard at Big Cat Rescue.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Leopard bit off helper’s finger
Yet Mitchell kept his job until June 2001, when the Nevada SPCA evacuated many of the estimated 200 dogs he was said to have held in a kennel built for 50.
Helping to look after Mitchell’s 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, identified by USDA inspection reports as Mitchell’s girlfriend.
Six African lions and three leopards were removed from their premises, which belonged to Alman according to the USDA reports, after a leopard bit off one of Alman’s fingers in March 2005.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare paid for transporting the big cats to the former Wild Animal Orphanage sanctuary near San Antonio, Texas, closed in 2009, after which the surviving Mitchell animals spent the rest of their lives at Big Cat Rescue, near Tampa, Florida.
“Joe Exotic” & prison visitors.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Bought animals from “Tiger King”
Karl Mitchell upon release from prison continued to find Pahrump a congenial place to do business, beginning by purchasing animals from Joe Schriebvogel Maldonado Passage, the notorious “Joe Exotic” and “Tiger King” himself.
(See Carole Baskin & Big Cat Rescue win custody of “Tiger King” Joe Exotic’s tigers.)
The Pahrump Regional Planning Commission on December 11, 2009 refused to grant Mitchell a conditional use permit to keep seven Bengal tigers, but he was still in the vicinity, still keeping exotic cats, when the Netflix television documentary series Tiger King debuted on March 20, 2020.
Mitchell had further history of note, exposed by George Knapp of KLAS on May 20, 2020.
“As far back as a 1996 interview,” Knapp mentioned, “Karl Mitchell felt he’d been unfairly targeted by the government, police, animal welfare groups, and the media.
Kari Bagnall and friend.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Kari Bagnall
“Mitchell has moved from place to place in Nye County over the last 25 years,” Knapp summarized, “but there are common threads. He always has a caged menagerie of exotic animals, in particular big cats, in facilities that fail to meet even the bare minimum standards.
“According to one of his former wives, Kari Bagnell, he was banned from working on Hollywood sets because of animal cruelty. Mitchell was accused of breaking her ribs.”
Leaving Mitchell, Bagnall went on to found the Jungle Friends sanctuary for exotic primates in Alachua County, Florida. Housing about 250 monkeys as of October 5, 2021, according to Bryce Brown of the Florida Alligator, Jungle Friends has itself struggled to meet Animal Welfare Act facilities standards.
(Beth Clifton collage.)
Fired by Mike Tyson
Continued Knapp, “Tiger owner and former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson hired and then fired Mitchell.”
Hair stylist Katie Taylor told Knapp that Mitchell beat a chimpanzee on the set of a Super Dave Osbourne TV shoot.
In February 2019, claiming his tigers were “therapy animals,” Mitchell won a conditional use permit from Nye County to keep ten tigers.
Allegedly repeatedly violating that permit brought the April 2, 2025 tiger impoundments.
Beth & Merritt Clifton
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The post Seven tigers impounded from Nevada “Tiger King” pal Karl Mitchell appeared first on Animals 24-7.
