‘A sad, sad tale’: Myrtle Beach Safari’s Doc Antle refutes murder hearsay in Tiger King
There are plenty of immoral allegations against Bhagavan “Doc” Antle in “Tiger King: The Doc Antle Story.”
Hypnotism. Drug smuggling and dealing. Improper interactions with teenage girls. Animal cruelty. Being a fake doctor. Running from the police.
And murder.
“Everyone who told the truth was kicked to the wayside,” Antle, owner of Myrtle Beach Safari in Socastee, said of the Netflix docu-series’ casting. “Only those who would take payment for their life stories got to be in the show.”
He ultimately faces charges only on those that deal with animals.
The biggest and most serious allegation that many in the show speculated about was that he pushed his friend and No. 2 in charge at his Virginia zoo, Mark “Mitra” Topping, off a cliff, where he fell to his death.
However, as Antle pointed out, the show itself appears to discount the allegation when Paul Lewis, who accompanied Topping to Crabtree Falls, where he died, said that Topping’s chance-taking ways were what led to his death.
“He falls off a cliff and dies and they push you for a long time that he was murdered for some reason,” Antle said of the docu-series’ narrative in episode 3, the finale. “They run that story pretty good. I have a lot of people writing me and saying that now they know I will go to jail for this murder of my friend who fell off of a cliff.”
One of Antle’s ex-wives, Sumati Steinberg, says in the show that she was supposed to go on a date with Topping the day he died, May 28, 1989. There are others in the show who said Topping was owed tens of thousands of dollars and wanted out of the animal business, implying that perhaps that would be Antle’s motivation to kill him.
“If you really take the time to roll it, the murder is so dang silly,” Antle said. “And in the end they say ‘Oops. That didn’t happen, but the guy likes peaches.’ That’s like the whole ending moment.
“So if you don’t watch it all the way through they are pretending that my buddy, who lived with me and a guy who hung with me for years, fell off of a cliff a hundred miles from my house.”
It’s mentioned in the show that Antle did not attend Topping’s funeral. However, Antle had only nice things to say about his friend.
“It’s a sad, sad tale of a thrill-seeking free-hand rock climber, a powerful, good-looking, strong man, but everybody can slip,” Antle said. “He’s halfway down a mountain when he slips. I certainly do not rock climb. I was not at his side. I never felt I needed to challenge a mountain. I love a tiger, but I’m not challenging mountains. It’s not my M.O.”
The series also tells tales of Antle’s hypnotizing ways, drug smuggling and dealing, improper interactions with teenage girls, animal cruelty, running from the police and being a fake doctor in the 1980s, when he was part of what they describe as a cult called “Yogaville.”
Antle, however, said many of the people interviewed for the show, such as magician Steven Diamond, barely knew him despite being portrayed as experts on his life.
“The kid that narrates, he does a good job because he’s a professional stage magician, but he’s just a kid I hired when he was a teenager to do a couple blip jobs,” Antle said of Diamond, who’s featured prominently in the series. “For me, there’s just moments in my life, but I didn’t know him. He didn’t hang out with me. He wasn’t my friend.
“He’s just a whole other kind of character. Yeah, he was a background guy on a couple of jobs that had 30 or 40 full-time staff. He’s one of 30 or 40 full-time staff. He was hanging around, but he narrates the show as if he has a personal relationship.”
Antle essentially discounted all of the tales told aside from some of what his three ex-wives said. He also mentions that two of his kids who he had with two of the ex-wives live with him now and love him.
“It was to tell a tale and almost everybody in there, pretty much every single person in there, except for, of course my first, second and third wives, every person in there hasn’t spent a dozen hours with me,” said Antle, who says he’s suing Netflix over the original Tiger King series he was featured on. “I have no relationship with them. They’re just making up their ideas.”
He also said that many of the people interviewed in the original Tiger King and The Doc Antle Story – he was barely featured in Tiger King 2 – were portrayed as if they worked for him when that wasn’t true.
“They always show these pictures of these characters hugging tigers and feeding a monkey. But everybody does that who meets me. That’s what you do. You pay a fee and you hug a tiger and feed the monkeys. That’s what I sell,” Antle said. “People often pretend that these images of them make it as though they worked there. Eddie Murphy didn’t work for me, but I sure made him look like Dr. Doolittle.”
Antle called The Doc Antle Story “poorly done,” though he thought the original Tiger King was well-done despite being what he’s called entertainment and not a true documentary.
The series ends with a very brief mention of serious charges Antle is facing in Virginia.
He is facing felony charges in Virginia related to illegal wildlife trafficking. He was indicted in October 2020 following a months-long investigation by the Virginia Attorney General’s animal law unit, according to a news release from the office.
Antle’s charges include felony counts of wildlife trafficking and conspiracy to commit wildlife trafficking, along with misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty and conspiracy to violate the Endangered Species Act.
The charges are related to lion cubs transported from a Virginia facility, Wilson’s Wild Animal Park, to Antle’s facility in Myrtle Beach, also known as The Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (T.I.G.E.R.S.). The animal cruelty indictments allege he carried or caused the lions to be carried in a “cruel, brutal, or inhumane manner, so as to produce torture or unnecessary suffering.”
Antle’s jury trial is set to begin July 25, 2022 in Fredick Circuit Court, according to Virginia court records.
However, the docu-series focuses mostly on Antle’s personal life.
“They interviewed enough people that they had all of the information they needed 100 percent. But they wanted a certain tract just like Tiger King 1. They wanted a story they thought would sell,” he said. “Tiger King is by no means a documentary. It is the greatest story ever told that didn’t happen. It’s that simple. It’s silly s***.”
This story was originally published December 26, 2021 at 6:58 AM.
