TikTok and Twitter are once again under the spell of Carole Baskin and her missing husband. Three years after everyone said it because of the series Tiger King about the disappearance, there now seem to be new developments in the case. Don Lewis, Baskin’s husband, who has been missing since 1997, was found alive in Costa Rica. But Lewis’ family knows nothing.
Anyone who went on social media in the first months of the corona pandemic has undoubtedly seen the theory: Carole Baskin would have killed her husband, put his body through a meat grinder and fed her tigers. Her arch-rival Joe Exotic made that claim in the then immensely popular Netflix series Tiger King.
Baskin, owner of the Big Cat Rescue cat shelter, has always said she had nothing to do with her husband’s disappearance. But Lewis’s family thinks otherwise. They are convinced that the big cat lover, who is now married to Harold Baskin, does know more about what happened to Lewis.
Lewis’s disappearance is now 25 years ago and from Tiger King hasn’t released a new episode in over a year. Why is this case in the news again? An excerpt from an interview Baskin gave in November 2021 is resurfacing via Twitter.
Document would confirm that Lewis is alive
In the conversation with the British TV show This Morning Baskin responds to a scene from the second season of Tiger King. In the scene a letter is shown that is supposed to come from Homeland Security (the US Department of Homeland Security). The 2002 document states that Lewis was found alive in Costa Rica.
“It says my husband is alive and yet I was accused of being involved in his disappearance all along, while Homeland Security already knew where he is,” Baskin said in the interview. She says she did not know of the existence of the document until Tiger King 2 appeared on Netflix. The ministry has also not confirmed the existence of the letter.
Sheriff and family deny that Lewis has been found
Although the document suits Baskin well, not everyone is convinced of its authenticity. In fact, Lewis was reported missing in 1997 and pronounced dead in 2002. That does not mean that no one is working on the case anymore.
The sheriff of Hillsborough County – where Lewis’s then hometown of Tampa is located – late TMZ have no reason to believe he has been found. The sheriff has not heard from the FBI about this. Lewis is still missing. The case is therefore still being worked on.
Lewis’s relatives say through a lawyer that they are having a hard time with the coverage of the old interview with Baskin. They refer the claim that he was found alive in Costa Rica to the realm of fables. His daughters are convinced that Lewis, who would have been 84 years old now, is no longer alive.
And what does Baskin himself have to say about it more than a year after the interview in question? She sticks to her statements about the document at the time and does not understand why they are now being reported as news. “I’ve discussed this in at least 60 interviews where I’ve been asked about Don. Now the press is pretending to hear it for the first time. Apparently it was Tiger King 2 not as popular as the first season.”
