Carole Baskin – star “Tiger King” and owner of Tampa, Florida’s Big Cat Rescue tiger refuge – has endured repeated allegations from viewers of the hit NetFlix documentary series that she may have been behind the disappearance of her estranged husband, Don Lewis, who who was declared legally dead in 2002 after going missing several years before.
However, an interview with Baskin last year has recently resurfaced and gone viral where she revealed at the time that her husband may actually be alive and well, and currently living in Costa Rica.
While being interviewed by ITV’s “This Morning” in 2001, Baskin claimed that Lewis had been spotted in the Central American country and that the Department of Homeland Security has reached out to her husband and confirmed that he was, indeed, alive.
The tiger rehabber claimed that she didn’t find out about Lewis’ bizarre resurfacing until after the sequel series “Tiger King 2” had already aired.
“One of the really exciting things that came out of ‘Tiger King 2’ is that they produced a letter from Homeland Security and it says that a special agent in charge with the FBI at Homeland Security reached out to the sheriff’s detective George [Jorge] Fernandez, which means this had to have happened after 2002 because Homeland Security wasn’t even around until 2002,” Baskin said during the ITV interview.
“They said my husband, Don Lewis, is alive and well in Costa Rica,” she continued. “And yet all of this drama has been made about me having something to do with his disappearance when Homeland Security has known where he is.”
It is unknown why that revelation essentially flew under the radar at the time, nor why it suddenly only now making the rounds in the media.
Baskin has been accused over the years – due to the unusual circumstances of Lewis’ disappearance – of having orchestrated a plot to have him murdered, although no concrete proof supporting that has ever surfaced.
However, until Lewis actually appears in-person for an interview, there will probably still be a segment of the Tiger King audience that still maintains that Baskin had him “rubbed out” as part of some nefarious scheme. Time will tell!
