48 Hours - The Missing Millionaire: A “Tiger King” Mystery

Episode Date: January 2, 2022

A new look into the disappearance of Carole Baskin’s husband. Famed lawyer investigates “meat grinder” theory. "48 Hours" correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. Do you believe he was killed, correct? Yes. My name is Alex Spiro. I'm a former prosecutor and I'm an attorney,

and I'm investigating the disappearance of Don Lewis. There's witnesses and information that shed light on further facts and circumstances surrounding this. Have you met these witnesses? Yes. And you believe them? Yes. There are new leads tonight in the strange case of missing millionaire Don Lewis, a man who seemed to vanish without a trace.

We had lost all hope of ever knowing what happened to Dad. And then they got some hope from a TV series. Tiger King was an addictive Netflix documentary series. I'm Julie Miller. I'm the senior feature writer for Vanity Fair. Tiger King centers around Joe Exotic. My name's Joe Exotic and this is Sarge. An Oklahoma-based animal cat owner and his sworn enemy, his rival, Carole Baskin. Talking about a woman down there in Tampa, Florida named Carole Baskin.

Joe Exotic is this wild, cartoonish, flamboyant, openly gay, mulleted, tattooed, gun-toting, large animal owner. Kind of the Mick Jagger, I'd say, of the large cat animal world. Carol has fashioned herself as more of an animal activist. Big cats don't belong in cages. She says that what Joe is doing is not humane and should be stopped. It'll be a cold day in hell before you completely stop me. But also woven into this entertainment was this cold case. Don Lewis, the owner of Wildlife on Easy Street,

disappeared. Carol's second husband, Don Lewis, disappeared under very mysterious circumstances. It was in 1997, and he just vanished. There have been all sorts of theories. There's one that he was drugged and put in one of the small planes and dumped out in the Gulf. If the plan was to push him out this door, that's a challenge. The plan was to push him out this door. That's a challenge. The most insane theory probably being that Carol Baskin had her husband ground up in a meat grinder and fed him to the animals. Word has it that Carol snuck up on Don in-husband, who once worked for Don and Carol,

may have revealed something about Don's fate during a fight. He said, if you try to leave me again, I will put you in the grinder like I did Don. In a meat grinder? Yeah. Her ex-husband denies her story. Do you believe her husband told her that he'd put her in a meat grinder the way he did to Don? I will tell you that there is certain information she's provided that has been independently corroborated. Who would you like to interview the most? Carol Baskin.

I didn't kill Don. People want answers. They want to know what happened to Don Lewis. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing the best idea yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories

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In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of them. 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones and for almost two years I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn trials I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction.

Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Like it or not, the Tiger King, Joe Exotic, is back, along with his arch enemy, Carol Baskin. I'm talking about a woman down there in Tampa, Florida, named Carol Baskin. Lots has happened to these two since we last heard from them netflix came out with a second season of its tiger king series when you think you've seen it all you haven't quite seen it all carol baskin vented on a celebrity webcast called hollywood raw really feel like this is going to be just another horrible year of people having the wrong idea about who I am and what I'm trying to do. Carol Baskin began getting all that attention when she was trying to shut down Joe Exotic's private zoo in Oklahoma.

She has spent over a million and a half dollars just trying to shut me down. Joe fought back. His weapon was a music video with a sensational message. Featuring his idea of a Carole Baskin lookalike, his video charged that 23 years ago, Carole murdered her husband, Don Lewis, and fed him to their tigers. Carole has denied the allegation vigorously and repeatedly,

but millions of viewers saw the video and suddenly the heat was turned up on a cold case. What happened to Carol's husband, Don? The show even lit a fire under the local sheriff's department. We re-interviewed everybody and have looked at new evidence and continue to investigate. Investigators say only two people have declined to be interviewed by law enforcement. One of them is Carol Baskin. Carol is considered a suspect and a person of interest. It was 40 years ago that Carol first became a person of interest to Don Lewis. Like so many Florida stories, theirs begins like a pulp fiction novel that any reputable publisher would reject.

It starts on an unusually chilly night in 1981 in Tampa. Carol was still a teenager and in a bad marriage. She found herself wandering in tears down a main street in the middle of the night. And just then, 42-year-old Don Lewis drove by in his truck. He had stepped out of the home he shared with his wife Gladys. We had had an argument, and he left home and was headed to another girlfriend's house for the night, which I found out later. But he was going down the avenue,

and here was a pretty blonde, and she was crying, and he told me that he stopped, and she got in the truck with him and they spent the night together. I'm sorry, so he was on his way to another girlfriend's house when he met with Carol and took her to a hotel or a motel? Yes. Wow, he was busy. Yes, he was. Don Lewis was busy with two main interests, money and women. Long before he picked up Carol that night on the street, he met Gladys. She was just 13 when he noticed her shopping with her mother.

And I looked up and I thought, whoa, he sure is good looking. And then he winked at me and I turned around to see who he might be looking at and there was no one there. So I said, I guess that was me. A little more than a year later, Gladys and Don married. He was 17 with very little money, but very big plans. He could tear anything apart, put it back together. Don worked hard fixing broken machinery. He made enough money to buy and grow a trucking business. Then he started buying and selling Florida real estate.

And along the way, he met Ann McQueen. Don took somebody with an eighth grade education and taught them how to manage a multi-million dollar business. Ann kept the books and helped run things and they were quite a team. Eventually Don was worth, according to his lawyer, between five and ten million dollars. But you'd never know it. He did business out of a used trailer on an empty lot. He dressed in old jeans and cheap t-shirts. And his cash management system was quaint. What about burying money on the property? Did he do that? Yes, he did. That's kind of an interesting thing to do. Well, somebody would pay him cash, and he loved having cash around,

so he'd put it in a jar and just dig a hole under the little red barn we had. I mean, where I'm from, people who want cash frequently go to the ATM. They don't go to the little red barn. But why do you suppose he didn't, like, go to the bank? Well, he had plenty of money in the bank, too, so. Don and Gladys raised a family. Their three daughters, Linda, Donna, and Gail, remember their childhoods as happy. He was home every night. We always had dinner. It was also a bit unusual, largely because Don had a thing for animals, mostly wild ones. I wouldn't call it passionate. I would call it an obsession.

We would come home from school and there would be a baby alligator swimming in the bathtub. There were ferrets and raccoons and horses and cows and a penguin and a monkey. Dad really loved animals. But his daughters never knew about that other love of Don's, women. And not just their mother, Gladys. Was he a good husband? He was until I would get a call and say he's seeing someone. Ooh. Well, that's, pardon me, that doesn't sound like a good husband.

He was. Up until that point? Yes. May I be a little impolite and ask you if you know roughly how many women he was seeing besides you? If you're talking about the whole 34 years I was married to him, possibly 25. Forgive me again for asking, but how did that make you feel? Well, when I would find out, I would tell him I was leaving. And he would say, there'll be no more.

Did you believe him? Of course, at that time. And as years went by, no. You have to make up your mind to live in that situation or let it drive you crazy. Gladys was pretty good about living with a serial philanderer. And then Don met Carol. a serial philanderer, and then Don met Carol. Was there any sense when he met her that she was different than the other 24-some-odd women? No, she was just like the other 25. But I would say more greedy

because she did find out that he had money. What do you think of her? You really want me to answer that? I'd like to. I think she's the worst thing that ever was born in the United States of America. Wow, you don't mince words. No, and there's more if you want them. Don and Carol had been seeing each other for about 10 years when Gladys decided she'd had enough. She and Don finally divorced in 1990. A year later, Don married Carol. And before long, the new Mr. and Mrs. Lewis had a new business.

They bought a bunch of big cats and put them on exhibit at a place called Wildlife on Easy Street. Don's former lawyer, Joseph Fritz. He'd take a chair and sit in a yard with 10, 12 bobcats. And all over him and him playing with them like it was a household puppy. But before long, there was difficulty on Easy Street. Don and Carol weren't getting along. He told me then, he said, I want you to know right now, don't you or the girls or any of the grandkids or anybody be left in the room with her alone.

And then, after only six years of marriage, Don Lewis just vanished. He wouldn't walk away and leave his cats. He wouldn't walk away and leave his business. I find it hard to believe he'd walk away and leave me. In the days before he went missing, Don Lewis was planning to go to Costa Rica to sell some used cars and trucks. He was supposed to go and get me some VIN numbers and supposed to call me back, and he didn't. Was that like him? I mean, did he do that frequently? No. Don and I spoke on a daily basis. I finally reached Carol.

I kind of asked her if she knew where her husband was, and her answer to me was no, that she hadn't seen him since the day before. And she asked me if I thought that she should call the police, and I think I made a smart aleck remark and said something like, you think, yeah, you need to do that. There were some not-so-subtle signs that there were problems in Don and Carol's marriage. And Don's daughter Donna had sensed trouble between the two. He thought she was crazy. Crazy? He didn't like the way she spent money.

The couple also reportedly thought about what to do with the animals. Carol wanted to keep them and make Easy Street a sanctuary. Don, so the story goes, wanted to breed and sell them. He had talked about getting a divorce and if he had gone through with it, it could have been costly, says Don's lawyer, Joe Fritz. So she would have lost a considerable amount of money. Millions. That's considerable. That's considerable. The couple made a lot of money while they were together, but it turned out there were more signs of trouble.

After Don disappeared, Ann McQueen says she remembered a sealed envelope that he had given her two months earlier. He came to the office, and he was was agitated and he gave me an envelope and he said take this keep it safe place. He either said take it to the police or you'll know what to do with it if anything ever happens. I took her home. I didn't think anything about it. But after Don went missing Ann says she opened the envelope. He was asking the judge for a restraining order. Just months before he disappeared, Don tried unsuccessfully to get a restraining order against Carol, telling the judge, Carol has gotten angry enough to threaten to kill me.

She has a.45 revolver, and she took my.357. Do you remember how you felt when you read the stuff about how she threatened to kill him? I started shaking. Did you actually start shaking? I'm shaking now. Ann says she took the document to the sheriff's department and while she was there the burglar alarm went off at Don's office. Carol had set it off. According to the Tampa Bay Times Carol got in with help from her father and Don's handyman a man named Kenny Farr. And when Ann got back to the office, she says she was

shocked. Everything was gone. Everything that was in my desk was gone. Including, she says, Don's will and power of attorney. Police said Carol's action was legal. After all, she was Don's wife. But Don's daughters were suspicious. Well, to us, it's very odd. She may be his spouse, but she did not have a key at all to the gate or the office. So that says a lot right there. But that's not the only odd thing. Carol gave this interview to the television show Hard Copy, suggesting Don might have had some kind of dementia.

Maybe he doesn't know who he is. Maybe he doesn't know where to call us. But Don's lawyer, Joseph Fritz, says Don had no memory problems. Absolutely none. Did you see him shortly before he disappeared? I saw him at least every week and sometimes two or three times. And Don's family doesn't believe Carol was really worried about Don, in part because they say weeks after he disappeared, she canceled Don's cell phone account. If a person at the beginning, your husband, you think he has dementia, he's got Alzheimer's,

at the beginning, your husband, you think he has dementia, he's got Alzheimer's, and now he's missing. Do you turn his cell phone off after two or three weeks of him being missing, his only lifeline to reach you? Yeah. She turned it off. His cell phone was turned off. Three weeks after. Canceled the account. As the weeks turned into months, Carol offered another possibility. As the weeks turned into months, Carol offered another possibility. Instead of Costa Rica, maybe Don was under arrest in Mexico and couldn't call her. The only place I still haven't looked that I feel somewhat hopeful of being able to find him alive is going to be Mexico. And I don't know how hard or how long that'll take. Do you think maybe a prison?

Yes. I can't think of anything else that would keep him away this long. I find it hard to believe he'd walk away and leave me. Don's family began to think the worst, that Don was dead and that Carol played a role in his death. What was your first thought? I would love to tell you, but I better not. Can you give me a hint? You got it. You thought it was her? I can't say that. Would I be wrong in assuming that that was your first thought?

Maybe. Maybe I'd be wrong? Maybe you might be right. And then the case took a turn. Police found Don's van abandoned at a remote airport. The keys were reportedly still in it. Remember, Don had been planning to go to Costa Rica for work. There is the theory that he just got tired of everything and jumped in an airplane and flew to Costa Rica and drove up the mountain and is living happily ever after there.

Don had owned several planes and he loved to fly. Tell me a little bit about this airplane. So it's a Piper Arrow 3. Joe Solon has flown hundreds of hours in one type of plane that Don Lewis liked to fly. You can roughly get about 700 miles to a full tank, the two main tanks full. So if, say, you were going to go from the Tampa area down to Costa Rica, it's not a nonstop flight. No, no. So that's like how many refueling stops? Oh, probably three to four at least. If he did refuel, no one seems to know about it.

Besides, Don's family says he would never just take off and leave them. But if Don didn't just fly off to begin a new life somewhere, what was his van doing at the airport? I've heard at the time that he was strangled from the back seat of an airplane with an electric cord pushed out 50 feet over the gulf. was strangled from the back seat of an airplane with an electric cord pushed out 50 feet over the gulf. Arrow 09 Michael depart 29 left turn out to the south. I'm also a pilot. And I fly the same type of plane Don often flew.

First of all, imagine the struggle involved in strangling a 170-pound man in this passenger seat. Then, if the plan was to push him out the door, that's a challenge. The slowest this airplane can fly is about 65 miles per hour, and that means winds approaching hurricane strength would be pushing against this door, trying to keep it closed. You'd have to open it, you'd have to keep it open, and you'd have to somehow wrestle the body out of here without interfering with the flight controls. Bottom line, I guess he could do it,

but there are easier ways to get rid of a body. And there was no evidence that any of Don's planes were missing. So if it's unlikely Don Lewis was pushed out of a small airplane, where was he? As the mystery got deeper, the theories got wilder. What were some of those theories or rumors? Someone said he was under a septic tank on Big Cat Rescue. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets,

the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify,

and listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. Did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, early and ad-free, with a 48-hour plus subscription on Apple Podcasts.

hours plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. In the summer of 1997, Carol spoke with the local Fox TV station. I'm very worried. It's just a feeling. But he is okay. The oil just walked back in the gate. But Don never did. It's very hard in the 21st century to go missing-missing as a middle-aged man who has a very active cellular records, banking records, etc. Alex Spiro is an attorney and a former New York City prosecutor. He's now working for Don Lewis's daughters. Well, there are all sorts of theories about what might have happened to Don. One of them was that he was tossed out of an airplane. Do you find that credible? Sometimes in high-profile cases, people come up with fanciful theories of, you know, tigers, lions, bears, and airplanes. I mean, there's usually a simpler explanation of things.

Spiro says the simplest thing of all is to start with the timeline of the day Lewis disappeared. There's a critical window here where Don Lewis went missing. And what really matters and where the rubber meets the road is what happened during those 24 hours. So what happened during those 24 hours? Carroll says she last saw Don Lewis early in the morning of August 18, 1997, when she came home from running a late-night errand. She would not talk to us in person this time, so she sent us a couple of diary entries. Leonora LaPeter-Anton is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and a CBS consultant. And one of them was what she did that night, the Sunday, August 17th, 1997. Carol says that late that Sunday night, before Don went

missing, she needed milk and supplies for her wild cats. At 11 o'clock, you know, she had these kittens that were in the house. There was a bobcat kitten and two caracal kittens. And she didn't have enough ingredients for the milk. In her diaries, Carol says she left Don and drove to a supermarket about six miles away. But the store was closed. And then the story takes another twist. She says her car broke down. Carol says she walked all the way home. It took her until nearly 4 a.m. And then when she got home, Don wanted to immediately go back and get the car. So at four in the morning, they went back. He got the radiator cap off, put water in it, and then they drove home. Two hours later, she saw him in the doorway and he was leaving.

You know, he just left. And that's the last time she saw him. Dawn's ex-wife has her doubts about that story. I don't think she was going to buy milk, no, okay? You do not? No, she wasn't going to go buy milk. You think that she was up to no good that night? Could be. What happened next has raised even more suspicions. After Don disappeared, Carol produced what she said was Don's will and power of attorney, leaving her in charge of everything. But Don's family says his signature

on those documents is forged. Would I be wrong in assuming that you believe that Carol was involved in making up these wills, the will and the power of attorney? You could be. I could be wrong? You could be right. If she was involved, why would she want to have Don Lewis killed? Money. Of course. That happens all the time in the world we live in today. Leonora LaPeter Anton had four handwriting experts examine Don's signature on the power of attorney. All said the signature did not look authentic. Two of them said they felt it was traced from the 1991 marriage license between Don and Carol

and that basically they were not accurate Don Lewis signatures. But Carroll says the signatures were authenticated back in 1997 and are real. The Tampa Bay Times also looked into Don's former right-hand man, Kenny Farr. Remember, he reportedly helped Carroll get into Don's office that day. He was basically a jack-of-all-trades, his right-hand man. And then after Don Lewis disappeared, he went and worked with Carol Baskin. He was driving one of Don's vans, Don's blue van. Trish Farr Payne was married to Kenny for five years. In her first ever TV interview, she told 48 Hours that two days before Don Lewis was reported missing, Farr came home with Don Lewis's van and inside

there was a pile of guns. He said, help me carry these in. We carried them in, we put them under the bed, we put them in the closet, we put them in the little bathroom we had in our room. carried them in, we put them under the bed, we put them in the closet, we put them in the little bathroom we had in our room. I was like, whoa, where did you get these? He said, listen, I'm hanging on to these right now for Carol. But he said, Don's gone. And I don't want you talking about him. Did you ask him what he meant by Don's gone? No, not right then, because he would blow up real easy at me. And I just didn't question it. Later that week, she heard on the news that Don had gone missing. Everything started kind of coming together.

Kenny's got Don's van, Kenny's got Don's guns, Don's gone. And I knew Don was gone the day before he supposedly was missing. Something wasn't right. She says she was too afraid to ask Kenny, but it was hard to ignore some very strange things, like the large freezer with a padlock that she says appeared on their porch around the time Don disappeared. And then, she says, the freezer vanished. How long after Don disappeared did the freezer disappear? About a week after Don disappeared. But Trish says she waited years to tell police about her suspicions. I was afraid for my kids. You know, I had my kids.

I was afraid for them. I was more afraid for them than anything. She says he made that one threat that was especially frightening and bizarre and maybe revealing. Kenny had threatened to put me in the grinders. He said, if you try to leave me again, I'm going to put you in the grinder like I did Don. I'm sorry, he said what? He said, if you try to leave me again, I will put you in the grinder like I did Don. I'm sorry, you said what? He said, if you try to leave me again, I will put you in the grinder like I did Don.

In a meat grinder? Yeah. I thought he was telling the truth. I knew deep down that Kenny has some part in Don's not ever coming back. I knew then for sure. My goodness. So you sort of thought at that point that you were living with a murderer? Yeah. Three years after Don went missing, in the midst of her divorce from Kenny

Farr, Trish says she finally told the police everything. Kenny Farr wouldn't talk to 48 Hours on camera, but told us Trish's story is, as he put it, a outlandish lie. He says, I had absolutely nothing to do with Don's disappearance. Farr also says he cooperated with police at the time of Don's disappearance and even took a polygraph. Now, attorney Alex Spiro says he's found some new witnesses. Have you met these witnesses? Yes. And you believe them? Yes. He said, if you try to leave me again, I will put you in the grinder like I did Don. Do you consider Trish Farr Payne credible? Yes.

Attorney Alex Spiro has been investigating the disappearance of Don Lewis for months. He doesn't want to say much because his investigation is still going on, but he will say there's been some progress. Has there been a new witness who's surfaced who can shed significant light on what happened or corroborate Trish Farr Payne's version of what happened or just clear up some of these unclear matters? There have been, yes. If that's true, you're a heck of a lot closer to figuring out what happened than many people might know.

I like to think I'm closer to figuring out what happened than many people would know, yes. The obvious question is, what about Carol Baskin? You were going to be a fur coat, weren't you, honey? After Don's disappearance in 1997, Carol Lewis carried on at her sanctuary, Wildlife on Easy Street. It is a lot of work. Feeding is one thing that he was always here for. It is a lot of work.

Feeding is one thing that he was always here for. On August 19, 2002, five years to the day Don Lewis was reported missing, Carol had a judge declare Don dead. Gradually, the investigation into his whereabouts went cold. She's a good girl. Yes, she is. In 2004, Carol got married again, this time to Howard Baskin, a businessman, and the ceremony was unusual, even by Florida standards, perhaps. Howard wore like a toga, a tiger pattern toga, and was like a caveman. And he came to her on the beach and she hit him over the head with a plastic bat. And then he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. And then

apparently she put a leash around his neck. You know, it's not how I would have done my wedding, but. Carol Lewis became Carol Baskin, and Wildlife on Easy Street got a new name too. Hi, I'm Carol Baskin, and I'm the founder and CEO of Big Cat Rescue. Howard has an MBA and a law degree, and he sort of brought a business sense to Big Cat Rescue. He brought in like a Washington lobbyist. He knew people in the community. He basically was really good at getting donations. Our donations last year alone were up 50 percent. The organization's mission also changed. There was no more breeding or buying big cats. Our goal is to end the trade in big cats. Carol is an animal rights advocate. We can do it with help from people like you. Someone who believes no one should own a wild cat, not even herself.

She spoke about it in a 2018 interview with CBS affiliate WTSP. Our mission is to put ourselves out of business because there shouldn't have to be a place rescuing lions and tigers from people that get them as pets. Carol eventually went after Joseph Maldonado Passage. You know him as Joe Exotic, an exotic animal owner in Oklahoma. In 2010, she tried to stop him from taking his baby tigers to shopping malls around the country, charging money for pictures. Joe fought back. Hi, Carol Baskin, down there at Big Cat Rescue. And tried to take the name of Carol's organization and make it his own. So Carol sued him. She has spent over a million and a half dollars just trying to shut me down. She won, and a judge ordered Mr. Exotic to pay Carol nearly one

million dollars and that only added more fuel to their feud. I'm already some damn poor I use a file cabinet for my dresser drawers. Joe took to his YouTube channel Joe Exotic TV to air his grievances in his own exotic way. Can you believe they spent enough time to build another entire website about me? For Joe, nothing was off limits. Word has it that Carol snuck up on Don in the middle of the night. And he gleefully revived those suspicions about Don Lewis's disappearance. Joe made that music video with a woman who was

supposed to be a Carole Baskin look-alike pushing that unsubstantiated theory that she fed her husband Don to the Tigers. Joe's hatred of Carole Baskin started feeding on itself and getting more violent. He's posted pictures of an effigy of me hanging and pointing a gun to my head. And Joe Exotic may have done more than pretend to kill Carol. A jury finds former Winnie Wood Animal Park owner Joe Exotic guilty. former Winnie Wood Animal Park owner Joe Exotic, guilty. In 2019, he was convicted of, among other things, hiring a hitman to actually kill her.

He got 22 years. Meanwhile, Carol had a new theory about who might be responsible for her ex-husband's disappearance. She clawed his face up pretty badly. He said he almost had to knock her out to get the gun away from her because she was so intent on killing him. Take an in-depth look at the timeline

of Don Lewis' disappearance at 48hours.com. In January 2021, then-President Donald Trump held the keys to Joe Exotic's prison cell. His legal team hoped for a full presidential pardon. I think we're going to get the pardon. I do. I'm 100% sure. A very stretched limo waited near his federal prison, ready to whisk the Tiger King away from captivity. But the limo left empty. There was no pardon. Joe Exotic's case is closed, but Florida Sheriff Chad Chronister still doesn't know what happened to Don Lewis. He thinks Don was murdered and more than one person might be involved. This wealthy individual left and left his wealth behind, left his money behind. You know,

when's the last time you've ever heard someone leaving without their wealth behind? But the more bizarre theories about what happened are too much, even for a lawman in Florida. They talked about the meat grinder and that the meat grinders were used to feed the cats. Well, the meat grinders had been removed from the property, you know, several weeks before his disappearance. Not saying they couldn't have been involved, but they weren't on the property. With all those uncertainties and those millions of Tiger King viewers demanding answers, the sheriff ordered his team to take a new look at the case. As a result of Tiger King, we contacted and followed up on well over 200 leads. Moses Garcia is a homicide detective for Hillsborough County. He says all those tips didn't help much. A large amount of those were virtually useless.

And Garcia says some of his efforts at investigation have been blocked by Carroll. In the first Tiger King, there were some rumors that came out that Don Lewis was buried in a septic tank or underneath a septic tank on the property. We wanted to go onto the property and kind of look around, but we were not allowed access. It is frustrating. I'd like to get on that property and look around a little bit. The detectives also say they've been unable to interview Carol Baskin. She does a lot of interviews where she says that the sheriff's office has not even approached her. That can be very frustrating when you know you've approached multiple times and you've been told no. Most missing persons, wives,

spouses, they cooperate with the law enforcement. Carroll's alleged lack of recent cooperation does seem to have increased the sheriff's focus on her. The only people that have refused to be interviewed has been Carol Baskins and Kenny Farr. In an interview with TMZ, Carol said since Don went missing, she has released scores of documents and done many interviews. TMZ reports Carol said she has nothing new to tell detectives and is declining to speak to investigator Garcia on advice of her lawyer. But she did email us saying Trish Farr Payne's story about Kenny is false. She called Trish's description of the meat grinder, quote, ludicrous and clearly fabricated, unquote. And as for Don's family's accusations that she canceled

Don's cell phone just weeks after he disappeared, she says that never happened. And she told us regarding the family, quote, they are liars, unquote. And Carol says Don's allegation that she threatened his life is just made up. The judge denied his application saying Don wasn't in any immediate danger. She says she never threatened Don and he only sought a restraining order to stop her from throwing out mountains of stuff he'd accumulated. But Carol says she may know who did threaten Don.

It's an explosive allegation. Carol says it's Gladys, Don's ex-wife, who might be the real villain. According to Carol, Gladys, Don's ex-wife, who might be the real villain. According to Carol, Gladys was angry over a lawsuit she filed against Don after their divorce. She sued him for a million dollars. But Gladys lost. Could she have been so angry over not getting the million dollars more that she thought she would get, that she would kill Don in a last-ditch effort to recover the money she felt he owed her for all of her suffering.

The Lewis family's new attorney, Alex Spiro, says that's nonsense. I have seen no credible evidence that the Lewis family has anything to do with Don Lewis's disappearance. If all the attention is hard on Carol, she's made the most of it. Meow. Tiger King has made her a queen. She was on Dancing with the Stars. Tyra Banks introduced her. It's Carol Baskin.

The eyes of the tiger. And she's just come out with a new documentary on the streaming channel Discovery Plus, Carol Baskin's cage fight. You're abusing big cats? I'm coming for you. As for the Don Lewis case, his family is still hopeful. And they say after more than 20 years, the publicity around Tiger King has changed everything with more tips and leads coming in every day. We feel like we have an army of angels behind us at this point. Is Joe Exotic one of those angels?

He might be leading the whole band. I'm here for you. I'm here. America needs drivers. And we're here to help. What are you learning from Girls on the Run? Never give up. And to always keep trying. I'm here for you.

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