The group also has surfaced names and connections between evidence that had not been talked about in public before. Farr backed it up to their house and opened the doors to reveal a pile of pistols and rifles. Later that afternoon, Baskin hooked the trailer to a truck and hauled the office to her animal sanctuary. Now a long-dormant police investigation has sprung to life, as journalists, TV crews and amateur sleuths from across the country travel to Tampa, publicly pursuing leads and theories they believe investigators may have missed or discounted two decades ago. “Man, I'm nobody,” he said a day after he ate dinner with Lewis’ daughters, who he says he’s working to help. The department may have been distracted by the disappearance of “Baby Sabrina” Aisenberg, a story that made national news shortly after Lewis’ disappearance. He was … The true crime docuseries, which premiered on Netflix this month, revolves around the life of Oklahoma zookeeper Joseph Exotic and the events that led him to plan a murder-for-hire plot against animal … heard a rumor that Lewis was pushed out of a plane 50 feet over the Gulf of Mexico. Chronister has said the original investigation did not turn up any physical evidence, only a byzantine loop of dead ends and conflicting stories from Tampa to Costa Rica. Records confirm that deputies confiscated about a dozen guns from their home in 2000. Garcia declined to speak to the Times. Her multi-millionaire husband Jack Donald Lewis  — who went by Don Lewis — did vanish without a trace back on Aug. 18, 1997. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. The couple has no child together. He finally called police months later. In a press conference from his home, Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister announced that the department would be reviewing reviewing “a lot of the evidence," and a detective supervisor has been assigned to handle all the leads coming in, although none so far have proved to be credible. stopped breeding cubs, which Lewis wanted to continue doing, the same year he vanished and the operation soon turned into Big Cat Rescue, a sanctuary to rescue cats from cub-breeding facilities. She said she couldn’t remember the date, but it had been long enough that she knew Lewis wasn’t coming back. However, Baskin admitted in the docuseries that they clashed over whether to breed the cats; for her it was about caring for animals she loved and for Lewis it was a business, she said. Smith filmed and posted the effort last weekend in Seffner, where cadaver dogs walked the perimeter of a 172-acre property Lewis once owned. After bingeing Tiger King, Chad Chronister, the third Hillsborough County sheriff in office since Lewis disappeared in 1997, reviewed the case files and assigned new deputies to investigate. The other two, including Robson Forensic’s Mark Songer, a former special agent and document analyst with the FBI, believed Smith’s video was right about the signature being traced from the marriage certificate. This show also tried to put light on the character of Don Lewis’ wife Carole Baskin. When the Times requested Pasco County’s report on the van, the document arrived mostly unreadable. Robert Stern, one of two real estate attorneys who reviewed the documents for the Times, described the transfers as “some of the messiest conveyances of title I’ve seen in my practice.”, He said there was nothing legally wrong with the transfers. The next day, his white 1989 Dodge van was found abandoned at the Pilot Country Airport, a private airport near State Road 52 … "That still holds true, (but) we are hoping that changes the more people watch this show." Records also show Farr and his family transferred a half-dozen properties, back and forth, with Baskin, beginning a month after Lewis went missing. Fritz said Cpl. “When these reports become available to fresh eyes, you can go down some trails you wouldn’t otherwise be able to go down.”. After this, Don Lewis graduated from the University of Georgia. He doesn’t work full-time but derives income from Airbnb rentals and walks with a cane since what he called a “botched” hip surgery. But do only the perfect among us deserve justice?”. She finds it strange that Lewis’ van, found at the Pilot Country Airport in Pasco County with the keys in it and no tag, was returned to Baskin before Hillsborough County investigators processed it for evidence. Moises Garcia told him they planned to do more in-person interviews after the worst of the coronavirus. Don was last seen in Tampa, Florida on August 18, 1997. That one made McQueen the executor. Big Cat Rescue chairman Howard Baskin and his wife, Carole, who is the founder of the organization, at the 2008 Fur Ball in Tampa, Fla. That just might be the error of all errors. She would not agree to an interview with the Times but answered questions by text and email. She said he was having trouble with short-term memory, had taken to hoarding vehicles and "junk" and had "deteriorated into dumpster diving" to feed those impulses. Do Not Sell My Personal Information. Thanks for contacting us. The alleged motive would have been to gain sole control over their animal sanctuary, which Baskin did do. McQueen recently recounted that detail to the Times and shared other things that she has told officers, who interviewed her as recently as the beginning of June. In Baskin’s diary entries, she logged communications with detectives and reporters over the years. Then, he said he heard a rumor that Lewis was pushed out of a plane 50 feet over the Gulf of Mexico. That expert concluded they were traced. Sitemap Hillsborough Det. Netflix’s new docuseries “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” is full of drama, all involving big cat people. Video of the search, posted to Facebook, showed a black German shepherd barking animatedly in the middle of the lake as a crew filmed for Netflix. The next day, Farr left in Lewis’ van. The airport’s owner, Dewey Gallops, called the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office Aug. 20 to come see if the van he’d found parked there at 4:30 a.m. was stolen. Among the craziest things about Netflix's "Tiger King" docuseries are theories about what happened to Don Lewis, the husband of Joe Exotic's nemesis Carole Baskin, who went missing in 1997. Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. He is currently incarcerated for 22 years for attempting to hire someone to kill her. Baskin claimed that the night before he vanished, he told her he had to wake up very early to transport cars to Costa Rica, where he had also envisioned moving their cub-breeding operation to. However, Baskin admitted in the docuseries that they clashed over whether to breed the cats; for her it was about caring for animals she loved and for Lewis it was a business, she said. A spokesman for the Pasco sheriff apologized, saying that quality control for scanning reports was lacking in 1997. Editor's note: In his initial interview with Oxygen.com, Greg Thomas of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department stated that Carole Baskin was looked at as a person of interest in her husband Don Lewis' disappearance. They form the small and dedicated core of the Lewis group on Facebook. Amid such disagreements, Lewis' ex-wife Gladys Lewis Clark told “Tiger King” producers that Lewis wanted to divorce Baskin. Two days after Baskin reported him missing, his van was found at an airport about 40 miles from Tampa. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. The next day, Payne said she stood beneath the carport and told detectives she suspected Farr of being involved in Lewis’ disappearance. Payne, Farr’s ex-wife who now lives in Hillsborough County, said she has not heard from the detective since mid-April. Ten days later, McQueen was being interviewed by detectives when she said she received a call from the alarm company. They both got married in the year 1991. Don Lewis got married in the year 1955 with Gladys Cross. “He had the ability to make a woman feel like she was the only woman on the planet.”. Two months before Lewis vanished, he filed court documents seeking a domestic violence injunction against Baskin, claiming she threatened to kill him, according to the docuseries. After his death was ruled, Carole was his spouse, and therefore inherited his millions. The circumstances surrounding his disappearance have sparked all kinds of theories and rumors. He is the founder of the famous zoo named “Big cat rescue”. He noted that the will, which had a specific clause about the instance of a disappearance, was suspicious but that ultimately, there wasn’t enough evidence to dictate whether it was falsified or not. Thomas said because Lewis was “supposedly sighted" in Costa Rica a couple of years after the disappearance. In interviews that did not make it into the series, Farr denied knowing anything about what happened to Lewis, she said. Though the docuseries focuses on the feud between G.W. Contact Leonora LaPeter Anton at llapeter@tampabay.com or 727-433-1446. “He just literally vanished into thin air,” Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department patrol sergeant, Greg Thomas, who worked homicide and cold cases for the department for years, told, At the time Lewis vanished, he and Baskin were running. Jim Moore, who regularly fed the tigers, leopards and cougars with Don and Carole, was surprised when no one came to interview him. Three years later, in June 2000, a woman named Trish Payne spoke with the detectives investigating Lewis’ disappearance, she recently told the Times. Payne told a deputy: “At the time, I thought he might try to shoot me, then he put it on himself and screamed over and over, ‘Is this what you want?’ before running out the back door.”. But McQueen, like Moore and Payne, is critical of the early investigation. Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is available on Netflix. She learned the collection belonged to Lewis. She said in all the years that she has worked for him that he has never failed to call her for such a long period of time. Another daughter, Lynda Sanchez, wrote in an email to the Times that the family is thankful that detectives are taking a fresh look. When did Jack Donald Lewis go missing and what happened? It’s been about three months since Tiger King lured 64 million households into the Lewis mystery. Payne said Farr told her again not to mention Lewis, especially on the phone, which he thought might be tapped. Amanda Granit, public relations coordinator for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, has since clarified that Baskin was never officially named a person of interest, nor has anyone else. "The idea that a human body and skeleton could be put through it is idiotic. The couple had argued at their home in Plant City, police reports show, and Farr pulled a pistol out of his pocket and pointed it at her. He was a self-made millionaire and the husband of the famous Tiger lover named Carole Baskin. His car was found parked at a private airport where Lewis, an amateur pilot who made frequent trips to Costa Rica, was known to have bought an aircraft in cash transactions. He expressed frustration with all the attention, saying, “I’d like to keep the investigation private.”. They all claim he had told them he was planning on leaving Carole and believed her to be dangerous. What Would Happen If NYC Homebuyers All Went to Florida? “In my opinion, this case hinges 100 percent on a witness statement, because you don't have any physical evidence,” Statile said. “He was someone I could trust to keep Don from getting lost or going into cages with cats who could kill him, while I worked.”. In 2002, after Jack still wasn’t found, he was declared dead. Wendell Williams, Lewis' former business associate, likewise told producers the claims of mental deterioration were "all bull," and accused Baskin of "setting the stage for the dementia and Alzheimer's" so it would make more sense if he just up and vanished. McQueen couldn’t reach him again after that Friday afternoon. Smith is investigating the case. “There was rumors that this was an ‘insurance scam type of thing,’" Thomas, from the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, told Oxygen.com.

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