‘Tiger King’ star Carole Baskin’s ‘dead’ husband isn’t dead after all.
Carole’s ex-husband, Don Lewis, has been found alive in Costa Rica — and while it was noted in an interview from last year, the news is just now going viral.
via NYP:
During a November 2021 interview with ITV’s “This Morning” talk show, Baskin, 61, revealed that her ex, who was declared legally dead in 2002 after disappearing a few years before, is actually alive and well.
The Big Cat Rescue owner alleged that the Department of Homeland Security has been in touch with her former lover.
“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 told the outlet at the time.
She continued, revealing, “And they said that my husband, Don Lewis, is alive and well in Costa Rica.”
The Post has reached out to Baskin, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI for comment.
Lewis has not made any public statements debunking rumors that he had died.
In November 2021, Baskin and her husband penned a blog on her Big Cats Rescue website, questioning why DHS released his alleged whereabouts to Netflix for season 2, which she did not participate in.
“Also noteworthy is the document they display from Homeland Security, which was not formed as an agency until 2002, five years after Don Lewis’ disappearance, saying they had information that Don Lewis was alive in Costa Rica,” they wrote at the time. “Why is this just appearing?”
The blog post contained screenshots of the alleged DHS documents from the second season of the series and addressed unverified fan theories and claims that she had killed him.
“And for everyone who still wants to believe that Carole killed Don, then please explain to us why you think armchair detectives, or you are better informed than the Special Agent in Charge at the FBI in this Homeland Security Document which says ‘Don Lewis is currently alive and well in Costa Rica,’” they wrote. “This was reported to Jorge Fernandez of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office by the SAC at the FBI according to this letter. While they have purposely redacted the SAC’s name and date, we do know that there wasn’t a Homeland Security until November 2002 which was 5 years after Don Lewis left home in Tampa, FL.”
And, even though the news is over a year old, people are only just starting to pay attention to it thanks to now-viral social media posts.
“Was I the only one that didn’t know they found Carole Baskin’s husband living his best life in Costa Rica?!” someone wrote on Twitter.
Another person wrote, “Hold on, I’m seeing people saying that Carole Baskin’s husband was found ALIVE???”
During the hit Netflix docu-series which premiered at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Baskin revealed that her ex-husband had mysteriously disappeared in 1997. At the time of his disappearance, the two were married, and she claimed that she never heard from him again, according toCBS News.
She has since gotten remarried, having wed Howard Baskin in 2004.
We’re still not buying it. We don’t believe a word Carole says.
