Carole Baskin Slams the Media for Calling Her Out

Mr. Jack Donald Lewis was a self-made millionaire who loved exotic animals, his zoo, Wildlife on Easy Street in Tampa, Florida. He was married to his second wife, Carole Lewis (now: Baskin), who is now the owner of all of his property including his zoo, now known as Big Cat Rescue and his $5 million in assets. The relationship between Don and Carole were rocky, but the two lived together happily with their wildlife. Don then disappeared on August 17, 1997, just two months before his disappearance, he filed for a protection order. He had told the Hillsborough Circuit judge that his wife was threatening to kill him and hid his gun, but the judge denied his request.

Carole hiding the gun could be taken two different ways, in Don’s case, he took it as a murder plot, so he could not fight back, but Carole could have hidden the gun so he could not shoot the cats. There has not been any evidence to show that Don was shooting any of his cats, so it cannot be justified that Carole had hid the gun out of fear for the cats. Something else that stuck out to me was the fact that he had pleaded for a protection order two months before his disappearance. There was a very long time for Carole to plan and go through with the murder, a well planned murder needs time, and the more familiar the person of murder, the easier it is for the murder to play off as a freak accident.

The second very strange thing about this case is the will, after Don’s disappearance, Carole conjured up a will. According to Don’s assistant, Anne McQueen, Don had her keep a will in her office, but the morning after Don’s disappearance, the will was taken out of her office, not by McQueen, but maybe Carole. Don was a very paranoid person, who believed that all his women were out for his money, and he made sure that when he was gone, his money didn’t go to them. Then the will emerged, but instead of the usual saying of, “in case of my death”, instead, it said “in case of my disappearance”. This stood out to everyone, even Don’s lawyer said that this kind of heading is uncommon for will, and that he has never seen one.

Finally, Don’s car was found at the airport next to his private planes, but none of the planes were gone and on top of that, Don lost his license a few years before the incident. Carole claims that Don flew illegally and lower than the altitude that you are legally supposed to fly, and crashed somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle when heading to Costa Rica. Extremely odd.

There are many theories of what happened to Don Lewis, but there is no evidence, for or against Carole Baskin. Almost all pointing to Carole, some accusing her of grinding her husband in the meat grinder, then feeding them to the tigers or throwing him into the Tampa swaps nearby. Both seem extremely likely, the tigers are close and don’t require transportation and feeding him to the crocodiles leaves no traces. Due to the fact that crocodiles are not extinct, but endangered, they protect the wildlife from being searched and probably dissected. There are more theories that don’t include wildlife, like Carole’s claim, Don Lewis flew his plane and crashed somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle. Then where’s the plane? Sure, the Bermuda Triangle is known for planes, ships, and even rubber duckies to disappear, but something that big couldn’t just fall out of the air. Now, twenty years later, Don’s lawyer, Joseph Fritz claims that Don Lewis was pushed out of a plane and killed. Explaining why his van was at the airport tarmac and why none of his planes were missing. We will never know.

More things that are weird about Carole Baskin:

1. According to a Bruce Durham, a body language expert, when trying to remember past memories, we typically look down, but in Carole’s interview in the third episode of the hit Netflix show, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness, she looks straight ahead at the interviewer and never once looked down when trying to remember what happened to her late husband. Then he talks about how Carole always purses her lips when she is answering a question. According to the expert, that means there is something that she doesn’t want to tell. Then he goes on to talk about what happened when she received the letter that her husband is pronounced legally dead, and how she blanked out for an entire day without realizing how or why. It is odd that she remembers blanking out, but no why.
2. Carole and Don used to run the Private Zoo, Wildlife on Easy Street, Together. Now, Carole is an “Animal Rights Activist” who claims to be against what she was doing maybe ten, twenty years ago. People can change, but can people change that fast? According to Psych Central, people are told that they can’t change because leopards can’t change their spots, but it might actually be possible to change over time. Changing people takes time and requires patience, motivation, and most importantly time. Did I mention? Change also depends on a person’s DNA, about DNA, we don’t know too much about Carole’s, but let us take a look at time. Don Lewis disappeared on August 18, 1997 and Big Cat Rescue, the big cat sanctuary Carole founded. That raises some eyebrows, you’re telling me that Carole decided, all-of-a-sudden to create a big cat sanctuary when her husband, still alive and well, had a private zoo, the one thing that she is against. My question is, why didn’t she kill him sooner?
3. When the show, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness came out, Carole posted a lengthy article about the “false” accusations on the show. She claims that she didn’t know the show was going to talk about things like that, instead she chose to join the show because she thought they were going to bring light to the animal right’s problem. She also talks about the misinformation about her zoo, Big Cat Rescue. She says, “There are not words for how disappointing it is to see that the series not only does not do any of that, but has had the sole goal of being as salacious and sensational as possible to draw viewers.” The show simply wants to tell the entire story of the “war” that is going on between private zoos and animal right’s activists. If you didn’t do anything wrong, there should be nothing you are afraid of, but it appears that the more Carole tries to defer the claims, the more we are going to believe it.
4. Carole was extremely excited when Joe Exotic was put in jail. It feels wrong to celebrate someone’s downfall. Instead of celebrating, she should put her time and effort into saving the cats that Joe had bred. Or helping Joe find a good path that is good for everybody. Sure, she just “won” a nonexistent “war”, but does that call for an excited article that is longer than the Declaration of Independence?

End Note: I was really biased, but I didn’t want to be biased towards Carole. Something about her is just off. We have no evidence, what a wack system America.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.