Baller Alert Entertainment & Lifestyle
Carole Baskin, one of the many eccentric characters of “Tiger King,” may be a celebrity now, but the animal enthusiast is not immune to the law. In fact, cadaver dogs will soon be brought in to search one of the lake homes of her former husband, Don Lewis, who disappeared mysteriously 23 years ago.
On Sunday night, an Investigation Discovery special dove into the sketchy disappearance of the pilot and tiger breeder in their special “Joe Exotic: Tigers, Lies, and Cover-Up.” Lewis’ family and friends have long suspected Baskin of murdering him and possibly feeding him to her tigers. And now, after two decades, the search is expected to continue.
Jim Rathmann, the retired homicide investigator who will lead the search, detailed the efforts to Fox News.
“That area near the lake house is going to be explored further. So there’s a lot of information that we’re going to reveal that hasn’t been heard and that a lot of people are going to be surprised when they see this thing,” he said.
“You know, it’s amazing. 23 years this case was completely unheard of other than the very initial stages. Completely unheard of. And then everybody watched that Joe Exotic saga several months ago [on Netflix] and boom, this is on a worldwide stage. Everybody’s focused on it. As an investigator, obviously, there’s a lot of people watching, and everybody wants their information and wants to know what’s going on,” he added.
Lewis went missing in 1997 and was later declared dead. However, Rathmann found several “interesting” factors in the case, including the fact that Baskin allegedly made property transfer to Kenny Farr, Lewis’ former handyman, a little over a month after he disappeared.
“That was incredibly telling because nobody has known about this information until recently,” Rathmann explained.
Baskin’s current husband, Howard Baskin, came to his wife’s defense on Monday, claiming that she did not give Farr the property, but instead was simply helping him get into real estate.
“Carole did not ‘give’ Kenny valuable properties for $9,000 as the show implies,” read his statement to Fox News. “Kenny wanted to try to get into the same kind of real estate business that Carole had done, i.e., renting out residential properties. The price he paid would be any down payment he made, which likely was very modest, and whatever mortgage Carole would have taken back that he was obligated to make payments on out of the rental income,” He said, adding, “If he did not make the payments she would take back the properties.”
However, Rathmann believes that the property transfer is a key piece of evidence.
“There were several people that actually have been holding onto information for many years, hoping that this day would come one way or another. So they reached out, and I was able to gather a lot of these documents that they’ve had from 15, 20 years ago, which was quite amazing because a lot of that stuff you didn’t think you’d be able to get access to.”
Rathmann praised the special for examining Lewis’ disappearance outside of the wildly entertaining “Tiger King” documentary that could have potentially overshadowed the cold case.
“What I think is so great about this particular special is that it’s actually uncovering a real investigation with a family that is truly hurting and looking for answers. When you watched what happened several months ago and was put on a worldwide stage, a lot of what wasn’t shown was the human aspect of it and what Don Lewis’ family was going through. You know, he has beautiful daughters and a lot of people that love and care for him, and you don’t get to see that in the show,” continued Rathmann. “And with this, you’re going to see an actual investigation that is going to be factually driven with the information that’s revealed with documents and interviews and firsthand accounts.”
