Carole Baskin said she was ‘absolutely shocked’ after she discovered her missing husband Don Lewis could be alive and well after watching season two of Tiger King.
Lewis was declared dead back in 2002 after vanishing without a trace five years earlier - but in 2021, when the Tiger King 2 was released, Baskin said that she was made aware of an apparent letter from Homeland Security claiming Lewis was alive.
You can see her talking about the moment she discovered he was alive here:
Speaking to Good Morning Britain at the time, she said: “I was absolutely shocked. I had to watch Tiger King 2, because I knew people would be just carried away by the narrative, like they were the first time around.
"But when they presented a letter that looked to be from Homeland Security saying that Don was alive and well from five years after I saw him the last time, then I reached out to the FBI and said, ‘I want a copy of that letter. I want to know what that says’ because part of it was redacted and I don’t know who the people involved were. I don't know how long it will take for me to get that, but I'm really curious about that."
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And during an interview with This Morning from around the same time, Baskin also claimed: “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 Jorge Fernandez, which means this had to have happened after 2002, because Homeland Security wasn’t even around until 2002.
"They said my husband, Don Lewis, is alive and well in Costa Rica.
"And yet all of this drama has been made about me having something to do with his disappearance, when Homeland Security has known where he is.”
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She added: "I didn’t think he was capable of supporting himself. He took about a million dollars down to Costa Rica, I had agreed to let him do that so he could prove to himself that he could make a living."
Baskin also claimed that she had attempted to recover the cash but said there was just $80,000 left ‘because the investments he had made were so bad’.
Despite Baskin’s claim from a couple of years back, Lewis has made no public declaration that he’s alive.
LADbible has contacted the US Department of Homeland Security for comment.
Topics: Tiger King, Netflix
Claire Reid