Florida Authorities Looking for New Leads on Missing Husband in ‘Tiger King’

With the surging popularity of Netflix’s Tiger King docu-series, police are looking for new leads on the disappearance of Carole Baskin’s husband. Jack “Don” Lewis was last seen on Aug. 18, 1997, and his disappearance is still an active cold case. Multiple people in the doc have accused Baskin of killing him, and then feeding him to her cats at the Big Cat Rescue sanctuary in Florida. 

Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said his department is looking for any leads or information about Lewis’ disappearance. “Since @netflix and #Covid19 #Quarantine has made #TigerKing all the rage, I figured it was a good time to ask for new leads,” he tweeted alongside a photo asking for help solving the cold case. Baskin has continually denied the allegations she killed her husband, releasing a statement in which she denounced the documentary’s portrayal of her.

Nobody has been charged in connection with his disappearance, although he was declared legally dead five years after he vanished. Joe Exotic has suggested that Baskin fed Lewis to her tigers, but she has since called that allegation “the most ludicrous of all the lies.” She added, “As Gladys and the daughters did everything they could to make life difficult for me after Don disappeared, they spread this rumor that they thought I had ground Don up and fed him to the cats. And the media loved it. The meat grinder shown in the video was enormous. Our meat grinder was one of those little tabletop, hand crank things, like you’d have in your kitchen at home.”