After almost three years since the premiere of the blockbuster program “Tiger King” during the beginning of Covid lockdowns, one of the show’s contentious stars, Carole Baskin, suddenly claims to have discovered that her husband is not truly dead.

Baskin, the proprietor of Big Cats Rescue and the blog with the same name, was criticized throughout the show for her ex-husband, Don Lewis, who had supposedly been gone for years without a trace, leading to rumors that she had murdered him. Now, the “Tiger King” actor asserts that a special agent in charge with the FBI at Homeland Security reported seeing Lewis in Costa Rica some years ago, a revelation that is currently going viral.

In the first season of the popular Netflix documentary series, Baskin disclosed that her ex-husband inexplicably vanished in 1997. According to CBS News, the two were married at the time of his disappearance, and she stated that she never heard from him again.

During an appearance with ITV’s “This Morning” in November 2021, Baskin, 61, disclosed that her ex, who was certified legally dead in 2002 after vanishing a few years earlier, is in fact alive and thriving.

The New York Post adds, however, that Baskin was uninformed of the claimed revelation until the November 2021 broadcast of the sequel series.

“I was not aware of it until ‘TK2’ aired,” Baskin told The Post via email, pointing to her Big Cats Rescue blog.

In the unearthed ITV tape, the animal rights activist said that the Department of Homeland Security had contacted her ex-spouse.

“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.

“They said my husband, Don Lewis, is alive and well in Costa Rica,” she revealed. “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.”

Lewis was 59 years old when he vanished in 1997; if he were still living now, he would be 84 years old.

Lewis has made no public remarks denying the reports.

“I don’t know how it is that Homeland Security says he’s alive and well in Costa Rica but I’m glad to hear it,” Baskin told ITV. ‘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 and her husband at the time, Howard, published a blog on her Big Cats Rescue website in November 2021, wondering why DHS disclosed his claimed location to Netflix for season 2, in which she did not participate.

More on this story via The Republic Brief:

‘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.’ CONTINUE READING…