Tiger King is a 2020 American true crime docuseries about the life of zookeeper and convicted felon Joe Exotic. It was released on Netflix on March 20, 2020. The series focuses on the small but deeply interconnected society of big cat conservationists such as Carole Baskin, owner of Big Cat Rescue, and collectors such as Exotic, whom Baskin accused of abusing and exploiting wild animals.
episode 3: the secret
We open with Doc Antle saying “It’s so crazy it can’t be true. 20 year old cold case murders don’t get solved.” Joe Exotic begins explaining that it all started with Carole Baskin who was Carole Lewis at the time. Mark McCarthy said that he did see Don Lewis about a month or so before he disappeared, and he mentioned to him that he felt like his life was in danger.
Vernon Yates, Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation, says that there’s so many twists and turns and so much stuff that you’d have to write volumes on it, what went wrong there, the lies. He says all the circumstantial evidence there shows that someone had something to do with it. And it all points to Carole but no one can prove it. Carole says that she really believes that everything happens for a reason. That she wouldn’t have any of her life any other way because it took all of that to get her to where she is now. She doesn’t regret any of it.
We then hear from Gladys Lewis Cross, Don’s ex-wife. She said that the last thing she heard from Don was that he said he was divorcing Carole. That she’s one of the worst people he’d ever met, and that she was dangerous. Don’s 2 daughters, Gale Rathbone and Lynda Sanchez are also interviewed and Lynda said that Don had told them to stay away from Carole. That she was dangerous. He never said exactly why though.
Wendell Williams, Don’s business associate said that Don said that he wanted a divorce and then he never saw him again. John Marsicano, lead homicide detective said that the call came in as a typical missing adult. He thought that it would go as things normally go, that after a while things would kind of work themselves out. Then he said after about 2 weeks he began to think that there was foul play involved.
Carole begins talking about when she first met Don. She said she first met him in January 1981, she was 20 and he was 42. Vernon said that Don was married with kids, but apparently he was going down Nebraska Avenue and he saw a girl walking down the road crying. She had been in a fight with her first husband. She said that she actually had to throw a potato across the counter at him in order to get out the door. She said that Don pulled around and asked her to get in the car. She said no. She said on the third time he pulled around and said he had a gun sitting on the front seat and said that she could hold the gun on him that he just needed someone to talk to. So she picked up the gun, held it on him and they drove around and talked. She ended up spending the night with him. Vernon said that he basically deserted his wife and kids cause he was in love with Carole. Gladys said that she was told that he had met Carole, and she was devastated. She said it was over.
Anne McQueen, Don’s executive assistant, said that at first she thought that Carole and Don were going to make it. That she liked Carole. She said that Don wasn’t easy to be with. Joe interjects that Don was a millionaire, and that he didn’t want her spending his money. Anne goes on to say that Carole wanted to be something. Joe said that he has Carole’s diary. Then we see him showing off the fact that he’s got Carole’s diary on his show. Someone sent it to him.
Anne said that you couldn’t look at Don and tell that he was a millionaire. Dale Lively, Don’s mechanic, said that Don wore jeans and a tshirt, but carried around a $500 bill in his wallet just because he could. Kenny Farr, Don’s handyman, said that he would bury money and didn’t want people knowing how much money he had. Joseph Fritz, Don’s lawyer said that Don was probably worth around 5 million if not 10 million.
Carole said growing up they lived in mobile homes, and she never realized how broke they were until she was a teenager. She also said that she was raped at knife point by 3 men that lived across the street from her when she was 14. She said her family were fundamental christians, and they believed that if something like that happened then the girl must’ve done something to ask for it. She left home at 15. She got married to her first husband, Michael, who was abusive, at 17. She was 20 when she met Don and 24 when she left her husband.
Carole’s daughter, Jamie Murdoch said that Don liked lots of animals. They started buying animals in 1992 with a bobcat they bought at an auction. They then bought 56 bobcats and lynx the next year. They kept buying bobcats and lynx until she said there were no more fur farms in the United States that were killing bobcats and lynx. They opened Wildlife on Easy Street. Mark McCarthy said that when they opened it they bought, sold and bred big cats for years. Dennis Hill, a former exotic animal owner said that he believes that he sold Don and Carole their first tiger in 1995. He said they flew their private plane up to Shelbyville and that’s how he met them.
Then Dennis shows us a tape of Don and Carole talking about their cats. It’s dated March 11, 1994. She said in the video that it’ll show viewers how they take the cubs from their mother and acclimate them to life being socialized with people. She said you have to take them so young from their mothers “in order to raise them up as good, quality pets.” Joe said that it’s funny because all the people who are against breeding and selling exotics used to do it.
We keep jumping back to the diary and Joe. He said “I’m sure yall don’t wanna know about how many cats died because they didn’t know what they were doing.” Anne McQueen said that she thinks she started feeling bad about what they were doing. She wanted to collect them to love, and Don saw it more as a business. Carole said that she and Don had differing opinions about the breeding. That Don would often go to Costa Rica once a month and every time he was gone she’d have the vet out there spaying and neutering the cats as fast as she could.
Debra Sandlin, a former big cat rescue volunteer, said that the attraction of Costa Rica for Don was that there were less regulations on the big cats. You could breed them easier. She said that Carole didn’t agree. Gladys said that Don also had a girlfriend in Costa Rica. One of their biggest problems was that she couldn’t be everything that Don needed. She couldn’t be the only one.
Don and Gladys got married when Don was 17 and Gladys was 14. Gladys said that life was good other than when someone would call her and say that they had seen him with someone else. Joe is still reading the diary and I for the most part see what he’s saying about Carole being a hypocrite, but I do not like that he’s reading her diary. He’s sharing very intimate details of their life and he’s rubbing it in in a very smug way. Wendell said that he thinks that Don was preparing his estate and assets in a way that would allow him to get a divorce and not have anything taken away from him. He thinks that Don thought that Carole was only there for his money.
Kenny Farr said that if they had gotten a divorce she would’ve been left with nothing. No money, no cars, no cats. Anne said that Don looked a little funny, and he went in and gave her an envelope with her name on it and said you need to take this and keep it with you and said if anything happens to me you need to give it to the police. It was a copy of the restraining order that he had filed against Carole. The restraining order said that “This is the second time that Carole has gotten angry enough to threaten to kill me. Carole got in a big fuss, she ordered me out of the house or she would kill me. She has a 45 revolver, she took my 357 and hid it.” He was denied any protection. The restraining order was taken out in June and Don disappeared in August.
We see a clip from a news story on the disappearance of Don, and Carole is being interviewed. She said that the last thing she heard from Don was that he asked her to get the Costa Rica truck ready because he was headed to Miami “early, early, early in the morning.” Then in the doc she’s asked again what the last thing he said was and she said “He said he was leaving early, early, early in the morning for Costa Rica.” I don’t know if that’s a slip or it’s not matching up. He said get the Costa Rica truck ready. Idk.
Kenny Farr said the last thing he heard from Don was “If I can pull this off it’ll be the slickest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” Kenny said that he knew there was more to follow, but he had a phone call and left so he never finished. Anne said that he was shipping some cars down to Costa Rica and that everything had to be done through Miami Monday morning. She had to get the titles ready, and she needed some things from him. She needed him to call her but he never did. She called him and he didn’t answer the phone. She called him for a few days after and nothing. She finally got ahold of Carole and she said, “do you think I should call the police?” and Anne said, “d’ya think??!”
Don Lewis was last seen on August the 18th. He was reported missing on the 19th at around 1:30pm. Investigators walked the property and didn’t find anything that led them to believe anything had happened there. Aerial searches were done and nothing. They found his van a few days later at the airport with his keys and briefcase still in it but no Don. The police didn’t look at the van while it was at the airport, they brought it back to Easy Street, and they didn’t look at it until it had sat there a few days. They talked to Dale Lively because they found his prints in the van. Dale said that Don had dropped it off to him a few days before he left and asked him to go to Costa Rica with him. He was apparently planning to move the whole cat rescue down to Costa Rica. When Don would go to CR he would fly commercial. He had a lot of planes, but they were really small. They couldn’t handle flying all the way to CR. You’d have to make 4 fuel stops. Investigator John Marsicano said that he didn’t think that Don got on a plane and flew to CR and crashed. There was no flight plan, no record of a plane taking off.
Carole said that Don lost his pilot’s license the day after he got it, and he flew illegally so there would be no record of him flying. She said he would go down to the gulf of Mexico where he was out of range for the radar. She said that if he crashed in the gulf he wouldn’t ever be found. She also said that Don had had a few crashes, and he was never really right after that last one. That he could remember things from when he was a kid but couldn’t remember where he was for the last 5 minutes. One of the volunteers for the rescue said that that looked like Alzheimer’s to him.
Wendell and Joseph said that they didn’t buy the Alzheimer’s story. There was no way. His disappearance was on hard copy. Joseph said that his understanding of the case is that someone, somewhere wanted Don dead and they got their way. But he wouldn’t say who.
Then we see the making of the video “Here Kitty, Kitty.” Where was this on MTV for making the video?? Rick Kirkham said that Joe had everyone believing that Carole killed her husband and fed him to the cats. Carole said that people want to believe something that is crazy and outlandish. Joe says that tigers have such an acidic stomach that when you feed them a whole turkey there are no bones that come out. Joseph Fritz said that it couldn’t have happened. That there would be bones, a dead body. Something.
Joe then says Don’s own kids tried to have the police dna test the meat grinder. Which they wouldn’t do. Carole is laughing about the fact that she couldn’t have run Don through the meat grinder, she couldn’t even get a hand through there let alone his whole body. Vernon said that there was another theory that Don was put in a septic tank underneath a house that they were building. Joe says that if they could ever get the law to go and dig up the septic tank that he knows that Don is in there. He promises it. It’s so confusing. Like which story are you selling, Joe?
John Marsicano said that they heard all the stories, but had to stay in the bounds of the law. That they started with people who were the closest to him. Anne McQueen was probably the closest to Don. She looked out for him. He trusted her with every penny he had. The only 2 suspects we know about are Anne McQueen and Carole. Carole’s brother was a sheriff’s deputy in Tampa. There’s speculation between some of the people in the doc about collusion, but it’s not proven.
Carole’s family didn’t like Don. Gladys said that she feels like Carole did something and her parents wanted to protect her so they said let’s fix this and get the money. After the disappearance, Carole and Vernon, Carole’s dad, asked Kenny to help them get something from the office. Anne McQueen said that she got a call that the office alarm had gone off and Carole was there. They had cut the locks on the gate, cut the locks on the office, cut the water, and sewer. Carole got the will and power of attorney out of the office. Anne McQueen said that she was the power of attorney for both of them and executor of the wills. When asked who the new power of attorney was when Carole produced the new documents she said, “I don’t know. It’s not me.” She prepared his power of attorney and named herself. She also put instead of upon my death, she put upon my disappearance. Who does that??
After Don’s disappearance Carole got rid of everyone who worked for them. Don’s daughter said that there was a note on the refrigerator that said “Never speak that man’s name in this house.” You can’t do anything after someone disappears until 5 years after and Carole had him declared dead 5 years and 1 day after he disappeared. Carole started to move things around that were Don’s. She took a lot of properties and put them in her name. She gave a lot of “yucky stuff” to his daughters and kept the good stuff for herself.
Carole said that she was always the “other woman,” and that his ex-wife and kids always acted like she didn’t get a fair settlement and tried to take him back to court for more money and that’s when he disowned them. He wanted to nullify their trust, but Carole didn’t want to do that so she kept it because those were his kids. The director asks Gladys and his kids what theory makes the most sense. Lynda said that she thinks the one that would’ve benefited the most from the death of her father is Carole. Gladys said “she knows.” There’s old footage of Carole on a news report saying that the hardest thing for her about the case is that she can’t finally say “see?! I didn’t do it!” and she’s laughing and happy as shit!!
She never seemed sad except on one news report. Carole said that there never was a formal memorial or funeral for him. She said that she got his death certificate in the mail and she opened it and sorta zoned out and the next thing she knew it was dark out. She stood there for hours apparently, and that’s the closest thing she said she had to a memorial. Lynda and Gale, Don’s girls, said that in the end they didn’t end up with probably 10% of his estate. Carole got the rest. Then we see a video of Carole with a fucking flower crown on, and she’s reciting the science of getting rich? She’s saying “There’s an exact science to it. You have to do things in a certain way. Whether on purpose or accidentally to get rich.”
Carole is talking about her husband Howard, they met on November 1, 2002 on November 1, 2004 they got married. And my god the photos. Carole is in a white day dress with a flower crown OF COURSE, and Howard is in a caveman style outfit. There are pictures of him wearing a wig and she’s got him on a leash in one photo. It’s fucking insane. Anne McQueen said that she would’ve loved to have a funeral for him. That she would like closure. The director says “What about justice?” And she said “It would be nice. But I’ve never been a greedy person. We all feel that Carole knows more than what she’s saying.”
Carole said that there’s not a lot that she wants to say to these people, because she knows that they are only saying these things because they view her as a threat to their livelihood and with that being their driving motivation there’s nothing she can say or do that will change that. Don’s family feel that they didn’t think the death wasn’t investigated enough. They were told that Carole was the prime suspect. John Marsicano said that he would be remiss if he said they had a prime suspect at that time.
Lynda, Don’s daughter, said that when they started to speak out, and did People magazine, Inside Edition went to talk to the family and they were going to be on Hard Copy but that’s when they got a cease and desist from Carole basically saying “We have the money. You do not.” So they stopped. The episode ends with Joe saying “I’m taking Carole on. Because everyone else is scared to. She has a lot of answering to do. Her day is coming.”
Next up, episode 4.
