Carole Baskin slams Netflix's 'Tiger King' over 'unsavory lies' that she fed her husband Don Lewis to big cats
In a long blog post she shared on the Big Cat Rescue website, Carole Baskin called out Netflix's docuseries 'Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness' for being "disappointing", "salacious" and "without any regard for truth". 'Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness' explores the eccentric frivolous life of Joe Exotic, who had hired someone to kill her.
The docuseries focuses on Joseph Maldonado-Passage aka Joe Exotic's rivalry with Carole Baskin, an animal activist and founder of Big Cat Rescue sanctuary in Florida. Baskin threatened to put Joe and his associates out of business.
The series claims that Baskin was involved in the disappearance of her former husband Don Lewis in the wake of the release of the series. Joe had theorized that Baskin was responsible for her husband's death and insisted that she fed his remains to their tigers.
She denied the claims on her website saying that she "never threatened him" and that she "certainly had nothing to do with his disappearance". "When he disappeared, I did everything I could to assist the police," she said.
"Lies in Netflix Tiger King regarding the disappearance of Don Lewis," Baskin began her post. "When the directors of the Netflix documentary 'Tiger King' came to us five years ago they said they wanted to make the big cat version of 'Blackfish' (the documentary that exposed abuse at SeaWorld) that would expose the misery caused by the rampant breeding of big cat cubs for cub petting exploitation and the awful life the cats lead in roadside zoos and back yards if they survive."
"There are no words for how disappointing it is to see that the docuseries not only does not do any of that but has had the sole goal of being as salacious and sensational as possible to draw viewers," she continued. "As part of that, it has a segment devoted to suggesting, with lies and innuendos from people who are not credible, that I had a role in the disappearance of my husband Don 21 years ago."
It was in August of 1997 that Baskin's husband Don went missing. Five years later, with no body recovered, he was declared dead.
"The series presents this without any regard for the truth or in most cases even giving me an opportunity before publication to rebut the absurd claims," she added. "They did not care about the truth. The unsavory lies are better for getting viewers."
After the announcement of his death, several theories had started doing the rounds. Some claimed that he had crashed his plane in Costa Rica and started a new life there. Other claimed that Baskin herself killed him and then fed his remains to their big cats and hid it under a septic tank.
In the blog post, Baskin also explained why Don got a restraining order against her two months before he vanished. "Don spent one week per month in Costa Rica. Don was a man who wanted to have sex daily. He would go to Costa Rica during the week I was having my menstrual cycle," Baskin claimed. "I accepted this as something I had to live with. During the week he was away, I would haul off the property as much of the junk as I could."
She added that the only way that Don could get her to stop moving his things was to file a restraining order against her on June 20, 1997. This order was denied.
Baskin then took to clarifying the "most ludicrous of all the lies" — that she ground Don and fed him to their cats. "As (Don's ex-wife) 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," Baskin wrote. "And the media loved it."
She said that the series exaggerated the bit about the meat grinder. She said, "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."
"Meat had to first be cut into one-inch cubes like you see here to go through it," Baskin said. "The idea that a human body and skeleton could be put through it is idiotic. But the Netflix directors did not care. They just showed a bigger grinder."
Elsewhere, Kim Kardashian took to Twitter to rave about the series. "Has anyone seen Tiger King on Netflix?!?! It is crazy!!!!" Kardashian tweeted. That prompted a lot of her followers to share their thoughts about Carol and Don.
"Wow the amount of texts I've gotten about Tiger King since I tweeted about it all have mentioned their belief that Carol killed her husband!" she then wrote. "What are your thoughts? Do you think Carol killed him?"
All episodes of 'Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness' are currently streaming on Netflix.
