Tiger King’s Carole Baskin ‘100%’ forged missing husband’s will which inherited her millions, sheriff confirms
A Florida sheriff has confirmed that Carole Baskin, the star of Netflix's hit docuseries 'Tiger King,' forged the signature of her missing and presumed dead husband Don Lewis.
Baskin has repeatedly denied rumors that she was behind Lewis' disappearance. He had gone missing in 1997 and was declared legally dead five years later, resulting in her inheriting his considerable fortune of $5 to $10 million.
Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister confirmed to WTSP that his signature had been forged on the document that gave Baskins not just his money, but also the ownership of 'Big Cat Rescue' which they had set up together.
This followed a previous report from Fox News where Joseph Fritz, former attorney and friend to Lewis, had similarly suggested that the signature had been traced from his 1991 marriage record. "I believe it was traced," he said. "Somebody sat at my office and had the pictures and was able to lay one over the other on their cellphone and they are a perfect match."
Forensic document examiner and handwriting expert Thomas Vastrick backed Fritz's assertion and said multiple signatures from Lewis' will and power of attorney were "highly suspect."
"In conducting the examination of the durable family power of attorney and the will, both of which were created on November 21 in 1996, I was struck by the uncanny similarity between each set of signatures," he said. "It was nearly exact replication to the extent that I was very confidently able to opine that what I was dealing with – at least with Mr. Lewis's signature – that these signatures were traced."
"Every time you sign your name, there's a level of variation from one signature to the next and these are just way, way too similar. I did not find this a difficult determination at all," he explained.
Chronister all but confirmed the same. "They had two experts deem it 100 percent a forgery. But, we knew that...we knew that before," he said.
However, he said law enforcement couldn't do anything about it at this point as the statute of limitations had expired for any crime related to the will. "The will had already been executed at that point," he said. "But, it certainly cast another shadow of suspicion, by all means."
Chronister had previously suggested that Lewis had been murdered but did not name Baskin in particular. Fritz, too, had insisted that there was foul play involved in his client's disappearance more than two decades ago.
"What I had heard was that he was strangled from the backseat of an airplane over the Gulf [of Mexico] at 50 feet and dropped out over the Gulf," Fritz had said.
"He loved those cats," he continued. "He never would have just walked away from them. Ever. He was proud of those cats. He loved his cats. Some force made him leave."
He shared that his "working theory" was that Lewis was killed after he was lured to a private county airport under the pretense that he could buy a plane on the cheap.
"Don Lewis, he was terribly cheap while he was very wealthy," the attorney said. "He was cheap beyond belief. What would have lured him more than anything else is a good deal on an airplane.'
"So that's what I assume happened, that he got lured up to the Pilot Country Estates to look at an airplane," he continued, adding how Lewis used to fly under the range of radar detection because of his revoked pilot's license.