A Florida sheriff says he’s receiving at least six new leads each day into the disappearance of Jack “Don” Lewis, the husband of Big Cat Rescue zoo owner Carole Baskin of Tiger King fame. However none have proved credible yet, Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister told the Associated Press. “Most tips are more theories,” he said. Chronister said he put out a call for public information and assigned a detective supervisor to handle leads after the documentary series exploded in popularity. “Everyone’s home. They’re watching Netflix,” he said.
Netflix’s Tiger King featured questions about Lewis’ 1997 disappearance raised by “Joe Exotic,” an ex-Oklahoma zookeeper. “Exotic,” whose real name is Joe Maldonado-Passage, was sentenced to 22 years in prison for trying to hire someone to kill Baskin—who allegedly had tried to shut down his Oklahoma zoo. Maldonado-Passage accused Baskin of killing Lewis and feeding his body to tigers or dumping it in a septic tank.
Chronister debunked some theories surrounding Lewis’ death, stating that the meat grinders that process food for the tigers at Big Cat Rescue were removed several weeks before he disappeared. Big Cat Rescue’s septic tank was put in years after Lewis’ disappearance. “We hope the Sheriff’s plea for leads will result in new information about what happened to Don Lewis,” Susan Bass, Big Cat Rescue’s spokeswoman, told the AP.
Read it at Associated Press
