Big cat owner cold case calls surge after Netflix show
IT HAS been 23 years since multimillionaire big cat sanctuary owner Don Lewis vanished into thin air. But now tips are flooding in at a Florida sheriff ’s department in the wake of a hit Netflix documentary series. Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness has become a massive hit during the coronavirus pandemic. Among those who binge-watched the sevenpart series was Chad Chronister, the
Sheriff of Hillsborough County, Florida.
Mr Lewis was declared legally dead in 2002. But in recent days the sheriff ’s office has been inundated with calls.
Mr Chronister, speaking by video conference from Florida, said: “I’ve assigned a detective supervisor to handle all the leads coming in. Everyone surrounding his [Mr Lewis’s] disappearance had their own theory. Some people believe it was in a meat grinder, fed to the tigers, some people said he was kidnapped, or killed in Costa Rica.”
The Netflix series features Joseph Maldonado-Passage (“Joe Exotic”) a former Oklahoma zookeeper. Earlier this year he was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in a murder-for-hire plot. He was convicted of trying to hire someone to kill Mr Lewis’s widow, animal activist Carole Baskin, who coowned Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Florida with Mr Lewis. Ms Baskin had tried to shut down “Joe Exotic”.