Carole Baskin is seen on 15 September 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by fupp/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
Tiger King‘s Carole Baskin claims her late husband Don Lewis pretended to be someone else and used a fake name to hide their relationship from his then-wife.
The Big Cat Rescue boss was married to millionaire Don Lewis when he disappeared in 1997. Lewis was declared legally dead in 2002, and Baskin has repeatedly denied claims that she was involved in his disappearance.
She spoke on Katie Piper’s Extraordinary People podcast about the early days of her relationship with Lewis. Baskin claimed Lewis used an alias when they first met as he was still married to another woman at the time.
She said: “It’s so bizarre. You’re talking about Don… I met Don in 1981, and when I met him, he told me his name was Bob Martin and that he was just a poor lot boy that worked for this really evil guy, Don Lewis.”
Baskin said Lewis would make her “hide under the dashboard” of the trailer that the pair met in “because we were hiding from Don”. She explained: “I didn’t know for two or three years that we were hiding from Don’s wife – not Don – and that Bob Martin was Don.”
Don Lewis is alleged to have had over 20 girlfriends.
Carole Baskin also alleged Don Lewis had other partners, and she learned in the hit documentary series Tiger King that there were more than she had expected. She said: “What I didn’t know was that he had all of these other girlfriends.
“I think I learned in Tiger King that his wife said he had 23 other girlfriends, and I’m like ’23?’.
“We were having sex like two or three times a day – when did he have time?”
Despite Joe Exotic being behind bars, Baskin has stated multiple times that she still fears for her life. She recently revealed that she will be closing her big cat sanctuary over fears people will try and kill the animals housed inside.