Tiger King's Carole Baskin hasn't received much sympathy, which is the type of reaction you can expect when lots and lots of people watch a docu-series in which it's lightly suggested that she chopped up her ex-husband and fed him to tigers.
And it looks like public opinion of Baksin isn't about to change. On Wednesday, TMZ reported that after the Tiger King premiere, a group of online sleuths joined forces with a spokesman named Jack Smith, who also happens to be representing the family of that dead ex-husband (Don Lewis). I'm pretty sure you know by now that Lewis' disappearance, which occurred all the way back in 1997, is still unsolved. He was declared legally dead in 2002.
TMZ adds that the group believes they have a new lead that will warm up the cold case, specifically that Baskin lied about the timing in which a septic tank was installed on her animal sanctuary property (legal disclaimer: their assertion, not mine). The new accusation is tied to an existing theory that Baskin buried Lewis under a septic tank.
According to Smith, the team of online detectives found what they say are literal receipts, in addition to permit paperwork, relating to the installation of the septic tank. In the past, Baskin had acknowledged that two tanks sit on the property. She said that one was put in long before Lewis disappeared, and one was put in way after that.
Smith and his cohorts state that these receipts (which have screenshots that can be found here) were for an installation around the time that Lewis disappeared. They're written for August 1997.
The news part of this comes from the fact that the Lewis family, who were interviewed in Tiger King, and the Facebook team that put it together, say that it indicates Baskin lied about her timeline. They believe that it could indicate that Lewis is underground, which was suggested by the currently-incarcerated Joe Exotic during the series.
The group intends to turn these findings over to police in the hope that it leads somewhere.
This new development comes just a few days after it was reported that the family of Lewis made a $100,000 offer in exchange for info that will solve his disappearance. That was paired with litigation that apparently caught Baskin by surprise, as reported by the AP.
