Carole Baskin’s “dead” husband is actually alive.
No one knew.
The “Tiger King” star’s missing ex-husband, Don Lewis, was reportedly found alive in Costa Rica, but the discovery is just now making headlines a year later.
During a Nov. 2021 interview with ITV’s “This Morning” talk show, Baskin, 61, said Lewis, who was declared legally dead in 2002 after disappearing a few years before, is alive.
However, Baskin told The Post she was unaware he was alive until the “Tiger King” sequel series aired.
Baskin, the owner of Big Cat Rescue, told ITV that the Department of Homeland Security has been in touch with her ex-husband.
“One of the really exciting things that came out of ‘Tiger King 2′ is that they produced a letter from Homeland Security and it says that a special agent in charge with the FBI at Homeland Security reached out to the sheriff’s detective George (Jorge) Fernandez, which means this had to have happened after 2002, because Homeland Security wasn’t even around until 2002,” Baskin told the outlet at the time.
“They said my husband, Don Lewis, is alive and well in Costa Rica,” she revealed. “And yet all of this drama has been made about me having something to do with his disappearance, when Homeland Security has known where he is.”
Lewis disappeared in 1997 at the age of 59 — and would be 84 if he’s still alive today.
Baskin shot to fame back in 2020 when she starred on the Netflix docu-series that followed the adventures of big-cat keeper, Joseph Maldonado-Passage.
During the series, Maldonado-Passage repeatedly accused Baskin of being connected to her former husband’s death, after he mysteriously went missing in 1997, just six years after they were married. Baskin denied the allegations made against her, which notably included that she had fed Lewis’ body to her animals.
Mark Heim is a reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim.