Tiger King follow-up documentary features startling claim about Carole Baskin’s ex-husband Don Lewis

Lewis’ former lawyer shares outlandish rumour about Don Lewis’ ‘murder’

A new documentary that’s been branded the unofficial sequel to Tiger King has been released.

Joe Exotic: Tigers, Lies & Cover-Up sees retired cop Jim Rathmann launch an investigation into the disappearance of Don Lewis, the ex-husband of Exotic's animal sanctuary rival Carole Baskin.

While Tiger King focused on Exotic, who is currently in prison for animal cruelty and attempting to hire someone to kill Baskin, the Netflix documentary also dedicated an episode to the theory that Baskin killed Lewis.

The original series revealed that some people, including Exotic, believe Baskin killed and fed Lewis to her tigers, a theory that soon become the centre of Twitter jokes and memes.

Baskin has denied such allegations and said she found the discourse surrounding them “troubling”.

However, the new documentary sees new claims made about Lewis’s disappearance.

In one scene, Lewis’s former lawyer, Joe Fritz, reveals a startling theory he heard “from two different sources” who claimed Lewis was murdered after a business deal went wrong.

“I had heard that he got strangled with an electric cord from the backseat of his airplane,” Fritz said. “With somebody else flying, he got dumped out over the gulf.

He added: “It kind of fits the scenario, because he was a pilot, he’d owned planes, he had a license, he lost his licence. It’s an unmanned airport, nobody logs you in, nobody logs you out. It’s not unusual for somebody to take off in a plane. So, it all fits together.”

Carole Baskin as featured in ‘Tiger King’ (ABC)

Fritz, who said there was “no question in my mind this was a murder”, said he believes Lewis was “lured up” by the offer of a good deal.

Rathmann combats the theory by questioning how someone could open a door at such a height when the plane was going at full speed.

Since Tiger King was released on Netflix in March, Baskin has since become a TV personality. Just last month, she appeared on US competition series Dancing with the Stars and performed to Survivor track “Eye of the Tiger”.

Joe Exotic: Tigers, Lies & Cover-Up is available to stream now exclusively on discovery+