Carole Baskins Diary

I have so much work to do, but I feel that it is important to log these coincidences now in case they amount to something later.  I got home last night from a week in Chicago for the Friends of Conservation hosted by Ruetie Butler Kent and Jim Fowler.   Judy Watson and Jamie had left last Wednesday in an extended van, but said it overheated in Bushnell and that the mechanic said it would be $650.00 to repair.

 

I took Dad, Kenny Farr and Tom Watson up there with my Jeep and Don’s Dodge van with the intention of moving everything out of the bigger van down into the smaller van and my jeep and taking two cars to Chicago.  We were able to cram everything in to the one van and I sent my jeep back.  The water pump which was only a few months old, failed on the jeep’s return to Tampa.  Dad and Kenny Farr worked on the jeep and  began to make some frightening discoveries.

 

When the jeep first started overheating this summer, I asked Don to fix it and he told me and Kenny Farr that it couldn’t be fixed and kept asking me to drive the silver station wagon (The 600.00 car with no title).  The kids like to drive the wagon, because it has more seats for more kids, and Don said that the brakes were bad and he was repairing them one day as I walked past the shed.  The brakes had never been bad before, but they felt different than my brakes so I did not question it any further, like to ask why he was doing the repair, when he always pays the old man next door (James Jennings) to do this kind of stuff.  When he got through, Don went looking for Jamie and told her that he had fixed the wagon and that it was safe now and they could ride it any time they wanted.  She and her friends were a little leery of the car after that because Don had not wanted them driving it before and he would never have cared about their safety.

 

I remember the night before Don disappeared how anxious he was to bring that car home at four in the morning when it had overheated on me.  There was no reason why it could not have set there until the following morning when Kenny Farr could have wreckered it in on his way to work.  If Don knew he was going somewhere very early Monday, why did he bother with the car so late?  Monday morning when I blew the engine up on interstate in the silver wagon, I called Kenny Farr to wrecker it in.  It was then that he discovered Don had completely removed two of the brakes and had sabotaged the remaining brake assembly.

 

In the meanwhile, I had asked Kenny Farr for a second opinion on my jeep and he had told me he could fix it for $24.00 with a water pump.  I had bought the pump and had him install it, and when Don found out he went into a rage and kept telling Kenny Farr that my jeep could not be fixed and that he didn’t want Kenny Farr to touch the car.  I paid Kenny Farr on the side to do it anyway while Don was gone.  The water pump fixed the overheating problem and I had started to use the jeep again.

 

Before the water pump scene, Jamie had noticed while following me home from church, that I had no brake lights and I asked Don to fix them.  He told me that he had Kenny Farr do it.   I did not check behind him.  Again, before the water pump scene, one of the volunteers told me I had no brake lights.  I asked Don about it and he started blaming Kenny Farr and saying that he had specifically told Kenny Farr to fix the lights and that he would take care of it.  He never did, but he lied to me again and told me they were operating just fine when we checked them out.  I stepped on the brakes and Don said he could see them light up.

 

When Kenny Farr worked on the water pump, I meant to ask him to check out the brake lights, but forgot to.  Just recently, someone said that I didn’t have brake lights, so I asked Kenny Farr to fix them and I drove extra carefully in the meanwhile.  Driving to Bushnell, I told Tom Watson, who would be driving my jeep back to Tampa, if we didn’t need it, that he should be careful because my br

The first thing the children wanted to do was have the Power of Attorney, Will and Trust tested for authenticity.  I agreed because, again, I was sure this would resolve any concerns they had regarding me in the disappearance of their father.  Don had disowned them a couple of years prior so they didn’t know anything about our personal relationship except what Anne was feeding them, and that was  nothing but lies.

 

Peter Candler reviewed the documents and said they were all genuine in his written report.  Willa Smith, hired by the children, said she questioned the Power and the Will, but gave no written report (to my knowledge)  J.J. Berrie examined the documents and agreed that they were Don’s signature.  Ray Green reviewed the Trust and said it was genuine.

 

All of the witnesses and Notary on the documents provided Affidavits stating that they saw Don sign them and that he understood what he signed and that he was competent to do so.  Last week I discovered that in all of the Will Contests where forgery was alleged, the judges gave more credence to the unimpeachable witnesses than to expert witness opinion.

 

I sent the following to Detectives Lingo and Fernandez today:

 

After speaking with the two of you last week I have had a few other thoughts.  It looks suspicious to me that Anne is the beneficiary of such a huge life insurance policy and how she and the kids are all behaving like they are sure Don isn’t going to come back in and blow them all away.  I guess the kids feel like they couldn’t be any worse off since they know Don wouldn’t even speak to them, but Anne is taking a terrible risk by acting this way.  Even she won’t be able to fast talk her way out of this one. 

 

The children are now trying to say that the Power of Attorney that Don gave me, the Will and the Trust documents were forgeries and therefore their father has died “intestate”, making half of the estate theirs.  They are in an awful big hurry to say their dad is dead and are trying to make it look like I have killed him  (I guess to free up more of the estate for them) and that I forged the documents.  They claim to have hired a handwriting expert who did ink tests and evaluations of the documents to prove that they are forgeries, which I find an amazing feat since I have possession of the originals.  I have gathered the witnesses and the notary to the documents and had them prepare affidavits as to the validity of the documents, but this has made me aware of just how far these people are going to destroy what Don & I have worked so hard for all these years. 

 

I had just offered to transfer to them the properties that I had put into their trust (most of the stuff Don owned when we got married) which amounts to about 1,200,000.00 because even if Don comes back, I don’t want to work for them any longer with the way they are behaving and although Don had told me to dissolve their trust, he’ll get over it someday.  They know if Don comes back they will get nothing, so they must be pretty sure he isn’t coming back or they don’t care what lies they get caught in since Don disowned them anyway.  They have nothing to lose and nine million dollars to gain.  More than anyone else though, Anne knows that the Trust, Will and Power of Attorney are valid because she had the old originals from 1992 hidden under her desk.  If she thought they were forged, surely she would have asked Don at some point in the last five years, especially since she was the notary on some of them. 

 

Something I guess I should tell you guys is that Gladys Lewis Cross (the kid’s mom) had tried to kill Don on at least three occasions that he told me about.  I remember that the first time he said that Gladys had found out about him and Dorothy (Thompson) and she came flying into the lot and tried to run Don down with the new car he had just bought for her.  On another occasion, when she found out about Janie (who worked at the post office) she tried to shoot Don and they got i

I miss Don so much.  Some people say they have seen him.  How can the passion we shared be gone?  How could he just walk away and not look back?  Why?  Why?   why

 

I remember looking at real estate with Don.  It was always an adventure and I would always feel like I was riding on the edge with him.  We pulled up in the driveway in Don’s pickup truck expecting the house was abandoned by the overgrown yard and broken windows.  This house was in an awful neighborhood and just getting from the truck to the back door of this long forgotten home was making the blood race through my veins.  I was expecting to be ambushed at any moment and although we had scouted the house out through the windows, we never knew who might be using these shells for cover.  Don was an expert at breaking and entering as it was his policy to never “break” and yet no building had ever proven impervious to him.

 

We always made ourselves known while on the outside, although this day we were quieter than usual due to the danger of drawing attention to ourselves in this part of town.  Once inside, we were always cat like in the quiet, cautious way that we would search out every room, always watching each other’s backs.  The hair would stand erect on the back of my neck and I would sweat in nervous anticipation.  Don always carried a gun in his sock and a gun in his pocket, but I was his eyes and his ears.

 

His senses had dulled and I had to be always on guard.  Once we were certain that we were alone in the house,  we could look at it again through different eyes.  The eyes of the real estate investors who knew what would be expensive to repair and what would need only superficial attention in order to turn this into a profitable venture.  The kitchen is often the most neglected and most costly to replace and as usual, our second search commenced here.

 

I stood at the sink, looking out the window, wondering what it would be like to be to have lived here and had for my daily view the depressing sight of burned buildings, graffiti and violence.  I thought about the desperation of being so impoverished that I could not change my status in life and the complications of addiction and unwanted children that would further add to my burdens… when behind me in his amorously happy voice Don said “Can you think of anywhere we haven’t done it?”  Coming back to present day reality, I looked down and said “only the kitchen sink.”

 

He pulled me close and kissed me, long and soft and gentle like he always does.  I get lost in his kisses.  The rest of the world just floats away and nothing matters anymore except the sweetness of his lips.  I’ve never been kissed with such intensity and passion before Don, nor since.  I was so lost in his love, that I barely even noticed he was unbuttoning and unzipping my jeans.  I was so lost in my desire that I don’t even know how he undressed.  All I remember was being thrust up onto the sink and the feel of Don sinking deep inside me.  I was howling with the pleasure in complete abandon of the danger this could bring on us.  I love the way he makes love to me.  So tender and with such force that I cannot think of anything but him and all else fades away in ecstasy.

 

There are so many moments that we shared like these.  I always thought the magic was in “us” but maybe it was all his.

On the morning millionaire Jack Donald Lewis disappeared, he was wearing a $1 T-shirt from Kmart and blue jeans bought at a yard sale. He left behind an 8-year-old Dodge van with a broken window and a battered grill.

 

He also left behind Wildlife on Easy Street, (now known as Big Cat Rescue) the 40-acre sanctuary in northwest Hillsborough County where he lived and kept more than 100 animals, from lions and leopards to llamas and lemurs.

 

A month ago, authorities found the van, the keys on the floorboard, at a private airport in Pasco County, where Lewis, who has crashed planes in the past, was known to buy aircraft impulsively - with cash.

 

Lewis' disappearance has worried his friends and family, knotted his business affairs and mystified law enforcement. Volunteers from his big-cat sanctuary have distributed more than 1,000 missing person fliers. A psychic has visited his house. His wife and his children from another marriage have squared off in court over his money, and the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office has taken a keen interest in his whereabouts. Detectives say that while there are no obvious signs of foul play, it hasn't been ruled out.

 

On Wednesday, authorities received an unconfirmed report that Lewis, 59, was in Costa Rica, where he owns 200 acres near a volcano. They do not know if someone took him there, if someone killed him, or if he left on his own.

 

He may have had reason to go.

 

In June, Lewis told a Hillsborough circuit judge that his wife threatened to kill him, but the judge did not see a danger. That same month he visited a psychiatrist at his wife's urging, but did not return for follow-up visits, she said.

 

He's been his own man all his life, boot-strapping himself from Depression-era childhood to financial success through trucking and real estate. But his latest vocation, Wildlife on Easy Street, may have been bringing on more publicity and financial drain than the modest animal lover wanted.

 

Lewis was born in Dade City to a single mother of three, who sold fresh bread and worked as a seamstress. His father was a drunk she never married who used to ride the corpses out to the cemetery in a horse drawn wagon.  Fortunately, the horse knew the way there and back.  His last name was never known to Don Lewis who was born at an abortion clinic at 305 W. South Ave. in Tampa, FL.  The doctor there was a friend of his crippled mother and her latter marriage to a man named Lewis was later attributed to Jack Donald.

 

In high school, he had several jobs, including mechanic and farm hand. He graduated from Pasco High School a year ahead of schedule in 1955. He used to joke that the only school he ever graduated from was reform school.  Girls adored him.

 

"He always seemed to know where he was going," said Gladys Cross, Lewis' first wife.

 

The couple met at the A&P when Lewis, a bag boy, winked at her.

 

Two years after their first date, they married. She was 14; he was 17. Eleven months after that, their first daughter, Donna was born.

 

"We were both so poor it was terrible," Gladys Cross said in a deposition last year.

 

That would change. Lewis started hauling rock and sand in Dade City, then bought five dump trucks. In the early 1960s, he began driving tankers for Texaco and Red Wing Carriers in Tampa. On the side, he bought washing machines, repaired them, and resold them at profit. He invested in used cars, making money at auctions.

 

His bank account swelled.

 

He kept hustling as though he was still dirt poor, according to those who knew him. His E Broadway Avenue office was a trailer with newspapers covering the windows.

 

His next big move was into real estate. While standing in line at a bank one day he heard a banker exclaim that he would sell a $22,000. mortgage that was in foreclosure for ten cents on the dollar.  He asked his friend, Carole Stairs to read the deal for him, as he could barely read, and they did the deal.  Lewis and Stairs bought bad mortgages from other lenders,

Hearing on the motions was heard before Judge Sexton.  Before the hearing I was presented with a copy of a Motion For Restraining Order dated 6/20/97 filed by my husband against me. I had never known about this petition and couldn’t think of what would have instigated it.  I was not informed then that the Motion had been denied because the Judge had written that Don was not in any immediate danger.

 

With the shock of my husband’s disappearance, the betrayal of my friend of 16 years, Anne McQueen, and the presentation of a document signed by my husband saying I had threatened to kill him, I did not feel prepared to launch into battle and conceded to the Agreed Upon Order of Conservatorship signed 9/16/97 by Judge Sexton.

 

I agreed to the appointment of myself and a disinterested third party, Douglas B. Stalley.  I felt Anne was misleading the kids and if I gave them a chance to see everything that was going on and all of the files and documents they would calm down.  I also needed time to find out what my husband’s request for an Injunction was all about.

 

2020 Note from the future:  Looking back on this I find it outrageous that Anne McQueen says that in mid June 1997 (or later) Don hands her an envelope and says, “If anything ever happens to me, be sure to get this to the police!” But when he disappears 2 months later she forgets all about it.  First, I can’t believe that she wouldn’t have peeked at the contents, if he’d said that and second, there is no way when you are being grilled by the cops about your missing friend and boss that you fail to remember the envelope exists.  No.  Instead, it’s the day of the hearing where the judge is going to decide who gets to run the real estate business that Don and I built, that she suddenly remembers and springs it on me right before the hearing.  She didn’t spring it on the police.  She springs it on me and the court.  I’m sure she knew it was just Don trying to figure out a way to keep me from hauling off his precious scrap, but now that it could be used as a weapon against me that might give her full control of our bank accounts and properties, it was her ace in the hole. 

 

I think the undated letter to Mildred must have been written just before this hearing.  I was offering to give Don’s daughters their Trust properties and all of his other assorted entities that I’d not worked with him on, which came to about 1.6 million and would agree to let them take the lion’s share of the life insurance policy.  This was roughly 20% of the estate.  As for everything outside of my GALTA trust, I offered to split it with them as long as they let me run the business without the expense of the conservatorship.  I figured I could keep turning the properties over so that when Don came back or the time was up, I wouldn’t care how much they were getting without working for it.  I needed that to happen so that I could make sure the business didn’t fail and to keep the cats fed.  I was trying to get Mildred to propose this settlement to them the day before the hearing on 9/9/1997 but with Anne springing the Restraining Order application on me, and maybe even on them, they probably didn’t trust me.  We would all have been much better off if they had.

To get our name out in the community, we would sometimes take cats to events.  Auroara was always a big hit because she was a tiger and she was easy to travel with because she had been raised in the house, slept in my bed, and trusted me.  She trusted me too much in fact.

 

After one such event, where we had taken her in a box truck, she wouldn’t come down the same narrow ramp (like they use for people to roll a hand truck up and down) she’d gone up to get in the truck.  It looked a lot scarier on the down slope than the up slope, I guess.  The clock was ticking and we were supposed to be inside, but Auroara wasn’t budging.  I had her leash in my hand and had been coaxing with praise and even food, but nothing was working.

 

Jokingly, I turned to her, arms outstretched and said, “Well jump then.  Momma will catch you.”

 

In the flash of an eye she did!  When she did, all 200 + pounds of her landed on my chest and knocked us both to the pavement .  She just about knocked the wind out of me and I thought she’d broken every bone in my body, but it turned out she was the one who actually got hurt.  She scuffed her paw pads on the pavement and I felt so bad about it, I vowed to never take her in vehicle where she would be fearful again. 

 

Auroara loved riding in the car because she had an obsession for the wind in her face.  As a cub you could send her into total bliss by pointing a blow dryer in her direction.  If you wanted her to sit still, just point a fan at her. 

 

We had a utility van briefly, that I thought was a great way for transporting Auroara to and from events because she could run free in the back, and there was a metal grate to keep her from climbing all over me while I drove.  I looked in the rear view mirror to see her peeling back the grate, like a sardine can lid, and that was her last road trip.

This was a letter to Detectives Lingo and Fernandez:

 

Nancy Heusted a WildLife volunteer at XXX or XXX approached me and said she had an encounter with Don just before he left that she thought was important.  Nancy is new here and didn’t even know who Don was when he asked her to do him a big favor.  He told her that he had some very important errands to do and needed her to do tours for him.  She explained that she was new and didn’t know how to do a tour.  He asked if she would sit out front and find volunteers to do tours as they came in.  This is all weird, because Don goes yard sale-ing on Saturdays and never takes any thought as to the operation of the refuge and he certainly never volunteers for doing tours.  She said from there he launched into a woeful account of how he wasn’t important, and that nothing he did matters, no body loves him and on and on, much to her embarrassment.  She felt like whoever this person was, he was destined to commit suicide in the near future and she asked around to find out who he was.  No one relayed this story to me and Nancy left shortly thereafter for an extended trip.  Upon her return this week, she discovered Don’s disappearance and thought that she should tell me about this incident.  She’s three weeks late.  I asked how strongly she felt about this and she said she was a nurse and often deals with people in distress and thinks that if Don isn’t here, it is of his own choosing.  She is willing to speak to the police about it.

 

I still have that bag of evidence from our search at the airport.  I also have copies of a stack of faxes between Don and his Costa Rican Attorney, and some from Vokker.  For what it’s worth two groups of psychics came out and did their best and they concur that Don was kidnapped by smugglers who are flying through Mexico, and they also believe that Don will be returned somewhere just off the Georgia border at a rest stop where free coffee is served.  One group knew Don, the other was here on vacation from Oregon and did not know anything about Don.  They acted independent of each other on separate days.  If you think there is any value to this sort of help, then let me know and I’ll forward their names and numbers. 

 

As for a reward, I agreed not to offer one while you were actively investigating, but I haven’t heard anything in a while.  Let me know when I can make this offer without messing up your search.  My attorney, Debbie Boje in conjunction with Jim Freeman said that the Insurance Company who insured Dod would certainly assist in finding Don.  They have over a million reasons to do so.  Can they contact you for leads, or can you do that? 

 

Don’t kids and I agreed to a Co Conservatorship to protect and maintain the assets while this is being sorted out.  Anne McQueen was originally in agreement but backed out because she thought the girls were being too generous in allowing me to continue supporting the wildlife sanctuary out here.  I don’t understand why Anne would care, since the kids and I agreed that this was Don’s passion and he would want it this way.   An onlooker’s view of Anne’s behavior in court this morning was that she acted like a caged snake, striking out at everyone.  That was Richard Dery XXX or XXX who Anne had subpoenaed to court.  I want to know why she was holding photos that appear good fuel for a blackmail case and how she came to be in possession of them.

 

Anne brought copies of an attempt at getting a restraint order that Don had applied for on 6/12/97.  I had gone down to apply that June while Don was still in Costa Rica, because he had threatened to turn the cats loose upon his return and although I expected him to calm down before returning home, (I had given away some of his precious trash) I wanted to know what had to be done ahead of time.  I was told that unless Don threatened to hurt me, then I could not get a restraining order, so I did not fill out the paperwork.  When Don went to the courthouse on Jun

At 8:30 in the morning I was served with an Order restraining anyone but Anne from having anything to do with the operations of our business.  It was time stamped with Friday’s date at 3:00 pm, which was well after we had already completed the transfer.

 

I did not violate the Injunction and Anne used it as an opportunity to ransack the office.  It was Labor Day weekend and the Courthouse and law firms were closed until Tuesday (9/2/97).  I prepared a Motion seeking relief from the Injunction and presented copies of the Power of Attorney and the “master” Trust Agreement.

 

Today at noon all of the volunteers (over 100) and all of the friends and family, came to pick up and post Missing flyers about Don. I have distributed and posted about 500 my self in the past few days.  Jim Moore asked me if I thought it would be a good idea to have this huge, human comb make a sweep through the area where Don was last seen and I did.  I can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier, especially given the fact that I was so annoyed that the Pasco police only thought it worth the time of one deputy and a couple of hours.  Why didn’t we use dogs?

 

The volunteers returned with a black shirt, turned inside out, a glove, covered in oil, just like the ones we have cases of, a brush, a 1996 license plate cut in half and a faded receipt from an Auto Salvage yard.   The most frightening of their evidence is what looks to be blood splattered on the pavement between the planes that were hangared next to (2 poles down) where Don’s van was parked.

 

They called Dewey Gallop over to look at it and he said it doesn’t look like anything typical of aviation fluids.  A Pasco cop was arresting a man for DUI and came over to ask the volunteers to look after the man’s dog and they asked him to look at the possible blood stain, but he said he was busy with the DUI and that the Sheriff’s Dept. would have to send someone else.  No one else ever came so I am faxing the info to the Tampa Detectives Lingo and Fernandez.  The news came out to the search site and I have heard that it is getting at least state wide attention and that may help.  National broadcast would help more I think.

 

Having had time to research the files I have made a frightening discovery: Anne has transferred $508,969.71 of our money into her name and $435,273.24 of it has been just in the last year while Don has been spending a lot of time in Costa Rica and I have been busy trying to get the sanctuary paying for itself.  The day Don disappeared was the date of the last transfer that I have found and that was for $3431.31 for a tax certificate.  If Don wasn’t around, then who okayed this?

 

Note to police: I have the bag of items the volunteers found for you and will bring them to you, or you may pick them up.  If I’m not here, they are on my desk, in a bag tied shut to prevent contamination.  Thank you for your time in finding my husband.  I know that there are probably a lot of more pressing issues that you have to deal with, but he is so important to me.

 

Carole Lewis    (813) 920-4130   920-5924 fax

12802 Easy Street   Tampa, Fl.   33625

 

I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views. If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story. The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/ I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story. My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet.

 

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