Carole Baskins Diary

I’m sitting at “the lot” (Corner of 62nd and Broadway) at 7 am waiting to see if Anne comes in early to start hiding records.  I can see the lot across 62nd Street to the East where the two grandfather oaks still stand.  In 1981, when Don & I fell in love, our little love nest, a tattered travel trailer was parked between those big trees.  So many wonderful memories flood my mind that it is difficult to record yesterday’s events.  I love and miss him so much.

 

Within 24 hours of Anne telling Don’s girls about his disappearance, they managed to have  a pow wow electing Donna Pettis as their spokesperson and hired Ross Peaveyhouse, Esquire who advertised heavily as a Will & Probate Attorney.  They sure didn’t leave any time for trying to find Don nor for grieving.  Anne & Donna Pettis called me from the office to let me know that they had decided to appoint a conservator (Anne).

 

Anne told everyone that there is no power of attorney, but then told me that she has my Will and the Power of Attorney I gave to Don in 1992 just before our Anniversary.  I asked about the reciprocal Will and Power of Attorney Don gave me that same day and she said it did not exist.  It seems strange that she can find mine, but not his.  They should have been kept together.  I had forgotten about preparing either  of the documents until she reminded me of mine that she had.  When Don had started going to Costa Rica so much we had revised his to add jurisdiction in any Country.  I have been too busy looking for Don and running our business and refuge to spend any great deal of time searching for a lost paper.  After the strange call from Anne and Donna Pettis, I spent the night searching until I located the original Will and Power of Attorney dated 11/96.

 

Knowing how bitter and suspicious of his kids Don was, I am dumbfounded that Anne would think it was okay to invite his daughters down to the office to go through the books and bank accounts.  These are the same girls who tried to take Don to the cleaners via his ex-wife and who Anne says “bald-faced lied” to the court to help their mom get another million dollar settlement four years after the first one.  I spent all day Thursday in the office with her and Madeline and let her hang herself with her own rope.  (A nice little rope trick my mother taught me.)

 

I remember the first Christmas Don and I shared in our little love nest.  Don had set up the cutest little tree and had decorated it all in white angels.  Angel was what Don has always called me.  He was the one who started me collecting angels.  He bought a nameplate for me that said “Angel”.  He brought me little plastic angels and when Pearlie Mae died he sent a ceramic angel praying over a cat.  It still sits on my desk to remind me that “all good kitties go to heaven”.

 

I made curtains for our love nest and tried to make it cheery because often I’d sit there for hours waiting for him to find time to sneak back there to see me.  Don had told me his name was Bob Martin and that he was just a lot boy for his slave driving employer, Don Lewis.  That was why he would have to sneak around to see me.  I was 19 and “Bob” Don was my life.  It was a year or more later before one of Don’s new secretaries accidentally gave away his secret.

 

This just in:  Paul Newman in Costa Rica triplex called to ask when Don’s flight will be arriving on Sunday.  I updated him and he at least pretended to be surprised and said he would call if Don showed up down there.  I told him to let Don know that his kids are seizing his assets and figured that would get Don on the phone right away.

 

Later that day:  I drove to the office 3 hours early and noticed that several other people seemed to be watching the building.  How many laps around the block can you make in a pickup truck towing a boat and not look suspicious?  The little green compact car must have made twenty laps alone.

 

At 9:15 Donna Pettis drives up and tells me that Anne did not want to give

Everyone’s been pointing at Anne McQueen and saying she’s responsible for separating Don & I.  No one seems quite sure if she knows where he is and has vowed not to tell, or if she “knows” he’s not coming back.  I’ve blown off the accusations because she’s been my friend for 16 years.  Or has she?

 

She’s always been the one I would call to make sure Don was okay and in the recent past, when Don would stay out all night, Anne always calmed my fears by letting me know that he was safe.  She never volunteered any information;  I’ve always had to verbally pin her to the wall, but she’s often been the only one who knew his whereabouts.

 

I spent most of the day at the office trying to figure out what Anne’s story is.  She said that all of the property that was put in her name by Don (and Wendell) had nothing to do with Wendell Williams and that Don was just making sure that Anne would never have to work again, if anything ever happened to Don.  Does she think I don’t know Don well enough that he thinks EVERYONE should work until they drop dead?

 

She also wanted to be sure that I knew that Don wanted some Motel to go to her, etc., etc. etc.  Madeline was in the office and heard all that was said, but her loyalties are certainly with Anne.  I reminded her that Don had told me about putting a few parcels in her name at Wendell’s insistence because Wendell Williams cannot get away with stealing Don blind if I know what’s going on.  My first doubts in Anne surfaced a few months ago when she went from detesting Wendell Williams to covering for him.  It took a while to figure out why.  Anne insisted that Don made no provisions for Wendell Williams and that there are no trust documents, whatsoever for the properties in her name.

 

The phone rang and although she was refusing to talk to the media, she found herself stuck on the phone when Wendell Williams walked in.  I took the opportunity to ask him about Don telling me that the properties in Anne’s name had something to do with Wendell Williams and asked if he had anything in writing.  He said that he and Don and Anne had all sat down and gone over that and that Anne was in possession of all of the trust documents that would spell out how much of each property went to Wendell.

 

I, disliking Wendell Williams the way I do, did not clarify the situation as per Anne’s version, but rather just looked at her and let her know that I knew she had lied.  I could see the horror in her eyes and I thought she would puke.  She hung up abruptly and asked Wendell Williams to leave, but she did not dispute what he had just said.

 

Anne said that she thinks something happened to Don on Sunday 8/17, which perhaps was her way of saying she didn’t believe I saw him Monday morning.  I told her there were a lot of volunteers here on Sunday who saw him and pointed out to her that Monday, by noon she was already frantically looking for Don by paging Kenny Farr and then getting me on the phone and almost yelling “Where in the Hell is your husband?!”

 

I had just walked in from the Courthouse and wasn’t aware that Don wasn’t here.  Why was she so nervous and upset?  Now she denies it and says it was Tuesday that the call took place, but Tuesday I had already filed a missing persons report and had told her, so she wouldn’t have been paging us to find Don on Tuesday.

 

I asked Anne if she had anything in writing from Don about the motel, or any of the properties in her name, or even so much as a trust agreement and she said “No.”  I asked if she had any power of attorney, will or anything that would allow her to continue in the operation of this business until his return and again the answer was “no”.  We played this sort of cat and mouse game all day and she had every child, grandchild, friend and relative drop by during the day for no apparent reason.  Madeline did nothing all day, as did Anne which has been true of every visit I’ve ever made to this office.

 

Separate entry with same date:

 

I spen

Gator the serval was convulsing yesterday and went to an emergency clinic, but the Vet doesn’t know anything about exotic cats, so first thing this morning I took her in to Dr. Stacie Wadsworth, DVM. Gator and I had been through a long night of her fits and finally at 6:00 am we had to sedate her because she was so tensed I thought her little heart would explode. I stayed with her at the Vet’s as long as I could and then finished looking at tax deed properties and filed a Quiet Title suit at the courthouse. I checked into names that Don holds property in and found $142,500.00 of actual cash he has put out in Anne McQueen’s various maiden names. The assessed values exceed a quarter of a million. Apparently he began doing these transfers in December of 1995 and I am sure that he has no paperwork to cover him. As soon as I came through the door Anne was on the phone wanting me to call Don’s kids and the media. She had originally said she wanted me to wait until next Monday so that we did not unnecessarily scare the kids, but two of them have called her and she said she is afraid they will accuse her if she doesn’t tell them he’s been gone a week already. I asked if she wanted to call them or if she wanted me to and she said she wanted to call, because she had talked to Donna Pettis just this morning and Gale Rathbone is Anne’s friend. I told her I would get the press involved, if that is even possible. Detective Lingo at the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office called about case number 97-069358 and asked if I have any more info on Don. I told him about the van being found and about the credit card purchase of the tickets for the 31st to Costa Rica. He asked if the office would be hiding Don’s whereabouts since he has done this to me before, and I told him I didn’t think so, because Anne keeps calling here looking for any news. I gave him her name and number. 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. You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only.

Don’s van was found at the Pilot Country Airport. The airport manager had discovered it there at 4:30 on Tuesday morning, and had asked around about whom it belonged to. When they called police to have it impounded, the ID# came back with the notation that the car was reported missing along with Don. Dad drove me up there and we talked to the cops and to the people at the airport and I got a list of every owner on the runway, some nearby homes and every plane’s owner on the field. I contacted everyone on the list to see if they had any knowledge as to Don’s whereabouts, but only one person even knew him and that was the airport manager and he did not know anything. No one could remember seeing the van there before 7:00 pm on Monday. The police officer, a Mr. Elliot said when we got there that he had been watching the buzzards, but it was windy and they were acting confused. He said he had canvassed the perimeter woods and had checked the sight over for any signs of a struggle, and had checked the van good for signs of blood, but had come up with nothing. He had looked through the van and the only thing he thought was odd (and I did too) was that in Don’s huge garage sale collection, there was a brand new, never opened Spanish/English Dictionary. Don can’t read, so what did he need with that? When I told Anne about it later, she said that Don had Madeline calling every used book store in town for one and Anne, thinking that was a huge waste of time had Madeline buy a new one for less than $4.00. The police would not finger print the van because they said it was not suspicious and said that even if they did finger print it there would not be any comparisons made because “you have to have a bad guy to compare it to” and no one was sure a bad guy existed. Dad pointed out that the seat was too far back for Don to have driven and I pointed out that the turn signals were on; something Don would never do, but it was still not considered suspicious. (The photos were taken in 2019 and look the same to me as what the place looked like in 1997) 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. You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only.

I Reported Don Missing

 

Don has been missing since yesterday morning before dawn, which isn’t unusual, except that he didn’t call Anne McQueen all day and she said she even paged him into the night, and he still did not call her back.  She said in all the years that she has worked for him that he has never failed to call her for such a long period of time.  He’s been real pouty and moody lately and ignoring us when we talk to him, but we never know if we are being snubbed or if he just didn’t hear us.  If it’s not important I just let it slide and don’t ask louder.  We haven’t had a fight, other than the ongoing issue about him not getting keys to the cages and to that end, after he began just cutting holes in the cages to get the cats out, I gave him a set of keys and told him that I didn’t have copies of the bigger cats keys, but that I would make him a set soon.  He doesn’t usually mess with the big cats, so I figured I could postpone him indefinitely on that point and he should have been happy to have keys to all the Servals, Caracals and Lynx.  He appeared justified if not happy.

 

He’s been raising two little Caracal kittens (Elijah was one of them born 8/1/1997) and has seemed to take a great deal of interest and pride in doing so.  He pulled them much too young and I am already raising a very difficult little Bobcat kitten (Catera), so I did not jump in and offer to do his midnight and 3:00 am feedings.  He hasn’t dutifully gotten up for these feedings every night but he does the 7:00 am feeding.  During the day he has made no provisions for the kittens to be fed,  other than allowing every volunteer who asks to feed.  We have never had a cub survive a lot of inexperience and I have been reluctant to get attached to them at all, because I have been so sure that his approach would kill these too.  He began this while I was in Jacksonville.

 

I haven’t written much in a while because things have been going so smoothly for a change.  He has been working on selling the scrap in the yard and having it all hauled off.  He took care of things (with Jamie supervising) while I went away for four days in Jacksonville for the LIOC Conference and no one died or got loose.  He bought my mother a sewing machine and my daughter several wave runners and gave me the pair of Snow Leopards that he knew I’ve thought about for a very long time, although I never said so.  (As a later note; I had put plates up in the house with snow leopards on them and that’s how he knew I was admiring these mystical cats)

 

He’s been pretty reliable in helping with the evening feedings of the adult cats.  He’s acted depressed and not very affectionate, but has been much easier to deal with in the recent past.  Cutting up the cages, over breeding the cats and moving them from nice yards into small cages have been the only “hateful” things he’s done and I’ve just let it slide and then once he had forgotten about the cats, I would put them back where they belong and repair the pens.  I get frustrated because there is always so much work to be done and he has nothing to do except impede progress, but I can’t really get angry with him because I know that he is no longer responsible for his actions.

 

Last Thursday he started complaining, more than usual about his diarrhea, but he was also complaining that he wasn’t getting his vitamins, when I was standing over him and watching him take them, so I did not pay much attention to him.  Saturday he felt good enough to go yard sale-ing and brought home washers, dryers, guns, motor cycles and assorted junk for his impending export to Costa Rica aboard the Iveco.

 

That night he was in and out until midnight or later digging through all of his yard sale goods to pack.  I remember hearing him on the phone with Wendell Williams saying that the signs would be delivered for the 26 lots on Monday morning.  He was testing the microwaves and televisions and moving stuff back and forth between the trucks, trailer

Cote’s Septic Tank Receipt & Fill Dirt

This is written from the future around 6/26/2020 when I saw these receipts being posted online to suggest that Judy Watson’s septic tank could have been open at the time of Don’s disappearance.  From what I can find, the first person to ever start the rumor about Don being buried in or under the septic tanks was started by Judy Watson after she was fired around 8/1/2000.   It was such a ridiculous claim, I never bothered to research it and always thought her mobile home and tank were already installed at the time of her taking over Jayla Cougar’s care which was May 1997.  After Judy’s interview with Ripper Jack he produced the following receipts that seem to coincide with the permit pulled for the mobile home installation on 8/4/1997.

 

Ripper Jack makes the assertion that because the trucking bill was dated 8/14/1997 that the tank could have been open when Don goes missing on Aug. 18.  It’s possible, and others have asked why I didn’t check to see if Don fell in and drowned.  Obviously, we would have looked if that could have possibly been the case, but nearly 23 years later, I have to rely on online sources that say the entire month of August only had 8.39 inches of rain, so even if all of it fell before the 18th, we would have seen a body in less than 9 inches of water, IF the site was open.

 

 

 

I think it’s more likely that Judy got the permit on 8/4/1997 to bring in the mobile home and also started the septic tank process on 8/5/1997 by paying Cote’s Septic $2700.00

 

 

Then there would be the sand needed for the drain field  which could have been what this Wingate receipt was for:

 

 

Judy Watson says the initial installation was red tagged by the county because it was too deep and that more fill dirt had to be brought in.  I don’t recall it, but this receipt from J & J Trucking was presented to try and prove that it was delivered 8/14/1997. 

 

 

 

That could be the case, or it could be that she was just paying the delivery fee for the dirt she bought on 8/6/1997.   In the Ripper Jack videos they try desperately to move the time of the septic tank installation as close to the time of Don’s disappearance as possible.  I think it was Judy Watson who then says that my father did the extra work to the tank to bring it up to code, which is ridiculous.  There’s no way Cote’s Septic was going to let us meddle with their construction project or their reputation with the county.  It’s possible that her story is correct about it being red tagged and elevated, but it would have been done by Cote’s who was the licensed contractor. 

 

Someday if someone wants to put up the money to replace the tank and drain field, the Sheriff’s office can come watch the whole process, but I’m not letting some armchair detective use this as a filming opportunity to continue their baseless accusations.  Even when they find that all of the animal exploiters who have run with this story were lying they will have to find some way to deflect attention to some other equally outlandish lie in order to save face.

 

At the time of this writing Jim Moore has already debunked the nonsense about the meat grinder saying that he was the primary food prep person for the sanctuary from 1995 until he left in 2000.  During that time he never saw a commercial meat grinder and only saw the small counter mount one that I have described.  He said the only person who ever used it was Don during a period of time when he was trying to grind up a donated truckload of breaded chicken patties from a Wendy’s delivery that had a freezer failure.  That coincides with my belief that the same grinder had been used prior to Jim’s arrival in 1995 for the Mazuri diet trial, because he never witnessed that process and if he was feeding every night, he couldn’t have missed it.   Jim also debunked the septic tank story and Anne McQueen’s story about the timeline of Don’s disappearance. 

 

On Sunday August 17, 1997 Jim said it had been a

Danny Lewis Murder or Manslaughter? I’m writing this from the future (6/17/2020) because it will come up later and I don’t think I ever recorded what I was told that made me think Danny was in prison for murdering someone. It’s been so long, I don’t recall who told me this. I think it was Don as part of his reason for disowning Danny, but it may have come from Kenny Farr later. I really seem to remember it was Don though. I had been told that Danny was driving a carload of kids who were all stoned and drunk and that he ran down a young man in a parking lot. That could easily have been deemed an accident, but what made it seem intentional was that I was told that he backed up and ran over him again three times. At the time I had no reason to stick my nose into Danny’s business. As long as he wasn’t coming to the sanctuary I didn’t have to worry about him being out of control. Later in 2001 when the police told me about the Michael Spitz’ (or whatever his last name turned out to be) deathbed confession that Danny had killed Don, it didn’t seem far fetched to me at all. The police would later tell me that Danny was in jail during that time and I assumed it was for the murder or manslaughter, or whatever had involved the death of the man in the parking lot. Gladys complained about my belief, saying that Danny hadn’t been in jail for murder, but rather was in holding for his drug addiction, when Don went missing. I can’t find mention of this on the Internet, but in 1996 - 1997 when I think this happened, the Internet was new to most of us and news stories weren’t being catalogued in most cases. I don’t have the capacity, nor the intense curiosity, to find out what had happened exactly, since it seems that regardless of what mayhem Danny may have been causing, it didn’t appear to have anything to do with Don’s disappearance. 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. You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only.

This is Hercules the snow leopard cub Don bought me for my birthday.  He bought this cub and a female from Marc McCarthy where he’d bought Jade and Armani the leopards.  The female and her sister are being used by the Dallas Zoo but as soon as she’s not a cute cub they will send one of them to us. 

 

Don returned and agreed to take care of everything so that Judy Watson and I could drive to Jacksonville until Sunday for the LIOC convention.  I left detailed written instructions taped to everything and told all of the staff and volunteers to remind him when to feed and about the sick Cougar’s medicine.  I called the first night and Don was having a hard time getting Callie to take her meds so it was the last time she did.  When I got back the cat was nearly dead, but we were able to turn her around.

I’m writing this from the future on 6/21/2020 because last night Ripper Jack posted a video of Judy Watson, Sherry DeWald and Debbie Sandlin trash talking me.  I did learn that I was wrong on one aspect though and that was the timing of Judy moving onto Easy Street.  I had always thought that she was living here at the time that Don left, but if this is a legitimate document, then it indicates that she applied for the permit to bring her new mobile home here on August 4, 1997 and it wasn’t ready for occupancy until September 18, or maybe not even until September 24, 1997. 

 

After Tiger King I had tried to discern if there could be any validity to claims that her septic tank was open at the time of Don’s disappearance and could find no health department records from that far back.  I knew that Jayla Cougar had been born on 5/6/1997 and Judy was taking her out to schools and civic events to raise money during the time that she was still handleable.  I knew we had built Jayla a cage on the west side of Judy’s trailer and assumed it was built after the trailer was in place, but I’m not sure.  Since Judy and Jayla were here all the time, after Jayla’s birth, I assumed it was because Judy was living here.  In her interview she said she was traveling with Jayla back and forth to Treasure Island.  That’s possible, but I don’t remember Judy having her own Florida Wildlife Commission permits to house a cougar off site and that would have been a risk, if not an outright violation, for us to have allowed her to do that.

 

In fact, when Judy came to work for us, she had just spent the last decade or so working for an animal abuser named Bert Wahl.  He had sent her two favorite cougars to Nature’s Classroom and Judy wanted possession of them.  If she had her own license at the time, I don’t think she would have been asking me to help her get the cats released to my custody.   

 

The notion of Don being in or under the septic tank is still just as ridiculous and just as easily disproven.  Howie suggested that we challenge anyone who wants to make such outlandish claims to put up $100k in escrow against our matching funds.  If Don’s not there we get their $100k.  If Don is there, they get our money.  It would be money well spent, if by some miracle someone managed to kill and bury him there, just to have closure.  I don’t think anyone who claims it, actually believes it.  They just love that the media and the mob runs with the idea of it.

Don flew back to Costa Rica for a week.

 

 

I had made these little cards so he could get information in a world where he didn’t speak the language.  On one side I put his photos of him or his cats because he loved to show them off to anyone who would look.  On the back, in very large type, I’d write a sentence as simply as I could say it, so Don could read it, and then the Spanish translation.  This way he could show someone a card with telephone, or bathroom, or food, or water, or hotel on it and the person reading the Spanish translation could at least point him in the right direction.  This is one example of the cards I’d made for him.