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When Carole Baskin and her husband, Howard, allowed filmmakers into their wildlife sanctuary Big Cat Rescue five years ago, they thought the docuseries they were shooting would focus on their cause of exposing tiger trade cruelty — not their personal drama. “I just feel so angry that people have totally missed the point,” Carole, 58, …
When Carole Baskin and her husband, Howard, allowed filmmakers into their wildlife sanctuary Big Cat Rescue five years ago, they thought the docuseries they were shooting would focus on their cause of exposing tiger trade cruelty — not their personal drama.
“I just feel so angry that people have totally missed the point,” Carole, 58, tells the Tampa Bay Times of the final cut of the Netflix hit “Tiger King” that ended up airing. “And the point is these cubs are being abused and exploited and the public is enabling that.”
The show goes beyond dishonesty, says the couple.
“There’s almost no way to describe the intensity of the feeling of betrayal,” says Howard.
The series has resulted in the Hillsborough County sheriff — who himself watched the show — seeking new leads in the 1997 cold case disappearance of Baskin’s second husband, multimillionaire Jack “Don” Lewis. Many armchair detectives and conspiracy theorists believe Carole fed him to her tigers, despite the sheriff’s spokesperson telling the Times she is not considered a suspect.
‘There’s almost no way to describe the intensity of the feeling of betrayal.’
That hasn’t stopped the public from suddenly getting involved in her private affairs after the Netflix show became a viral hit.
Despite Big Cat Rescue being shuttered since March 16 due to the coronavirus, Baskin says some 30 people daily have been loitering at its gates, drones have been seen flying over her home, and she is now scared to leave her house due to a flood of death threats she’s received since the series premiered on March 20.
As a result of the number of calls she’s receiving from strangers attempting to get her out of her home, “I’ve had to turn my phone off,” she says, making her unable to answer calls she’d previously field about injured animals on the side of the road. “I can’t tell the real ones from the fake ones because they’re always out of state numbers anyway.”
She’s also had to end her daily 30-minute bike rides from her home to the sanctuary, as strangers have begun filming and screaming at her along the route.
Still, she’s hopeful the spotlight the series has brought will also begin to shine on her cause, and not just her life.
“I really hope what will come of this is that law enforcement will take this seriously,” she says. “We’ve all been screaming at the top of our lungs for 20 years that this abuse was happening, and no one was listening. Now the abuse is so apparent, I hope it will encourage them to take action on it and inspire Congress to do what they can to end cub petting and private possession of big cats.”
