Carole Baskin Wrote A 10 Page Letter to Don Lewis’ First Wife, Gladys

Tiger King’s Carole Baskin is suspected by some of being responsible for her second husband, Don Lewis’s death. His body has never been found after his mysterious disappearance in 1997. Now Baskin says the media is taking something she wrote in 1990 out of context.

In a strange 10-page letter Carole Baskin wrote to the ex-wife of Don Lewis, Gladys, Baskin said she feared for Lewis’s soul because he was involved with a woman named Pam who Baskin believed used witchcraft and was possibly possessed by a demon.

Baskin was so concerned about it that she reached out to Lewis’s ex-wife, who’d been married to Lewis for decades when he and Baskin started having an affair.

In that letter, which Heavy obtained from a Facebook Group called the “Don Lewis Cold Case Files,” which describes itself as “a research group that is actively helping the daughters of Don Lewis and his former assistant, seek justice,” Baskin spoke of the beginnings of her relationship with Lewis, saying, “Perhaps I asked for too much, but I had to get out of my marriage and would have eventually killed my husband to do it.”

In light of ongoing investigations and suspicions that Baskin had Lewis killed, or killed him herself after he disappeared without a trace 23 years ago, Baskin told Heavy in an email, “I only meant it in the context of self-defense as Mike Murdock was physically abusive to me to the point of causing me to fear for my life.” Murdock is Baskin’s first husband.

Baskin said, “Anyone who bothers to know the whole situation will see that as much as I loved Don I was willing to step out of his life if Gladys would take him back. This was a full year before Don and I married. I have always dealt with Gladys and Don’s daughters with respect and generosity.”

There Are No Local Records of Murdock Being Arrested for Domestic Abuse

A search through Hillsborough County Court records brings up the couple’s divorce, which was filed for in 1986. There are no arrest records for Murdock for domestic violence charges.

Heavy asked Baskin if she ever called police to intervene when Murdock was abusive, as she alleges, but her current husband Howard Baskin replied to that email, saying Baskin couldn’t answer because she was preparing for a performance for Monday night’s episode of Dancing With the Stars.

He said, “All I can tell you is what I believe she has explained online, that Mike was physically abusive and her comment about killing was in reference to her potentially having to defend herself if she felt her life was in danger in one of his attacks.”

Yet when the couple divorced, it was Murdock who retained primary custody of the couple’s daughter, Jamie, and court records do not mention Murdock’s alleged abusive behaviors.

Custody Documents Show That Baskin Did Not Initially Get Custody Because of Her Adultery, Which the Courts Called “The Basic and Underlying Cause of the Failure of the Marriage”

Courtesy of Carole BaskinCarole Baskin and her current husband Howard Baskin at Big Cat Rescue in Florida.

In custody records posted on the Don Lewis Cold Case Files Facebook Page, which are not visible in their entirety, there is no mention of any abuse of any kind. Rather there is Baskin’s testimony about her ongoing affair with Don Lewis and a man named Roy Pearsons, who she also talks about in her letter to Gladys. The judge wrote the “petitioner/wife has been unfaithful to her husband and untruthful with the court in many particulars,” while saying nothing of any reports of abuse.

Prior to the final custody decision, during the divorce, the court records said Jamie wanted to stay with her father rather than her mother. The petition for custody also said:

It would be detrimental to the child’s physical and emotional welfare not to have the father continue to exercise custody of this minor child, since the Petitioner/Wife has exhibited by her actions disregard for the child’s safety and welfare and has further subjected this minor child to episodes of sexual misconduct and parental irresponsibility by leaving the minor child of the parties with persons and at locations unknown and further refusing to allow the father any contact with the minor child.

The petition also said Baskin (then Murdock) lacked “maturity and the inclination to give her daughter the care, attention and guidance she needs.”

Murdock’s attorneys claimed that he had “been consistent in his duties as a parent and has shown himself ready and able to care for this child,” and accused Baskin of being “unstable.”

But according to Harold Baskin, “There is more to the story of him getting custody and then later I believe losing it but I’m not familiar enough to tell it.”

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