“48 Hours” investigates a “Tiger King” theory: Was Don Lewis pushed from a plane?

The story of the battle between Tampa-based animal rights activist Carole Baskin and Joe Exotic, a flamboyant huge cat proprietor in Oklahoma, continues to be making headlines almost six months after its launch on Netflix. A reported 64 million households watched the present.

The documentary has generated legions of armchair detectives fascinated by Joe Exotic’s declare that Carole had murdered her then-husband, Don Lewis, again in 1997, and fed him to her tigers.

For her half, Carole Baskin, has vehemently denied all of the allegations, and Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister has clearly said as lately as this spring, that Baskin is neither a suspect, nor a individual of curiosity within the 23-year-old chilly case. Chronister has additionally stated, that due to the curiosity within the “Tiger King,” he has re-energized the investigation by assigning a murder supervisor to evaluation the case.

In 1997, when Don Lewis disappeared, the case made sensational headlines in Tampa.  There had been many theories about the place he may need gone, and what may need occurred to him.  In reality, Lewis had been planning to journey to Costa Rica, the place he owned property, and sometimes did enterprise. But he had been planning to take a business flight from Miami, and apparently by no means made it.

Then, simply a day after Lewis was reported lacking, detectives found his van at a small airport about a half an hour outdoors Tampa. The keys to his van had been reportedly discovered inside, however no signal of Don. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than a number of theories and rumors emerged.

It was extensively recognized that Don Lewis was an beginner pilot and had owned a variety of small plane.

Don Lewis’ lawyer, Joe Fritz, advised “48 Hours Suspicion” that on the time of Lewis’ disappearance, there was a widespread rumor — that someone had murdered Lewis within the air.

“I’ve heard, at the time, contemporaneously with everything — and I know that our sheriff’s department has heard this story — that he was strangled from the backseat of an airplane with an electric cord and pushed out 50 feet over the Gulf.”

“48 Hours Suspicion” investigated this chance and several other different of those aircraft-related theories.  It so occurs that correspondent Richard Schlesinger can be a pilot, and he introduced his personal specialised experience to the investigation. Schlesinger’s report, “The Tiger King Mystery,” aired on a particular “48 Hours” collection, “Suspicion.” The collection airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on CBS.

One of the planes Don Lewis was recognized to fly was a single engine, low wing Piper Arrow. Schlesinger additionally typically flies the identical type of airplane.  For “48 Hours Suspicion,” he took to the air in a related Piper Arrow and reported from the pilot’s seat as he flew the plane.

“First of all,” reported Schlesinger, “imagine the struggle involved in strangling a 170-pound man in this passenger seat. Then, if the plan was to push him out the door… that’s a challenge… the slowest this airplane can fly is about 65 mph– and that means winds approaching hurricane strength would be pushing against this door trying to keep it closed.

Schlesinger continued, pointing out the challenge of moving a body to the door in the cramped cockpit , “Then you’d should open it… you’d should preserve it opened… and also you’d should by some means wrestle the physique out of right here with out interfering with the flight controls. Bottom line… I assume you could possibly do it… however there are simpler methods to do away with a physique.”

If it was unlikely that Lewis had been pushed from a flying plane, there was also another theory in the air back in 1997. That was the possibility that Lewis simply drove to the airport, got in a plane, and flew himself off to Costa Rica.

In fact, that’s what Lewis’ lawyer, Joseph Fritz, told 48 Hours: Suspicion he first figured when he heard Don had disappeared.

“Off of Costa Rica is what I assumed. I do know he spent a lotta money and time in Costa Rica. … But that is what I initially thought.”

As part of the 48 Hours: Suspicion investigation, Schlesinger spoke with another experienced pilot, Joe Solan, about the range and capabilities of the Piper Arrow:

Joe Solan: You can roughly get about 700 miles to a full tank, the two main tanks full. 

Richard Schlesinger: So, say you were gonna go from the Tampa area down to Costa Rica. It’s not a nonstop flight. … So that’s like how many refueling stops? 

Joe Solan: Oh probably three to four at least.

Solan explained that in order for Lewis to have flown all the way to Costa Rica he would have had to have made multiple fuel stops along the way. It would have been a lengthy and unlikely journey.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office has never released details of its investigation of the aircraft mystery back in 1997. But if Lewis did make the journey, his family says there were never any reports that he stopped to refuel. The Lewis family also says there were no reports of any of Don’s planes missing.

So the mystery remains—what happened to Don Lewis? And now with a legion of armchair detectives propelled by the mysteries of the “Tiger King,” each clue is being re-examined, together with how and why was Don Lewis’ van found, deserted at that small airport in Florida.