During the season premiere of Dancing With the Stars Monday night (September 14), a commercial aired about missing 60-year-old millionaire and animal sanctuary owner Don Lewis, who was married to Tiger King's Carole Baskin — a contestant this season — at the time of his disappearance in 1997.
Don Lewis was declared legally dead in 2002, but his disappearance became a hotly debated topic and his case was reopened after Tiger King gained popularity on Netflix earlier this year.
“Don Lewis mysteriously disappeared in 1997, his family deserves answers. They deserve justice. Do you know who did this? Or if Carol Baskin was involved?” John M. Phillips, the Lewis’ family attorney says in the commercial.
“$100,000 reward has been funded,” Lewis’ oldest daughter Donna added.
Tiger King's Joe Exotic alleged that Baskin fed Lewis to her tigers at Big Cat Rescue, but she has fiercely denied the allegation. The other theory is that Lewis may have fled to Costa Rica in a plane.
In a recent interview with People, Baskin claimed, "I am not at all the person I was portrayed in Tiger King."
"I am not the money grubbing, gold-digging, murderous person that they portrayed. I am the type of person who will come after any person who is abusing animals. I am relentless. I just won’t stop until I find some legal way to make it stop," she continued. "From that perspective, I think they got me right. Me as a person, that was a total assassination of my character for nothing other than whatever money they could get for selling that to Netflix.”
During Baskin’s Dancing With the Stars debut on Monday (September 14), she wore a tiger-print outfit and did the paso doble to “Eye of the Tiger,” of course. Baskin’s dance earned 11 points out of 30, the lowest score of the night.