In a new interview with 48 Hours, a woman whose ex-husband reportedly worked for Big Cat Rescue founder Carole Baskin and her then-husband Don Lewis says that her ex may have had a hand in Lewis' mysterious disappearance.
Even months after Tiger King initially made waves on Netflix, the docu-series and the mystery of what happened to Lewis still make headlines and have fans speculating. According to CBS News, Trish Farr-Payne's ex-husband, Kenny Farr, worked as a handyman for Baskin and Lewis around the time of the latter's disappearance in 1997. In the interview, which will air on Wednesday, Farr-Payne said that one night back then her ex arrived home in the middle of the night with Lewis' van and guns, acting suspiciously.
Farr-Payne said that Farr told her to keep quiet about the guns. "'I'm hangin' on to these right now for Carole.' But—he said, 'Don's gone. And—I don't want you talkin' about him. If anybody calls, you don't say anything about Don.' I'm, like, 'OK,'" she told 48 Hours.
When asked if she questioned her husband about what he meant by "Don's gone," Farr-Payne said that she didn't ask, because Farr would "blow up real easy" and be violent towards her.
Farr-Payne alleged that it was two days after her conversation with her husband that Baskin reported Lewis missing. As news reports began broadcasting Lewis' disappearance, Farr-Payne started to connect the dots, and realized that Farr had told her that Baskin's husband was "gone" before it was public knowledge. ""I asked him, and he said, 'Don't ask me questions that you don't want the answers to,'" Farr-Payne said.
Farr-Payne also alleged that a padlocked freezer showed up on their porch, not long after Lewis' disappearance. She said the freezer then disappeared, about a week after Baskin's husband had gone missing.
During a later dispute, Farr allegedly threatened to kill his wife and made reference to Lewis while doing so. "Kenny had threatened to put me in a grinder, he said, 'If you try to leave me again, I'm gonna put you in the grinder, like I did Don,'" Farr-Payne claimed, telling 48 Hours that she thought Farr was being honest, when he claimed to have put Lewis' body in a meat grinder.
In a June interview with The Tampa Bay Times, Farr-Payne said that she reported her ex-husband's claims to local authorities three years after Lewis' disappearance. As for Farr, 48 Hours noted that it was unable to contact him for any comment.
In an emailed statement to Newsweek, Baskin said that Farr-Payne seems influenced by the interest surrounding Tiger King, and questioned why she hadn't reported the alleged crimes sooner.
"I've caught Trish Farr in enough lies about her ever visiting Big Cat Rescue and her description of the meat grinder to cause me to believe she's just seeking attention post Tiger King and is using her 15 minutes to bash her ex," Baskin wrote. "If she really feared for her life, and that of her children, wouldn't she have called the police if she thought her husband had Don Lewis's body locked in a freezer on her porch? That's a much clearer path to safety than hiding what she claims she believed while continuing to live with Kenneth Farr for the next 3 years or more."
Uncommon Knowledge
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