Carol Baskin was born on an Air Force base in Bexar County, Texas on June 6, 1961. Like Joe, she didn’t have an ideal childhood and ran away from home at age 15, hitchhiking from Florida to Maine. She slept underneath cars until she could afford her own truck and then slept in the back of that with her pet cat. At age 17, Carol got a job at a department store and fell in love with her boss, Michael Murdock, who seems to have been several years older than Carol. The two were married soon after they moved in together because Carol feared the consequences of living in sin. BUt Mike beat her regularly and obsessively tracked her moves, going so far as to track the odometer on her car. The one solace Carol had was her animals, and soon she began to rehabilitate injured bobcats. [Image Source] One night Carol fled her house in fear of another beating from Mike. As she walked down the street crying, a man in a car pulled up and asked her if she’d like a ride. Eventually Carol got into the vehicle and the two went to a hotel that night, but Carol swears nothing happened. But they decided to meet again. Rob Moor interviewed Carol and wrote this piece in the story exotic-and-his-american-animals.html">Tiger King Joe Exotic: The Modern Barnum and His Equally Extraordinary Nemesis: The man told her his name was Bob Martin. Since they were both married, they had to have their clandestine meetings in a trailer at his work site; when Bob pulled into the lot, he would make her lie down on the floor of his truck so no one would see her. She thought they were hiding from his boss, a rich businessman named Don Lewis. Whenever she called him at work, she would ask his secretary if she could speak with Bob Martin. One day, a different secretary answered the phone. When Carole asked for Bob Martin, the secretary said she’d never heard of him. Carole described him — middle-aged, blond hair, blue eyes — and the secretary laughed. “You’re describing Don Lewis,” the secretary said. Carole realized she was having an affair with a millionaire. exotic-and-his-american-animals.html">[3] For the next 5 years Carol continued her affair with Don Lewis before the two finally left their spouses. For a while the couple raised, breeded, and traded exotic animals. Then in 1992 they changed their tactics and opened Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Florida. It was Carol’s dream and yet life was not a dream at all. Don was stingy with his money, he never even bought Carol a real diamond ring. He would go dumpster diving for day old bread and he held his money over Carol’s head. He also cheated on Carol as he had his previous wife and she was expected to accept these terms. The two began to disagree on how the animals should be treated as Carol began to realize their tactics were harmful and even cruel. Don saw the animals as a way to make money so the couple fought constantly. Finally, Don began to tell Carol he wanted a divorce. In July of 1997, Don filed a restraining order on Carol claiming she threatened to kill him and a month later he mysteriously disappeared and was never heard from again. When confronted about the restraining order years later, Carol shrugged the incident off and published a statement on the Big Cat Rescue website: Don spent one week per month in Costa Rica. Don was a man who wanted to have sex daily. He would go to Costa Rica during the week I was having my menstrual cycle. I accepted this as something I had to live with. During the week he was away, I would haul off the property as much of the junk as I could. Wendell told Don I was doing this. Don tried calling the police to get them to stop me. They told him he would need a restraining order.