The vanishing of millionaire cat lover Don Lewis has cops wondering, was he killed, or did he fake his own death?

Following a trail beneath the Cypress and water oaks shading her Florida Wildlife Refuge Carole Lewis stops to coo over one of her babies, a 300 pound Siberian Bengal tiger named Aurora. Looking for more than passable feline herself in a leopard print blouse Louis mimics a throaty purr.  The tiger playfully prances close to the 12 foot fence. It paws at her long blonde locks “Mommy loves you” mummers Lewis 37, “Yes I do”.

Indeed in the six years since Lewis and her husband Don, a self-made multimillionaire turned 40 acres of prime Tampa real estate into Wildlife On Easy Street, sanctuary for exotic cats, no one has questioned her fierce passion for her pets. When it comes to her feelings towards her spouse, however that's another story. On a humid August morning last year Don Lewis then 60 disappeared without a trace and some people including his grown children from a previous marriage and his longtime secretary suspect his wife of foul play. His daughters even speculate she may have fed him to the tigers.

“It's a perfect scenario to dispose of someone” says the oldest of his four children Donna Pettis 42. “We were upset that the cops didn't test the DNA of the meat grinder”. For her part Carole Lewis who harbor suspicions of her own- among them the notion that Don may have staged his disappearance-finds the “Sweeney Todd” theory grimly humorous. “My tigers eat; meat they don't eat people” she says. “There would be bones and remains of my husband out there I'm amazed that people would even think such a thing” .

If Don Lewis disappearance sounds as though it might have been scripted by Elmore Leonard so could much of the six decades of wheeling and dealing in the preceded it. “He had the Midas touch” says daughter Pettis, a Tampa area manicurist.  “He could talk through cow droppings and come out smelling like a rose”.  The Dade county city Florida native could mentally compute interest rates in less than time than it took most people to use a calculator. He had already amassed a small fortune through trucking, used cars, and real estate- as well as acquired a wife Gladys, three daughters and an adopted son by 1981. When he spotted Carole walking barefoot down a Tampa St after a fight with her husband.

The very next day, Carole whose daughter Jamie was six months old at the time, became the latest in a long line of Lewis girlfriends.  “I'm probably the only woman he never fooled around with” observes Ann McQueen 44, his secretary of 18 years and a partial beneficiary in his 1.25 million life insurance policy. “I used to say it was the only time in my life that I was glad I was short and fat”.

Despite his wealth, which grew substantially after Carole began helping him buy and sell real estate in 1984- much of it tax delinquent properties he acquired at auctions- Lewis had a split personality concerning money. The trained (though not licensed pilot) always carried enough cash to purchase an airplane but he shopped for his clothes at garage sales.  “I used to tell him”,  says McQueen, that he put the chirp in cheap cheap cheap”. When Don and Carole finally married in 1991, the year after his divorce he gave her a $14.00 wedding ring during a courthouse ceremony. But soon after, Don sprang for something Carole would love better than a bauble- a six month old bobcat she named Winsong. Within a few months both Lewis’s were significantly smitten and that they (and Jamie who's now 18 drove) to Minnesota to buy another six bobcat kittens. “When we got there it turned out to be a fur farm. The guy had 56 kittens”, Carole recalls. “We couldn't just pick out six and leave 50 to die so we bought everyone.”

Back at the Tampa home where the Lewis’s lived before moving to an equally modest residence on the refuge grounds, family and friends scrambled to bottle feed the babies every two hours. As the couple began educating themselves on how to care for the animals Carole says they also started to learn about the horrors the exotic creatures face. Soon Don was going to auctions across the US and bringing home every “abused, dying maimed cat he could find”, Carroll says.

Eventually their collection expanded to include 200 cats of 17 species housed on a nonprofit sanctuary staffed by five full time employees and more than 100 volunteers. To help set the cost they turned four cabins into unique B&B- for $75 a night, guests get their choice of tamed bobcats, cougars or servals as bedmates. “You'd pay that much at a Holiday Inn” says Carole “with no entertainment.”

These days the solidly booked cabins are attracting their share of crime buffs, tandalcisd by the mystery of just what happened to Don Lewis on August 18th 1997. There is currently a wealth of suspects and scenarios but precious little evidence. Although Don's 1989 Dodge van was found at the an airport 40 miles from the refuge two days after his wife reported him missing none of his credit cards was subsequently used. Neither the private eye Carole hired nor an extensive police investigation including searches of the property Don Lewis owned in Costa Rica where he told some family and friends he was planning to move- uncovered anything more sinister than indications that he may have been involved and extramarital affairs and questionable business practices.

Police did learn that two months before he vanished, Don Lewis had filed court documents seeking domestic-violence injunction against Carrol accusing her of mistreating threatening to shoot him. But after a judge failed to find grounds on an injunction Don apparently didn't fear for his life very much since he continued to live with her. (Carole Lewis maintains she never threatened her husband and had no knowledge of a planned injunction. “The worst thing I ever did” she says “was threaten to report him to the IRS.) Admits John Marsicano, one of the lead detectives on the case: “We don't have a good idea of what really happened to him.”

Don's disappearance has left Carole Lewis ensnarled in a nasty legal catfight with his children over the control of his business affairs and holdings estimated at more than five million. Accusing Carolee of forging their father's will and power of attorney, his daughters want to prevent her from draining the coffers to care for the animals. Carolee maintains that the children are entitled only to about $1,000,000 in properties that belong to their father before he married her.

Under temporary court order Carolee can use just $152,000 from the real estate operations to run the refuge when the current annual budget is expected to exceed $225,000. Last year the sanctuary spent $22,000 on veterinarian bills alone. As a result Carolee is trying to negotiate settlements that would give her stepdaughters a total of about $1,000,000 in property and allow her to manage the bulk of the estate until Don can be declared legally dead in 2004. “The cats are her life” says Carole mother Barbara Stairs 57 who has been helping run the real estate business. “She doesn't care what she lives in as long as the cats are taken care of.”

A truce with Don's daughters would ease the financial crisis but the cloud of suspicion hovering over Carolee Lewis- and her beloved cast may- remain. “Can you imagine having people think you killed your husband or wife and not being able to prove otherwise?” she asked. “Without a body there is nothing I can do to clear my name.”