Writing From the Future With Evidence From 1996-1997

I am writing this on 12/18/2020 because I have been researching all of the files from 1996-1997 involving Don Lewis. I have placed it here, on the day of his disappearance, because all of it transpired prior to this day, and in some cases, where documents are not dated, I don’t have a better guess. I think this will explain the last thing Don Lewis apparently said to Kenny Farr, which was, “If I pull this off, it will be the slickest thing I ever did!”

This story goes a long way back, but it’s pretty interesting and gives great insight as to the kind of persons that Don and Joe were and what was happening right as Don disappeared. To the best of what I can find in my files and online, Don and I bought 11509 Sligh Avenue, Tampa, FL on 7/18/90 at a foreclosure or tax deed sale. It had been a cock fighting ring and Don wanted me to convert it to a women’s mud wrastlin’ [sic] pit. I refused and Don sold it on a lease option to Joe Ryan. (Joseph George Ryan SS# 436) On 5/31/1994 Lazy Days RV Center, Inc., brought suit against Don and Joe for specific performance in case 94-CA-003672 for the sale of this property.

The following is based on what Don told me and some of the evidence I have found, including Joe Ryan’s deposition in 98-7799-F where he sued the Conservatorship for more money after already having been paid $70,000 for a property he never owned, to settle the Lazy Days case. Don sold the property to Joe Ryan on a lease option whereby Joe would pay $5000. of the taxes on the property and a monthly lease fee and if he made 12 on time we would deed the property to him and take back a mortgage. Joe Ryan’s depo says he was buying it from us for $50,600.00 on time.

We already knew Joe Ryan wasn’t good for his word because he had a similar agreement with Don on the “Seffner farm” property where Don had carved out a parcel and on the lake and Joe was building his dream home, but fell on hard times financially and never got past the inner studs of the house inside its shell. We took that property back and the house was later demolished in 2006 by the new owners who turned the Seffner farm into a subdivision.

Lazy Days wanted to build their huge RV center in the area and sent out scouts to buy up the little lots without letting anyone know who the real buyer was to keep the prices low. They offered Joe more money than he owed us so he signed an agreement to sell to them at a price of $60k, I believe, based on Joe Ryan’s deposition. After agreeing to the sale amount by contract, Joe Ryan discovered the buyer was Lazy Days and Joe thought he could get a lot more for the property if he could get Don Lewis to nix the deal by showing what was true: Joe Ryan didn’t own the property yet because he had not been making his payments and was in default.

Don then apparently went to Lazy Days and offered to sell it to them for $225,000.00 but he told Joe Ryan that he only got $131,000.00 from it so he wouldn’t have to honor his agreement (which the deposition implies was signed by Anne McQueen, not Don, but Joe Ryan said Anne signed Don’s name all the time on things) to give Joe Ryan everything above $60,000.00 that he would get from the sale. The way Don was scheming to do this without Joe Ryan knowing what the real sales price had been was to sell the property to WITCO which was a corporation Don set up in Costa Rica. Then WITCO would do the transaction with Lazy Days after Joe Ryan thought the property had changed hands and he was getting the excess proceeds based on what he said Don had told him and Anne had signed with him.

The way Don was getting $94,000.00 more than what Joe Ryan knew about was that Don had written into the agreement with Lazy Days that in addition to the $131,000.00 they would have to make a payment of 94k to Wildlife on Easy Street, Inc., as his “charity of choice” and they agreed. I can’t find how much we paid for the property in 1990 but I think it’s fair to estimate that it was about half of what we sold it to Joe Ryan for and now Don was closing in on a sale for 10 times what he’d paid for it. Don had not made a good business decision or property sale in the past four or five years before his disappearance, so if Don had pulled this off, it truly would have been the “slickest thing” he ever did. Of all the properties we had ever bought and sold, I think this would have been in the top 5 based on the amount and equity.

This sounds pretty simple, but it was raging on in court from 1994 until 11/5/1997 (3 months AFTER Don disappeared) when I settled with Lazy Days and sold the property to them. At the time of Don’s disappearance he had been over paying for properties in Costa Rica and his only income had been in a few hundred, here or there, on selling cars, motorcycles, guns and such. Also at this time Don was having Anne run ads in the Tico Times advertising to buy endangered species of exotic cats for his new sanctuary that he planned to set up on the 200 ac farm in Bagaces, Costa Rica. I don’t know if he planned to give me the $94k for our Tampa location, or because he was an officer of Wildlife on Easy Street, Inc., maybe he figured he could just cash the check and not tell me anything about what he’d been doing in the Lazy Days deal. Regardless, this truly would have been the biggest deal Don had ever done other than selling the 600 acres in Pasco county out from under me to Mr. Sultanfuss. That was a mortgage though and not cash in hand like this one, so I think that’s why Don was so thrilled with himself.

On July 16, 1997 Don faxed Roger Petersen, Esq. saying, “I also have signed the contract with Lazy Days RV, you can do whatever is necessary to complete this, but under no circumstances reveal who the shareholder is. Please fax any contracts to my office for approval prior to faxing to Ms. Bennett. Once every thing is done you can fax to her but the originals are to be overnighted to me and I will take them to closing. Nothing else is to be discussed with Ms. Bennett. Should you have any questions, please call my office and Anne will get me on the phone.” In the court case summary sheet there is mention of a Terryn H Bennett, but I am not sure who she was.

On 8/12/1997 (just 6 days before he went missing) Don had Anne fax Roger Petersen, Esquire saying, “Please call me collect when you get into your office, I need to talk to you about the WITCO papers. The call will not be accepted, but my office will get me to the phone and I will call you right back.” This is included in the dated faxes above. In the Lazy Days lawsuit there were motions to dismiss by the defendants and hearings coming up where documents were to be produced. Don was saying he had lost his WITCO paperwork and was likely stalling.

The fax below is the last fax I have found from Don to Roger Petersen and it is dated 8/15/1997 and is talking about what he was going to ship to Costa Rica inside the Iveco box truck.

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