Vanished
On May 29, the Hakuna Matata left Auckland for Tahiti with Saldo, Benson and Dabord.
Dele and Karlan decided to fly instead, leaving the next day.
Although Dele was worried about Karlan getting seasick, Fitzgibbon says, the main reason they decided to forgo the long voyage was because of Dabord.
Dele "was feeling a little crowded by (Dabord's) presence," Fitzgibbon says. "He never would have asked him to leave. (Dabord) was his brother, and his boat was his brother's as far as he was concerned."
About that time, Dele apparently spoke with his friend and financial manager Kevin Porter and expressed concern about his brother's behavior, according to Porter's statement to Phoenix police. Dele added that he might want to cut his brother off financially because of his pattern of wasteful spending and irresponsible financial ventures, the police report says. Porter says he didn't say that to police.
The Hakuna Matata arrived in Papeete, the capital of Tahiti, on June 19, the voyage taking only three weeks, apparently in part because of Dabord.
"He seemed to enjoy taking on a bit of a commanding role in his brother's absence," says Fitzgibbon, who talked to Mark Benson at length after the trip. "He was fairly demanding on how fast he wanted to go and where and when they could stop.
"He did become a little bossy to a degree, but not in an aggressive sense."
On June 21, the boat sailed to the nearby island of Moorea, where Dele and Karlan had spent the previous three weeks in the bungalows of Sofitel Coralia la Ora Hotel.
Three days later, the entire group sailed back to Tahiti. On July 2, Benson flew back to Australia, and on July 6, the Hakuna Matata set sail for Honolulu with Dele, Dabord, Karlan and Saldo on board.
According to the FBI, sometime on the morning of July 7, Dele, Karlan and Saldo were killed off the shore of Maiao, about 75 miles from Papeete.
The next day, Dabord docked the boat in Moorea, where he met his girlfriend of two years, Erica Wiese. She had booked a trip to the island months earlier. The two spent a week in the Pearl Beach Resort taking in the sun and going on at least one trip with other tourists to a nearby atoll.
Wiese later said that Dabord never had planned on sailing with his brother to Hawaii. Instead, the plan was for him to vacation with Wiese, then fly home with her.
In the four days after Wiese left Tahiti, Dabord moved the Hakuna Matata, now renamed the Aria Bella, to a Tahitian port and cleaned it up. Then he flew back to the apartment he shared with Wiese in Palo Alto, Calif.
Confession
Dabord spent the next month and a half traveling between California, Miami and Belize, trying to set up the purchase of $152,000 in gold coins in Phoenix using his brother's name, checking account and passport. On Sept. 5, Phoenix police arrested Dabord when he tried to get the gold.
Shortly after his arrest, while sitting in the back of a patrol car, Dabord told an officer how proud he was of his brother, bragging about what a good basketball player he was. The officer asked Dabord if he played. Dabord replied, "No. Brian got all the luck and talent in the family."
He added that he wasn't working and that his brother "took care of him and that he was driving around in a new Lincoln Navigator that his brother gave him."
In the seven hours of interviews that followed, Dabord seemed nearly manic - at times soaking in a nervous sweat, shaking and on the verge of crying, then later laughing, smiling and even shaking an officer's hand, according to the police report.
Unable to get Dabord to tell them where Dele, Karlan and Saldo were, police allowed Dele's friend Porter to interview him.
Dabord told Porter that Dele had asked him to buy the gold, but wouldn't say why, adding, "sometimes you just gotta look out for yourself."
When asked whether Karlan and Dele were alive, Dabord said they were when he left.
Police released Dabord because they couldn't prove he wasn't acting on behalf of his brother.
The next day, Dabord flew to see Wiese, and they drove to San Ysidro, Calif., she says. In the morning, Dabord confessed, telling Wiese that Karlan had died when he accidentally knocked her down and she hit her head. Dabord said Dele then killed Saldo because the captain wanted to report the death. Dabord said he then killed his brother in self-defense.
He told Wiese he weighted down the bodies and threw them overboard.
Dabord also told his freind Paul White that he acted in self-defense. White says the account differs from Wiese's, but he has yet to share it publicly.
After confessing to Wiese, Dabord said goodbye and fled to Tijuana.
He spent a week in the area before someone found him comatose, sitting on a park bench overlooking a Tijuana beach.
On Sept. 27, Dabord died, a day after being removed from life-support.
The FBI and French authorities don't believe Dabord's account of what happened on the Hakuna Matata, saying forensic evidence doesn't match with his story.
John "JC" Steiner, who is overseeing the FBI investigation into the triple homicide, says not enough blood residue was found on the teak deck of the boat to account for Dabord's story. But investigators still believe that Dele's custom-made 10 mm Glock, which was on the boat, could have been the murder weapon.
Authorities continue to investigate.
"Nobody wants a grassy knoll at the end of their investigation," Steiner says. "But we may never know exactly what happened. We may just have to piece it together."
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