Naked, pot-smoking drifter found dead on killer whale at SeaWorld | A Weirdlando tale from 1999
“Nude man found dead on killer whale’s back”
That’s a headline that’s sure to grab attention, and it did back in July 1999 when it ran at the top of an Orlando Sentinel front page. And the story behind the headline is the first entry in a series of strange-but-true stories from the Sentinel archives we’re calling “Weirdlando.”
A 27-year-old man described as a marijuana-smoking drifter hid in SeaWorld until it closed and decided to go swimming with the largest killer whale in captivity, a 22-footer named Tillikum.
It did not go well.
A park employee found the man – whose identity wasn’t immediately known – dead, naked and draped over the back of a whale named Tillikum early in the morning of July 8, 1999. The man’s swimming suit was found in the whale’s tank, and it was later determined to have been pulled off along with some of the man’s anatomy by Tillikum.
“It’s been a pretty bizarre day,” Orange County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jim Solomons said then. “No one has come forward and said, ‘John or Bill or Mike hasn’t come home from SeaWorld.’ It just adds to the mystique.”
Despite having three security guards patrolling the theme park’s Shamu Stadium area, the man’s deadly swim with the killer whale wasn’t noticed.
He would later be identified as Daniel Dukes, 27, from Columbia, S.C. Police would describe him as a nature-loving drifter who had recently lived in a Hare Krishna temple and was in jail a week earlier for stealing a candy bar.
The original stories
Here are some of the initial stories Sentinel reporter Lenny Savino wrote for the newspaper about the incident.
July 8, 1999
The nude body of a man was found at SeaWorld Orlando on Tuesday lying across the back of an 11,000-pound killer whale that was moved to Florida after it was involved in the death of a trainer.
Police were still trying to contact relatives of the 27-year-old victim, whose name was not disclosed.
One expert said the 22-foot whale named Tillikum, the largest killer whale in captivity, could have mistaken the man for a toy.
“Killer whales play,” said Sam Gruber, a marine animal expert at the University of Miami. “They are often seen tossing prey around for no apparent reason other than play.”
Investigators said the victim apparently hid in the park after it closed, took off his clothes, then climbed a fence outside the gigantic breeding tank and jumped into 55-degree water with Tillikum, whose name means “Friend” in the Chinook language.
A park employee spotted the man’s body draped over the back of Tillikum about 7:35 a.m. Tuesday in one of the whale pools behind Shamu Stadium, said Victor Abbey, SeaWorld’s executive vice president and general manager. The man’s swimming suit was found in the tank.
Animal-rights groups, including the Humane Society of the United State, said the death shows why whales should not be held in captivity.
“The fact that a SeaWorld patron was able to gain access to the whale pools after the park was closed demonstrates that SeaWorld does not provide enough security for whales and visitors alike,” said Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist for the Humane Society of the United States.
“SeaWorld and all marine parks should have security officers posted l around the whale pools while the park is closed to prevent this kind of tragedy,” Rose said.
Abbey said three security officers patrol the Shamu Stadium area overnight, although no one is specifically stationed at the tank that holds Tillikum, the attraction’s only male orca of breeding age.
The park, which has no surveillance camera at the breeding tank, will review its security measures, Abbey said, adding that “In the 35-year history of SeaWorld, this has never happened before.”…
No one knows why the man jumped into the whale tank. A preliminary examination of the man’s body found the cause of death appears to have been by drowning or hypothermia in the chilly water, investigators said.
Since the body was found on Tillikum’s back, it’s unlikely the whale was behaving aggressively, Rose said. The whale was probably playing with the man and continued to play with the body after the man died, she said.
July 8, 1999
The man who died in a pool with a SeaWorld killer whale was identified Wednesday as a marijuana-smoking drifter from South Carolina with a string of petty arrests.
Those who knew him said Daniel P. Dukes had recently lived in a Hare Krishna temple and had a great love of nature.
Orange County deputies said the body of Dukes, 27, was found Tuesday draped over Tillikum, a whale the size of a Greyhound bus.
The 5-foot-11-inch, 150-pound man wandered from his South Carolina home to Washington, Texas, and finally Florida, seldom staying in one place for more than two months. But nobody could say Wednesday what possessed Dukes to sneak into the whale’s 1.5 million-gallon tank or even how he did it.
Before diving into the tank with the 5-ton mammal, Dukes left few clues behind. A marijuana cigarette was found inside his pile of clothes with a worn-out Florida Department of Motor Vehicles identification card.
The card’s address belongs to a Hare Krishna temple in trendy Coconut Grove.
Paul Seaur, a priest at the temple, said Dukes lived with a community of six worshipers for about a month before leaving unexpectedly last spring.
“He said he came from Jacksonville and that he was looking for spiritual tranquility,” Seaur said in Portuguese through an interpreter on Wednesday. “We took him in as a religious volunteer. He helped out with our feeding homeless program and taking care of our garden.”
Seaur described Dukes as a quiet person who seldom mentioned his past or family. He enjoyed writing in his journal and feeding bread and vegetable scraps to the wild birds flying in and out of the temple’s garden. Although Dukes left before becoming a member, he tried to follow the religion’s insistence on liquor, drugs, sex, gambling, eating meat or eggs.
Dukes did not get along with everyone at the temple.
“He was sort of an odd bird,” said Lilakara Das, another member. “He seemed to be out in space a lot in his own world.”
Church member Gandharzika Devi Dasi said Dukes told her he wasn’t going home to be with his parents in Columbia, S.C., because they didn’t need him. Mike and Pat Dukes, who run a ReMax real estate agency that calls itself the “No. 1 Real Estate Team in Columbia” on the Internet, would not talk about their son.
Dukes’ neighbor Keith Brumble, who spent time with Daniel Dukes over the years during brief visits, said Dukes would build cabinets to make a few extra bucks.
“He liked nature,” Bramble said. “He just liked walking in the woods. He liked being outside. He was always outside.”
Sometimes, though, Dukes ended up in jail on theft and drug charges. He had more than a dozen arrests and convictions in several states including Florida.
On Christmas Day 1998, he was charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession in Marion County.
Before he was busted on pot charges in March in another case, Dukes told a Volusia County deputy he was on his way to a “Rainbow Fair” in Ormond Beach. On Friday, a judge released him from the Indian River County Jail after Dukes served three days for stealing a Three Musketeers bar from a 7-Eleven.
Three days after leaving jail, he caught the attention of SeaWorld workers who observed him inside the park. Tuesday morning, his naked body was recovered from a killer whale’s back in a breeding tank in back of Shamu Stadium.
His swimming trunks were inside the pool. There was no admission ticket to the park in his belongings, but officials haven’t determined whether the homeless man sneaked in. Some workers said they may have seen Dukes in the park on Sunday, said Nick Gollattscheck, a SeaWorld spokesman.
Gollattscheck said Dukes would have had to scale a 3-foot-high Plexiglas barrier and a shorter stone wall around the pool to enter the water. Once he was in the water he could have climbed out from steps around most of the 80-foot-by-100-foot pool.
A preliminary examination of the body by a medical examiner indicated he drowned, but officials are waiting for test results from Wednesday’s autopsy before making a conclusion.
Epilogue
Days later, a preliminary autopsy found that Dukes more than likely drowned in the icy 55-degree water of Tillikum’s tank. “I’m in favor of the drowning and hypothermia theory,” said then-Orange County Medical Examiner Dr. Shashi B. Gore. “I think he died from both.”
Gore said it was also likely that Tillikum bit the man in the groin and tore off his swimming trunks. What was not known was whether the whale actually caused Dukes’ death.
Tillikum had previously been blamed for drowning one of his trainers in 1991 when he performed at Sealand of the Pacific in British Columbia. At SeaWorld he was brought in for breeding and splashing the crowd at the end of shows. Trainers were not allowed in the water with him.
Shortly after Duke’s death, his parents sued SeaWorld seeking unspecified punitive damages.
“While defendant [SeaWorld] repeatedly warns patrons they they may incur damage to their cameras or video equipment from being splashed with salt water at the theme park, and while defendant tells its audience the water is cold, it does not warn of the specific risk of death from hypothermia involved in being in the water with any period of time,” said one excerpt from the lawsuit.
Then-Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas, in criticizing the suit, wrote, “According to the lawsuit, SeaWorld should have included a warning in its shows that would go something like this: See that big killer whale over there? That one is a real killer. So, in particular, don’t jump in his tank.”
About a month after filing the suit, the family dropped it.
Tillikum would be in the news again in 2010 when he drowned longtime trainer Dawn Brancheau at SeaWorld, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her beneath the water. Tillikum himself would die in January 2017 from a bacterial infection.
