Professional athletes are idolized by many and even worshiped by some. Their talents and riches all too often make fans believe they are immune to the troubles faced by the rest of us. But athletes are human beings, and they are susceptible to dangers such as crime as much as anyone.

Bison Dele’s eight-year career in the National Basketball Association (NBA) had made him financially secure. Though he had done much traveling not of the basketball violation, he longed to see the natural sights of our beautiful world as opposed to hotel rooms and sports arenas. With money no hindrance and eager to pursue new adventures, he quit the game at age thirty.

Bison walked away from basketball in his athletic prime. Shortly after setting sail from Tahiti in 2002, he was, most assuredly, murdered in the prime of his life.

Bison Dele

Bison Dele was born Brian Williams.  His father, Geno Williams, was, for a time, a singer with The Platters, one of the first popular early rock’n’roll bands.

Geno Williams 

Brian Williams’ Father

Though the younger Williams also showed musical talent in playing the saxophone, trumpet, and violin, his true talents were in athletics. Whereas his dad was a singing star, Brian Williams became a sports star.

At California’s Santa Monica High School, Williams excelled at track and field before a growth spurt led him to the sport which would ultimately make him millions of dollars. By his senior year, he had grown to six-feet-ten-inches tall and was the star of the basketball team. College recruiters were setting course to Santa Monica.

Williams chose to play college basketball for the University of Maryland where he had a great freshman season, averaging 12.5 points and six rebounds a game. He longed, however, to be closer to home and transferred to the University of Arizona. After being required to sit out the 1988-89 season, he played two years for the Wildcats and posted similar averages of 12.4 points and 6.8 rebounds per game.

As the college recruiters had stampeded to Santa Monica, NBA scouts were now trekking to Tucson.

Collegiate Hoopster

The Orlando Magic selected Brian Williams with the tenth pick in the first round of the 1991 NBA Draft, but he played only sparingly in two seasons with the team.

A First Round NBA Draft Pick

Willaims was traded to the Denver Nuggets for the 1993-94 season. His play improved in his two seasons with the team, as he averaged eight points and five rebounds per game.

The following year, when he came home to play for the Los Angeles Clippers, his game improved even more, as he averaged nearly sixteen points and seven rebounds per game.

Success Out West

Having sat out most of the 1996-97 season due to a contract dispute, Williams was signed by the reigning champion Chicago Bulls with only nine games remaining in the regular season. He proved a valuable reserve in the playoffs, providing solid play coming off the bench.

Part Of The Bulls Run

Brian Williams earned a championship ring as the Bulls won their second of three consecutive NBA titles.

Brian, Next to Michael Jordan 

Celebrating As 1997 NBA Champions

The following season was Williams’ best NBA campaign. As the starting center on the Detroit Pistons, he achieved career highs in averaging sixteen points and nearly nine rebounds per game.

After his career season, Brian Williams changed his name to Bison Dele to honor his Native American and African ancestry. He played one more injury-plagued-season with the Pistons, averaging a respectable 10.5 points and 5.5 rebounds per game.

To everyone’s surprise, the thirty-year-old Bison Dele, in the prime of his career, retired from the NBA before the start of the 1999–2000 season. In so doing, he walked away from a remaining five-year contract that would have paid him $36 million.

Changes His Name 

Quits The Game . . .

Life after basketball was not dull, as the former NBA player traveled abroad. After obtaining a pilot’s license, Dele’s destinations included Lebanon, the Mediterranean, and the Australian outback.

. . . And Becomes A Travelin’ Man

After learning to sail, Dele also purchased a fifty-five-foot catamaran he dubbed the Hakuna Matata, after the popular song in the Disney movie The Lion King.  He planned to sail the Seven Seas aboard his new boat, whose Swahili name means “No trouble.”

Bison Dele’s ride on his prized vessel instead proved to be a voyage of the damned.

Bison’s Ride

The Hakuna Matata

On July 6, 2002, Bison Dele, his thirty-year-old girlfriend Serena Karlan, his brother Miles Dabord (born Kevin Williams), and French skipper Bertrand Saldo set sail from Tahiti aboard the Hakuna Matata.

When the ship arrived back in Tahiti two weeks later, on July 20, Dabord was the only person aboard. He hit the road before he could be questioned about his missing crew mates. Investigators soon learned why.

The Hakuna Matata Crew: 

Miles Dabord, Bison Dele, Serena Karlan, And Bertrand Salto

Dabord had forged his brother’s signature and used his passport as identification to buy, in American money, over $152,000, in gold.

The Forged Check

Mexican police found Dabord had stayed at a Tijuana hotel in August 2002, approximately one month after the group set sail.

Two days before, the Hakuna Matata, which had been registered in Tahiti as the Aria Bella, was found off the Tahitian coast with its name plate removed. The catamaran was riddled with possible patched bullet holes.

Investigators Examining The Hakuna Matata

On September 5, Miles Dabord was tracked backed to America, in Phoenix, three-hundred-sixty-five miles from Tijuana and over four thousand miles from where he had hastily left the Hakuna Matata.

Under questioning, Dabord said that as he and his brother were fighting, Serena Karlan had been accidentally hit. She fell and struck part of the boat, knocking her unconscious. Dabord said his panicked brother, fearing his girlfriend was dead, then killed Skipper Saldo as he proceeded to call the Coast Guard, and then attempted to kill him. Daboard claimed he had shot his brother in self-defense, and, in a panic, threw the three bodies overboard.

Authorities believe the missing boaters did wind up in the water, but they doubted the rest of Dabord’s story.

The Missing Tahiti Three

Authorities were not buying Dabord’s tale of the South Pacific, but with no bodies, they did not have any evidence to charge him with a crime.

Three weeks later, on September 27, Dabord took his life by overdosing on insulin.  With his death, the chances of finding the bodies of the Hakuna Matata crew mates likely died as well.

Daboard Deceased

Brothers Bison Dele and Miles Dabord (formerly Brian Williams and Kevin Williams) were often at odds with each other and their arguments nearly turned physical on several occasions. Such an argument between the siblings may have ensued, in which Dabord wound up committing a triple murder.

 

Bickering Brothers

Because Tahiti, from where the Hakunta Matata set sail, is part of French Polynesia, French authorities assisted the United States Coast Guard and the FBI in the investigation. The joint efforts have concluded that Bison Dele, Serena Karlan, and Captain Bertrand Saldo were likely murdered and thrown overboard by Miles Dabord or forced at gunpoint by Dabord into the ocean where they drowned.

Daborard had recently purchased $200 worth of weights, which the law enforcement agencies believe he used to weigh down the bodies and then likely dumped them in the middle, and deepest part, of the Pacific Ocean, meaning it will be highly unlikely they will ever be found.

A Tragic Tale Of The South Pacific

Bison Dele is reported to have dated the pop singer Madonna at one point in his NBA career. Serena Karlan once worked as the personal assistant to the pop singer Prince.

Serena And Prince

SOURCES:

• ABC News
• CBS News
• ESPN
• FBI
• NBA Media Ventures
• NBC News
• Sports Illustrated
• United States Coast Guard