553 - Ohio, Let’s Say

0:15 Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murderer.

0:18 That's Georgia Hartstark.

0:20 That's Karen Kilgareff.

0:21 And we're full of beans today, if you don't mind.

0:24 Oh, I forgot to, I have these like caffeine pouches that you suck on that I forgot to take. That's why I'm so fucking tired.

0:33 Let's get you off those pouches.

0:35 I think I need to get on them because I forgot to take it.

0:37 Just drink that as fast as you can. Georgia's going to chug, chug.

0:42 Oh my God.

0:43 Remember back in the days?

0:44 Chug it. Full of beans. That's full of shit, right? Uh-huh. That's what that means.

0:49 For the children. Right. If you're going to yell at children with a smile on your face, you don't get to say shit. Did you know I have seven children? Isn't that crazy? I never talk about them.

0:58 Yeah. What are their names? Name them all. Danny. That's a boy. And then there's a Danny girl. Oh.

1:05 Because we were so drunk when they were born. Twins. Uh-huh. And of course, Maurice.

1:11 Don't ever forget Maurice.

1:13 You can't.

1:14 He rages if you don't. George, Frank, Blossom, Mimi, Elvis. All right. Mo. Kevin. Kevin. Sorry, Pete, Kevin.

1:28 Okay.

1:30 This is a podcast. Listen, we're.

1:33 On people's televisions right now in some homes.

1:36 We're on the main stage. Hello.

1:39 Can we turn out a little more? Let people see your sweater. Let's clear that mic. Amazing.

1:44 Amazing. It's a child's vintage sweater. It's too tight and it's uncomfortable, but I just needed to wear it. It's so good. It's tight. It's real tight. But it's pretty, like, it reminds me of the island story that I did that one time.

2:00 The Island of the Blue Dolphins? No, no.

2:02 The one... Oh. I curse you with my dying breath. That's, um... It's got a good name. It's not Guantanamo. The Gua... Guadalajara.

2:14 No.

2:15 The Galapagos affair. That's what I said. I said it first. Thank you.

2:19 Have you worn that before? I feel like I've never seen it.

2:22 No. It's really good. I've been saving it. And it actually ties into my story. That's why I'm... If I.

2:27 Had the longest arm ever, I could reach in and see what the label is.

2:30 It's gone, but it's definitely a child's.

2:32 Yes.

2:33 You're very small. I'm busting out of this thing. It shouldn't be on me at all.

2:42 There's actually a lace-up back that you're trying to close.

2:47 Did you see there's a woman in like, you know, Ohio, let's say, who found, that's like, you know, somewhere.

2:53 Could be Vermont.

2:54 Who, okay, her grandfather had a department store in the like 50s through the 90s. And she inherited the warehouses full of the backstock that never went out.

3:04 From the 50s to the 90s?

3:05 Yes. And she's posting it all for sale. I bought a couple things. What? And it's everything from like the alarm clock that your mom had in its original box to like tapestries. Tons of garter belts and like undies and bullet bras and just like the craziest shit. It's called Opa's something. Can you look that up for me?

3:26 Opa's treasure.

3:28 Opa.

3:28 Opa, like your Opa. Yeah, yeah.

3:30 A Greek grandfather. Yeah. That, first of all, made my mouth start watering just as you were like, A woman's grandfather.

3:37 And then I was like, this is going to be good. Something's good.

3:39 But that idea, there is a portal opening there with people going to be, being able to suddenly go back and have in their hands the thing they've missed and wanted.

3:50 And of course, for all us fucking weirdos, the original box. Yes. This is the most important part of vintage vintage. shopping.

3:57 The true time travel of the way it used to be.

4:00 In the box. Original box, original like manual.

4:03 Yep.

4:03 There's like roller skates. There's just, it's crazy. I've got to be a part of this. You must. I bought a thermos. I bought a fucking brand new dead stock.

4:13 Was it Holly Hobby on it?

4:14 Thermos. No, it's like, it's like, you know, windsurfing. 70s like windsurfing. It's so rad.

4:20 Can I argue that that would be, well, maybe it's late 70s, early 80s.

4:23 I don't even think there's windsurfing on it, but it's got that vibe. You know what I mean?

4:28 It just made you think of windsurfing.

4:30 It just reminds you of windsurfing. Were you looking in the mirror? I'm having a real windsurfing moment. Fall. A fall girl.

4:38 You're a coastal grandma all the way. It's time.

4:41 I really am.

4:42 Or you have a coastal grandma knitting you clothes. Is there a brick and mortar location?

4:46 No, she's just posting it on this like messy website for sale that's like, it's so clear that she's just like, shit, I don't know what to do with all this stuff. Just throwing it on.

4:56 It's like, And are you in any way worried that if you don't gatekeep this from the murderitos, they're going to go buy it?

5:02 Well, I've done a couple searches. I bought what I wanted to buy. I've done it already before I told everyone. That's right.

5:08 Sorry.

5:09 You're welcome. You cleared it. Molly found it. It's called Opa's Vintage Gal. And go buy your weird stuff that's like made of asbestos and mothballs. Yeah, be very careful.

5:20 There's certain... dishes you can't have because there's lead in them.

5:24 Don't do the cocaine that you buy from there.

5:27 If you find little bags of cocaine inside a record sleeve, it's not for you. That's for another time. And also it's just, it's baking soda level strength.

5:35 Right. Or it's those things that come with the clothes that your cats try to eat.

5:38 Oh yeah.

5:39 The silica gel pack. Hey, speaking of don't eat these poisonous things, we have a Tylenol poisoning update.

5:49 Incredible.

5:49 So incredible. So I covered the Chicago Tylenol poisonings in episode 43 in arrears, which I now know what that means thanks to you. And it's been one of those cases that just always stuck with us. You know, it's just who fucking did it? I would have bet money on Ted Kaczynski just because of the connections. However... Recently, a man who was found dead from suicide by cyanide poisoning in an Idaho church back in December of 1982 has been identified through DNA as Dr. Matthew Francis Bukowski.

6:22 And so Bukowski was a chemist who had struggled with mental health issues and who had gone missing from Jacksonville, Florida that same year in 1982. Over the course of their reopened investigation, police learned that he had been preoccupied with cyanide and that he spoke at work about how easy it would be to tamper with over-the-counter medicine. So they found him in December. The poisonings happened in like September, I believe. So super close. When going through his possessions, investigators found maps of Chicago where the Tylenol poisonings had taken place. Those murders began, as I said, in September of 1982, just three months before Bukowski was found dead, never identified. His family was originally from L.A. and was prominent.

7:02 His grandfather had been a city council member. Investigators have not officially named him as a suspect in the Tylenol poisonings, but have announced the, quote, connection. So I think we're going to get more information and, you know, how easy I am to believe things. I buy it.

7:19 I mean, it's adding up.

7:20 It all adds up until it falls apart.

7:22 Yes. Also, just for a case that had no suspects, no answers, no nothing, to have an area where clearly investigators were like, we have hit upon something meaningful. That's why it's made it to the news.

7:35 And a mystery on a mystery. Like, they found this guy and for decades they didn't know who he was. And it turns out just these weird little connections that someone made.

7:44 Yep. Here's what is a true trip, I think, probably for especially the younger people that listen to the show, for most of my young life, there was no tamper-proof anything on any medicine. And this doctor was right. It's almost like the worst part of him took over, like a Jekyll and Hyde thing. The doctor part of him was like, this is not safe. And then it's like, I'll make it not safe.

8:07 Can you imagine like being at the water cooler? Allegedly. Allegedly. Can you imagine being at the water cooler and someone just dropping that? Hey, you know how you could kill a lot of people really easily. Like, oh, shit.

8:19 And you hold it for years because the vibe of it is so bad that you're like, I absolutely will never forget when he.

8:25 Said that to me. And then he went missing. Yep. Yeah. Creepy.

8:30 Very interesting.

8:31 Yeah.

8:35 I don't know how to get into the Cornell 7.

8:37 We just have to get into it because we need to talk about it. We're all on social media.

8:41 Some of us to a terrible degree where we're buying foundation online and then it doesn't match our skin. But here's the experience that I had yesterday in watching it, hearing about it, hearing everything. There was a guy who went in and read the, I believe it's an affidavit or some sort of official statement that was, say it was 40 pages long. And he kept saying pages 23 to 27 almost made me throw up at my desk.

9:10 So we don't know what actually happened. Technically. And for people that we are in the media, we can't be saying what happened.

9:17 We don't know.

9:18 But we know what people close to it are saying. We know what student reporters at that Cornell student newspaper investigated.

9:25 We know what Jane Doe is saying.

9:26 And we know what Jane Doe is saying.

9:27 And we believe that. Because, and I love this movement, we are all Jane Doe.

9:31 We're all Jane Doe.

9:32 Yeah.

9:32 And that idea that some fucked up person thinks they're going to expose Jane Doe for some reason will, to me, ignite... Finally, I think, in this country, it's like, how much further can you push women to be like, sorry, you're going to do that for what reason? How will that serve anything? What are you talking about? So watching video after video of women being like, I'm Jane Doe.

9:57 Yeah.

9:58 I've never seen anything like that in my life.

10:00 Yes, you have. Me too. That's why I'm so sorry to be such a cynic, but yes, we have. It doesn't, I just feel like it doesn't fucking change. We just keep having these fucking instances. Brock Turner, like, That should have fucking taught everyone a lesson.

10:15 But sorry, who's it going to teach a lesson to? The lesson is not going to go to the rapist.

10:20 Not the rapist. I mean that like that women somehow get to start not being afraid.

10:28 By joining up together.

10:30 Yeah. That's the way.

10:32 And before, I think Me Too was like a social media version, which was all very new. It was brand new. It doesn't catch fire the first time. You have to hit that match and hit that match. What I'm saying is, this seems different to me. I mean, the women that are watching everything are not watching passively anymore, and they're not watching as if it's somebody else anymore. That's what it feels.

10:53 Like to me. Yeah, I hope so. It definitely, it feels like it could be something huge if we make it that.

11:01 I think that women are just, with every horrifying experience, it's not saying it makes anything better. It's just saying women are uniting.

11:12 Yeah.

11:12 It's less and less happening that people are able to be manipulated at the outset by, here, we're going to string up this witch.

11:19 Right.

11:20 That is not happening in a way that I think is very different, even from the Me Too movement.

11:25 Yeah.

11:26 Because that became, look at how crazy and fucked this is. But when we're talking about coordinated gang rape that then gets put on a text thread with 50 fucking seven people... That's what people are saying. Expose it. Stand up against it.

11:43 Yeah. Get pissed off about it. Yeah. I love that. And teach your sons just to not be fucking rapists.

11:48 Give a shit about what they're doing.

11:50 Right. To stand up against them. Not even don't be a rapist. Stand up against the wrongdoings that you see. Yeah. And of course, we have to say this is all alleged. And also, we are recording this a week before this comes out, just to keep that in mind.

12:04 Yes. Also, I think it would be much easier for people to talk about stuff like this if journalists had jobs, if newspapers were not owned or all shut down.

12:15 And if our president wasn't a rapist, too.

12:17 Yeah, if the rape culture wasn't absolutely celebrated and then ignored and then celebrated and then wrestling on the lawn.

12:27 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All of that. Now, let's podcast.

12:32 Well, here's the thing. It's a true crime podcast and this is a serious fucking crime.

12:37 Truly crime.

12:38 It's a real bad crime that people have to start feeling is a real bad crime.

12:43 Yeah. And also believing women when they say, your friend is creepy, don't leave me alone with him.

12:48 Yes.

12:48 Like, then they're not friends with that person anymore. Right. That's like, it's the thing of like, every woman knows someone who was sexually assaulted, but men don't know anyone who's a fucking rapist, turns out.

12:59 It's very strange math.

13:00 Yes. Boy math.

13:02 That is a piece of it, maybe.

13:03 Yeah.

13:03 Is me too, everyone, all the men, even the good ones, quote unquote, that I knew were like... this is very dangerous and people could lose their careers or whatever. And it's like, right, but we've been stopped by that over and over again. And it turns out they need to. It turns out there need to be consequences to, I don't know, thinking that you can do something like that to a human being.

13:25 Your actions and your inactions, there are consequences for those things. Exactly right. Media, here are some highlights.

13:33 This week... On this podcast, we'll kill you. Aaron and Erin are joined by award-winning author Robert Kolker to discuss his new book, The Vanishing Family, which explores one family's experience with hereditary frontotemporal dementia. and what it means for the future of dementia research.

13:49 Wow. I have to read that.

13:51 I will not be reading it.

13:53 Oh, that's fair. Please let me know. I'll let you know to not read it.

13:56 Appreciate it.

13:56 Over on Buried Bones, Kate and Paul go back to 1955 to discover.

14:01 A department store filled with goods.

14:03 Right. To discover the investigation of United Airlines Flight 629 that exploded over Colorado shortly after takeoff. We've covered that. As authorities search for answers, the evidence begins to reveal that it was no accident. Fascinating story. Yeah.

14:18 Over on Hollywoodland, Jake and Zeth uncover the real-life 1908 murder mystery that helped inspire Twin Peaks. This unsolved murder of a young woman named Hazel Drew in idyllic New York town revealed a world of corruption, deceit, and even more murder.

14:35 Then check out bananas. Kurt and Scotty talk about a tarantula owner's quest to make sure his pet doesn't die a virgin. Aww. France's record heat wave leading to historic champagne levels and... I appreciate that. So good. And on a related note, whether regular social drinking could actually be good for your health. The answer is no, and... I got a letter in the actual mail from Kurt and Scotty because they were doing the Dry 69 challenge for bananas. Yeah.

15:03 And they sent me a Dry 69. I did it. Bumper sticker, like a little note. How amazing is that? That's the cutest. So I was like, how did you get my address? And then I was like, thank you.

15:13 Stay away from my door.

15:15 Yeah. That was really sweet.

15:16 That's very sweet. Just so you know, I wrote in the answers now for you.

15:21 Oh, good. Thank you.

15:22 Right as you do this huge accomplishment where you're just like, hey, I did this thing.

15:27 I feel great.

15:28 And it's like, hey, guess what?

15:29 Everything's fine. It turns out.

15:31 And hey, listen, look, get out your gowns because it's award season for a podcast.

15:36 Hey.

15:36 Five of our Exactly Right shows have been nominated for Signal Awards.

15:40 Hell yeah.

15:41 Two-Face, John of God, which was our limited series. From Adande Media.

15:45 Incredible.

15:46 I Said No Gifts with the great Bridger Weininger. Disgraceland, Jake Brennan's amazing show. Of course, Brief Recess with the star of Traitors.

15:54 Absolutely.

15:56 Michael Foote and, of course, Melissa Malabrant. And The Knife, our beloved The Knife with Hannah and Pasha.

16:03 Amazing.

16:04 This is a listener favorite situation. You have to go vote. If you love these podcasts as much as we do, and we know you do, please go to SignalAward.com and vote for your favorites. You have until October 15th.

16:17 Do it.

16:17 Your vote matters.

16:18 That's so huge. I mean, it means so much to get an award like that. So please vote. SignalAward.com. Okay, I'm first and only today. That's right. I've got a doozy for you that I am excited to tell you about. I've been immersed in this now.

16:40 It's just a fight with your neighbor. I've been immersed since I moved into my house.

16:46 Jairus, you are on. Here's a photo of my neighbor. No, we're the best neighbors. Okay. This is a story of a different kind of killer. It's February 24th, 2010, and we're in Orlando, Florida at SeaWorld. Oh, okay. And a trainer named Don Brancho is performing with one of the park's many orcas, or Shamu whales. This whale's name is Tilikum, and Don will be the third person whose death is attributed to Tilikum. This is the story of Tilikum, the killer whale who killed three people before SeaWorld finally stopped letting trainers get in the water with killer whales. Oh, my God.

17:26 Yeah.

17:27 I see. There he is.

17:29 Hey, and then psychically, I was like, I'll do your theme.

17:31 Hi, I'm Blue. Hi.

17:33 Deep Blue. I'm the deep sea.

17:35 So this is... Where Tilikum belongs. That's right. So this story, okay, I first found out the story from an article in Outside magazine. Your favorite. My favorite. Actually, they have really great, like, in-depth articles. And this one was by Tim Zimmerman. And when I pitched it to Allie Elkin and Molly Smith of Exactly Right Media, they, I've never seen them so excited about a story. And Allie, like, researching this and writing this was so excited about it. So I love that.

18:02 Love it. Their excitement over this.

18:04 Yeah.

18:05 Also, I listened to a book called Beneath the Surface by John Hargrove. He's a former senior orca trainer at SeaWorld, and it has been on both sides of the, like, for and against.

18:18 Yeah, what an incredible perspective.

18:20 He just has, yeah, he can tell you everything. I mean, it's a really great book that explains why and how someone gets into that and what it means and what really happens. Wow. Okay. And then the other main sources are the documentary Blackfish, of course, and the book Death at SeaWorld by David Kirby. Also a 1997 frontline episode called A Whale of a Business. Boo.

18:43 Why?

18:43 You love it.

18:44 Noah.

18:45 It's funny. It's like the most serious... episode I've seen and it's there someone was like having fun.

18:50 That day you're gonna have a whale of a good time knock it off also no one says that anymore.

18:55 No all right so let's go back and let's get a little bit of info about Tilikum and SeaWorld so by 2010 when this episode with Dawn happens nearly all of the whales at SeaWorld had been born in captivity but not Tilikum He is an 80s baby and was born in the wild. Much of what we actually know about orcas, and orcas and killer whales are interchangeable names here, has been learned very recently in the past couple decades.

19:22 So we know that they are generally highly social creatures that form tight-knit family networks with their pods. The pods communicate with each other in distinct languages. even accents and dialects. So like one's like Boston and one's from like, you know, Dublin and they don't understand each other kind of. They're like Worcester. Exactly. Orca societies are matriarchal. And even after they grow up and begin having their own babies, orcas stay with their mothers their entire lives. They go to other pods to breed.

19:54 Can you imagine? Can you imagine?

19:58 No.

19:58 You're back with Janet.

20:00 Oh, no.

20:00 In your bunk bed.

20:01 She's trying to put you to bed. Yeah, we're living in an RV for some reason. Yeah. I'm thinking about, like, the tightest quarters I could think of.

20:10 Yeah, and she's just touching elbows with you the whole time.

20:12 Oh, okay. I'm sweating.

20:15 Me and my mom in my front room, and she's like, put some lipstick on. You look like a corpse. Put some lipstick on.

20:21 So, and then the little pods are centered around the oldest female. So, this orca craze started in 1965 when a 22-foot male orca was unintentionally captured in a salmon net off the coast of Namu. The man who caught the whale sold him to the Seattle Marine Aquarium, where he began performing under the name Namu. He was so popular, the aquarium captured a female killer whale who they named Shamu and then leased to SeaWorld in San Diego. So Namu and Shamu are both sensations, and this sets off a frenzy of other aquarium and marine parks. which previously sprung up around the craze for performing dolphins because of Flipper, wanting to get their own performing killer whales.

21:05 Sorry, hold on really quick.

21:06 Yeah.

21:07 The TV show Flipper from the 50s and 60s is why we have like Marine World and Sea World and all that?

21:13 Yeah, yeah. That's wild. The Frontline episode talks a lot about that, how it happened. It's fucking so upsetting and troubling, I will warn you. This sets off an unregulated Wild West situation in the 60s, 70s, and 80s in which professional hunters harass pods of killer whales with flash bombs and other noisy objects. They funnel them into confined areas and separate the smallest ones from their mothers to take them to perform. And when this happens, the rest of the pod stays nearby, watching the calf get lifted onto a stretcher, onto a boat, and they're calling back and forth to the calf the whole time. And supposedly it's heartbreaking to witness, not surprisingly. This is how Tilikum winds

21:54 up being captured as a baby off the coast of Iceland in 1983. And there's a whole thing about the Pacific Northwest whales and that practice getting banned here, having to move to Alaska, getting banned there, and finally Iceland's like, whatever, go ahead.

22:08 No.

22:09 Sorry, Iceland, yes.

22:10 They would never.

22:11 They did. Because there's so many of them and they were saying it's ruining the fishing, you know, industry.

22:17 I'll just say that as a child of the 70s, and I'll use any excuse to talk about being a child in the 70s, but my parents subscribed to National Geographic magazine, which was a game changer.

22:29 Yeah.

22:30 I think it's so important and so incredible. And there was an issue of it that put out a 45 record on very floppy material, but right, of whale songs when it was like the whole Save the Whales movement started in the 70s.

22:45 Yeah.

22:45 And it was just as I was kind of like becoming aware of all the things that I want to read that magazine or whatever. So it was like saving the whales and protecting whales and sea life like that were always this big part of at least California, maybe Northern California culture.

23:02 Right.

23:03 But meanwhile, this is actually what was happening.

23:06 Right. And also off of that, SeaWorld acted like they were part of this save the whales thing. Yeah. They acted like they were doing a good thing by helping save the whale and helping to protect.

23:17 Sure.

23:18 And like teach people about this.

23:21 And donate tons of money to make sure they're never harmed.

23:23 Exactly. So Tilikum is displayed for a year at an Iceland aquarium before being sold to a marine park called Sealand of the Pacific in Oak Bay, British Columbia in 1985. This is a smallish park with not a ton of space to hold whales. It's like a big pool, essentially. And then at night, Tilikum and two older females, they are stored, essentially, in this small holding tank. in the dark, and the females, the two older females, treat him, a male newcomer, aggressively, as they do in their pods in the wild. They rake his skin with his teeth, meaning they just almost like... With their teeth? Yeah, they rake their teeth down his skin, and you can see that there's like these cuts. He's bleeding when he's brought out

24:10 to perform in the mornings, and it's just really awful and tragic. Sealand is often described as run down and rinky-dink, It's kind of on its last leg. I think it had dolphins originally, and then they just replaced them with killer whales. The pools are small. The park has those three killer whales who perform tricks. The park calls them behaviors, but trainers here do not get in the water with the whales. Even in 1985, they were like, that's not a good idea.

24:39 They're what we call killer whales. Right.

24:42 So on February 20th, 1991, a 20-year-old part-time trainer named Kelty Byrne who is a marine biology student and a competitive swimmer, is wrapping up a show with Tilikum and the two other females. Kelty was a champion swimmer from Victoria, British Columbia. So she's an incredible swimmer. Trainers in general are hired mostly for their swimming ability and their charisma.

25:07 And while they do have a love of animals and learn a great deal about them, at this time, they don't have to have any particular science or psychology background to understand whales. Just seems.

25:18 Like something that should be regulated.

25:19 Right. Yes. So as Kelty is walking along the pool side, she slips and her foot falls into the pool. And Tilikum at this point is about 10 years old. Having lived in cramped conditions with older whales taking their aggression out on him for years, he reacts as an animal does and grabs Kelty's foot and drags her into the water along with the two dominant female orcas. So I looked up. in our Gmail account, I just put in Tilikum and I was like, there's no way someone already wrote in about this. Yeah, we had multiple emails about Tilikum, including one from someone who wants to stay anonymous and go by Kay from 2020. Kay said, quote, I have a degree from a respected university in marine mammal science

26:05 and marine conservation, worked for two plus years at SeaWorld Orlando, and I have personal experience working alongside Tilikum, Tilly, and animals like him. And this is how she explained what happened to Kelty when she was grabbed. Quote, the three orcas submerged Kelty, dragging her around the pool in a game of sorts, preventing her from surfacing. At one point, she reached the side and tried to climb out, but the orcas pulled her back into the pool. She surfaced three times before drowning, and it was several hours before her body could be safely recovered from the pool. And again, she was a champion swimmer. After this incident in which Kelty Byrne dies, Celan sells all three killer whales to SeaWorld.

26:47 one of which is pregnant with the first of many killer whales to be sired by Tilikum. That whale is known as Kaiquat or Kai. You want to see a photo of Tilikum? Is now a good time?

26:58 I mean, will it ever be a good time? Here's a photo of Tilikum. Also, just like when you swim in a pool for like three hours and your hair's all fucked up and your skin feels terrible and your eyes are red.

27:09 Yeah.

27:10 And these are animals that are— that' s supposed to be their air and their, like, surroundings, and then they're just in a bright blue chlorinated pool like that.

27:18 It just seems like it's so pristine, the water, compared to what they need and thrive in. It's just very troubling. So Tilikum arrives at SeaWorld just in time for a killer whale craze to sweep the nation. Orca Madness reaches an absolute fever pitch— around the release of the movie Free Willy in 1993. You remember that? Yeah. People lost their minds.

27:41 They got the children on the orca's side.

27:43 That's right. Yeah. And it's possibly why many millennials believed they would grow up to be marine biologists. K.R. Murderino in residence says, the vast majority of people hired for positions in animal training are psychology grads who earn their spot only after passing grueling swim-based and psychosocial examinations. Despite what certain groups will lead you to believe, nobody is walking off the street and jumping onto a whale at SeaWorld.

28:07 We believe you.

28:08 Yeah, and in that book that I read, the one called Beneath the Surface, talks about everything you had to do to become a SeaWorld trainer.

28:16 I'd love to take a psychosocial SeaWorld test. Fail.

28:19 You fail. Immediate fail. What? Take her to jail.

28:22 Straight to jail.

28:23 Straight to jail. Yeah, we should find that out. That'd be a good fan call video.

28:25 It'd be like, you're just holding a herring and staring into someone's eyes.

28:28 Don't look away. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? So in this atmosphere of increased popularity of killer whales from the movie Free Willy, SeaWorld faces some scrutiny over the practice of keeping whales and other mammals like dolphins in captivity for the purpose of entertainment. Activists regularly protest the practice, and throughout the 90s and early 2000s, there's mounting evidence that the whales are not doing well in captivity and that their living conditions are making them aggressive. And to this day, the only known instance of killer whales killing people or almost killing people, the only times that have happened... is with captive whales. So in the wild, there's been a couple

29:06 isolated incidents where a wild killer whale has bitten a person in a wetsuit, but they've never displayed this dragging behavior. And as soon as they realize in the wild it's a person and not a seal, they let the person go and the person has survived.

29:19 Wow.

29:19 So.

29:20 Because they have those little round teeth. They don't have shark teeth. They have those little funny teeth.

29:25 I mean, there's a lot of them and they're big. Yeah, they're large.

29:29 But they make me laugh because it's like you look at this thing and you're like, oh, this is so scary. And then they're like, ding. with just like funny little teeth.

29:35 Little plushies. You got to sell those little plushies. Yeah. So back to the captive whales. On the morning of July 7th, 1999, Tilikum is discovered swimming around his tank at SeaWorld with a body of a man, naked man, draped across his back. And that's actually a behavior they'll do is they'll play with their food. So they'll do it when a seagull will land in the pool. They'll toy with it and kill it and then put it on their back and like cruise around with it, like showing it off. And in the morning when someone gets there, they see that there's a man dead draped across his back.

30:07 Officials will later determine that this man was named Daniel Dukes and that he was 27 and from South Carolina. Very little has been published about him, but he was a drifter and a self-professed environmentalist. And it sounds like he probably suffered from some degree of mental illness. It appears that he hid in the park after closing time with the intention of swimming with the killer whales. And there are nighttime security, like they should have been able to stop him.

30:34 Right. But you wouldn't expect anyone to want to do that.

30:39 And he was clearly not aware that only some of the whales were cleared to have trainers even in the water with them. And Tilikum was expressly not one of those whales. SeaWorld is very quick to paint Daniel as some sort of deviant. Later, a former trainer named Rick O'Berry will say, quote, the problem is that the whales have nothing better to do. They're bored. We literally bore them to death. It's like you living in a bathroom for your life. And autopsy reports state that Dukes had no drugs or alcohol in his system, and the cause of death was deemed to be drowning. But I also saw hypothermia somewhere because the water's kept at 55 degrees.

31:17 But he was also like mangled before death as well. It's really disturbing. I take back what I said about the teeth. That was incorrect. So in 2004, SeaWorld has a close call out at San Antonio Park with another highly experienced trainer, a man named Steve Abel. And these little close encounters are in the movie Blackfish, the documentary Blackfish.

31:45 And I was so mad that I had to watch it again for this because it is so stressful.

31:49 Oh, I've never seen it because I can't deal with it.

31:51 Yeah. I can't. It's incredible. It's so well made. It is so fucking disturbing. Yeah. You should watch it.

31:59 Is that the same one as the one, it's not, the cove where they show?

32:02 No, no, no, no, no. Murdering dolphins. I've seen that too. It's fucking awful. They're all awful.

32:07 I think I've gotten into one documentary in an area where I was like, well, now I'm haunted forever because my brain takes pictures and shows me randomly. So I can't have that in there.

32:16 Yeah. Maybe don't watch Blackfish. Great. It's so good.

32:20 I mean, I'm sure it is. I think it changed. Yes.

32:23 It changed things. It did. So Steve Abel is performing with Kai, which is Tilikum's first son, who's now 13 years old. And this is, again, in San Antonio SeaWorld. Kai starts breaching and slamming down on Steve in the water. And there's video of this. And Steve seems to get underwater in time to not be seriously injured from the impact.

32:43 Then he stops Steve from getting out of the pool at the exit ramp and pushes him around the pool. Mm-hmm. Somehow, after about a minute of this, Steve seems to calm the whale down and leap over him to exit the pool. And it's pretty incredible that he, it just shows how good he was as a trainer that he was able to escape this thing that maybe he shouldn't have been in in the first place, we'll argue. But still.

33:08 Right.

33:08 And it appears Steve still works for SeaWorld and is pretty high up in the company.

33:12 Well, I mean, after that, you would be like, no one can touch me.

33:15 Totally. I beat a Killer whale. Layoffs? I don't think so.

33:18 No way. I'm running this place.

33:21 This happens again two years later in 2006 at SeaWorld in San Diego with a female whale named Kasaka and a trainer named Ken Peters. And in this incident, Kasaka drags Ken to the bottom of the pool by his foot two different times, each stretch for about a minute. And again, Ken is so good at his job that he manages to control his exhale while he's being dragged under.

33:47 They have to have these crazy lungs and they have to like, part of their test is holding their breath for this insane amount of time. Oh, in a psychosocial test?

33:54 Yes.

33:54 Okay. Yes. And then like swimming down to the bottom of this huge tank, grabbing a weight and like coming to the top and then going back and forth like laps. Right. We could definitely do it.

34:03 We could do it so easy. But there is serious qualifications.

34:07 Yeah. It's like the scuba diving experience, but also, I mean, yeah, there's a lot going on.

34:12 Yeah.

34:12 So somehow Ken manages to, you know, control his exhale and hold his breath. And then he's able to stroke the whale's head, calming her down until she actually does let him go. And Ken's wetsuit is torn at the leg and the bite has broken his foot. Again, there's in Blackfish, there is video of this. And again, this is all in front of crowds of children.

34:35 And they're screaming, crying children.

34:38 It seems like SeaWorld is not at all chastened by this, saying Katsaka will likely be allowed to continue performing. I think a lot of the times they just chalk this up to trainer error rather than acknowledging how dangerous this is. Three years after this, in December 2009, a trainer named Alexis Martinez, a man, is killed by a performing killer whale named at a marine park called Loro Parque in the Canary Islands. The park is not owned by SeaWorld, but the whale is. They have this transactional thing. They lose them or something. Yeah. And it had been on loan to Loro Parque. And while SeaWorld downplays the relationship between the parks, SeaWorld trainers, including Dawn from the beginning

35:21 of our story, had supervised and trained Loro Parque trainers. So there is a relationship there. Don had worked with Alexis previously, and Alexis is known to be the top trainer at this park in a place where you didn't actually have to be that good. Their standards were way lower, and he was incredible. He was really charismatic. Everyone loved him and looked up to him. So this happening to the best of them says so much. The killer whale named Keto had pulled Alexis underwater, then rammed him in the chest, causing massive internal bleeding. These are gigantic. Yeah.

36:00 I haven't even gotten to how big they are, but picture an elephant. Picture a full-grown elephant.

36:04 Underwater.

36:04 Underwater. With a little eye that's looking at you. Yeah. Yeah.

36:08 And the teeth.

36:09 So this all brings us to two months later. It's, again, February 24th, 2010, and we are in Orlando, Florida at SeaWorld. Dawn Brancho is 40 years old and one of the most experienced trainers at SeaWorld.com. Orlando. Again, it's not newbies that this stuff is happening to.

36:26 Yeah.

36:27 She trains the other trainers. She's huge on safety and teaches the less experienced trainers all the techniques and practices that Searold has put into place over the last 20 years. Dawn herself is married to a man named Scott. They live in an Orlando suburb with two chocolate labs. She's got a magnetic personality. In high school, she was the class president and the homecoming queen. Her Christmas card list is 250 people long. Working at SeaWorld as a trainer had been Dawn's childhood dream after her own family had seen a Shamu show at SeaWorld when she was a child.

36:59 After college, she worked with dolphins at Six Flags Great Adventures in New Jersey before getting a job at SeaWorld and steadily working her way up. At this point, Dawn is the face of SeaWorld, appearing in promotional photos next to many of their performing killer whales, including a mural at the Orlando International Airport.

37:17 Wow.

37:17 So here's a photo of Dawn Brancho with a killer whale, but that's her. Yeah. So that day, Dawn is slated to do a Dine with Shamu show for a lunchtime crowd. This is more of an intimate show done in an open-air restaurant surrounding a pool in which a killer whale performs tricks with a trainer. So you pay more to get in there. You get some, like, crushed— Fish sandwich. Yeah, probably. Probably. Today, Dawn is performing with Tilikum, who is at this point one of SeaWorld's oldest whales and by far the largest.

37:47 He is 12,000 pounds. And I looked it up. A cow is 1,200 to 1,400 pounds. And an elephant can be up to 15,000 pounds. So he's 12,000 pounds. So like an elephant, like a good-sized elephant. Yeah, like a kind of skinny elephant. Yeah. The next largest whale is half that size. So he is the fucking big guy.

38:13 But Tilikum seems distracted that day. In a nearby pool, diners can see that a group of other whales are kind of agitated. Tilikum keeps vocalizing loudly and those other whales are calling back to him. The whales' previous show that morning hadn't gone so well, meaning they weren't doing their behaviors or tricks. They don't like to call them tricks. Instead, the whales had all seemed more interested in roughhousing with each other than performing their tricks. And that might be why Don kind of pushed him a little more is because More was expected from her for this intimate show.

38:42 You know, she's still working for a corporation, a billion-dollar corporation, right? Yeah. Now, at dine with Shamu, Tilikum misses some of Dawn's cues, and that causes her to give what's called a neutral response, meaning he doesn't get rewarded because he didn't do the tricks correctly. Yeah. And it seems like he's getting agitated about this. And also, another thing is their hearing is so good that— that they can tell when their trainer is at the bottom of the fish bucket, when they're running out of fish. Wow. Yeah. So he knows that his treats aren't coming the way they should be. And not only his treats, his food. Like that's how he gets fed. So I know. I hate it so much.

39:23 I know. And it's like all of these examples you keep giving, like the hearing or the communication or those things. It's like, you have trapped a wild animal that's so intelligent and so sensitive totally and just like too bad totally do a flip.

39:38 Totally in the name of education and entertainment.

39:41 To the great cost of human fucking life totally it doesn't make sense totally wait is SeaWorld still open uh huh It's like, oh, wait, there's a lawyer behind you.

39:54 Yes? What do you want? No, this is all allegedly. Okay. Okay, so the show's wrapping up, and then Dawn goes over to a shallow platform, which is where the trainers interact one-on-one with the whales after they've done their little show. Their little show. And they lay down and kind of have, like, some, like, calming interaction with them. They're supposed to do this. She lays down on, like, a really shallow pool. What do they call them now? A Baja deck? Yep. She lays down on what is now known as a Baja deck.

40:21 and is kind of soothing Tilikum, who's in the water with his head up, like, near her. And what happens next is not completely clear. The other trainers on hand are not looking when it happens, and the guests and other staffers have gone downstairs to an underwater viewing area where they're supposed to get a picture with, quote, Shamu.

40:39 And suddenly they hear a big splash, and they see Tilikum do a barrel roll and make the horrifying realization that he has Dawn in his mouth. Oh. Okay, so there's this big debate on whether he's holding Dawn by the ponytail or forearm, meaning he pulled her in. From the footage that you see, it looks like he grabs her by the arm. The ponytail is an argument that's trying to make it her fault in a really fucked up way. even though she wasn't supposed to have that. Yes, but that's not true, and they all did. Like, ponytails were the norm, so it kind of becomes her fault if she has a ponytail. I disagree. Yeah, exactly, in their argument. And actually, Dawn had been growing out her hair to donate to Locks of Love, and they're saying it's, yeah,

41:25 it's really ugly. And also, Dawn followed the rules like, To the T. If there was a rule about a ponytail, she wouldn't have been wearing one.

41:31 Right.

41:32 You know? Yeah. So Tilikum lets go long enough for Dawn to make a break to the surface where she gets one more breath of air before he pulls her back down and thrashes and rams her. And they, of course, have the 911 calls in Blackfish. So, yeah, you shouldn't watch that.

41:47 Also, down in the viewing area, people can see this.

41:50 Uh-huh. Oh, my God.

41:51 Children.

41:51 Children. Staff quickly try to usher guests away as an alarm goes off and other SeaWorld staff race to the pool. Some people, they slap the water to try to draw Tilikum to the surface. Others slide out a net. He's just not responding to any of his cues that would help let her go. In the end, it takes about 40 minutes to corral Tilikum into a smaller pool where he finally lets Dawn's body go. EMTs attempt CPR, which is unsuccessful. Tilikum stays at the surface watching this happen.

42:22 Onlookers will describe his demeanor as seeming to hope she will wake up. Dawn's cause of death is eventually ruled to be drowning and blunt force trauma.

42:31 You know, I gotta say, I think a big part of this is being able to project onto an animal.

42:37 Totally. Totally.

42:38 Where it's like, how in the world would you be like, he wants her to wake up?

42:41 Yeah. I mean, perhaps. Yeah.

42:43 It's a possibility, but also, this is a wild animal whose entire system is built to feed itself. Right.

42:50 Right.

42:51 And if there's no more fish in the bucket, he's got to get food.

42:54 And he's probably, I mean, he's been in solitary confinement for most of his life. Yes.

42:59 He is not having a good time. No. This isn't his friend.

43:02 No.

43:03 All the things that might be on the other side because that's what would draw you to.

43:06 And you want to believe.

43:07 Yes.

43:08 Right. It's sad. It's really sad. This tragedy sets off a firestorm around SeaWorld, causing people to stop and think about if there are any circumstances under which killer whales and other animals should be kept in captivity, especially when it's strictly for entertainment and not for conservation purposes. It had never been Dawn's intention to get in the water with Tilikum. People don't get in with him. She had just laid down. There's a long list of rules working with Tilikum. Dawn is aware of these rules, and one of her jobs is to give new trainers the Tilly talk about working with him. That talk basically boils down to, if you get in the water with Tilikum, you will not survive. And of course, Dawn was well aware of

43:48 the track record of the incidents, including two previous deaths involving the whale. So after Dawn's death in February of 2010, OSHA, which in case you need to know, because I did, the Occupational Health Administration, opened an investigation into SeaWorld, and trainers are never allowed back in the water with killer whales. Okay, that's a great first step. Yes. Osha finds SeaWorld and demands changes be made to the pools, like emergency floors that raise. SeaWorld fought all of this in court, but ultimately lost. Tilikum continues to perform, obviously without any trainers in the water. Starting about a year after Dawn's death, he goes back out and trains for the audiences. No, just nothing. No. I mean, they can't let him back out.

44:38 So that's the employee safety side of things, the OSHA stuff. But it's really only after the release of Blackfish that the animal welfare side of things is discussed. The documentary, which wins an Oscar, ignites a firestorm of criticism about the practice of keeping these highly social animals in small tanks and manipulating them into performing. SeaWorld has since announced that it will be phasing out its breeding program. So eventually there will be no more killer whale shows at SeaWorld.

45:05 So they are phasing them out. And it's unclear what SeaWorld will evolve into when this happens, whether it will solely be a theme park with some sea animals or whether it might use those performance spaces to expand its dolphin programming. This practice raises all the same ethical concerns for performing whales, but dolphins can't easily kill people. So it's not as important.

45:26 We don't know that, though.

45:27 No, we don't. Because seriously, they're very smart. So long and thanks for all the fish. So here is a quote from Kay, our murderino. Quote, while many pushed for Tilly to be freed in his final years, biologists and ecologists agreed that Tilly would be incapable of fending for himself in the wild and would likely be susceptible to ailment from treatable diseases. It was feared that he would end up like Keiko, the orca from Free Willy, who was released without clearance of researchers and biologists and whom ended up dying of pneumonia off the coast of Europe.

45:58 So you can't put them back. Right.

45:59 They didn't have the correct upbringing, childhood, wild animal experience.

46:04 None of it. None of it. Tilikum dies in 2017 at SeaWorld Orlando of an infection at the age of 36. He's survived by nine calves he sired and three grandchildren. Wow. Dawn's family starts the Dawn Branchow Foundation, which raises money for organizations that provide services to children and animals. And Kay says, quote, Dawn's family is amongst the first to say that Dawn passed away doing what she loved and that they do not hold Tilikum or SeaWorld accountable for her death. Mm-hmm. In fact, every year since her passing, Dawn's family hosts a walk at SeaWorld Orlando in her name to raise funds for the rescue causes that Dawn cared for so deeply. And that is the story of Tilikum the killer whale. Wow.

46:49 I just didn't know any of that stuff happened anymore. Like, I really thought after Blackfish, I was like, oh, they're going to take care of all that. But it is a business.

46:58 Yeah.

46:58 That's kind of how it goes.

47:00 I mean, thank God they can't ride them anymore and get in the water with them.

47:04 It's a weird comparison, but it makes me think of there's a podcast and it talked about there's a guy that was like a hypnotist, but he also was a scammer and all these other ways. And one of the things he did, remember permanent makeup that came out and it was like you could get lip liner tattooed? He was the one that came up with that. And he was not a doctor. He was not. He didn't study anything.

47:27 He went to, I think, South Asia, saw people doing it there. with tattoo kits and then was like, oh, well, they should do that here on women and then just held the weekends himself and taught all these women just kind of like, oh, here's how you would do it. But like nothing was official. And there's been so much of our life and culture and world in this country that is truly like some scammer made it up and then people believed and trusted.

47:54 Totally. Trusted. Totally. Yeah, it's so ugly. It's so heartbreaking. I personally will never go to SeaWorld. As a kid, I went. not knowing these things. No one knew anything back then. Never go again and haven't and... Yeah, that's it. Oh, wait, the lawyer's back. So sorry. We have to go to SeaWorld.

48:13 And thank you to Kay, our resident marine biologist murderino. Wow.

48:18 I love the idea that the Gmail is just sitting there with also, like, more research waiting to be mined.

48:24 That's why when we say send us your hometowns about anything, that's what we mean. So if you have a story about fucking killer whales, send it to MyFavoriteMurder at Gmail. Was your grandpa one of those original people who... chase down whales.

48:37 We'll bust him here on our podcast. Tell us all about him. We want to hear it. Also, just because we don't read your email in 2016 when you send it doesn't mean 10 years later it won't get read.

48:46 Oh, no. We have your email. Hers was from 2020.

48:49 2020.

48:49 Yeah.

48:50 Amazing.

48:50 Yeah.

48:51 Just a six-year hold. We just had to review some facts.

48:54 Right. Wow.

48:56 Great job.

48:57 Thank you.

48:58 That was a great story, and it's something really worth Kind of hearing about.

49:02 Yeah.

49:03 Because I feel like maybe people are like me where it's like, I think I know.

49:06 Yeah.

49:06 And then I don't really know.

49:07 Yeah. I could have done like so much more research on this. I'm going to finish listening to that book and maybe fall asleep to it at night, which is really disturbing. Yeah. Be careful with that.

49:15 Can I recommend a parallel and adjacent thing?

49:18 Bluey? You think I should watch Bluey?

49:21 Have you ever just spent some time with Miss Rachel?

49:24 Oh, I love her.

49:26 There's a movie called Rust and Bone, and Marion Cotillard plays a killer whale trainer. who has her legs bitten off by the whale, and then it's her life after. Oh. And Matthew... Lillard.

49:40 I love Matthew Lillard.

49:42 Shaggy from Scooby-Doo comes, and then the beautiful actor, Matthias Schonartz, comes, and he's just some dude that has to come and help her. He's almost like a care worker in home that has to carry her around and stuff.

49:56 And he's so hot.

49:57 He's so hot, and then eventually he's like, And it takes forever, of course, for her to go outside and it's this whole kind of rehabilitation. Okay. And then he's like, well, I'll sleep with you if you want me to, if you want to like get it going again and whatever. And it is like the most heart-wrenching, realistic, unromantic, hottest, like I can't explain it, but I would watch it if I were you, especially after this.

50:23 Yeah, I will.

50:24 Amazing.

50:25 Well, thank you. And thank you guys for listening to this story and tuning in.

50:30 And being with us.

50:31 We appreciate you. Stay strong.

50:33 Rise up.

50:34 Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?

50:48 This has been an Exactly Right production.

50:50 Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.

50:53 Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

50:55 This episode was mixed by Liana Squilacci.

50:58 Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Allie Elkin.

51:00 Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.

51:03 And follow the show on Instagram at myfavoritemurder.

51:06 Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

51:11 And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.

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