what happened to the well deserved yacht

Thomas and Jackie Hawks Murders: How Did They Die? Who Killed Them?

When a pair of the adventure-loving couple went missing for several days, it raised the alarm with friends and family members who were expecting to see them soon. Thomas and Jackie’s closest acquaintances were worried that something bad had happened to them. They turned to the police for help. What the police found subsequently will go down as one of the most brutal and spine-chilling crimes in American criminal history. The crime has been covered by several true-crime features and podcasts, including ABC’s ‘20/20’ under the episode titled ‘Overboard.’ The harrowing details of the crime have left us shocked and wanting to know more. We indulged in a little investigation of our own to find out more about this crime.

How Did Thomas and Jackie Hawks Die?

57-year-old Thomas Hawks and his 47-year-old wife, Jackie Hawks, were living the dream retired life. Thomas and Jackie were described as a very happy, healthy, and athletic couple who had worked hard all their life to fulfill their early retirement aspirations, living on adventures and whims of traveling. Tom worked as a Yavapai County deputy probation officer in Arizona, and his wife, Jackie, was stepmother to his two sons from a previous marriage. Shortly before commencing his retirement from his job, in August 2001, the Hawks couple sold their house and shifted to a yacht, referred to as their dreamboat. The yacht moored in Long Beach, named “Well Deserved,” had luxurious interiors with two decks, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a gallery.

Tom indulged himself in renovating the yacht, adding the latest technology and features to the yacht to make it suitable for long voyages. Tom and Jackie were known to be dedicated fitness buffs, with strict gym regimes that the two of them followed religiously. According to his sons, Ryan and Matt, Tom had also made a name for himself in the Arizona arm-wrestling circle. Tom and Jackie met during a chili cookoff and married in 1989. Tom was known for having a passion for boating. Hence, soon after the couple bought “Well Deserved,” they pulled out of Long Beach in 2002 and set sail on an almost two-year-long cruise down the coast of Baja California, around Cabo San Lucas, and into the Sea of Cortez, stopping in Baja and the Mexican mainland.

The Hawks decided to call their cruise to a rather wonderful end when they were blessed with a grandson back in Arizona. The proud and happy grandparents, eager to spend their time with the little boy, put up their adored yacht “Well Deserved” for sale. They decided to sell the yacht themselves rather than heftily commissioning a yacht broker to do so.  The Yacht advertisement in ‘Yachting World Magazine’ asked $435,000 in exchange for the fastidiously maintained “Well Deserved.”

On November 15, 2004, the couple boarded their precious ship to embark on the last trip to Santa Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles, California, to commemorate the yacht’s sale. They had finally found a buyer for “Well Deserved,” and they had informed their family of the upcoming sale, which was to take place within a few days. After this, they disappeared. The yacht was found in its usual spot in Newport Beach by the family the next day. However, the couple’s car and the couple were nowhere to be found.

The family was sure that the person to have last seen the Hawks was the buyer. Jim Hawks, Tom’s brother, also a retired police officer, left his card with his number on the yacht, hoping they would contact him. Before leaving the card, he and the Hawkses’ friend Carter Ford surveyed the yacht to find any signs. They smelled trouble as soon as Ford observed the 11-foot dinghy that ferried Tom and Jackie between the Well Deserved and Balboa Peninsula was tied sloppily to the dock. On the yacht, they noticed similar imperfections that were not characteristic of the Hawkses, for example, a towel hanging out of a porthole. On the next day, a lady called Jennifer Deleon called Jim and told him, she and her husband had paid for the boat in cash.

When there was reportedly no activity on the Hawks’ bank accounts, the family knew that something wasn’t sitting right. It was eventually revealed that Skyler Deleon and her then-wife Jennifer Deleon had entrapped the Hawkses in a heinous plan that led the Hawkses to their death.

A witness to the crime who testified against Skylar Deleon detailed the events leading up to Jackie and Thomas Hawks’ death. The yacht’s buyer had reportedly expressed a willingness to test the yacht before buying it by taking it out to the sea. The Hawkses agreed after Skylar Deleon managed to create a good impression of herself on them by bringing in her former pregnant wife Jennifer Deleon and their daughter. On the day of their last trip onboard “Well Deserved,” the Hawkses received their buyer on the yacht along with two other men, one of whom Skylar had claimed to be her accountant. Once they set sail and were on waters, Jackie and Tom were ambushed by Skylar and her two companions, who became Alonso Machain (who later testified against Skylar) and a notorious gang member John Fitzgerald Kennedy respectively. Skylar managed to make the couple hand over the ownership of their yacht by making them sign attorney papers and promised them mercy if they cooperated, according to Machain’s testimony.

However, the couple was handcuffed with their mouths and eyes shut, covered by duct tape, and then kept under watch for several hours. Alonso Machain was given the responsibility to “baby-sit” them, following which the couple was then tied to an anchor and “yanked” over the yacht and into the Pacific Ocean. Their bodies have not been recovered to this day.

Who Killed Tom and Jackie Hawks?

The primary convicts in the conspiracy and murder of Thomas and Jackie Hawks are Skylar Deleon, her wife Jennifer Deleon, Alonso Machain, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, an Insane Crips Gang member, and Myron Sandora Gardner, also a member of the Insane Crips Gang who had introduced Skylar to Kennedy.

The family filed a missing-persons report approximately two weeks after they went missing. An investigation into the missing couple was fueled by a sudden activity in the couple’s bank accounts, three weeks after their disappearance. The Deleons, who were living out of Jennifer’s parents’ garage in Long Beach at the time, were trying to gain access to the Hawks’ financial resources. The investigators found out more about Skylar, who turned out to be on probation for an armed robbery. Besides, documents suggested that Hawkses had handed him over their power of attorney, which seemed unrealistic.

When the police investigated the interiors of the “Well Deserved,” they came across a receipt from Target dated two days after friends say the couple had taken their prospective buyers on a trial trip. Newport Beach Detective Sgt, Dave Byington said , “If I was going to kill somebody, I’d have my clean kit. And it would be bags to get rid of the evidence, bleach to wipe down the scene, and maybe, if I had a conscience, some Tums to settle my stomach after killing some poor people.” The police then found the SUV the Hawkes owned in Ensenada, Mexico, at a mobile home.

The Mexican authorities got in touch with the homeowner, who said they did not know the Hawkses and that the car was given to him by his friend, Skylar Deleon. In December 2004, Skylar Deleon was arrested on money laundering charges, mostly based on the fact that he had previously told the police that the payment for the yacht to the Hawkses, of about $400,000, had been made in cash. But the investigators kept looking into the Hawkses’ murder. They found the Hawkses’ laptop and their video camera at Deleon’s home. The videocamera which initially had films of the Hawkses’ travel, suddenly cut off to Deleons celebrating Thanksgiving with their family.

Machain had turned himself in, and the police arrested Kennedy later. In 2006, Jennifer Deleon, previously arrested in connection to the murder, was also convicted of the murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks and was later sentenced to two consecutive life imprisonments without the possibility of parole in 2007. Skylar and John Kennedy were sentenced to death in April 2009 and May 2009, respectively. Machain was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2009.

Read More: Where Are Skylar Deleon and Jennifer Deleon Now?

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Tom and Jackie Hawks Killed in Yacht Murder By "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" Actor and His Wife

Skylar Deleon, who appeared on  Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,  tied Tom and Jackie Hawks to the anchor of their yacht and then threw them overboard with the help of his pregnant wife.

Thomas and Jackie Hawks christened their yacht “Well Deserved.” It was a fitting name for a happy and successful seafaring couple whose hard work enabled them to retire early and realize their dream lives in Newport Beach, California.

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But in 2004, the dream turned into a nightmare. They were murdered in what Caitlin Rother — the  author of Dead Reckoning and former San Diego Union-Tribune reporter —  described as the “most unbelievably horrible” way to Oxygen’ s The Real Murders of Orange County ,  streaming now   on Oxygen.com .

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After spending years traveling and living on their 65-foot-boat, Tom Hawks, a 57-year-old bodybuilder and former probation officer with two sons from a previous marriage, and his wife, Jackie, 47, were ready to leave the California coast and get their land legs back. 

Destination: Arizona, where they’d wed in a joyous Hawaiian-themed ceremony years before and now had their first grandchild. In mid-November 2004, they put Well Deserved up for sale and appeared to have found buyers.

But around that time, the Hawkses vanished. They didn’t return calls. Their bank account went untouched , the San Diego Union Tribune reported at the time.

Family and friends wondered if the Hawkses had possibly taken an impromptu voyage as a celebratory last hurrah, but it soon became clear something was amiss. Jim Hawks, a former police chief in nearby Carlsbad and Tom’s older brother, called authorities, according to the outlet . Officers from Carlsbad and Newport Beach police departments got busy on the missing persons case. 

The search began at the couple’s boat, and the discovery of what could have been a bloody partial fingerprint on the Hawks’ yacht gave authorities probable cause to enter the vessel and search for clues. 

No clear evidence emerged, however. Crime Scene Investigation analysis revealed that the suspected partial bloody fingerprint was actually rust. 

How did former  Mighty Morphin Power Rangers  actor Skylar Deleon become a suspect in the yacht murders?

Detectives then turned to Skylar Deleon, 25, and his wife, Jennifer Deleon, 23, who were listed as the buyers of the boat, Well Deserved. Skylar was a former child actor who appeared in the TV series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers  and dabbled in real estate. Jennifer was pregnant with their second child.

Detectives interviewed the couple in Long Beach, where they lived with Jennifer’s parents. They told authorities that they had paid cash — a whopping three quarters of a million dollars — for the yacht. The money had been saved from Skylar’s acting days, they claimed.

Authorities expressed doubts to Skylar about his story, and they were shocked when Deleon admitted that he was actually flush with cash because he was involved in large-scale drug sales — a felony. 

RELATED: Retired Marine's O.C. Murder Traced To His Ex-Girlfriend and Her Two Accomplices

“He admitted to money laundering,” investigators told producers. However, they decided to table this revelation to focus on the missing persons case.

Three weeks after the Hawkses disappeared, there was suspicious activity on their bank accounts. The people trying to access the money were the Deleons. 

This break in the case became doubly alarming. Investigators learned that Skylar was on probation for armed robbery. Moreover, documents showed that the Hawkses had given durable power of attorney to Skylar, which defied logic. 

Skylar, meanwhile, claimed the Hawkses signed over an all-access pass to their money because he was helping them secure a vacation home in Mexico.  

Careful scrutiny, though, raised a red flag: Jackie’s surname appeared to have been signed as Hawk, not Hawks. Did someone else add the “s”? Was it a subtle signal that Jackie signed under duress? 

Despite their suspicions, the document seemed to be above reproach. It bore the name of a witness — Alonso Machain, a friend of the Deleons — and a notary, Kathleen Harris. When questioned separately, their stories confirmed the transaction was legitimate. 

By mid-December, authorities “were desperate to find” the Hawkses, retired Newport Beach Police Department Det. Sgt. David Byington told producers. 

RELATED: "His Throat Was Cut On Both Sides": 24-Year-Old O.C. Man Murdered "With Sincere Hate"

After fliers and bulletins were distributed with information about the missing couple’s car, the vehicle was found across the border. 

Detectives recovered the missing couple’s Honda CR-V in Ensenada, Mexico, the Union-Tribune reported in 2004. The person who had the car said it had been a gift from the Deleons. 

“My heart stopped right there,” Byington told producers.

Inspecting the car for evidence became an urgent priority. Skylar had insisted during police interviews that he’d never been in the Hawks’ car. DNA evidence could prove otherwise. 

While awaiting that proof, detectives learned from Skylar’s probation office that the former child actor requested permission to leave the country for work.

Investigators needed to arrest Deleon, and luckily, they had a reason to in their back pocket: his admission of money laundering. They arrested Skylar at his Long Beach residence. Searching the premises, police found personal papers, IDs, videotapes, and a laptop that all belonged to Tom and Jackie Hawks. 

“Any hope the Hawkses were alive died right there,” Byington told producers.

Meanwhile, Deleon’s DNA turned up on a dashboard knob of the Hawks’ car. 

It was potentially a game-changer, but there was still a high hurdle, according to Newport Beach retired Det. Sgt. Mario Montero. “It’s hard to have a murder case when you don’t have any bodies,” he told producers.

There was more digging to do. Detectives re-interviewed Harris, who initially swore she saw Thomas and Jackie Hawks sign a document giving their power of attorney to Skylar Deleon.  Harris eventually admitted that she never laid eyes on Tom and Jackie Hawks. Motivated by making some extra money, Harris had backdated the documents to Nov. 15, 2004, at the Deleons’ request. 

RELATED: “Evil to the Bone”: O.C. College Student Stabbed 41 Times in Campus Parking Lot

Investigators then set their sights on Machain, who, they discovered, was in Mexico to elude arrest. Investigators believed that he was the only avenue to find out what happened to the Hawkses, so they took the death penalty off the table and Machain returned to California. 

The Yacht Murders

In early 2005 he related the details of the murder: Machain said he was present when the Hawkses were lured out to sea, forced to sign legal documents, and then tossed overboard chained to an anchor.  

Skylar had sought help from a Long Beach gang member named John F. Kennedy to help physically subdue the burly Tom Hawks. He passed Kennedy off as part of his business team. The presence of Jennifer Deleon, a mom with a baby on the way, helped convince the victims there was nothing to fear.

“She’s as evil as anybody on that boat,” Byington told producers.

How did Tom and Jackie Hawks die?

Tom and Jackie Hawks “were pulled down 3,500 feet to the bottom of the ocean,” said former San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Caitlin Rother. “They were drowned alive.”

Alonso Machain was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the heinous crime. Jennifer Deleon was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole . John Fitzgerald Kennedy was sentenced to death for his part in the murder of Thomas and Jackie Hawks. 

What happened to Skylar Deleon?

Convicted murderer Deleon was sentenced to die by lethal injection . However, because of California’s moratorium on the death penalty, the ringleader in the deaths of Tom and Jackie Hawks will live out his days on Death Row.

Where to Watch  The Real Murders of Orange County

You can watch The Real Murders of Orange County on the  Oxygen app . The first two seasons are also available on  Peacock .

Originally published Nov 15, 2020.

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What Happened to Tom and Jackie Hawks?

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It had been a week since anyone had heard from Tom and Jackie Hawks, and that wasn’t right for a pair as dependable as the tides.

The 55-foot yacht that the retired couple called home still was moored in Newport Harbor when Tom’s older brother, Jim, arrived to track them down.

Waiting for him that late November day was Carter Ford, port captain of the Lido Isle Yacht Club, who had befriended the Hawkses, finding the newcomers refreshingly unpretentious and endearing in a world where people often are intent on flashing their wealth.

Ford had already noticed that the 11-foot dinghy that ferried Tom and Jackie between the Well Deserved and Balboa Peninsula was tied sloppily to the dock, and its motor was still in the water, mistakes the couple would never make.

Something wasn’t right.

The men jumped into Ford’s 21-foot harbor cruiser and made the five-minute trip to the Well Deserved.

They circled the yacht a couple of times. The green canvas that covered the nautical equipment was half off. A towel hung out of a porthole. They could tell this wasn’t the way Tom and Jackie would care for the boat. They pulled up closer, and Jim, a former Carlsbad police chief, went on board and left his card.

The next day, a woman called. She said that she and her husband, Skylar Deleon, had bought the boat about 10 days before but hadn’t seen the Hawkses since then. If you hear from them, she said, tell Tom my husband needs to talk to him about changing the fuel tanks.

Nobody heard from the Hawkses again.

A few weeks later, Skylar Deleon, 25 -- who had said he was a former child actor -- was arrested by police. Authorities say he hatched the plan to kill the Hawkses, steal their boat and loot their bank account. He and four other people -- including his wife, Jennifer -- have been charged with murder.

Police say that somewhere between Newport Harbor and Santa Catalina, the Hawkses were handcuffed to the boat’s anchor and thrown overboard alive. Tom was 57; Jackie, was 47. Their bodies have not been found.

In the days after the disappearance, Deleon drove the Hawkses’ car to an Arizona bank, where, police say, he tried to empty the couple’s bank account using a document signed by the Hawkses giving him power of attorney. Unsuccessful, he tried again a couple of days later, calling the bank from Mexico, and abandoned the couple’s car in Ensenada, police say. On Nov. 26, the family filed a missing-persons report.

Deleon told police that on Nov. 15 he paid the Hawkses more than $400,000 in cash for the Well Deserved and watched as they got into their silver Honda CR-V and drove off from Newport Beach.

The preliminary hearing is scheduled for late May or early June.

The Hawkses were the kind of people personal finance magazines hold up as models.

They invested well in real estate and bought the Well Deserved in October 2000. Shortly before Tom retired as a Yavapai County, Ariz., deputy probation officer in August 2001, they sold their house and moved onto the boat, mooring it in Long Beach. It had two decks, two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a galley. The interior was hand-carved teak.

Tom added wooden racks for a kayak and a windsurfer. He equipped the boat with the latest electronics, a generator and a 400-gallon-a-day desalination system so they could stay at sea for months.

Tom was so good with his hands that “he could turn a dump into a mansion,” said his son Ryan, 28, of San Diego.

After divorcing his first wife, Tom moved from Del Mar to Prescott, Ariz., where he bought a small cabin and nearly quadrupled its size, adding three bedrooms, a gym and a sewing room.

Tom and Jackie met in 1986 at a chili cookoff. They were fitness buffs, and Tom worked out an hour and a half a day. Jackie went to a gym religiously. Tom was an Arizona arm-wrestling champion, and he competed in amateur bodybuilding competitions into his early 50s, said Ryan Hawks and his brother, Matt, 26, of Buckeye, Ariz.

Tom wrote an article for the yachting magazine Latitudes & Attitudes’ February 2005 issue explaining how to exercise in the limited confines of a boat. The photos show a short-haired man with a mustache curling past the corners of his lips, his large biceps straining under the weight of a pair of dumbbells.

Jackie grew up in Mentor, Ohio, a block from Lake Erie and moved to Arizona after high school. She was on the back of her first husband’s HarleyDavidson in 1985 when a car pulled out of a side street and crashed into them, said her mother, Gayle O’Neill. Jackie’s husband was killed, and she barely survived.

She and Tom married in 1989. His two boys lived with them most of the time, and they called her Mom.

“Tom would walk on water for her,” said Tricia Schutz, a Prescott friend. “I’ve never experienced a couple that much in love, that compatible working together.”

Boating had long been Tom’s passion. Growing up on a ranch in Chino, his family would take their trawler to Catalina. As an adult, Tom always had a powerboat, and every other weekend, Tom, Jackie and the boys would tow it to a local lake. Vacations meant more boat trips.

All the while Tom and Jackie were saving to buy something like the Well Deserved, going to boat shows and doing research. Their goal was to cruise around Mexico. “They had been planning this for years and years and years,” Schutz said.

After Tom retired, the Hawkses moved into the Well Deserved, took it on short trips to learn its quirks and spent about $50,000 on improvements.

The Hawkses pulled out of Long Beach in October 2002. They cruised down the coast of Baja California, around Cabo San Lucas and into the Sea of Cortez, stopping in Baja and the Mexican mainland.

“The sea was calling us, and we couldn’t wait any longer,” Tom told Latitudes & Attitudes in an article about the Well Deserved in the December 2003 issue. “Life is just too short to put things off, and one cannot discover new oceans unless they have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

For the next 1 1/2 years, they e-mailed friends and family about their adventures -- diving for clams and scallops, swimming with whale sharks and spending Christmas with a Mexican family.

“We are so happy that we are finally in the Sea of Cortez,” they wrote.”This is what we have been waiting for. The weather is wonderful, the sea is like a lake....We just had a whale surface beside us, wow!”

If Tom and Jackie Hawks had learned anything while cruising the Mexican coast, it was that maintaining their 55-foot yacht was backbreaking and expensive. They decided to sell the Well Deserved, buy a smaller boat and maybe some property in Mexico and return to Arizona so they could dote on their newly born first grandchild.

The Well Deserved arrived in Newport Harbor on June 23, 2004.

Skylar Deleon was also a man with big dreams; they just went nowhere. He was going to buy a boat so he could teach scuba diving or use it as a charter for fishing trips. Another time he was going to start a business cleaning boat hulls. There were plans to go to nursing school, but he never carried through.

He told people he had been a child actor, but those stories were more fantasy than fact. He convinced the Hawkses that he had starred in the “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers” show on TV in the early 1990s. An ABC Cable Group spokeswoman said Jon Liberty, a name that one of Deleon’s relatives said Deleon used, was a nonspeaking extra on two shows in 1993.

And for all his talk of paying $400,000 for the Well Deserved, Deleon and his wife were living in her parents’ garage in a modest Long Beach neighborhood. His name growing up in Huntington Beach wasn’t even Skylar Deleon. It was John Julius Jacobson.

Deleon’s parents split up before he was 5. His father was sentenced to three years in federal prison for selling cocaine when Deleon was nine or 10. While his father was imprisoned, he lived with his stepmother. His mother, according to relatives, didn’t have much to do with his life.

“I’m the only mom he knows,” Lisa Wildin said.

Deleon squeaked through high school and enlisted in the Marines about 1 1/2 years later, in November 1999. He went AWOL and received a less-than-honorable discharge, according to his family. He served just 15 months, according to the Marine Corps, which would not say what discharge he received.

While in the service, he cut off contact with relatives but then suddenly showed up a couple of years later with a pregnant wife and a new name. He was living with his in-laws a few miles away.

While the Hawkses were having the time of their lives cruising Mexico, Deleon was having problems staying out of trouble. He got a job as an appraisal contact at mortgage lender Ditech. But on Dec. 9, 2002, he was arrested with two other Ditech employees burglarizing the Anaheim home of a co-worker. He was carrying a loaded gun and plastic handcuffs, authorities said.

Deleon pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year in jail and three years’ probation, and ordered to pay $200 restitution.

A judge allowed him to serve his time in the work-release program at Seal Beach City Jail, in which Deleon was allowed to hold a job during the day and return to jail at night. Deleon paid $70 a day for the program, around $2,000 a month, according to John Forren, chief executive of Correctional Systems Inc., which runs the jail.

It is not clear how Deleon managed to get the money to pay for the program.

Since his arrest, Deleon has become a suspect in an unrelated slaying that occurred while he was in the work-release program. Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Murphy said in court in March that the unnamed victim’s throat was slashed Dec. 27, 2003, 10 months before the Hawkses were presumed killed. Sources say the killing took place in Mexico.

At the time it occurred, Deleon was serving his sentence in the Seal Beach City Jail for the Anaheim home burglary.

While in jail, according to a source, Deleon met Alonso Machain of Long Beach, one of those charged with murdering the Hawkses.

Machain wasn’t a fellow inmate. He was a jailer.

In February 2003, Deleon started work as an electrician’s helper at Total-Western Inc., an industrial maintenance company in Paramount. Machain, 21, and Myron Gardner, 41, of Long Beach also worked there, according to David Wimmer, a lawyer for the firm. Gardner and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 39, also of Long Beach are also accused in the Hawkses’ disappearance.

Like the Hawkses, Deleon enjoyed the sea. Jennifer Deleon said that when they met, her husband owned a 26-foot Sea Ray cabin cruiser. On Dec. 20, 2003, he brought the boat to Mo Beck Stern Drive Co. in Costa Mesa for repairs. He paid an $18,000 deposit for the work -- in cash, sources said.

According to a lawsuit, owner Mo Beck later filed to get the rest of his money, Deleon went to the shop when it was closed on a Sunday in April 2004, cut the lock and took his boat without paying the $7,500 he owed. He was charged with grand theft.

When the Hawkses decided to sell their boat, they were hoping to find someone who would care for the Well Deserved as well as they had, Schutz said.

Always frugal, they hoped to sell the boat without using a broker. “They’re the kind of people who did everything themselves, except when it came to taxes and accounting,” Ryan Hawks said.

On Nov. 12, Tom and Jackie took friends to Catalina and talked about the impending sale. Tom told Brian Gray, his old boss at the probation department, about the former child actor who was about to buy the boat. The Hawkses had wondered how someone so young could afford the price, but Deleon had convinced them that between his acting and real estate investments, money wasn’t a problem.

On Nov. 15, Tom talked to Carter Ford on the phone as he and Jackie waited for Deleon to come aboard for the final test drive. Tom said he wanted to make sure the new owner knew how to operate everything. “In Tom’s eyes, this nice kid was buying the boat,” Ford said.

That afternoon, Jackie called Ford and left a message: “We’re out at sea.” That was the last anyone heard from the Hawkses.

By the next day, the boat had returned to Newport Harbor.

A few days later, Deleon proudly told a relative he had bought a boat. He e-mailed him a photo and said he couldn’t wait to ride it in the annual Newport Harbor Christmas boat parade.

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Former Los Angeles Times staff writer Jeff Gottlieb shared the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2011 for uncovering corruption in Bell. He also received the George Polk and the Selden Ring awards, among others. He previously won a Polk award while working at the San Jose Mercury News for uncovering Stanford’s questionable spending of federal funds. He received a bachelor’s in sociology from Pitzer College in Claremont and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University.

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48 Hours Mystery: Dark Voyage

June 12, 2010 / 10:19 PM EDT / CBS

This story originally aired on May 2, 2009. It was updated on June 12, 2010.

Newport Beach, Calif., Detective Dave Byington doesn't rattle easily.

"This is probably the thirtieth time I've been on this vessel and I don't like it," he says of a 55-foot yacht, which now sits in dry dock - cold as a tombstone - giving silent testimony to a crime that defies humanity.

"I get the heebie jeebies on this boat. I just don't feel comfortable on it. You start to think about - imagine, only try to imagine what they experienced, and it's too horrific," he tells "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Maureen Maher. "The boat's under way, It's nighttime. It's cold."

The only thing outweighing the horror of what happened that night is the power of Tom and Jackie Hawkses love. It is a fairy-tale romance that started hundreds of miles from any ocean, in the mountains of Prescott, Ariz., where Tom was raising his two sons alone.

Tom's boys, Ryan and Matt, are sons from a first marriage that ended in an amicable divorce.

Ryan describes his father as a "man's man."

"He was very masculine, very outdoors. And he just wanted us to appreciate what we had in life… He would take us to Catalina Island to do a lot of hiking, fishing and backpacking," he says. "Some of my better times with him were on the water."

"It was an absolute great life," says Matt. It was a life where toughness was taught early on.

"You know, stay strong. I remember if I wrecked or cried as a little kid, he'd be like, 'Toughen up boy. Toughen up,'" Ryan recalls.

Above all else, Tom Hawks played by the rules. He worked with the probation office of Yavapai County, helping those in trouble, find a second chance.

"Tom was a kind of probation officer that would take a real interest in the problems that his probationers were having," John Ryder tells Maher.

Ryder, Brian Gray and Bill Paiano were Tom's co-workers and knew what kind of a man he was. "Tom was a quality guy," says Paiano.

"I believe Tom's family life, like most of us that worked together, was really important to him," says Gray.

But something major was missing in his life. Then, the tough, single father had his heart melted by Jackie O'Neill.

"She met Tom at a chili cook-off. I believe it was July of '86," says Jackie's best friend, Patricia Shutz. "He would walk on water for her, and she would do the same for him."

It was clear where things were heading.

"He got down on his hands and knees and he asked her to marry him," Shutz says. "She was very excited and she was very happy."

And soon, Ryan and Matt were happier, too. Because, they say, there was a downside to life alone with dad - like Tom's "famous goulash."

"He would make a pot of it for a week," Ryan explains. "And every time we'd come home for dinner it'd be like, 'Ugh, this again?'"

Things changed once Tom and Jackie wed. "Dinners got a lot better," says Matt.

Matt and Ryan were still in elementary school when Tom and Jackie wed in 1989. The boys came to think of Jackie as their mother.

"She was the best mother any boys could ever have. Really," says Shutz.

Ryan describes Jackie as a real trooper. "Most of the time they do something, it's my father's idea. And Jackie never complains and she just goes with it."

So it came as no surprise when Tom sold the house and Jackie said 'yes' to a dream Tom had been nurturing for years - to retire, own a yacht and live on the sea.

"He said, 'Life's too short, and it's my life, this is our time, and I feel if I hesitate, then it would just go by and I'll miss it,'" says Ryan.

It was in Newport Beach, Calif. that Tom and Jackie Hawks came to find paradise. Their dream was rooted in two simple things: being together and being on a boat. Few people had lived better lives, so it almost seemed like fate when the couple bought a 55-foot yacht that was already named Well Deserved.

For Tom and Jackie, a dream had come true. Life was an endless cruise filled with good times and best friends, sailing from Catalina Island to Mexico's Sea of Cortez.

"Being on water for them was a solitude," Ryan explains. "It was seeing the curve of the Earth and seeing the sunset fall right behind it every night."

While Tom and Jackie were living the life they'd always dreamed of, something wonderful was happening in the mountains of Prescott, Ariz., that would alter their lives forever: Matt and his wife, Nicole, welcomed baby Jace.

"They were just very excited," Matt says. "Jackie was already buying baby clothes."

After four years at sea, Tom and Jackie decided being grandparents was worth more than all the sunsets across the Pacific.

"They wanted to come back and be a part of our lives," Matt says. "They believed very strongly in family."

The couple put a small ad in a boating magazine and the Well Deserved was on the market; all they needed was an honest buyer.

Skylar Deleon: File under loser.

"Tom and Jackie Hawks put their boat up for sale and I went to buy it," Deleon tells Maureen Maher.

If the Hawks are all about family, the man who showed up to by their boat is all about the lack of it.

"Growing up I've never really felt like loved," Deleon tells Maher. "My childhood, I hated it… the environment, my dad… I hated him. He was into manufacturing drugs. And… distributing them and selling them."

Despite those odds, Deleon did try to make something of himself as an actor. He even made it onto the TV show "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers." He'd tell people he was a major member of the show's cast, but it was a lie. He admits to Maher he was an extra "three times."

Then, eager to get away from an abusive home, Deleon joined the Marines; he ended up going AWOL.

Deleon was fast drifting nowhere. "I don't think I have a life plan," he says. And then, through a random e-mail, he met a small-town girl with big ideas.

Jennifer Henderson grew up in Long Beach, Calif., in a devoutly religious home. She'd finish high school and end up working in a hair salon. After they chatted for a few weeks online, she and Deleon agreed to meet at the mall.

Orange County Prosecutor Matt Murphy now knows everything about these two aimless young adults and their twisted relationship.

"She wasn't really doing a whole lot with her life until she met Skylar," he says. "He was a manipulator and somebody that was a complete conman and she was a spoiled brat. Basically, the two of them together was the perfect combination."

They'd marry, and soon, daughter Haley was born. The pressure mounted for Deleon to support his new family and prove his worth to Jennifer.

"I definitely loved her. I mean, to the point there's nothing I wouldn't do for her," he says.

But Deleon couldn't hold a job and couldn't find a way to move his young family out of his in-laws' garage apartment. He grew desperate.

Other than going AWOL with the military, he tells Maher that he had never committed a crime before. "Not until I met Jen."

Deleon's new ambition led him to a new line of work: burglary. He was arrested and ended up in California's Seal Beach City Jail, leaving his wife to care for their baby.

"Their relationship is characterized by debt… they were $87,000 in debt," Murphy explains. "Skylar has no job. And [Jennifer's] pregnant again."

When asked if Jennifer was happy, Deleon says "no," explaining she was tired of the bills and tired of living with her parents. "She's like, 'You know, we gotta do something.'"

It was that pressure that led Deleon to Tom and Jackie Hawks, where he used the one deadly skill he really had.

When asked how he rates Deleon as a con artist, Murphy says, "As far as his effect on other people? I've never seen anything like Skylar."

Even those who chase horror for a living are haunted by the depravity of what happened on the Well Deserved.

"It drives me nuts. It makes me so angry," Det. Dave Byington says. "And you start thinking about it … It's one of those things that you can't get out of your mind because it's that terrible."

It all began with the simple ad Tom placed in a boating magazine so he and Jackie could spend more time with their family.

Deleon says he called and talked to Tom. When asked if he was really planning on buying the boat, he replies, "Well, we really didn't have the money… Our thought at that point was to, I guess, rip them off."

But he knew he'd need help. That's when Deleon says he enlisted Alonso Machain, a young prison guard he'd met when locked up on the burglary charge.

"Alonzo is unsophisticated. He hasn't been a lot of places. He hasn't done a lot of things," Murphy explains. "So he was really ripe for Skylar to enlist as a confederate in this whole thing."

On Nov. 6, 2004, Deleon and Machain went down to the waterfront to meet Tom and Jackie Hawks. Tom, who was smart and savvy, didn't like what he saw.

"Thomas Hawks had been a probation officer for 20 years and Thomas Hawks was kinda leery," Murphy explains.

Tom was asking $435,000 for the Well Deserved. Deleon just didn't look like the kind of guy with that type of cash. When Jackie started proudly boasting about her new grandchild, he saw his opening: family.

"And the first thing that Skylar did when they got off the boat… is he picked up his phone and called Jennifer up in Long Beach, and he said, 'You gotta come down here and bring Haley and put these people at ease,'" Murphy says.

Jennifer came down that same day.

"I can't think of anything more horrific than a mother using her child," says Byington, who tears up at the thought.

But the Hawkses fell for it, convinced they had a real buyer. They couldn't imagine the trap that was being set. No one could.

The disgraced Marine sized up the life-long public servant mentally and physically.

"And what did you think when you saw Tom?" Maher asks. "The fact that he's pretty big," Deleon replies.

The gang of two needed a tough guy. Byington says Deleon recruited a gang member from Long Beach named John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Arrested more than 20 times, JFK joined the plot. Deleon set a date to test drive the boat while Jennifer stayed home - her child having served her purpose.

"Oh, she's up to her eyeballs in the whole thing," Murphy says of Jennifer's involvement.

It was Nov. 15, 2004. Machain came along and JFK even wore a suit. Deleon told Tom and Jackie that Kennedy was his accountant. The Well Deserved headed out to sea.

Good and evil were about to intersect in waters off Newport Beach, Calif.

Tom and Jackie Hawks guided their yacht, the Well Deserved, from the shelter of the harbor. But as light danced across the waves, darkness was set to descend, brought on by the very passengers they'd invited onboard: Alonso Machain, John F. Kennedy and their hapless leader, Skylar Deleon.

"I don't think anything was even 100-percent serious until it was too late," Deleon tells Maureen Maher. Too late, he says, was when they were already on the boat.

But that's one of Deleon's lies. The truth is everything was deadly serious and meticulously plotted weeks before, when he and Jennifer Deleon used their very own baby to con Tom Hawks into believing they were honest buyers.

Detective Sgt. Dave Byington and Sgt. Evan Sailor would come to know everything about Deleon's plans - right down to the tasers and handcuffs he brought on board.

"He's capable of making decisions, and making his conscious decisions and planning things out over a period of time," says Sgt. Sailor.

When asked if Deleon's plan gives a whole new meaning to the concept of premeditated, Byington says it's "beyond anything I could imagine."

That's because stealing the 55-foot yacht was only the start of the plan.

"They didn't want to get a job," Byington says. "They wanted to take other people's money."

Because of the work led by Byington and Sailor, the Well Deserved - home to Tom and Jackie - would become evidence. Incredible detective work by the two cops would eventually reveal every horrifying moment of that day at sea.

The boat was now anchored well outside Newport Beach Harbor. Deleon went below. Moments later, John F. Kennedy - the hulking gangbanger who was pretending to be Deleon's accountant - also came down, feigning seasickness.

"Eventually, Thomas Hawks also goes down to investigate, 'cause they're not returning," explains Byington. He says Jackie remained on deck with a jittery Alonso Machain.

"Jackie first hears a commotion down in the stateroom," Byington continues. "And at this point, she sees Thomas Hawks being choked by John Fitzgerald Kennedy and being struck by Skylar Deleon.

"Alonzo now knows he has to do his part. And he starts to overpower Jackie first by applying the taser. And he actually overpowers this poor woman, puts handcuffs on her. Skylar and John Fitzgerald Kennedy end up overpowering Thomas Hawks, handcuff him. And eventually, Jackie Hawks is brought downstairs with Thomas Hawks. And they are laid on their bed."

They were bound, and now, Tom and Jackie Hawks would be gagged.

"Skylar tells Alonzo to go get some duct tape. And Skylar instructs him to duct tape over their mouth and their eyes. And he proceeds to do so," says Byington.

Tom and Jackie huddled together on their bed. These are the details their sons, Ryan and Matt, would come to know - the agonizing flashbacks that will never fade:

"She couldn't stop crying. She was yelling at Skylar saying, 'You this, you that. You took your baby daughter and your wife on our boat. How could you?'" says Ryan.

"She was begging for her life, wanting to see her grandchildren again," says Matt. "I mean she was only 47 years old."

"And I think the only thing my father could move was his hands. And he just calmly stroked Jackie's hands to give her some level of comfort," says Ryan.

When Maher points out that that was the last gentle moment Tom and Jackie shared, Byington says, "I never thought of it, you're absolutely right. That is. After that, everything else was pure horror."

Finally, the depth of the depravity of Deleon's plan was about to be revealed.

He produced a set of phony documents and handed the couple a pen. Deleon says he wanted the Hawkses to sign over the boat and power of attorney for their bank accounts.

"They brought with them an ink pad," Byington explains. "Jackie's obviously still crying. She can't help herself and it's understandable. They remove one handcuff and they remove a little bit of the tape so she can see out, instruct her to sign her name, roll her fingerprints. And Skylar starts asking her various questions about her accounts, account numbers, where the banks are."

Then it was Tom's turn to sign away the honest life he's worked so hard for to a man who had hardly worked an honest day in his life.

"And if there was a chance of living, I think he was willing to just stay calm and follow their commands," Matt says of his father.

"[Tom] proceeds to sign all the paperwork, roll his fingerprints, gives him the account information that he's requesting," Byington says.

With the phony papers signed, the Well Deserved powered further out to sea.

"Skylar came up and punched in coordinates which set him out to Santa Catalina," says Byington. He says Deleon knew exactly where he was going.

The yacht and its passengers were headed out towards the deep waters off Catalina Island, where Tom and Jackie shared so many good times, and where only days before, they'd enjoyed a final cruise with friends on the Well Deserved.

Byington says, "These people were living a dream and Skylar just took it."

Handcuffed, gagged, and now tied to one another with nautical ropes, Tom and Jackie were dragged up on deck. That's when, Byington says, they heard the sound :

"He hears the chain coming. There's no doubt. Skylar gets behind and starts and actually hooks the anchor to the rope so now this anchor is now attached to these two poor people."

"He heard that sound a hundred times," says Ryan. "And he's like 'Son of a bitch. They're not gonna let us go.'"

Aware of his destiny, Matt says his father fought back one last time.

"…he basically does a reverse mule kick with his leg and kicks Skylar… and he kicks him so severely that Skylar's lifted up off his feet and lands on his backside," Byington explains. "John Fitzgerald Kennedy sees this and - JFK is a big man and he levels him, hits him. It knocks Thomas Hawks out. The punch is so severe and so violent."

With the anchor chain tied around the couple, Deleon threw the anchor overboard. The chain fed out to sea, yanking Tom and Jackie into the icy waters.

"So that's where they are now," Ryan says. "They're 3,600 feet below the cold Pacific Ocean tied to an anchor."

The deed now done, the Well Deserved headed back to Newport Beach. Deleon called his wife, Jennifer, on his cell phone.

"I remember her asking if 'I was sure'" he tells Maher, of the question of whether the couple was dead. "I was like, 'I'm sure.'"

Sgt. Sailor says Deleon had a motto: No body, no crime. Deleon thought he was going to get away with it because there were no bodies.

Friends and family believed Tom and Jackie Hawks had just sold the Well Deserved and were headed home to Prescott, Ariz., to see their new grandson. Their sons, Matt and Ryan, couldn't wait for them to arrive.

"I called my dad first. It went straight to voice mail. Then I called Jackie's and it went straight to voice mail. And they never shut off their phone," Ryan says. "I was thinking maybe they're taking a last-minute cruise… And I talked to my Uncle Jim. He's a retired police chief from Carlsbad."

Just a few days earlier, Jim Hawks spoke with his younger brother about Skylar and Jennifer Deleon buying the boat.

"It was very brief," Jim says of the call. "You know just, 'Hey ugly.' We called each other that. And, uh, 'if you need help when you get ready to move, just let us know.'"

But it had been about a week since that final conversation. Jim decided to take a look at his brother's boat, which was tied up back in Newport Beach. "We circled the boat on its mooring and noticed things out of place," he tells Maureen Maher.

Then, Jim Hawks and a friend boarded the Well Deserved. "I said, 'Be careful. Don't touch any smooth surface… Let's treat this like it could be a crime scene."

Ryan Hawks called his brother. "And he finally said it out loud. I'm like, 'Well what do you think is going on, Matt?' And he's like, 'They're dead. I think they're dead.'"

Eleven days after Tom and Jackie last left port, Jim Hawks filed a missing persons report. That's when Det. Dave Byington and Sgt. Evan Sailor drew the case of a lifetime.

"When did you first hear the names Skylar and Jennifer Deleon?" asks Maher.

"Actually, the Deleons were both listed in the initial missing persons report," says Byington.

Within days, Skylar Deleon agreed to be interviewed. Cool, calm and collected, the con man spun his tale.

Deleon told the cops he'd just bought the Well Deserved and that he'd never even taken it out of the harbor. He told police he'd paid Tom Hawks in cash, and that Tom and Jackie had said something about heading down to Mexico.

"As far as we know, they are down in San Carlos right now," Deleon told investigators.

When asked where he got over $400,000 in cash to pay for the boat, Deleon told investigators the cash was profit from a drug deal: "$60,000 here, $90,000 there."

We're talking about this money he had to launder. He was very at ease telling us this stuff," says Sailor.

Deleon confessing to a crime threw off investigators. Plus, he had all the paperwork to prove the boat was legally his - the documents he'd forced Tom and Jackie to sign. He tells police that neither he nor his wife had anything to do with the Hawkses disappearance.

Police also spoke to Jennifer Deleon. For the most part, cops bought the couple's story just like the Hawkses had.

Byington says he was convinced they were telling the truth.

But the couple's story began to fall apart when they went to Tom and Jackie's bank. With the phony power of attorney document, they tried to make a withdrawal.

"We've got surveillance video of her smiling ear-to-ear, you know, basically trying to steal these people's money," says Byington.

Then, police got a tip from Skylar Deleon's parole officer learning that he'd asked permission to leave the country. Concerned he was a flight risk, Deleon was arrested - but not for murder.

"He just kept asking me 'What am I being charged with?' Once I told him it was money laundering, I could see kind of like a sigh of relief," says Sailor.

That feeling wouldn't last long. Police moved in, searching the cramped garage apartment the Deleons had so desperately wanted to leave behind. It was there that they found items belonging to Tom and Jackie Hawks.

"We found their video camera… Jackie's laptop computer… and then the batteries to Tom and Jackie's Sprint Nextel phones," says Sailor.

On Dec. 16, police got a call from San Miguel Village, Mexico, saying that the Hawkses vehicle was there.

"And then we come to find out… the vehicle had been dropped off by Skylar about a week earlier and that following him in another car was his wife Jennifer," says Byington.

It was time for investigators to talk with the district attorney.

"We hit it out of the ballpark getting Matt Murphy as our D.A.," says Byington.

Murphy quickly grasped the enormity of what had happened.

"Tom and Jackie Hawks were not only really good people, they were totally innocent," he says.

But Murphy had a problem. He had never dealt with a crime scene like this before and he knew very little about boats. But he knew someone who did: Salty Sam, a.k.a. Gary Burns - a friend of Murphy's located 6,000 miles away in Darwin, Australia.

"He's a character. He's been on boats pretty much his whole life," says Murphy, who called Burns and described the shadowy outlines of the case.

"I called Matt back and said… 'A boat that size would probably have, for sure, two anchors,'" Burns says. "Get your guys to go on board the boat and count the anchors around there. And they'll probably be missing one."

"Sure enough, just like Gary said, there was an anchor that should have been on the boat, and wasn't," says Murphy.

Now that investigators had their theory, what they needed was an eyewitness. And Skylar Deleon provided one during his police interview: Alonso Machain.

Deleon told police Machain had been with him when he bought the boat and could back up his story. Deleon bet wrong.

"[Machain] is the only one on this investigation that actually had a conscience," says Sailor. "And it was that guilty conscience eating and eating at him."

Skylar Deleon's Police Interview Excerpts Alonso Machain's Police Interview Excerpts Pictures: Murder at Sea

After briefly fleeing to Mexico, Machain returned to Newport Beach and made a full confession about his involvement - " I was able to cuff Ms. Hawks" - and every horrific detail of the murders.

Alonso Machain : Skylar was looking for an anchor to push them over… Sgt. Dave Byington : How was Skylar acting when he threw them off the boat? Machain : He was calm. It was like the most normal thing.

Machain also told police about the muscle for the murder: gang member John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

In March 2005, Machain, JFK and mastermind Skylar Deleon are all charged with the murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks.

Jennifer Deleon told a local news crew her husband was innocent.

Reporter : Would your husband want to kill somebody for their money? Jennifer : No. That's not him.

But Matt Murphy and company weren't done yet. They had the alleged killers who'd been on the boat. Now it was time to focus on the one who dialed into the murder on a cell phone.

"In the time they were killed, he made a call to Jennifer. When they were turning back after throwing these poor people off the boat, he made a call to Jennifer," says Byington.

Reporter : What if they try and point the finger at you and say you were involved? Jennifer (holding her baby) : You have to be positive and hope that it won't come to that and take you away from your kid.

A month after her husband was charged, Jennifer Deleon was also charged with first-degree murder. Murphy was determined to get justice for Tom and Jackie Hawks.

"Thomas and Jackie Hawks were thrown overboard alive and begging for their lives," Murphy tells Maher. "It's as ruthless and dark and cold blooded as any murder capable of being committed by another human being."

Prosecutor Matt Murphy was working overtime preparing to bring Skylar Deleon and his crew, who were each charged with two counts of murder, to justice.

"This very well-thought-out diabolical plot to do this, they thought they were gonna get away with it because the bodies have never and will never be recovered," says Murphy.

With Deleon his prime target, Murphy approached Deleon's wife, Jennifer, with a deal.

"We offered her immunity," says Murphy. "We offered her a complete walk initially in the investigation… She said, "No.'"

Jennifer Deleon refused to testify against her husband. But Skylar was willing to tell "48 Hours Mystery" about Jennifer. He explains that it was actually his wife's idea to kill the couple. "She threw it out there - 'What if they're not here?' and I agreed."

Jennifer Deleon was the first to stand trial. On Nov. 17, 2006, she's found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to two life terms in a California prison.

Skylar Deleon would be tried next. But his attorney, Gary Pohlson, says there's not a chance of his client testifying, because "he's told so many lies."

And it turns out that Tom and Jackie Hawks may not be Deleon's only victim.

Pohlson wouldn't let Deleon tell "48 Hours Mystery" about John Jarvi - a man Deleon says he met at Seal Beach Jail and targeted a year before he met Tom and Jackie.

"He conned John Jarvi into taking out $50,000 on his condo and told John Jarvi some sort of story that he bought into and convinced John Jarvi to accompany him… down into Mexico," Murphy explains. "And led him down into a ravine, and there Skylar Deleon cut his throat."

Deleon is charged with John Jarvi's murder, leaving no question that the con man is also a cold-blooded killer.

"Did you kill Tom and Jackie Hawks?" Maher asks Deleon. He replies, "According to the law and stuff like that, yes."

The three killings are merged into one trial and it didn't take long for a verdict. Deleon is convicted of the murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks and John Jarvi.

Gary Pohlson was fighting to keep Deleon off death row. But those who treasure the memory of Tom and Jackie had very different ideas.

Ryan Hawks is hoping for the death penalty. So is Det. Dave Byington. "If anyone deserves the death penalty it's Skylar Deleon," he says.

Saying he is not afraid to die, Deleon's life hung in the balance; Yet, he was still blaming everyone but himself.

"The feeling I'm getting from you," notes Maher, "is that you're this little weaselly guy who's trying to make his wife happy. You concoct this big scheme and then you lost control of it… That's the part people will hold you responsible for."

"Uh, huh," he agrees.

And the people did hold him responsible. On April 10, 2009, Skylar Deleon is sentenced to death .

"It wasn't a good feeling or exciting. It was sad," Ryan says of hearing the verdict. "It was all over and my parents are still missing. And I'll never get to bury them. I'll never get to say goodbye. And that bothers me."

In death, as in life, Tom and Jackie Hawks touched everyone they ever met.

"Every day I look at the ocean, and I say, 'Hi' to Tom and Jackie. Every day I make a point of saying hello to them both." And, says Byington, he probably always will.

Alonso Machain was found guilty and sentenced to 21 years in prison.

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California Mother Convicted in Plot to Kill Couple for Yacht Sentenced to Life Terms

SANTA ANA, Calif. – A 26-year-old mother of two young children was sentenced Friday to two terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole for her role in a plot to kill a wealthy couple for their yacht.

Jennifer Deleon was convicted last year of two counts of first-degree murder and murder for financial gain.

She was not on board in 2004, when the victims were tied to an anchor and thrown over the side of their 55-foot yacht, the "Well Deserved."

Authorities said, however, that Deleon helped her then-husband with the murders by using their infant daughter to gain the trust of victims Tom and Jackie Hawks. Deleon was also pregnant at the time.

She was also accused of helping cover up the crime by cleaning the yacht with bleach and lying to investigators.

During the brief sentencing hearing, Deleon was urged to give up her children by Ryan Hawks, 31, the son of the victims. The children are living with Deleon's mother.

"I know the best possible future they could ever have is them growing up in an environment not knowing who their biological parents were, what they did and how the children themselves were used as decoys to murder my parents for financial gain," Hawks said, holding back tears.

A handcuffed Deleon, who is now divorced and uses the name Jennifer Henderson, appeared emotional and tried to wipe away tears after making eye contact with family members in the courtroom. Her children were not present.

She did not speak before being sentenced by Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank F. Fasel.

Her ex-husband, Skylar Deleon, and another alleged accomplice, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, could face the death penalty if convicted of the murders at a trial expected to begin in January. They have pleaded not guilty.

Tom and Jackie Hawks vanished after taking Skylar Deleon and two of his friends on a test cruise off Newport Bay. The couple thought the men were interested in buying the yacht.

Two other men accused of participating in the plot will have a separate trial.

Prosecutors have said Skylar Deleon asked his wife to bring their 9-month-old daughter to the docks to put the victims at ease before the cruise.

Skylar Deleon called off an earlier plan to kill the Hawkses when he realized that Tom Hawks was a retired probation officer in good physical condition, according to testimony at Jennifer Deleon's trial.

Skylar Deleon then spent another week recruiting Kennedy and refining his plan before setting up the test cruise, Alonso Machain, another suspected accomplice, has testified.

Machain said the Hawkses were blindfolded and handcuffed after he, Kennedy and Skylar Deleon overpowered them on the open sea.

The victims were then forced to sign and fingerprint documents transferring ownership of the "Well Deserved" to Deleon before being tied to an anchor and pushed overboard, Machain testified. Their bodies have never been found.

Machain testified that Tom Hawks tried to hold his crying wife's hand and comfort her in the moments before they died.

Evidence at the trial also showed that Jennifer and Skylar Deleon were in cell phone contact the entire time the three men were on board the yacht.

Ryan Hawks said after the hearing that he is haunted because the bodies have never been found.

"Right now, I can tell you they are 3,600 feet below the cold Pacific Ocean, bound to an anchor, handcuffed and blindfolded, and I think that anchor will hold them down until justice has prevailed," he said.

"It's one down and three to go, so we're not quite there yet ... but we'll be there," he said.

Prosecutors contended that after the killings, Jennifer Deleon helped clean the boat and lied to investigators. She also conspired to make it seem as if the Hawkses had moved to Mexico. authorities said.

Defense attorney Michael Molfetta has said that his client wasn't aware of the plot when she brought the baby to the harbor. He said that after the killings, Jennifer Deleon went along with her husband's demands because she was afraid of what he might do to her.

Tom and Jackie Hawks, of Prescott, Ariz., had been living aboard the "Well Deserved" for about two years in what was the realization of a longtime dream, friends and family have said.

They later decided to sell the cabin cruiser and buy a smaller vessel and a home in Mexico.

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Former child actor admits killing couple for yacht

For nearly four years, Ryan and Matt Hawks have felt certain that a former small-time child actor masterminded the vicious murder of their parents, who were tied to the anchor of their yacht and thrown to their deaths in the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island.

The brothers sat in the TODAY studio in New York Friday with the show’s co-host, Meredith Vieira, and looked at photographs of their father, Tom Hawks, and stepmother, Jennifer Hawks, tanned and smiling aboard the “Well Deserved,” the 55-foot yacht they had saved a lifetime to buy.

Two days earlier, the attorney for Skylar Deleon, who once had a non-speaking bit part in “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,” admitted in an Orange County, Calif., courtroom that Deleon was the mastermind of the plot to murder the Hawks and steal their yacht. The admission was made during opening arguments in the trial, which is no longer about whether Deleon did it, but what his sentence should be: death, or life behind bars.

Back to land Tom Hawks had planned for most of his life to retire on a yacht with his second wife, Jackie. A body builder and probation officer, he realized his dream while still in his mid-50s.

After cruising the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez off Mexico for two years, the Hawks had decided to sell their boat to move back to Arizona, where they could be closer to their first grandson. Their sons, Matt and Ryan, looked forward to having them back home and sharing their lives with them.

“They realized there was more to life than this boat and seeing the curve of the earth, and that’s what really made them want to sell the boat and come back and be a part of our lives, and especially part of their grandson’s life,” Ryan Hawks told Vieira.

He last talked to his parents by phone on Nov. 14, 2004, the day they disappeared. “I was flying to Seattle for work,” Ryan Hawks said. “It was on the last voyage of ‘Well Deserved.’ I kind of pushed them off the phone; I was running late for a plane. I just felt bad. I had no idea that was the last time I’d talk to them.”

On that day, Tom, 57, and Jackie, 47, set sail for Catalina Island on a test cruise with Skylar Deleon and two other men, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Alonso Machain. Deleon was a smooth-talking 29-year-old career criminal who bragged about being a former child television star who wanted to buy the boat. In reality, Deleon had had just one non-speaking bit part in 1994 on “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,” and had been in trouble almost ever since. He introduced Kennedy and Machain as his accountants.

Thieves fall out Machain admitted his role in 2005 and is awaiting sentencing. Kennedy is to be tried next year. The fourth member of the plot, Deleon’s former wife, Jennifer Henderson, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder last year and will spend the rest of her life in prison.

According to that confession, after overpowering the Hawks with a stun gun, the conspirators forced them to sign over title to the yacht. Then, duct-taped together and tied to an anchor, they were thrown into the ocean to drown. Their bodies were never recovered.

Now Ryan and Matt Hawks just want to see justice served on Deleon, who, according to his own lawyer, Gary Pohlson, also killed another man in 2003. Deleon committed that murder when he was on work furlough from a sentence he was serving for burglary.

Pohlson told the jury Tuesday that his purpose in admitting Deleon is guilty was to save his client from the death penalty.

Justice at last Matt Hawks said when he heard Pohlson’s statement, “I was kind of relieved in a way, just [at] the thought that they’re admitting guilt. It’s been four years; it’s been a long time. I’m looking forward to this trial, and I’m sure the jurors will make the correct decision.”

Ryan Hawks said it isn’t easy being at the trial and hearing again about the murders. But, he told Vieira, “It’s important to us as a family, because this is the last thing we’ll ever get to do for our parents. And as much as it hurts, we just need to be there and represent them. We’re a true testament to our parents’ parenting, and we feel it’s necessary.”

Matt Hawks said the hardest part for him is thinking about what he and his two children are missing. “It’s just been very difficult,” he said. “I’m raising two beautiful children now. And I don’t have the grandparents so that they can share their lives with them. It’s just very hard not having them around to share the best part of our life, and the best part of our family’s life with them.”

Both brothers said their parents had talked about their plans to sell the yacht and move back home. The parents mentioned that the man who wanted to buy it was a former child star, but neither of the two sons had ever watched “Power Rangers,” so they weren’t especially impressed.

“I was just happy they were selling the boat and coming back to spend a lot more time with [their grandchildren],” Matt Hawks recalled. “They’d be much more grounded with my family. We’d be able to travel out to see them, as I was able to back when I didn’t have children.

“I was looking forward to them coming home.”

For sale: the ‘Well Deserved’ murder yacht with…

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For sale: the ‘Well Deserved’ murder yacht with a gruesome history

Kept in immaculate condition by its previous owner.

Has a cool name.

Little wear and tear the past four years.

Has some psychological baggage.

It’s also one of the most famous yachts in Orange County history .

It is the Well Deserved, a 55-foot Lien Hwa trawler, moored in Newport Beach.

This is the yacht that cost Thomas and Jackie Hawks their lives .

It was inside the hand-carved teak galley of the Well Deserved that former bit-part child actor Skylar Deleon forced Tom and Jackie to sign sales documents to the boat before they were tied to a 60-pound anchor and thrown overboard.

At first, in November 2004, it was a missing persons case investigated by Newport Beach police.

Then it was a high-profile murder investigation.

And it became a headline-making murder prosecution.

Deleon, 29, who prosecutors said was the mastermind of the botched plot to steal the yacht, was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.

So was John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 43, a Long Beach gang member who signed on to the murderous mission at the last minute to provide the muscle needed to subdue Tom Hawks, a dedicated weightlifter.

Jennifer Henderson Deleon, 27, Skylar’s wife, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for her role in putting the Hawkses at ease so they would go with her husband on their fatal last voyage. She visited the couple shortly before the murder voyage while pregnant and with her newborn daughter in her arms.

Myron Sandora Gardner, 45, a former gang member, accepted a deal with prosecutors and provided inside information about the plot to detectives. He was sentenced to a little more than four years in custody for accessory to murder.

And earlier this week, Alonso Machain, 25, of Pico Rivera – a conspirator who turned state’s evidence and became the prosecution’s star witness – got 20 years and four months in prison for two counts of voluntary manslaughter, robbery and kidnapping.

That closed the book on the defendants in one of Orange County’s most sensational murder cases.

But there are still a few loose ends.

For one thing, Tom and Jackie’s bodies have never been found.

For another, there is the Well Deserved, the Hawkses’ dream boat.

The couple pulled up stakes in Prescott, Ariz., in 2002 when Tom retired as a probation officer after 17 distinguished years to cruise on the open seas off California and Mexico.

They were living full lives, until they decided to sell the Well Deserved so they could return to Prescott to be near their newborn grandson.

That’s when Deleon entered the picture with his sinister scheme.

The inheritance that Tom left to his sons, Ryan and Matt, is the Well Deserved. Jackie Hawks was a loving stepmother.

Law enforcement authorities kept the trawler on stilts in dry storage and in plastic wrap for four years as evidence. But now that the criminal cases are over, the yacht has been returned to Ryan and Matt. It is in the Newport Beach’s Basin Marina now, being fixed up after years in storage. But by the end of this week, it will likely be returned to its original home in Newport Harbor.

And it will be placed on the market.

Both Ryan and Matt, who lost their father to murder in 2004 and their mother, Dixie, to cancer in 2007, are in their early 30s, and are not in a financial situation that would allow them to use and enjoy the Well Deserved.

In fact, the boat that was Tom and Jackie’s well-deserved dream is becoming a financial drain on the young men. They have been paying taxes on the yacht for nearly five years.

They also pay maintenance and taxes on the mooring, and they must maintain the buoy and the yacht, including monthly hull cleaning and topside deck washing, engine upkeep, etc. They are also paying out of pocket to fix up the boat, which was damaged by harbor sea lions and vandals before it was moved to dry storage in 2005.

Ryan and Matt have decided they must sell the Well Deserved, and they must sell it as soon as possible to avoid more monthly dings to their bank accounts.

The problem is that this may be the worst time in decades to sell a yacht. The economy is bad. People who have money are holding on to it. Gasoline prices are rising.

Ryan Hawks says Dixon Yachts International Inc., the yacht broker, believes that based on comparison sales, the Well Deserved will be listed for $229,000.

This for a yacht that Tom and Jackie Hawks paid about $300,000 for in 2002, and then did about $50,000 worth of improvements on.

And this is the boat for which Deleon fraudulently offered $435,000 in 2004.

Now it is worth a little more than half of that figure.

And it could be a tough sell, even at that reduced price, because of the notorious nature of what happened onboard on Nov. 15, 2004, according to Nancy Dixon, who has the yacht listing.

“Everyone knows what happened on the boat, and that might be a problem,” Dixon said. “But on the other hand, maybe someone out there is interested in doing a movie and would want to use the real boat. Who knows?”

It is a beauty.

The 55-foot Lien Hwa trawler has two decks, two staterooms, one bath and a galley. The interior is hand-carved teak.

Tom added wooden racks for a kayak and a windsurfer. And he equipped the yacht with the latest electronics, a generator, an enormous gas tank and a 400-gallon-a-day desalination system so they could stay at sea for months.

“It is the perfect boat for anyone wishing to complete Tom and Jackie Hawks’ dream,” Dixon said. “The object of the whole game is we have to sell this boat and we have to sell it quickly.”

To inquire about the Well Deserved, call Dixon Yachts, 949-355-4898, or e-mail [email protected] .

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/6936102001?isVid=1&publisherID=987209017

Contact the writer: [email protected] or 714-834-3784

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Skylar DeLeon case in 'Overboard 20/20': The murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks

One of the strangest murder cases in recent history needs a proper explanation

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• TV Shows. Skylar DeLeon, from Power Rangers actor to gender reassignment to death sentence

Skylar DeLeon was found guilty and sentenced to the death penalty for the murder of Tom and Jackie Hawks . They were a couple who was eager to sell their beloved 'Well Deserved' boat because they wanted to buy a new home that was close to their new grandson. Skylar DeLeon was an actor who briefly appeared in the Power Rangers show in a small role, but he became a criminal due to financial problems. Also, he eventually decided to change his gender and became Skylar Preciosa DeLeon after getting extensive hormone therapy to make her look more femenine.

As it turned out, Tom and Jackie Hawks family killers were Skylar, his wife Jennifer DeLeon and three other accomplices. One of which confessed to the crimes after the bodies of the Hawks couple wasn't found anywhere. They were both thrown to the sea tied-up andeventually drowned. The case was featured in a famous ' 20/20 ' docu-series, it tells the full story of how the murders happened and what happened to the criminals who did it.

The case Overboard 20/20

Names 'Overboard', this episode of '20/20' told the entire story of how Tom and Jackie Hawks were never seen again after criminals Skylar and Jennifer DeLeon murdered them in cold blood. Initially, they intended to only steal their boat but they decided to throw their live and tied bodies to the sea. They were never found and were both outlived by two sons in 2004.

Skylar DeLeon death sentence

After the case found Skylar as the mastermind of the operation, he was sentenced to the death penalty by lethal injection but California law made him spend the rest of his days on death row prison. His wife, Jennifer DeLeon will also spend the rest of her life in jail but sshe didn't get the death penalty.

Tom and Jackie Hawks sons

Tom and Jackie Hawks were outlived by their two sons, Matt and Ryan Hawks. Matt was the one who gave his parents the news of an incoming grandson, named Jace. Both of the Hawks couple's children inherited the boat but had to sell it due to financial status.

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Continuing Coverage

For Sale: Yacht With Chilling Past

By jonathan lloyd • published june 17, 2009 • updated on june 18, 2009 at 6:06 am.

Tom and Jackie Hawks wanted to sell their yacht -- the Well Deserved -- because they planned to move closer to their newborn grandchild in Arizona.

The 55-foot Lien Hwa trawler has two decks, two staterooms and hand-carved teak interior. The couple put about $50,000 into improvements.

All attractive features for any potential buyer.

But the Well Deserved will forever be associated with what happened on Nov. 15, 2004. That's when  the Hawks were bound, tied to a 60-pound anchor and thrown overboard. Long Beach residents Skylar Deleon , 29, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy , 43, were sentenced to death in the case. Investigators said Deleon, posing as a buyer and Kennedy, posing as an accountant, went aboard the Well Deserved under the guise of taking a test run. In a video posted on the OCRegister.com , detective David Byington explains what happened next. Byington tours the boat and describes the confrontation between the Hawks and their attackers. "I don't like being down here," Byington said while showing the camera crew the bedroom in which the Hawks were bound. "I don't even like being on this boat. I feel like I'm still invading their home. The worst part is they were downstairs for several hours, and they knew they were going to die." The Hawks' dream boat will be for sale next week. The couple intended to spend some of the happiest years of their lives aboard the boat after Tom Hawks retired after 17 years as a probation officer.

They wanted to sell the Well Deserved so they could return to Arizona to live near their newborn grandson. Tom Hawks' sons, both of whom are in their early 30s, were left with the responsibility of maintaining -- and now selling -- the boat. It will be placed on the market next week after it is returned to Newport Harbor, according to the newspaper. Ryan Hawks , one of Tom's sons, said the yacht broker indicated it will be listed for about $229,000. That's about $70,000 less than the Hawks paid in 2002.

Investigators were holding the yacht until the end of the criminal cases.

Tearful Testimony in Yacht Murder Trial

Family of victims testify as prosecutors seek death for Skylar Deleon.

Oct. 23, 2008 — -- Prosecutors rested their case Wednesday in the penalty phase of the murder trial of Skylar Deleon, a man convicted of tying a California couple to the anchor of their yacht and throwing them overboard.

Before concluding, prosecutors played home videos of the couple on their last voyage together. Police say the tapes were found in a video camera Deleon stole after the murders.

The jury must decide whether Deleon should get the death penalty or life in prison.

A 20-minute video showed Tom and Jackie Hawks traveling together on their beloved yacht, the Well Deserved. The final clip showed the couple, who planned to sell the boat in order to spend more time with their grandson, celebrating their last trip with family and friends.

The video then cut abruptly to images of Deleon's family at Thanksgiving.

Deleon, 29, was found guilty Monday of murdering the couple, with several accomplices, after he posed as a potential buyer for their yacht. He was also convicted in the 2003 murder of John Jarvi.

The home videos capped an emotional day of testimony from the victims' relatives, several of whom cried on the witness stand as they described the Hawkses as a loving couple and devoted parents.

"He was more like my best friend," said Ryan, Tom Hawks' son.

Jackie Hawks' mother, Gayle O'Neill, choked up on the witness stand as she called her daughter "a wonderful person, loving, caring."

"She would do anything for anybody," she said. "I think of them in the morning when I wake up and at night before I go to bed."

Witnesses, including one of Deleon's alleged accomplices, testified that Thomas and Jackie Hawks were blindfolded, beaten, shackled to the anchor of their beloved yacht, thrown overboard and drowned.

Deleon's lawyer admitted on the first day of trial that Deleon was guilty, but asked asking the jury to spare his life.

Click here to see a slideshow of Tom and Jackie Hawks' pictures.

As a teenager, when Ryan Hawks once complained about his sometimes strict father, he said Tom Hawks looked him in the eye and said, "You will thank me one day for the man you are yet to become."

"And I never got to thank him," Hawks said today.

Jarvi's mother, Betty Jarvi, described her son as "very clever, he sparkled."

Another witness testified that Deleon tried to have three critical witnesses against him killed before his trial.

Daniel Elias testified that Deleon offered him $3 million to kill the witnesses. Elias, a career criminal who met Deleon at the Orange County Jail, said Wednesday that Deleon told him, "if [the witnesses] were gone, he could beat this case."

All three witnesses testified against Deleon.

'Yanked' to Their Deaths

In gut-wrenching detail, alleged accomplice Alonso Machain, a cooperating witness for the prosecution, told jurors last week that he, Deleon and a third man overpowered the couple, handcuffed them to the anchor and sent them hurtling to their deaths.

"They were basically yanked -- yanked into the ocean,'' Machain told Orange County jurors, as tears welled up in the eyes of the Hawkses' friends and family in the courtroom gallery.

Deleon and the other men then turned the boat around and began an hourlong trip back to the shore, according to testimony. One cracked open a beer and grabbed a fishing pole and "started fishing,'' Machain said.

Jennifer Deleon, Skylar Deleon's former wife, was tried and convicted for murdering Tom and Jackie Hawks and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in a separate 2006 trial.

Machain cooperated with the prosecution in a deal to avoid the death penalty; alleged co-conspirator John Fitzgerald Kennedy is awaiting trial. Adam Rohrig, a fourth man reportedly involved, was not on the boat when the murders took place and is not expected to face charges.

Elias testified that Deleon asked him to kill Rohrig; Kathleen Harris, a notary; and Deleon's cousin Mike Lewis. Elias claims Deleon promised him $1 million for himself and an additional $2 million for the men Elias would hire for the killings.

Harris testified that she was duped into doctoring documents for the Deleons and then threatened with violence if she didn't continue to cooperate with the plot.

Harris met the couple through Rohrig, a mutual friend. Harris claimed she met the couple at an extended-stay hotel, where they asked her to backdate and notarize documents that were related to the Hawkses' boat.

"I really didn't know it was going to be fraudulent," Harris said of the documents she notarized. Though her normal fee was between $50 and $250, the prosecution said she received $2,000.

"I did not know how much he paid me until I got in the car," Harris said.

But she added that Jennifer Deleon promised her more money "when this is all over."

Harris said she didn't feel right about the transaction, so she called Rohrig to inquire further about the Deleons. She said Rohrig told her during a phone conversation several days later that she'd need to take care of more documents, or that Skylar Deleon, who he said had ties to the Mexican drug cartels, would come after her family.

"I was going to do whatever I needed for me and my family not to be killed," she said.

Rohrig, she said, then gave her physical descriptions of the Hawkses and, "He told me to tell the detectives that I met Tom and Jackie by the yacht to sign the documents."

Harris said she repeatedly lied to investigators in interviews, saying she wanted to tell the truth, "but I was scared for my life. I was told he [Deleon] had killed over 20 people."

"I was always watching my back, I always felt like someone was after me," she said.

Harris received immunity from the prosecution in exchange for her cooperation.

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Yacht With Chilling Past Up for Sale

By jonathan lloyd • published june 19, 2009 • updated on june 19, 2009 at 6:43 am.

Tom and Jackie Hawks wanted to sell their yacht -- the Well Deserved -- because they planned to move closer to their newborn grandchild in Arizona.

The 55-foot Lien Hwa trawler has two decks, two staterooms and hand-carved teak interior. The couple put about $50,000 into improvements.

All attractive features for any potential buyer.

But the Well Deserved will forever be associated with what happened on Nov. 15, 2004. That's when  the Hawks were bound, tied to a 60-pound anchor and thrown overboard. Long Beach residents Skylar Deleon , 29, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy , 43, were sentenced to death in the case. Investigators said Deleon, posing as a buyer and Kennedy, posing as an accountant, went aboard the Well Deserved under the guise of taking a test run. In a video posted on the OCRegister.com , detective David Byington explains what happened next. Byington tours the boat and describes the confrontation between the Hawks and their attackers. "I don't like being down here," Byington said while showing the camera crew the bedroom in which the Hawks were bound. "I don't even like being on this boat. I feel like I'm still invading their home. The worst part is they were downstairs for several hours, and they knew they were going to die." The Hawks' dream boat will be for sale next week. The couple intended to spend some of the happiest years of their lives aboard the boat after Tom Hawks retired after 17 years as a probation officer.

They wanted to sell the Well Deserved so they could return to Arizona to live near their newborn grandson. Tom Hawks' sons, both of whom are in their early 30s, were left with the responsibility of maintaining -- and now selling -- the boat. It will be placed on the market next week after it is returned to Newport Harbor, according to the newspaper. Ryan Hawks , one of Tom's sons who lives in Carlsbad, said the yacht broker indicated it will be listed for about $229,000. That's about $70,000 less than the Hawks paid in 2002.

Investigators were holding the yacht until the end of the criminal cases.

Brittany Penaroza Tells the Story Behind Her Viral Drop-In at Desert Point

The rail tap that caused five stitches. Photo: Instagram

At any given moment in a lineup somewhere on this planet, someone is getting dropped in on. Whether an accident or intentional, it’s an inherent part of surfing. While most of these incidents occur without much fanfare, others go viral and penetrate even the most remote internet connections. One such drop-in by Brittany Penaroza last month fell into the latter category. 

The Oahu-raised Penaroza posted a clip at Lombok’s Desert Point in which she unknowingly drops in on a fellow surfer. She received a forceful rail bump that sent her tumbling with the lip. The video has been viewed nearly 300,000 times on her profile and created a spirited debate in the comment section headlined by words from the GOAT himself. 

“Deserts is blown,” said Kelly Slater. The Indonesian Olympian Rio Waida also chimed in, “Mwahaha, that was gnarly.” 

As the summer’s most-seen drop-in circulated the internet, I noticed that everyone had their opinions and guesses about what happened that day at Desert Point. But, as far as I could tell, no one cared to ask Penaroza. So that’s what I did. While she was still enjoying the Indian Ocean waves in Bali, I gave her a ring to chat about the viral moment, what really happened, and her takeaways in the aftermath of the video.

There was lots of online speculation about what happened, but I don’t think we’ve heard your full version. Can you give the story behind that video?

It was so chaotic out at Deserts. There were like 100 people in the lineup, so (the guy who bumped me), amongst the entire lineup, was honestly paddling circles around me. I don’t blame him at all in particular, but I was absolutely sitting out there forever. I caught an insider, a small one compared to the rest of the waves coming through. I did hear somebody call me saying “go,” I thought, so I put the blinders on and started padding for the wave. There was a bunch of mist in my eyes, so I actually didn’t even see who was to the right of me. I took off and started pumping down the line. Before I knew it, I just saw the guy right next to me and I’m going over the lip doing a backflip. After that happened, I was pretty rattled. I didn’t really know what happened. I immediately paddled up to him to try to apologize, but he was a little dismissive. There was also a set coming, so we weren’t really able to communicate. Then 20 minutes go by and I look down at my foot and I see that I hit my fin underwater. I had to paddle in because my foot was bleeding like crazy. I eventually needed five stitches.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brittany Hokulani Penaroza (@britroza)

I went back to Deserts after about two weeks. When I saw him we made eye contact in the lineup and both started paddling to each other. We shook hands because my intention wasn’t to blast him from the post. I honestly thought it was funny. I wanted to make sure that he knew it was all good. From the clip it’s hard to gauge if that was really necessary to bump rails with me. I am still unsure about it, but ultimately it’s behind us. It’s hectic at Deserts – absolute chaos.

Oftentimes in those crazy, crowded lineups, taking turns goes out the window. What was it like that day?

There are locals out there and they’ll just drop in on you if they want a wave, which is fair. But there really isn’t an uncle or anyone who organizes the peak, like what I’m used to. And in particular, the way Deserts works, it has this current that swirls at the peak. It makes it really hard to hold your position. That day had the craziest current and it was really slow – sets were coming through every 30-40 minutes. It had to be a free-for-all, but there were a handful of people catching a lot of waves.

That reminds me of one of my Pavones sessions this year. You have to be so aggressive to get waves.

Yeah, honestly I feel like I’m going into battle every time, especially being the only girl out there. 

This clip polarized the internet. What’s the sentiment you’ve been receiving from your social media messages and comments since it was posted?

I tried not to look at the comment section. I knew it was going to be polarizing, so I just put my phone away for a week. I’m happy because a lot of the people that matter – people whose opinions I care about – were actually really encouraging. They know how it goes out at Deserts and those were the people that thought it was funny. But wow, people that are random on the internet were quite mean. I got some really aggressive messages. One DM I received from this guy was like, “If I ever saw you in the lineup and you did that, I would have no problem hitting you.” I was pretty rattled to receive stuff like that. Ultimately, I tried to treat it like water off a duck’s back. A lot of people were saying I deserved it. There’s just so much anger and frustration. I feel like nobody deserves to ever get hurt from the waves or being in the water. It should be a really enjoyable experience.

I agree. I often have a love-hate relationship with surfing because of that. 

It’s ironic that surfing is such a beautiful way to connect with the ocean, but it’s actually kind of creating addicts. Everybody’s chasing this high and looks at every other person in the lineup as someone who actively keeps them from that high. If you see me in the lineup, I think you can ask anyone, I’m normally really chill.

When Kelly Slater comments on your post it’s a big deal, so I admire your ability to put the phone away.

Yeah, oh my gosh. I screenshoted that (laughs).

Is that your most viewed social media post ever? Any press is good press, right?

I guess it’s my most viewed video in recent times, other than TikTok videos in the past. Part of me wishes it was one of my barrel clips that did well, but I completely get why that blew up. Whatever. I got some sh*t on Instagram, but ultimately it was a funny situation.

Did you see a big spike in followers?

I think I got 500-600 followers. But it did make me think about how, in this world, the goal and your value is to get more followers. But I was like, do I want to get popular based on this sort of attention? I would rather post content that has a lot more substance and brings value to people.

Do you have any plans to go back to Desert Point anytime soon?

Like I said, I went back a couple of weeks later, after I got my stitches out. The stitches weren’t that bad, but the infection in my foot was insane. I couldn’t walk for a week and a half and had to take antibiotics. Once I was sorted from that I went back and on my second wave I pulled into a close-out and semi-dislocated my shoulder. So I’m kind of taking it easy. I didn’t go the last swell and it’s starting to get into the later season winds (more onshore). I might try to send one more swell because it’s the best wave in the world. I don’t even care about putting myself into those hectic lineups because it just feels so amazing when you get one.

Any other thoughts on this chaotic situation?

I just hope that the surf industry – and surfers, in general – have a little bit more grace towards each other. We’re all trying to enjoy the ocean. I think if everyone was a little more generous with each other, that would be better. When it comes to localism and the hierarchy of the peak, it’s important to maintain a little bit of order, as long as people don’t abuse it. But leading with aloha is number one. If you do get in a situation with someone, just make peace. That is always the better route to take.

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US alleges sanctioned Russian oligarch’s niece made payments for his $300M yacht

The yacht, known as the Amadea, was seized by officials in 2022, with the U.S. alleging billionaire Putin ally Suleiman Kerimov is the ultimate beneficial owner.

U.S. authorities claim to be one step closer to proving a seized $300 million mega yacht is owned by sanctioned Russian Suleiman Kerimov, according to new court filings that detail alleged payments for the boat from the oligarch’s niece.

The yacht, a 348-foot luxury vessel known as Amadea, was seized in Fiji in 2022 by local officials at the request of the United States, as part of the Justice Department’s ongoing efforts to identify and seize assets of sanctioned Russian oligarchs in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Kerimov, known for throwing lavish parties and for his reportedly close relationship with Vladimir Putin, was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018. Britain and the European Union later followed suit.

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However, since the Amadea’s seizure, another Russian oligarch, Eduard Khudainatov, who is not currently under U.S. sanctions, has claimed to be the yacht’s rightful owner — an assertion U.S. authorities deny.

Prosecutors allege that new documents show Kerimov’s niece, Alisa Gadzhieva, entered into a loan agreement with the company that owns the yacht, Errigal Marine Limited, and then made two payments to Khudainatov’s holding company, Invest International Finance Ltd, Intelligence Online reported .

“The United States takes sanction evasion seriously and will use all tools at its disposal to ensure that sanctioned individuals are held accountable for their crimes,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said in an earlier statement . 

The ship belongs to an array of high-value luxury items linked to Kerimov, including private jets and sportscars, like a $650,000 Ferrari that Kerimov totaled in a fiery crash on the French Riviera in 2006. 

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The yacht’s seizure followed ICIJ’s Pandora Papers, which included revelations on the offshore financial empire of Kerimov and his closest associates. The investigation showed billions of dollars flowing through opaque offshore shell companies associated with Kerimov, and covert money flows tied to oligarchs and others close to the Kremlin. It also highlighted offshore professionals who have helped oligarchs secretly buy luxury assets like yachts and jets.

Gadzhieva’s brother, Kerimov’s nephew Nariman Gadzhiev, is also under U.S. sanctions for allegedly serving as an assistant and financial facilitator for Kerimov. ICIJ’s reporting showed that, in 2012, a firm registered in Gadzhiev’s name worked with Credit Suisse to secure a $67 million loan for the acquisition of a custom-built Boeing 737 Business Jet as well as a Bombardier Global Express jet. A few years later, an article in Forbes Russia described Kerimov as owning the same kind of Boeing jet.

The Amadea, which is currently in U.S. custody, has already cost over $7 million in taxpayer funds to maintain while the legal battle plays out, The Guardian reported.