Murder suspect doesn’t take stand

Friends testifying Tuesday on behalf of a woman accused of helping murder yacht owners Thomas and Jackie Hawks described her as nurturing wife and mother who could be a bit naive, too trusting, and unlikely to show her emotions.

Jennifer L. Deleon did not take the stand to defend herself against accusations that she helped her husband, Skylar, and three other men in a plot to murder the Hawkses, steal their yacht and plunder their savings. Her lawyer rested his case after calling four witnesses: two friends, a friend of her parents’ and a tax accountant.

Deleon, a 25-year-old mother of two, is being tried on two counts of murder and the special-circumstance allegation of murder for financial gain. If convicted, she could face life in prison without parole. Skylar Deleon, 27, the alleged mastermind, goes on trial in January.

Prosecutors acknowledge that Jennifer Deleon was not on board the yacht Well-Deserved in November 2004 when her husband and two accomplices allegedly forced the Hawkses to sign transfer-of-title and power-of-attorney documents, handcuffed them to an anchor and tossed them into the sea off the coast of Newport Beach.

During more than five days of testimony, Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Murphy called a series of witnesses, played taped interviews and presented other evidence in an attempt to portray Deleon as a coldhearted woman who used her 9-month-old child to gain the Hawkses’ trust, helped destroy evidence and then lied to investigators.

Deleon’s attorney, Michael Molfetta, has maintained that his client didn’t know what her husband was planning until after the couple were killed, then followed his lead only because she was afraid of what he might do to her if she didn’t. Throughout the trial, he has sought to raise reasonable doubt about her prior knowledge of the alleged plot.

On Tuesday, witnesses who tried to paint a kinder portrait of Jennifer Deleon included a friend since high school, Erin Dworzan. She described Deleon as a hard-working hairstylist who was “not a violent person at all.”

Under cross examination, Dworzan added that Deleon was smart, “a little naive at times” in her relationships with men, tending to trust what they would say, “even when they were playing her.”

Meghan Leathem, who met Deleon through a roommate and later moved into a condominium next door to the Long Beach home where the Deleons lived with Jennifer’s parents, said she was a “very sweet, loving” caregiver who supported and nurtured her husband, and “hides a lot of her feelings on the inside.”

Leathem also testified about a jail visit with Deleon within the past two months during which Deleon apologized for bringing Skylar into her life, calling him a psycho, a freak, and warning her to get a background check on her boyfriend. Deleon also told her she feared for what he could do to her and her family, Leathem said.

Under cross examination, however, Murphy got Leathem to acknowledge that not once in the four months between the time Skylar and Jennifer were arrested -- when the two women still lived next door to each other -- did Jennifer ever mention being afraid of her husband.

After the defense rested, the prosecutor played a tape of another jailhouse conversation, this one between Jennifer and a cousin who visited her in June, during which she refers to her father with an obscenity for refusing to let her kids visit Skylar in jail.

“And he likes to control,” she adds, referring to her father. “And it makes you wonder why I, you know, married somebody that doesn’t make any decisions ... that doesn’t act like he cares, at least that I know of, you know? Somebody that’s so passive, ‘cause it’s like, I finally get a say.”

Closing statements are set for today.

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christine.hanley@latimes.com