Woman guilty of yacht murders

The wife of the alleged mastermind in the high-seas murders of Thomas and Jackie Hawks was convicted Friday of participating in the plot to kill the retired couple, steal their yacht and plunder their life savings, at one point using her 9-month-old baby to gain their trust.

Jennifer L. Deleon, 25, a mother of two and the first of five defendants to be tried in the case, was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder -- and the special circumstances of murder for financial gain and multiple murder -- by a seven-woman, five-man jury that deliberated five hours.

Deleon, who showed little emotion throughout her two-week trial in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, wept quietly when she learned her fate. Her parents, who rushed from Long Beach to hear the verdict only to miss it by seconds, were shaken and weeping as their daughter was led from the courtroom, never turning to see them.

“They’re devastated,” her attorney, Michael Molfetta, said.

The moment was bittersweet for relatives and friends of the Hawkses, many of whom sat through every moment of the trial. Although satisfied and relieved that justice was served, they said their sense of closure was tempered by the fact that they would never see Tom, 57, and Jackie, 47, again.

They also said they knew they would have to sit through painful testimony at future trials.

“We lost the two greatest people we love the most, my parents,” Ryan Hawks, one of the Hawkses’ two sons, said outside the courtroom.

“My father used to tell me that the only thing to look forward to is the future. And that’s what we’re doing.”

Deleon could face life in prison without parole when she is sentenced Feb. 23. Her husband, Skylar Deleon, 27, will be tried in January with John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 41. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against the two men, describing them, respectively, as the “brains” and “brawn” behind the plot.

The Hawkses, fresh from two years of plying the waters of the Sea of Cortez, were believed to have been killed Nov. 15, 2004, after being tricked into a test sail of their 55-foot yacht, the Well-Deserved. They had put the boat up for sale because they wanted to move back to Arizona to be closer to their newborn grandchild.

Skylar Deleon, Kennedy and a third man, Alonso Machain, 25, allegedly overpowered the couple between Newport Beach and Santa Catalina, forced them to sign transfer-of-title and power-of-attorney documents, then tied them together to an anchor and tossed them overboard alive. They are presumed drowned; their bodies have never been found. A fourth man, Myron Gardner, 41, of Long Beach was also charged.

Although Jennifer Deleon was not onboard when the couple were believed to have been killed, prosecutors say she used her baby to gain their trust a week earlier, helped destroy evidence and lied repeatedly to investigators. The defense maintained that she didn’t know what her husband was up to until after the couple disappeared, and then cooperated with him out of fear.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Murphy said Friday that justice prevailed. He maintained that Jennifer Deleon’s role in gaining the Hawkses’ confidence was a pivotal part of the murder plot, leading the couple to drop their guard and abandon any questions about her husband’s credibility.

“It took a team effort to put them at ease,” he said. “She might as well have been on the boat.”

Molfetta said he was not surprised by the verdict. Although he still believes Skylar Deleon is the culprit, he conceded that “there was a lot of evidence” against his client.

During the trial, Molfetta depicted his client as a nurturing, churchgoing wife and mother who was unwittingly put in play by the man she loved. Jennifer Deleon didn’t testify in her own defense. Molfetta called a friend of her parents’, a tax accountant and two friends to the stand in a defense that lasted all of two hours.

In operatic fashion, Molfetta repeatedly blamed everything on Skylar Deleon, saying he was more evil than murderer Charles Manson, likening him to “Satan’s brother” and “120 pounds of hermaphrodite evilness,” a jab at Skylar Deleon’s purported desire to become a woman.

Jennifer Deleon might have been blinded by love, intimidated by fear or simply confused by a blizzard of her husband’s lies, Molfetta told the jury, but she was not a killer and would not have knowingly helped the Hawkses meet their end.

Murphy, on the other hand, portrayed Jennifer Deleon as a coldhearted, money-hungry plotter in league with her husband from the beginning.

Witnesses, including a real estate agent and tax preparer, testified how the Deleons, in the weeks before the murders, told them they were expecting to be given a boat and coming into a huge sum of money. They were hoping to buy a $2-million waterfront home with a slip big enough for the 55-foot vessel, according to testimony.

When she met with the Hawkses at Skylar Deleon’s request, Jennifer Deleon knew they were broke and that her husband, based on a criminal history that included an armed-burglary conviction, was willing to use deadly force to enrich them both, Murphy argued.

After the disappearance, prosecutors said, Jennifer Deleon helped her husband in a variety of tasks: cleaning the boat, backdating the bill of sale and other documents, dumping the Hawkses’ car in Mexico and going with him to the couple’s bank to try to withdraw their savings. And she repeatedly lied to Newport Beach police detectives.

christine.hanley@latimes.com