Skylar Deleon was convicted of three murders committed for money in the space of eleven months. In December 2003 Jon Jarvi, a 45-year-old Anaheim man Deleon had met in a jail work-furlough program, withdrew 50,000 dollars for what he told his mother was a business deal that could not lose. The next day his body was found beside a road near Ensenada, Mexico. In November 2004 Tom and Jackie Hawks, a retired couple who had put their 55-foot yacht up for sale, took Deleon and two other men out of Newport Harbor on what they believed was a test cruise for a buyer. They never came back. Prosecutors proved that the men overpowered them at sea, made them sign the boat over, tied them to the anchor and threw them into the Pacific while they were alive.
At his 2008 trial in Orange County Superior Court, Deleon's own lawyer told the jury on the first day that his client was guilty of all three killings and asked only that his life be spared. The jury convicted Deleon of three counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances and chose death. He was sentenced on April 10, 2009. His then-wife, Jennifer Henderson, is serving life without parole for her part in the Hawks killings, and a second man who was on the boat, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was also sentenced to death. A former jail guard, Alonso Machain, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and testified against them.
Deleon was born John Jacobson Jr. in 1979, according to Fox News, a year consistent with the age the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) gives today. Caitlin Rother, a journalist who wrote a book on the case, reported in Orange Coast magazine in 2015 that his father, known as "Big John" Jacobson, was a former Marine who later served federal prison time for drug trafficking. At the 2008 penalty trial the defense argued that this father had abused Deleon as a child; the Associated Press reported the defense account that the father dealt drugs and later died of AIDS, and that Deleon's mother had left the family. Rother's article, based on Deleon's account and the trial record, describes violent punishments by the father, including after he found the child dressed up with neighborhood girls and wearing mascara. These are defense and family accounts, and the prosecutor told the jury he did not find them believable as an explanation for the murders.
According to Rother, the father pushed the child into acting after his own release from prison. Deleon appeared in commercials and, as a boy of about 14, had non-speaking parts as an extra on the children's television series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers during its 1993 to 1994 season. The Associated Press described the role as a non-speaking part in several episodes and reported that Deleon worked as a child actor under the name John Liberty. When he was first linked to the Hawks case in 2004, his wife's lawyer described him as a former child actor on the show, and the AP later noted that he had apparently claimed to have been a star of it when his part was small. Rother reported that Deleon said he hated the work and never kept the money.
In 2002, before he began dating Jennifer Henderson, he legally changed his name to Skylar Deleon, a name Rother described as gender-neutral. In May 2003 he was convicted of first-degree residential burglary in Orange County, a conviction that counted as a "strike" under California's sentencing law. He served part of the sentence in a work-furlough program run from a private jail in Seal Beach, which let inmates leave during the day.
Deleon and Henderson married and lived in a converted garage at her parents' home in Long Beach. Their daughter was born in early 2004, and Henderson was pregnant with their second child by the autumn. Prosecutors said Deleon was unemployed and that the couple were heavily in debt.
Jon Peter Jarvi, called John in the prosecutors' releases, was 45 and lived in Anaheim. He met Deleon in 2003 in the Seal Beach work-furlough program; Rother reported that the two had shared a cell. His mother, Betty Jarvi, told the jury at the penalty trial that her son was "very clever, he sparkled." His brother, Jeff Jarvi, said at the 2009 sentencing that he still woke gasping for breath, imagining his brother's last moments. "It doesn't go away," he said.
The Orange County District Attorney's account, set out when charges were filed in August 2005 and proved at trial, runs as follows. On December 26, 2003, Jarvi told his mother he was going to Mexico for a business deal that could not lose. He cashed two checks for 25,000 dollars each at his bank in Laguna Beach and then called Deleon. About two hours later Deleon spent 18,000 dollars in new 100-dollar bills at a boatyard and paid 21,000 dollars into the joint account he held with his wife. Soon afterward the couple bought Jennifer a wedding band for 2,200 dollars.
On the morning of December 27 Jarvi called Deleon again. That day Deleon and his cousin, Michael William Lewis Jr., drove to Mexico, and the three were in frequent phone contact. At about 4 p.m. Jarvi's body was found beside the northbound lane of a road near Ensenada, Baja California. His throat had been cut. About two hours later Deleon's car crossed back into the United States. A week later, prosecutors said, the Deleons got rid of Jarvi's car, which had been left outside their home.
Machain, then a jailer at the Seal Beach city jail for the company that ran it, later became central to the Hawks case. Prosecutors told the jury that on the night Jarvi was killed, Machain let Deleon back into the jail without penalty although Deleon had no job to account for his absence; Rother reported that he returned about two hours after curfew. Prosecutors also quoted a friend of Deleon's, Adam Rohrig, who said Deleon had once told him, "No body, no murder."
The Jarvi killing went unsolved for more than a year and a half. Deleon was not charged with it until August 18, 2005, after the Newport Beach Police Department, investigating the Hawks case, connected him to it.
Thomas Charles Hawks was born on December 24, 1946, and was 57 in November 2004. He retired after 17 years as a probation officer, and NBC Los Angeles, reporting from his trial record, described him as a former high school wrestling champion. The boating newspaper Soundings described him as a retired probation officer and firefighter. Jackie Ellen Hawks was born on June 26, 1957, and was 47. Soundings described her as a homemaker who had helped raise Tom's two sons from his earlier marriage. Her mother, Gayle O'Neill, told the jury at the penalty trial that her daughter was "a wonderful person, loving, caring."
The couple came from Prescott, Arizona. Tom had planned to spend his retirement on the water. They bought the Well Deserved, a 55-foot Lien Hwa trawler with two decks, two staterooms and a hand-carved teak interior, in 2002, and put about 50,000 dollars into it. They lived aboard, cruised the Pacific and the Sea of Cortez, and kept the boat in Newport Harbor.
In 2004 their first grandchild was born, and the couple decided to sell. In November they advertised the yacht in several boating magazines for 440,000 dollars. Prosecutors said they wanted to spend more time with the new grandchild in Arizona; relatives told the AP in 2004 and 2005 that they planned to buy a smaller boat and a home in Mexico. Either way, they meant to stay close to the sea and closer to family. When prosecutors showed the jury a photograph of the couple with their grandson, some jurors wept.
Deleon answered the advertisement. According to Machain's testimony and the prosecution case, Deleon and Machain went out to look at the boat and the couple on November 6, 2004, posing as buyers. Deleon called off that first attempt because Tom Hawks, a fit man, was bigger than they had expected; the Los Angeles Times, cited by the AP, reported that the plan was abandoned that day for that reason. Deleon spent the following week looking for more help. Machain told detectives that Deleon had promised him several million dollars.
On November 9 Jennifer Henderson, pregnant and carrying the couple's nine-month-old daughter, came to the boat with Deleon to meet the Hawks. Prosecutors said the visit was meant to win their trust, and that it worked. Ryan Hawks later said his parents had been used "as decoys or fakes" by a family with a baby.
The last recruit was John Fitzgerald Kennedy, then about 39, a Long Beach man with a 1988 attempted-murder conviction whom prosecutors described as a documented Los Angeles gang member. A Long Beach acquaintance of Deleon's, Myron Gardner Sr., introduced the two men; Gardner later testified that he believed Deleon wanted Kennedy for a drug deal. Kennedy was to come aboard posing as Deleon's accountant. Prosecutors called him the "muscle."
On November 15, 2004, Deleon, Machain and Kennedy went aboard the Well Deserved and the Hawks took the boat out of Newport Harbor for a test run. Henderson stayed ashore, and she and Deleon were in constant phone contact throughout.
Machain, who later pleaded guilty, gave the only eyewitness account. Once the boat was well out to sea, he testified, the three men overpowered the couple. Kennedy put Tom Hawks in a headlock and Deleon used a stun gun on him; Machain subdued Jackie Hawks. The couple were handcuffed and their eyes and mouths covered with duct tape, and they were held below deck. A detective who later walked through the boat said they had been kept there for several hours and knew what was coming.
They were made to sign documents transferring ownership of the boat to Deleon, with a power of attorney, and to put their fingerprints on them. Jackie Hawks begged for her life, Machain said; the AP quoted the prosecutor as saying she pleaded that she had a grandchild. Tom Hawks held her hand to comfort her. When she signed, she left the "s" off the end of her surname. The prosecutor, Matt Murphy, later told the jury she was trying to "send a flare into the future" so that someone would see that something was wrong.
The couple were taken up on deck, still bound. Tom Hawks fought back, and Kennedy punched him; Murphy called it "the world's biggest cowardly sucker punch." The men tied the couple to the boat's anchor, which Yachting Monthly reported weighed about 60 pounds, and threw it and them over the side. "They were basically yanked, yanked into the ocean," Machain testified. Prosecutors put the place about 55 miles offshore. The men then searched the boat, split about 3,600 dollars they found, and motored back to shore while one of them fished.
The bodies of Tom and Jackie Hawks have never been found. Ryan Hawks later said his parents lay about 3,600 feet down in the Pacific.
Back in harbor, Deleon and Henderson cleaned the boat with bleach wipes and got rid of the Hawks' belongings. They paid a notary, Kathleen Harris, 2,000 dollars, far above her normal fee, to notarize the transfer papers with false earlier dates; she testified under a grant of immunity that she had been tricked and later frightened into cooperating. The Deleons tried to move the Hawks' money from their Arizona bank account into an account in Mexico and, with Machain, tried to create the impression that the couple had moved to Mexico. A camera taken from the boat held a home video of the couple on their last voyage, followed by footage of the Deleon family at Thanksgiving; prosecutors played it at trial.
The Hawks were reported missing late in November 2004. California's Department of Justice missing-persons listing, filed by the Newport Beach Police Department, records them as last seen on November 17, 2004; the trial record puts the cruise on November 15. Tom Hawks had told relatives he would come back to the boat for his fishing, diving and sailboarding gear, and he never did.
Deleon told investigators he had bought the boat. The AP reported in December 2004 that he and his wife said they had paid 400,000 dollars for it in mid-November, and that the couple had driven off after a cash exchange. Henderson spoke several times by phone with Tom Hawks' brother and told him the same story. Police noted that the couple's credit and bank cards had not been used since they vanished. In mid-December their car was found in Mexico.
By then Deleon was already under pressure from other charges. On December 20, 2004, the AP reported, he pleaded not guilty in Newport Beach to three counts of laundering drug money and three of possessing money from drug sales, involving at least 250,000 dollars, and was held on 250,000 dollars bail; the prosecutor, Matt Murphy, would not say whether he was a suspect in the disappearance. The district attorney's office later said Deleon was arrested on January 16, 2005, as he was trying to leave for Mexico, and charged that February with grand theft of a different boat.
The break came from Machain. He was arrested on March 2, 2005, and talked. Gardner was arrested the next day. On March 4 the district attorney charged Deleon, Machain and Gardner with murdering the Hawks, with special circumstances of multiple murder and murder for financial gain. Kennedy, whose name Machain did not know and whom he identified from a police photo lineup, was arrested about a week later. Prosecutors later said that without Machain's account the police might never have known Kennedy existed. Henderson was arrested on April 8, 2005, shortly after giving birth to the couple's second child, and charged with the murders on April 11.
At a preliminary hearing in August 2005, a Newport Beach police sergeant testified to Machain's account: the handcuffs, the duct tape, the signed power of attorney, and the couple tied to the anchor and thrown into the sea alive. Prosecutors said Henderson laughed during the preliminary hearing while the Hawks family watched.
The Jarvi charges rested on bank, phone and border-crossing records. On August 18, 2005, Deleon was charged with Jarvi's murder for financial gain. Henderson and Lewis were charged with helping to conceal it; Newport Beach detectives arrested Lewis in Arizona that day. The district attorney's office later said the police had conducted more than 100 witness interviews and examined thousands of documents and hundreds of items of evidence. David Byington, a Newport Beach detective who worked the case for five years, became its public face.
In July 2006, while awaiting trial in the Orange County jail, Deleon was charged with soliciting fellow inmates to kill two witnesses: his father, John Jacobson Sr., and his cousin, Mike Lewis. The boating magazine Latitude 38 reported that prosecutors had audio and video recordings of the requests, and that the father had gone into hiding out of state; he called it "a bad dream you never wake up from." At the 2008 trial a career criminal who had met Deleon in jail, Daniel Elias, testified that Deleon offered him 3 million dollars to kill three witnesses, Adam Rohrig, the notary Kathleen Harris and Mike Lewis, saying that without them he could beat the case. All three testified against him. No source opened records a separate verdict on the solicitation charge.
On September 6, 2006, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas announced that he would seek the death penalty against Deleon and Kennedy. He summed up their roles in four words: "Deleon the brain, Kennedy the brawn." His office cited the multiple killings, the financial motive, the cruelty of the Hawks killings, Deleon's burglary strike and the plots against witnesses. Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy was assigned to all three cases. Judge Frank F. Fasel of Orange County Superior Court later separated Henderson's trial from the men's, and in September 2008 he joined the Hawks and Jarvi cases into a single trial for Deleon and split off Kennedy's trial.
Henderson, then 24, went on trial first, in November 2006. She was not on the boat, but the prosecution argued that she had used her pregnancy and her baby to win the Hawks' trust, kept in contact with her husband throughout and joined in the cleanup and the lies to police. Her lawyer, Michael Molfetta, argued that she knew nothing of the plot when she took the baby to the harbor and went along afterward out of fear of her husband. On November 17, 2006, the jury convicted her of two counts of first-degree murder, with special circumstances of multiple murder and murder for financial gain.
On October 5, 2007, Judge Fasel sentenced her to life without the possibility of parole; the AP reported two life terms without parole. By then she was divorced from Deleon and used the name Jennifer Henderson. At the hearing Ryan Hawks urged her to give up her children, who were living with her mother, so that they could grow up not knowing what had happened. "It's one down and three to go," he said.
Jury selection began in late September 2008 in Department C-35 of the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana. Opening statements were made on October 7, 2008. Deleon faced two counts of murder with special circumstances for the Hawks and a third, with a financial-gain special circumstance, for Jarvi.
His lawyer, Gary Pohlson, began by conceding everything. "I am going to concede that Skylar Deleon is guilty of the charges," he told the jury, adding that this was not a guilty plea and that he would dispute some details. His purpose, he said, was to save his client's life at the penalty phase. Ryan Hawks, 32, said afterward that he was "blown away." Machain testified for the prosecution, as did Harris, Rohrig, Lewis and Elias.
On October 20, 2008, after deliberating for about two hours, the jury convicted Deleon of three counts of first-degree murder and found true the special circumstances of multiple murder and murder for financial gain. Ryan Hawks called the verdict a warm-up for the penalty phase.
The penalty phase lasted six days. The prosecution called members of the victims' families. Ryan Hawks told the jury that he had been like his father's best friend, and recalled his father telling him as a teenager that one day he would thank him. "And I never got to thank him," he said.
Pohlson argued that Deleon had been abused by a drug-dealing father and left predisposed to violence, and psychiatrists for each side disagreed about how such abuse shapes a child. Murphy rejected it as an excuse, saying many people overcome hard childhoods, and called Deleon "one of the most prolific liars imaginable." Deleon "had every opportunity to be a productive member of society and chose to murder these people for money," he said.
On November 6, 2008, after nearly two days of deliberation, the jury of seven women and five men returned a verdict of death. Deleon sat motionless. In a statement, the jurors called the verdict "the only reasonable outcome given the evidence presented." Ryan Hawks said he had waited four years and that the verdict was for his parents, not for him; he also said Deleon would spend years in prison before any execution while his parents stayed dead. Pohlson said his client was disappointed.
Sentencing was set for January 16, 2009, and then put back twice. On April 10, 2009, Judge Fasel refused a defense motion to reduce the penalty to life without parole and imposed death, citing the nature of the murders and the suffering the three victims probably endured. "It is the judgment and order of this court you shall suffer the death penalty as to each count," he said. He also ordered restitution, including 55,500 dollars to Betty Jarvi.
"It is difficult to imagine a case where it's more cold-blooded and calculated than this series of murders," Murphy said. Ryan Hawks said he hoped Deleon's two children would never learn what their father had done or how their sister had been used to win his parents' trust. Tom's brother, Jim Hawks, a retired police chief, said he would spend the rest of his life dealing with grief and with anger at the defendant. CDCR records show Deleon was received into state prison, at San Quentin, on April 16, 2009.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 43, was tried in early 2009. His lawyer, Winston McKesson, argued that Machain had identified him only from a photo lineup and that he had left street violence behind; the AP reported that he had worked as a gang intervention worker for the city of Long Beach. On February 19, 2009, the jury convicted him of two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances, and on February 27 it recommended death. Judge Fasel sentenced him to death on May 1, 2009. On October 16, 2026, the CDCR locator listed him at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.
Myron Gardner, who had spent four years in jail awaiting trial, pleaded guilty on March 19, 2009, to being an accessory after the fact. He was sentenced to one year in jail with credit for time served, and the murder charges were dismissed. He testified at Kennedy's trial.
Alonso Machain pleaded guilty to two counts each of voluntary manslaughter, kidnapping and robbery. On June 15, 2009, he was sentenced to 20 years and four months in state prison. Prosecutors said he had shown remorse and that his detailed testimony had supplied facts available from no other source, especially against Henderson and Kennedy. He does not appear in the CDCR locator as of October 16, 2026.
Jennifer Henderson remains in custody. On October 16, 2026, the CDCR locator listed Jennifer Lynn Henderson, committed from Orange County and received in October 2007, at the California Institution for Women in Corona.
No source opened reports the outcome of the 2005 charges against Henderson and Michael Lewis Jr. of helping to conceal the Jarvi killing.
In March 2008, while awaiting trial in the Orange County jail, Deleon seriously injured himself with a razor in his cell, the Orange County Sheriff's Department said; he was treated in hospital and returned the next day. In an interview with ABC News broadcast in early 2009, Deleon said that this had been an attempt to remove his genitals, that he had long wanted to live as a woman and had researched sex reassignment surgery, and that he still considered himself attracted only to women. Molfetta, Henderson's lawyer, told ABC that he believed the whole plan had been driven by a wish to pay for the surgery. Rother reported in 2015 that Deleon had booked surgery in Colorado for November 2004, paid a 500-dollar deposit and could not pay the remaining 15,000 dollars or so, and that Detective Byington regarded the money for surgery as part of the motive. Byington also told her he did not think Deleon deserved to be called "she."
Rother reported that Deleon had been housed in San Quentin's psychiatric unit, had a history of self-harm and hospitalizations, and was taking hormone treatment, and that state officials classified Deleon as transgender. Gayle O'Neill, Jackie Hawks' mother, told her she objected to the state paying for surgery for her daughter's killer.
In October 2024 the New York Post and Fox News reported a letter Deleon wrote to the Washington Free Beacon, saying she had received "gender affirming surgery and breast augmentation" on April 5, 2023, at state expense. Fox reported that Deleon says she legally changed her name to Skylar Sophia Deleon about 20 years earlier and asked reporters to stop using the birth name. CDCR's locator lists her as Skylar Sophia Deleon. These details rest on Deleon's own letter and the corrections record; no source opened confirmed them independently.
California's last execution took place in 2006. On March 13, 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order granting a reprieve to everyone on death row, which acts as a moratorium for as long as it stands. Under Proposition 66, approved by voters in 2016, CDCR moved condemned prisoners out of the segregated death row units; the transfers from San Quentin began on February 26, 2024, and by May 28, 2024, East Block was empty. CDCR stresses that these moves do not change anyone's sentence.
On October 16, 2026, the CDCR locator listed Deleon (as Skylar Sophia Deleon, CDCR number G56028, age 47, committed from Orange County) at California Medical Facility in Vacaville. She remains under sentence of death. A judgment of death in California is appealed automatically to the California Supreme Court; no decision on Deleon's appeal was found in any source opened, and the court's online docket could not be read.
The Well Deserved was held as evidence until the criminal cases ended. In June 2009 it passed to Tom Hawks' sons, who planned to sell it for about 229,000 dollars, some 70,000 dollars less than their father had paid. Ryan Hawks followed the case through each trial and spoke at the sentencings. On the day Kennedy was condemned he said, "Today gave us justice."
The case drew wide coverage because of the Power Rangers connection, the absence of bodies and the trial concession of guilt. Caitlin Rother told the story in her book Dead Reckoning (2011; updated edition 2020).
Proven by jury verdict: the murders of Jon Jarvi and of Tom and Jackie Hawks, with special circumstances. Deleon's lawyer conceded all three at trial.
Charged, outcome not found: the 2006 solicitation charges concerning his father and cousin; the 2005 concealment charges against Henderson and Lewis in the Jarvi case.
Motive: prosecutors proved murder for financial gain. The claim that money for sex reassignment surgery was a driving motive comes from Henderson's lawyer, from Deleon's later interviews and from the lead detective, as reported; it was not an issue the jury had to decide.
Childhood abuse: presented by the defense in mitigation and disputed by the prosecution; reported here as claims.
Details that vary between sources: the victim's first name (Jon in AP and press reports and Soundings, which gives Jon Peter Jarvi; John in prosecutors' releases); the date Jarvi handed over the money (December 26, 2003, per prosecutors; one 2009 report says November 2003); the date the Hawks were last seen (November 15, per the trial record; November 17, per the state missing-persons listing); the sale price (440,000 dollars in prosecutors' releases; 465,000 in one AP report); the couple's plans (to be near a grandchild in Arizona, per prosecutors; a smaller boat and a home in Mexico, per relatives in 2004); and whether Deleon's first arrest was in December 2004 (AP report of an arraignment on money-laundering charges) or January 16, 2005 (prosecutors). Deleon's middle name appears as James in prosecutors' releases; CDCR now gives Sophia.
1979: born John Jacobson Jr.
1993 to 1994: non-speaking extra on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
2002: legally changes name to Skylar Deleon; the Hawks buy the Well Deserved.
May 2003: convicted of first-degree residential burglary; later meets Jon Jarvi in the Seal Beach work-furlough program.
December 26, 2003: Jarvi withdraws 50,000 dollars and calls Deleon.
December 27, 2003: Jarvi is killed near Ensenada, Mexico.
Early 2004: Deleon's daughter is born.
November 2004: the Hawks advertise the Well Deserved for 440,000 dollars.
November 6, 2004: Deleon and Machain visit the boat; a first plan is called off.
November 9, 2004: Henderson and the baby meet the Hawks.
November 15, 2004: the Hawks are killed at sea.
Mid-December 2004: the Hawks' car is found in Mexico.
December 20, 2004: Deleon pleads not guilty to money-laundering charges.
January 16, 2005: Deleon arrested while trying to leave for Mexico.
March 2 to 4, 2005: Machain and Gardner arrested; Deleon, Machain and Gardner charged with the Hawks murders.
March 2005: Kennedy arrested.
April 8 to 11, 2005: Henderson arrested and charged.
August 18, 2005: Deleon charged with Jarvi's murder; Lewis arrested in Arizona.
July 2006: Deleon charged with soliciting the murder of witnesses.
September 6, 2006: district attorney announces he will seek death against Deleon and Kennedy.
November 17, 2006: Henderson convicted.
October 5, 2007: Henderson sentenced to life without parole.
March 2008: Deleon injures himself in jail.
October 7, 2008: Deleon's trial opens; defense concedes guilt.
October 20, 2008: Deleon convicted of three counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances.
November 6, 2008: jury returns death verdict.
February 19, 2009: Kennedy convicted; death verdict February 27.
March 19, 2009: Gardner pleads guilty to accessory after the fact.
April 10, 2009: Deleon sentenced to death by Judge Frank F. Fasel.
April 16, 2009: Deleon received at San Quentin.
May 1, 2009: Kennedy sentenced to death.
June 15, 2009: Machain sentenced to 20 years and four months.
March 13, 2019: Governor Newsom's moratorium on executions.
April 5, 2023: date Deleon gives for gender-affirming surgery.
February to May 2024: San Quentin death row emptied.
October 2024: Deleon's surgery reported in the press.
October 16, 2026: listed at California Medical Facility, Vacaville, under sentence of death.