In her final moments, Jackie Hawks screamed and cried out for mercy, saying she was "too young to die" as her husband tried to console her by stroking her hand, a prosecutor said Monday.
"That woman pleaded for her life," Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Murphy told jurors in his opening statement at the Santa Ana trial of Jennifer L. Deleon, accused of helping her husband, Skylar, and three other men in a plot to murder Jackie and Thomas Hawks, steal their yacht and plunder their savings.
Before being tied to an anchor and tossed overboard with her husband, Murphy said, Jackie Hawks also "begged to see her grandchild again," and asked Skylar Deleon, "How could you do this to us? You brought your wife and baby on this boat. We trusted you."
Jennifer Deleon was not on the yacht at the time of the alleged killings. Her attorney, in his statement, said his client didn't know about the November 2004 killings of the retired Arizona couple until it was too late, and that she followed her husband's plan for afterward only because she was scared to death of what he might do to her.
"She had every reason to fear him, like everyone on this planet should," said the attorney, Michael Molfetta.
Deleon, 24, a mother of two charged with two counts of murder and the special-circumstance allegation of murder for financial gain, faces life in prison without parole if convicted. Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank F. Fasel agreed to sever her trial from that of her husband and the other defendants.
The trial is expected to be a preview of the trial of Skylar Deleon, 27, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 41, scheduled to begin in January. Prosecutors, describing the two men respectively as the "brains" and "brawn" behind the killings, plan to seek the death penalty against them.
The Hawkses disappeared not long after advertising their 55-foot yacht, Well Deserved, for sale for $440,000. At the time, the couple had spent nearly two years plying the Sea of Cortez and other waters along Baja California, finally deciding to return to Arizona to spend more time with their first grandchild.
On Nov. 15, 2004, the Hawkses sailed out of Newport Harbor for a "test sail" with Skylar Deleon, Kennedy and Alonso Machain, 22, authorities say. Once at sea, the couple were forced to sign transfer-of-title documents, then handcuffed and tied to the anchor between Newport Beach and Catalina Island, authorities say. Their bodies have not been found.
