Skylar Deleon

Skylar Deleon, charged with murdering an Arizona couple at sea, tried to cut off his penis with a razor blade while in Orange County Men's Central Jail awaiting trial, sheriff's officials said Friday. Deleon, 29, was hospitalized after the March 13 incident. His penis was reattached and he was returned to jail the next day, said Damon Micalizzi, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

A Long Beach gang member was sentenced to death Friday morning for helping tie Thomas and Jackie Hawks to the anchor of their yacht and then throwing them overboard off the coast of Newport Beach in a plot to steal the vessel and plunder the couple's life savings. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 43, will join accomplice Skylar Deleon on death row in the murders of the Hawkses, who were last seen in November 2004 leaving Newport Harbor aboard their 55-foot yacht, Well Deserved. Deleon, who masterminded the crime, was sentenced to death last month.

With his hands bound behind his back and eyes covered in tape, Tom Hawks seemed to realize that certain death awaited him and his wife, Jackie, if he didn't act quickly. So he mustered all the force he could and delivered a blow with his foot that sent one of his three attackers reeling into a deck chair. It would be the last act of heroism for a man who made a living in law enforcement. Within moments, an anchor was dragging the Arizona couple into the ocean.

A Santa Ana jury Thursday voted for the death penalty for a 29-year-old man convicted of three murders, including those of a Newport Beach couple who were lashed to the anchor of their yacht and thrown into the ocean. Skylar Deleon was convicted Oct. 21 in the 2004 slayings of Tom and Jackie Hawks, who had spent nearly two years plying the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean before deciding to sell the boat to move closer to family in Arizona.

As the westbound Amtrak streaked across the sun-splashed plains of Kansas, John Jacobson finally talked about his sons -- the good one, and the other one. He was headed to Kingman, Ariz., to pass along the family business to his younger son, an 18-year-old who had just beaten a drug problem and had found new hope in religion.

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.

The wife of the alleged mastermind in the murders of Thomas and Jackie Hawks at sea was sentenced Friday to two consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole for participating in the plot to kill the retired couple, steal their yacht and plunder their life savings. Before her trial, Jennifer L. Deleon, 26, a mother of two, turned down prosecutors' offer of immunity in exchange for testifying against her husband, Skylar Deleon.

The wife of a man charged with killing a couple who were selling their 55-foot yacht was arrested Friday by Newport Beach police on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder. Jennifer Deleon, 23, is the fifth person arrested in the presumed murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks. The hairdresser was arrested when she arrived to visit her husband at Orange County Jail, police Lt. Steve Shulman said. Her attorney, Michael Molfetta, said she was innocent.

Exactly two years to the day since Thomas and Jackie Hawks were last seen alive, a woman accused of helping in their alleged murders at sea was portrayed alternately Wednesday as a calculated accomplice motivated by greed, and an unwitting pawn manipulated by her diabolical husband. The contrasting depictions of Jennifer L. Deleon were presented during closing arguments at her Santa Ana trial over the Nov.

The father of a woman accused of helping her husband in the high-seas murders of a retired couple testified Tuesday that his daughter had the upper hand in the marriage and that his son-in-law seemed "timid" when the couple were together. Steven Henderson was one of two prosecution witnesses who said Jennifer L.

With his conviction a foregone conclusion, Skylar Deleon did not flinch Monday when he was found guilty of killing Tom and Jackie Hawks in a plot to steal their yacht and plunder their bank accounts. "He knew that was going to happen," his attorney, Gary Pohlson, told reporters moments after an Orange County jury, which had deliberated just two hours, found Deleon guilty of killing the Hawkses and Jon Peter Jarvi, an Anaheim man found dead in Mexico after Deleon swindled him out of $50,000.

With his hands bound behind his back and eyes covered in tape, Tom Hawks seemed to realize that certain death awaited him and his wife, Jackie, if he didn't act quickly. So he mustered all the force he could and delivered a blow with his foot that sent one of his three attackers reeling into a deck chair. It would be the last act of heroism for a man who made a living in law enforcement. Within moments, an anchor was dragging the Arizona couple into the ocean.

With the big smiles of Tom and Jackie Hawks looming above him in an Orange County courtroom Tuesday, the man accused of orchestrating their murders at sea prepared to acknowledge for the first time that he had a hand in the crimes.

Skylar Deleon, charged with murdering an Arizona couple at sea, tried to cut off his penis with a razor blade while in Orange County Men's Central Jail awaiting trial, sheriff's officials said Friday. Deleon, 29, was hospitalized after the March 13 incident. His penis was reattached and he was returned to jail the next day, said Damon Micalizzi, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

The wife of the alleged mastermind in the murders of Thomas and Jackie Hawks at sea was sentenced Friday to two consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole for participating in the plot to kill the retired couple, steal their yacht and plunder their life savings. Before her trial, Jennifer L. Deleon, 26, a mother of two, turned down prosecutors' offer of immunity in exchange for testifying against her husband, Skylar Deleon.

As the westbound Amtrak streaked across the sun-splashed plains of Kansas, John Jacobson finally talked about his sons -- the good one, and the other one. He was headed to Kingman, Ariz., to pass along the family business to his younger son, an 18-year-old who had just beaten a drug problem and had found new hope in religion.

A Long Beach gang member was sentenced to death Friday morning for helping tie Thomas and Jackie Hawks to the anchor of their yacht and then throwing them overboard off the coast of Newport Beach in a plot to steal the vessel and plunder the couple's life savings. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 43, will join accomplice Skylar Deleon on death row in the murders of the Hawkses, who were last seen in November 2004 leaving Newport Harbor aboard their 55-foot yacht, Well Deserved. Deleon, who masterminded the crime, was sentenced to death last month.