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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thomas and Jackie Hawks fought their alleged captors to the bitter end and in a moment of tenderness managed to hold hands before an anchor dragged them to the bottom of the sea. Family and friends of the couple were brought to tears Wednesday when a prosecution witness gave an excruciating, minute-by-minute account of events aboard their 55-foot yacht, Well Deserved, during the Santa Ana murder trial of Jennifer L. Deleon.

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.

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.