http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...wed-storylevel
Los Angeles Times
November 9, 2006
Account of pair's fate at sea chills courtroom
An alleged accomplice in the disappearance of a yachting couple out of
O.C. says there were some frantic minutes, then a callous drowning.
By Christine Hanley, Times Staff Writer

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.

Deleon, 25, a Long Beach mother of two, is accused of helping her
husband, Skylar, and three other men in a plot to murder the Hawkses,
steal their yacht and plunder their savings. If convicted, she could
get life in prison without parole. Skylar Deleon, the alleged
mastermind, goes on trial in January.

Jennifer Deleon was not on board when the Hawkses were presumably
killed - their bodies haven't been found. But prosecutors say she
used her 9-month-old child to gain the couple's trust and later helped
destroy evidence by cleaning the boat. They reject her defense that she
didn't know what her husband was up to until after the alleged murders,
then followed his lead only because she was afraid of him.

On Wednesday, Alonso Machain, who was on the boat with the couple the
day they disappeared, provided the first eyewitness account of the
alleged crimes, acknowledging that he was hoping for leniency in
exchange for his testimony.

Machain, who is rail-thin and looks much younger than his 23 years,
testified that he met Skylar Deleon at Seal Beach City Jail, when he
was working as a jailer and Deleon was in a work furlough program for
committing home burglary. Machain said Deleon, during his jail stay,
convinced him that he was rich, earning more than $2 million a month
and traveling the world. Machain said he grew to respect and admire
Deleon, and the two became good friends.

In October 2004, Machain said, Skylar Deleon asked him whether he'd
like to make a "few million dollars." At the time, Machain was
unemployed. When Machain asked how he could make that much money
legally, Deleon responded that "it isn't illegal unless you get
caught," Machain said. He said Deleon told him he was routinely
solicited to carry out murders, which he did "on the side."

Deleon told him the Hawkses "were bad" and it would "make the world a
better place if they were taken out," Machain said. After the couple
were killed, he allegedly told Machain, they would get to keep their
boat and anything else they owned.

Machain said Deleon accompanied him to the Lakewood Mall, where they
bought two stun guns, and Machain went alone to another store to buy
two pairs of handcuffs. On a test-sail with the Hawkses on Nov. 6,
2004, Machain was to have overpowered Jackie Hawks while Deleon subdued
her husband. But Machain said Deleon abandoned the plan once they were
all on the boat, for unknown reasons. It was during that outing that
Machain said Deleon first learned that Thomas Hawks was a retired
probation officer "very physically fit for his age."

Back at the docks, Machain said, Deleon called his wife and told her
she had to come down to the boat to meet the Hawkses and make them
"feel more at ease." Within the next week he also decided that a third
person would be needed to help overcome Thomas Hawks.

On the morning of Nov. 15, Machain said, he and Deleon met up with that
person - whose name, he later learned, was John Fitzgerald Kennedy
- before returning to the pier. Once they were headed out to sea, he
said, Jackie Hawks called someone to report that she and her husband
were with the buyers.

Machain said he was standing in the kitchen of the main cabin when
Deleon and Kennedy overpowered Thomas Hawks in a lower area of the boat
near a bedroom. The commotion caused Jackie Hawks to try to move past
Machain, he said, and she screamed, "What's going on?"

With Jackie Hawks cornered in the kitchen, Machain said, he pulled out
his stun gun. "I knew I had to act. I had to overpower Mrs. Hawks. I
struggled with her. She was fighting me."

Eventually he got her handcuffed, he said, and took her down to the
bedroom, where her husband was already handcuffed on the bed. That's
when she asked Deleon, "How could you do this to us? You brought your
wife and kids here. We trusted you."

Machain helped Deleon cover the couple's eyes and mouths with duct tape
as Jackie Hawks cried, saying she didn't want to die and that she
wanted to see her new grandchild. The Hawkses were then taken up to the
main cabin one at a time to sign and fingerprint title transfer
documents. Jackie Hawks was told that if she cooperated she would be
released. "She was shaking uncontrollably," Machain recalled. When it
was her husband's turn, Deleon told him that if he tried anything funny
he would be struck with a Magnum flashlight. Thomas Hawks responded
that he wouldn't try anything, according to Machain.

The couple were brought back to the bedroom while Deleon and Kennedy
prepared the anchor on the aft deck, Machain said. Left to "baby-sit"
them, he watched as Thomas Hawks tried to console his wife.

She was still crying and asking, in a muffled voice through the tape,
why their captors were doing this to them.

"I could see Mr. Hawks trying to reach over and hold her hand and
comfort her," Machain said.

On the deck, the couple were tied together standing, her back to her
husband's chest with their hands still cuffed behind them.

Realizing what was happening, Thomas Hawks kicked Deleon as he tried to
fasten the couple to the anchor, sending him back into a deck chair,
Machain said.

Kennedy responded with a "hard swing" to the husband's right temple.
"It was a pretty hard blow" that left him staggering and making
"slurring noises," Machain said.

He would have fallen to his knees but "Mrs. Hawks was holding him up,"
all the time "screaming, yelling, asking, 'What's going on?' " he
recalled.

Deleon lifted the anchor and threw it overboard as Kennedy pushed the
couple overboard, Machain said.

Deleon then turned the yacht around and the men collected cash, jewelry
and other valuables, Machain said. Kennedy cracked open a beer, grabbed
a fishing rod and fished all the way back to the harbor, he said.