Yeardley: Hey, Small Town Fam, It’s Yeardley. How are you guys? We have the incredible Matt Murphy on the microphone today. Matt is the former Orange County Homicide DA and now, of course, he’s allover true crime shows on TV, providing analysis from the prosecutor’s point of view.

Basically, if you watch true crime in the States, you have for sure seen Matt Murphy. I can see why the case that Matt brings us today has stuck with him all this time. It’s awful, it’s evil, and it is the very definition of the phrase cold blooded murder.

There are a lot of players in this case, but Matt is a phenomenal storyteller, so you won’t have any trouble following along. And like me, I suspect you’ll have an idea where this story is going once you meet the two victims. And their kindness will fill you with dread.

You know, even after 16 seasons of this podcast, the thing that surprised me about this episode was just how malevolent and merciless the main suspect is. He’s one of the worst we’ve covered, I think, for his willingness to exploit his victim’s trust as well as his willingness to use his own child as a means to an end. Basically, he takes a wrecking ball to the lives of two innocent people without a shred of remorse. Here is Cold Blooded.

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Yeardley: Hi there, I’m Yeardley.

Dan: I’m Dan.

Dave: I’m Dave.

Paul: And I’m Paul.

Yeardley: And this is Small Town Dicks.

Dan: Dave and I are identical twins-

Dave: -and retired detectives from Small Town USA.

Paul: And I’m a veteran cold case investigator who helped catch the Golden State killer using a revolutionary DNA tool.

Dan: Between the three of us, we’ve investigated thousands of crimes, from petty theft to sexual assault, child abuse to murder.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Dave: Each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare personal account of how they solved the crime.

Paul: Names, places and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of victims and their families.

Dan: And although we’re aware that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we ask you to please join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved-

Dave: –out of respect for what they’ve been through.

Unison: Thank you.

Yeardley: Today on Small Town Dicks, we have the usual suspects. You’re so lucky. We have Detective Dan.

Dan: Hello there.

Yeardley: Hello. Hello. We have Detective Dave.

Dave: I am happy to be here.

Yeardley: I’m so happy that you are here. And we have the one and only Paul Holes.

Paul: Yeah, Dave. But I am thrilled to be here.

Dave: See, see.

Dave: Playing one uppy already. [laughter]

Yeardley Never tired of the competition. [laughs] And Small Town Fam, I hope you’re sitting down because today is a very big day. We are so honored and absolutely delighted and having a little bit of a fangirl moment here because today you guys will all know him. We have former Orange County Homicide prosecutor Matt Murphy.

Matt: Thrilled to be here.

Yeardley: You, sir. We’re all just sort of slack jawed that we get to see you here on our zoom screen because being avid true crime fans ourselves, and of course the guys having been immersed in it, this is really, really cool. This is like meeting one of your heroes.

Matt: My assistant, Heather. You are her far and away favorite podcast and she was jealous when I got to give you guys that Clue Award at CrimeCon.

Yeardley: Yes.

Matt: And she was mad at me that I didn’t invite her. She is a huge diehard fan. Absolutely number one favorite pod.

Yeardley: We love Heather. Tell her she has very good taste. Thank you.

[laughter]

Matt: Yeah.

Yeardley: Anyway, we digress. So, Matt, you have a really interesting case for us today. And what I do love about these episodes, when we get somebody who is linked into the law enforcement community but not necessarily a detective, is we get a whole different side of the investigation, a whole different perspective. So, I’m just going to hand it over to you. Tell us how this case came to you.

Matt: Sure. So, Orange County uses what’s called a vertical system, which is relatively rare in law enforcement. So, my cities were Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Laguna Beach and Irvine. So, any murder that happened in those cities for 17 years automatically came to me. And you had your own investigator. So, it’s a DA investigator, but they’re a sworn police officer assigned to you as like a partner. And so, the idea is you work the same cases again and again with the same detectives.

And we’d go to the crime scene, we’d go the night of the murder or the afternoon of the murder, we’d roll out. I’d be there to sign warrants. So, you’d enter these murder scenes and you’re involved in every facet from the very beginning, all the way to who gets charged with what. That’s your call as a signed prosecutor. You decide when there’s enough evidence and then you present the case to a jury. You do the trial, all the way through sentencing.

And then they also let you become a pro. There’re so many different kinds of murders, as you guys know better than anybody. There’s a child abuse murder is totally different than like a 7-eleven robbery gone wrong or a conspiracy to kill for money, which is the first case we’re going to talk about is a different animal than a serial killer. So, it takes a while, really to find your feet on all those different kinds of cases. And then they let you stay and do them over and over and over again, so you get to be a pro.

Yeardley: It must have really changed the game and given you guys on the court side some real agency and some real ownership of these cases in a way that you hadn’t been afforded before.

Matt: That’s exactly right. And in Newport Beach, it’s a beautiful place. It’s kind of like a Beverly Hills by the sea for those who haven’t been there. You’ll see a Bentley next to a surfer with a surfboard under his arm on a bike on a summer day. It’s a special place. They have a lot of money there. And murders are rare. But because of the sort of the whole nature and the setup, when they do happen, they tend to be really twisted. They tend to be about money. And the first case we’re going to talk about is one of the wildest ones I ever had in Newport.

So just to put it in context, there’s some embarrassing personal aspects that kind of feed into this that if you don’t mind, I’ll share with you.

Yeardley: Oh, do tell.

Matt: So, I had a really good run in the DA’s office. You start out in misdemeanors and you go to juvie. And then what they would do in Orange County is, I had to do 37 misdemeanor jury trials before I touched my first felony trial. Then you go to what’s called the felony panel, where you do generic felonies. And basically, it’s like drug sales and fourth time DUIs. You graduate into more serious cases. Then at the end of that time, I went to sexual assault, where I spent three and a half years doing child molesters and rapists. Then I got– It’s almost like in baseball, you get drafted to the show. You get the phone call and they want me to go to homicide, so I just got into that unit and I was going through a breakup.

I’d been with her for five years. I am heartbroken. And like a lot of heartbroken people, I stagger into my next relationship where I ignore every single red flag. And this person, and I won’t mention her name, but she was like the red flag parade of everything that you could look for. And being super smart, I jump in with both feet. So, I wind up in this really horrible relationship. She takes me to a wedding in Napa. Andwhen she was in college, she used to hook up with one of the groomsmen. So, this is about eight months into the relationship.

Yeardley: Dan and Dave are shaking their heads and just know where this is going. This is so sad.

[laughter]

Matt: In fact, anybody in the world with a brain would know exactly where this is going except me. And I was stone cold sober at this wedding. It’s all her friends. I don’t know anybody. She’s mad at me about whatever. So now I was watching the UCLA of Alabama season opener in the bar. I’d leave to go to the bathroom and catch her making out with the groomsmen, so that’s bad. We break up, and I have this annual surf trip with a bunch of buddies where we go to Indonesia. And I was going to skip that year because I just got into homicide. I’d been in the unit for about six months or so at that point, maybe. And I sign on last minute as I’m driving my little rental car back to the hotel after leaving early, after catching her making out with this dude and I go to Indonesia.

I went up on this boat. The captain of the boat is kind of Gary Burns. So, we do these surf charters, and you’re on the boat for about 10 days, and everybody’s wondering how this is related to true crime. I promise this connects. [laughter] You spend 10 days. And me and the boat captain, Gary, we really hit it off. He’s a great guy. We’ve been good friends ever since. But he came from a part of the boating world that was the not yacht club type, like, he encountered some real smugglers and some bad people along the way. He was a totally legit guy, but he’d lived on a boat his entire adult life, and now he’s doing these surf charters.

Yeardley: And was he American living in Indonesia, or did he come over with you guys or did he– What’s his story?

Matt: He was American. So, he ran the surf charter business of a place called Rote Island in eastern Indonesia. And he lived the rest of the time in Australia with his wife and his daughter. So, he’s an expat, essentially.

And Gary tells me some of these crazy stories of these characters that he encountered. And I get back, and I’m 34. I just want to be a homicide prosecutor. I’m really happy to be where I am. I got great people. And I get a call from Newport Beach one day. Detective Dave Bonnington says, we got a missing couple in Newport Beach. He’s like, “Look, this is a really weird one. We have no signs of foul play.” So, I go down that afternoon with my investigator, a guy named Larry Montgomery, who’s awesome.

What he lays out for us is there’s this nice couple named Tom and Jackie Hawks. Tom is a retired probation officer out of Arizona. Tom was 57. Jackie, his wife, was 47. God, and I remember back then thinking that 57 sounded old to me, [laughter] and that’s how old I am now. But Tom was a really good man, and so was Jackie. And essentially, he retired as a probation officer. And they bought this 55-foot Lien Hwa trawler, basically a yacht, and sailed off into the sunset. That was his dream. And that’s what they actually did.

So, there’s this whole expat community of retired Americans that cruise around in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. So, they’d spent two years having adventures and videotaping swimming with whale sharks. And they did that for two years. And then Tom and Jackie decided they were going to sell their boat. When you have an agent sell a house, the real estate agents get like 4%, something like that. But when you sell a boat, it’s 15%, So Tom wants to do it himself. So, he put an ad in Yacht World Magazine. And they soon found a buyer who was a former child actor named Skylar Deleon. Skylar supposedly worked on the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. And Tom and Jackie are very excited because Skylar didn’t even haggle about the price. I think it was $495,000. And they’re making arrangements to move their stuff off the boat and pack it up and head back to Arizona. And then Tom and Jackie disappear.

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Matt: So now Tom’s brother named Jim Hawks, who was the retired chief of police from Carlsbad Police Department, which is about an hour south of Newport. And Jim Hawks goes up looking for his brother because he was supposed to help move. And he gets to the yacht and the yacht is a mess. And Tom and Jackie were meticulous. There’s like a towel hanging out of the porthole. And this is like just a few days after the last time they talked Tom and Jackie.

Jim leaves his business card and he gets a call back from a woman named Jennifer Deleon. So, Skylar Deleon’s wife, who says, basically, look, we are purchasing the boat. And we haven’t heard from Tom and Jackie either. We bought the boat from them. And when you talk to them, can you please tell them that they’re supposed to teach us how to use the engine properly and how to properly operate the boat.

So, the police go on the boat and we do a complete forensic workup and we find nothing. There’s no blood, there’s nothing broken, there’s no sign of a struggle. They do find a receipt though, to a Target where somebody had purchased trash bags, bleach wipes, which is significant, and Tums. They take the receipt and they’re able to trace it back to a Target store. And a lot of people don’t know this, but Target actually records all their transactions. So, the guy paid with a credit card and it’s some dude and his name is Steve Henderson. Turns out it’s Jennifer’s dad and he’s like a skilled blue-collar worker.

And Steve’s initially cooperative and he says, “Look, Skylar and Jennifer bought this boat.” And they’re volunteering at a church down the street.

So, the police, they roll over and there’s Jennifer and Skylar and they separate them. And Jennifer and Skylar tell virtually identical stories. They said that they went down to the boat and they engaged in these negotiations and that they purchased the boat and they paid for the boat in cash. And the kicker that they threw in was they’ve got all the documents indicating that the boat had been lawfully purchased by them.

So, Skylar and Jennifer producer a bill of sale for the yacht signed by Tom Hawks. There’s Tom Hawks thumbprint on it. And Jackie Hawks also signed the bill of sale documents, but there was one thing wrong with her signature. It almost looked like she wrote Jackie Hawk with no ‘s’. And it looked like somebody had filled in an ‘s’ because the ‘s’ did not match signature exemplars that we had from her bank.

Yeardley: Sounds like this document was notarized, which would account for the thumbprints, correct?

Matt: It was notarized, yes.

Yeardley: And so when I’ve had things notarized, they’re so meticulous and fastidious about every detail being exactly right that there doesn’t seem like there’s any world where a notary would say, “That’s okay, I’m going to add an S. She would have you do it over.” Because the whole point of it being notarized is that everything is locked up tight, right?

Matt: Right. That’s the whole point. So, you have an independent witness to a transaction. That’s the entire legal purpose of a notary. And there’s a notary stamp on it. Her name is Kathleen Harris. So, they track her down. Kathleen’s licensed notary. She does it professionally, never been in trouble a day in her life. And they interview her. Kathleen tells almost the same story that Tom and Jackie went with Skylar and his wife to sign the documents right in front of Kathleen and that they drove out of their parking lot in their red Honda CR-V.

So, the only thing that was weird about it was Kathleen described Jackie as having long, brown, curly hair. And Jackie, when she moved onto the boat, cut her hair short and had spiked blonde hair. So, we’re thinking, is she describing Jennifer, who had long brown hair, but it wasn’t curly? Sometimes recollection can fail people, as you guys know very well, and so it’s just we’ve got this weird ‘s’ and we’ve got a description that doesn’t match, but that’s it, that’s what we had. And later we would send the documents to the FBI, who confirmed all that.

The FBI said Jackie Hawks signed these documents, but the ‘s’ is weird. Everything else about her signature, the FBI said she signed this document. And Tom and Jackie’s fingerprints were both all over the documents. Not just the notary thing, but their actual fingerprints. So, the days are ticking by. This is November 15^th, 2004. So, we’re coming up on the holidays. Thanksgiving is on the way. So, we do a second forensic workup on the boat. And the boat was almost too clean. I don’t think we found any DNA for Tom and Jackie, who’d lived on the boat for two years. But as you guys know, bleach destroys DNA. So, the choice to use bleach wipes to clean this boat maybe it’s innocent or maybe it’s not.

So now we look at Skylar’s background. Now, Skylar, unlike the notary, Skylar had a burglary conviction where he had done time in a local jail. So, a 459, that’s California code for burglary. That can mean, like, walking into a garage as a kid and ripping off a bike, or that can mean something way more sinister. So, we look into that in more detail, and it is weird as can be.

So, Skylar is working at a thing called Ditech Funding. It’s one of these mortgage get cash fast for your second mortgage companies that was booming back in the early 2000s. And Skylar worked for a guy named Ted [unintelligible ]. And he’s our victim of the burglary. Ted comes home one day, and his deadbolt has been locked that he never used. So, he walks down the driveway to call his uncle because his uncle was the only other person that had a key to see if his uncle had been there. And out of the house burst these three men, including Skylar. So, Skylar probably thought Ted was calling the police and decided to run. And Skylar had a backpack with zip ties, loaded firearm, and it looked really bad. But Skylar showed up to court with his pregnant wife, and then the judge in that case decided to give him virtually no time. But Skylar has to do a work furlough program at a local jail in Seal Beach, where basically you check out for the day, and then you check in and you sleep there with the idea that you got a job.

Skylar did not have a job. I don’t know how he convinced the court to do that. The court let him do that. And the jailer, who was one of the jailers responsible for watching Skylar and making sure he was checked in was this guy, Alonso Machain.

Alonso was 19 years old, lived in Pico Rivera. Very unsophisticated guy with his parents still. It’s like his first job out of high school was this city jailer thing. So, Alonso was also interviewed, and Alonso tells the same story as the notary and Skylar and Jennifer, he’s just a lot weirder and sweatier and more nervous, as he tells it.

Yeardley: Are you saying that Alonso met Skylar in prison because Alonso was the guy responsible for making sure that Skylar did what he was supposed to do at 19 years old?

Matt: Yes.

Yeardley: That’s insane. Seems like this most massive conflict of interest. That’s a mess.  

Matt: Right. And it’s super weird. And since we’re on with a bunch of cops, they’re going, this is hanky as hell. I can see Dan, Detective Dave and I know Paul for years. And so, this is where we get into the room realm, which is I think a fascinating part of what we all do, catching bad guys is there’s that gray area between when we know something’s wrong and then what we can prove and not prove. So, as a prosecutor, what do you do with that?

Paul: Well, one of the things I want to point out is you and your investigators are looking into Skylar’s criminal history. And for those that haven’t seen California rap sheets, it is minimal information. It’s an arrest date, it’s a charge. There might be a disposition, but it gives no details as to the particulars of the crime. And so, what they’re just seeing is, like Matt said, They’re seeing 459 PC burglary. In California, it’s entering a dwelling with the intent to commit a felony.

They’re looking at what Skylar had been convicted of or at least arrested for this burglary. They’re entering Ted’s residence and they’ve got zip ties. It sounds like they had the intent to tie up occupants inside this dwelling, possibly abduct occupants. And now Skylar is involved with this case involving a yacht. And you’ve got the owners of the yacht missing. The bells are dinging from an investigative side, even though right now there’s a weird ass, a bad haircut, and something else that Matt was talking about, which on the surface doesn’t seem like much, but when you look history of Skylar, then you’re going, something is not right here.

Matt: Yes, and all of that is exactly right. So, we interview the other two guys who had no criminal history at all. And they say Skylar convinced them to go in saying Ted owed him money, which he didn’t. And Skylar said, “The plan was, all I want you to do is help me restrain him and then you guys can leave and I’ll settle my business with him and blah, blah, blah.”

Yeardley: And this is this person Skylar used to work for?

Matt: Yes. That’s another thing. Of all the stuff in his backpack, which Skylar didn’t have, is he had no disguise, he had no mask. It’s like there’s no way he was going to able to hide his identity from him, which becomes scarier and scarier as the case goes on.

So now we look into Skylar. Skylar had been in the Marine Corps, but he went awol. And turns out Skylar was in fact on the Power Rangers. He was a speaking extra in like three episodes as a little kid. So he was in fact, a child actor. His dad was driving around to auditions, so it’s like he had done it so he could talk the talk. And he had been in the Marine Corps and he had a Special Forces. He had a Marine Corps Force Recon tattoo, which is elite, elite, elite military, but in truth, they gave him like a clerk assignment after he got out of boot camp. He didn’t even finish advanced infantry training before he decided the Marine Corps wasn’t for him and he split.

So, he’s one of these guys that has just enough information that he can tell a good story, but none of it’s real. So, they bring Skylar back down and they interview him again. And then they’re like, “Look, dude, you’ve got some history here.” And Skylar, in his initial interview, he said, “Hey, look, I’m on probation. You guys are going to see that. I’m ready to answer any questions when you get that far.” So, he was open about it and my detectives sit him down for the follow up. And Skylar said, “Look, my dad, if you look at his background, was involved in the cartels in the 1980s. That burg was part of cartel business. And what you don’t know is that I bought the boat as a money laundering scheme to account for this income.”

Now when you’re looking at that Skylar, he’s looking at potential 8-year prison sentence just for the money laundering that he’s just admitted. Nobody does that in interviews. It’s such a crazy story. Maybe it’s true. And then we run his dad, sure enough, his dad did federal time in 1985 for smuggling cocaine up from Mexico. So, it’s like again, just enough truth and then we start postulating alternative theories, like, “Okay, so this is a cash transaction delivered by some courier for a cartel, who’s to say that the cartel didn’t kill Tom and Jackie, right?”

Matt: So, we run their phones. Tom and Jackie’s phones were pinging on a transponder in San Ysidro, which is right on the border of the crossing in Tijuana. At like 3 o’clock in the morning on the night they disappeared, Tom and Jackie’s phones are pinging in Mexico. So now we have an alternative hypothesis of what may have happened to these people based on Skylar’s story. And I’m telling you guys, I mean, I was a DA for 26 years. This interview was one of the most convincing things I have ever seen. Skylar was so smooth. He had an answer for everything. He feigned concern at just the right times.

And they threw in a kicker and his wife actually said this in one of her interviews. Jennifer said, “We’re really worried about them.” But at the same time, and I hate to sound mean here, “They promised us how to operate this boat as a part of our sale and they have not taught my husband how to do that, and I hate I have to sue them. So, when you find them, can you please tell them they need to fulfill their end of the bargain.” So, these are the conversations that my cops are having with them. So, we’re at a dead end. I do not have enough to charge them. It’s super weird, but I don’t have enough.

Yeardley: But you have a hunch that Skylar and Jennifer are blowing smoke up your skirt.

Matt: There’s nothing right about this. Nothing right at all. It doesn’t work. But the problem is I can’t disprove it. All right, so full circle to bad girlfriends and Napa, California. [Yeardley laughs] So, I call Gary in Australia.

Yeardley: And Gary’s the boat captain.

Matt: Gary is the boat captain that I wouldn’t have met if my girlfriend at the time hadn’t made out with the drunken groomsman.

Yeardley: Everything happens for a reason, Matt.

Matt: Everything happens for a reason. And I made this friend, Gary, so I call him in Australia, and the surf season just ended. I’m like, “Hey, here’s the deal.” And I start laying out the facts. Before I can even finish describing it, Gary says, “If you think they’re murdered on the boat, look for missing anchors.” And it was pretty scary. How quickly– And he’s like, “Look, everybody thinks they’re the genius. He goes, if there’s a murder on a boat, they tie them to anchor and throw them overboard.”

Yeardley: Did you just say “They tie them to anchor and throw them overboard?”

Matt: Yes. Over and over again. That’s how they get rid of the body. We go back and staring at us, there should have been two anchors on the bow, and there’s only one.

Yeardley: I never would have thought that there would be two anchors on a boat. I would have thought one would be enough.

Matt: Right. If you’re not in that world, who knew? And I don’t own a boat, and none of my detectives own boats. We had the Orange County Crime Lab and the Newport Beach Forensic Team. So, we had two different teams do forensic workups. None of us knew. Gary was like, “There’s going to be a manifesto. How many anchors on the boat? Count the anchors. If you’re missing one, that’s what your couple is.”

We go back, and it was one of the two bow anchors. Now I’ve got something tangible that I can point to. There’s a missing anchor. So, we hooked Skylar the next day, and we arrested him for the probation violation that he had told us about. And then the whole house of cards starts to fall apart.

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Matt: After we arrest Skylar, we serve a search warrant of the boat. It looks like chaos in there. And when we got in, we found Tom and Jackie’s high eight digital cassette tapes and their computers from their boat. That’s not the type of thing that somebody is going to leave. And we also find an LAPD Interpol liaison business card. Okay, so we call this LAPD detective, and we’re like, “Why is your business card found in the home of our suspect?” He proceeds to tell us that 10 months earlier he had helped the Mexican police out of Ensenada on a completely separate murder of a guy named John Peter Jarvi, who wound up with his throat cut on the side of the road in between Ensenada and Tecate.

The suspect in that was Skylar Deleon. And the chief of police for Ensenada homicide had come up with some of his men and they interviewed Skylar. Turns out Skylar, while he was doing his time for the burglary in Seal Beach jail, convinced another prisoner, John Jarvi, to give him $50,000 cash. And he drove him down to Mexico for some sort of no-lose business thing. And Skylar cut Jarvi’s throat on the side of the road and he came back up with the cash. ‘

So now the person who checked Skylar back into jail was Alonso Machain.

Yeardley: Ah, the 19-year-old.

Matt: Yes. Now once we arrest Skylar, Alonso splits and he runs down to Mexico. So, while this is all going on, while the Hawks are missing, I made what’s called an offer for transactional immunity to Jennifer. Because I’m thinking she’s Skylar’s wife, she’s pregnant, how involved can she really be in this? And transactional immunity for your listeners, there’s two kinds of immunity. There’s use immunity and then there’s transactional immunity. Use immunity means when you give a statement to the police, your statement cannot be used against you get to say anything and you cannot be prosecuted for what you say. They can still prosecute you, but they just can’t use the statement.

Transactional immunity, which is what I offered Jennifer is immunity. And you know, just for your listeners, like if you’re offered transactional immunity, whether you did it or not, you say yes, if you TP the frigging high school gym, confess to everything you’ve ever done wrong because it is like blanket absolution for anything that you talk about during that interview. So, it is never go to jail. Never see a second in custody immunity. It’s immunity, immunity. And Jennifer turns down our immunity offer, tells us to pound sand. She does not want immunity from us.

So now I’ve got our 19-year-old Alonso down in Mexico and I tell his lawyer like, “Look, we’re still in the market here for somebody to tell us what happened. So have your guy come up, turn himself in, we’ll give him an extra night with his parents and we’ll do what we can to protect him from all the powers that be here, but he needs to come clean,” and Alonso did it.

And meanwhile Jennifer starts visiting Skylar in the jail. So, we get a recording where Jennifer is visiting Skylar in the jail and they’re whispering, which isn’t suspicious at all. And it’s one of those things like you see on TV, where the Orange County jail has a glass separation. And they talk on phones, and of course the phones are recorded, but they are whispering. And they’re whispering pretty good because we got almost nothing from their little whisper sessions except for one of them and it was like, [onomatopoeia] remember, no bodies, no murder. So, we get those words from Jennifer and Skylar on the tape.

And then Alonso comes in, and we sit down for about four hours with Alonso at the Newport Beach Police Department, and he proceeds to lay out every single thing that happened on the boat. And basically, what happened was Skylar tells Alonso that Skylar himself is an international hitman and he gets paid millions of dollars to make people disappear. Alonso is a very unsophisticated guy to begin with. And Skylar is singularly the best liar I personally have ever seen in my 32 years in this business.

Yeardley: That’s saying a lot.

Matt: Yes. And Skylar winds up convincing Alonso to go into this scheme to murder this couple who have ripped a bunch of people off, which isn’t true. And Alonso said they went to the boat one day, and Tom is very suspicious of Skylar. Alonso listens to Skylar call Jennifer and say, “You need to come down here and bring Haley, that was their baby. Bring Haley down to put these people at ease.” So, Alonso’s basically saying Jennifer and Skylar used their child as a prop for the specific express purpose of luring Tom and Jackie into a false sense of security. And then Alonso says, once they meet Tom, who’s a bodybuilder and an all American wrestler when he was in college, Skylar needed muscle. So, they reach out and they arrange for a guy named John Fitzgerald Kennedy, that’s his actual name. And this is a guy who’d been suspected of multiple murders in the city of Long Beach. He is a true-blue OG gangster in Long Beach. He’s been to prison before. He’s a big, gnarly guy.

So, Tom and Jackie did a sea trial on their boat where they said, “We’re going to take Skylar out to sea to do—” Basically, it’s a test drive of the boat. Well, Skylar brought Alonso and Kennedy. Skylar introduced Kennedy as his accountant, by the way. Like, “Hey, this is my accountant.” And Tom, you know, he’s a nice man and they got to do a sea trial, and he’s brought his accountant, and I guess it’s not normal.

So Alonso says they go out to sea, and then Skylar and Kennedy get Tom to turn his back, showing him an electrical panel downstairs in the stateroom, they’ve got taser guns. And JFK and Skylar attacked Tom. They taser him. They jump on him. They overpower him. And meanwhile, Alonso overpowered Jackie with a taser. And Tom, he’s not even fighting back because he knows that his wife is in danger. So, the whole time he’s like, “Guys, I’ll give you anything you want, just don’t hurt my wife.” And they basically say, “We’re going to hurt your wife if you don’t sign.” He’s like, “You don’t even have to threaten. Wherever you want me to sign, I will sign. We’re all good here. Just don’t hurt my wife.”

And the first thing she said, Jackie said after being tasered and tackled by Alonso, Jackie yells at Skylar and says, “How could you do this? You brought your wife and baby on the boat. We trusted you.” Skylar promised them, “If you sign, we’re going to let you go. If you sign, we’re going to let you go.” And of course, we’re not going to let them go.

They head out to sea, and Alonso’s job was to watch Tom and Jackie as the boat goes out into the ocean. Tom and Jackie, they’re duct taped and they’re tied up, and they’re laying back-to-back on the bed that they had shared for two wonderful years in the Sea of Cortez. And this gets me up, I’ll try not to choke up as I share this part, because it gets me every time.

So, they’re back-to-back and their hands are touching. Skylar is not letting him go, they know that. Jackie’s begging for her life, saying, “I have to see my grandchild one more time.” And she’s begging, and Tom is stroking her hands, saying, “It’s okay, sweetheart. Where we’re going, we’re going to be together.”

Skylar and JFK take one of the anchors, and the chain is rubbing across the deck. So everywhere in the boat, you can hear this thing getting dragged. And Tom and Jackie are blindfolded. Now they’re face to face. Skylar dragging the chain. Tom can hear him. So, he does like this reverse mule kick. And Tom almost knocks Skylar off the boat. And then after Tom kicked Skylar, John Kennedy came over. And this has to be the most cowardly sucker punch in the history of all sucker punches. Tom Hawks is literally fighting for his wife. And he’s blindfolded, zip tied Tom is bound in every way. And John Fitzgerald Kennedy punches him in the face. And according to Alonso, Tom appeared to go limp. Skylar and JFK attach the ropes that they’d used to tie them up to the anchor. They throw the anchor over, and the chain goes taut, rips Jackie and Tom into the cold November ocean.

The ocean out there is probably 52 degrees, maybe 50 degrees. It’s very, very cold and we never recovered their bodies. We all have that conversation as kids, like, around campfires, like, what’s the worst way to die? Freezing to death or burning to death. That morbid thing that we have as kids. And I think that question has been answered for eternity. And that’s Jackie was crying. How do you cry and hold your breath at the same time? Of all the planning that Skylar and Jennifer did for this, all the meticulous time they spent putting it together, there was absolutely zero consideration for the suffering of Tom and Jackie.

Yeardley: Oh, God.

Matt: So, Tom and Jackie Hawks disappear into the ocean. And according to Alonso, Skylar proceeded to go through their stuff, frisbeeing a lifetime worth of recognitions and awards, photographs. Just getting rid of everything that was of no value to them, like their frisbees off the side of the boat. And JFK popped a beer. Then they steam into the harbor with their bill of sale documents. And their plan was to be like, “Hey, what are you talking about here? We got this bill of sale right here.” And then we find out that among the documents that they got them to sign, there were power of attorney documents granting them access to their bank accounts in Arizona.

As we’re sitting there going through Alonso’s statement, I’ve got some of the best detectives in the world at Newport. I love those guys. And they are in real time, they’re simultaneously checking out this information. So, we’ve got phone records, and we’re going down the metadata on the phone records and right when Alonso says this phone call happens, we have a phone call from Skylar’s cell phone to Jennifer’s in Long Beach. So, like you have this corroboration electronically to exactly what Alonso said happened. Then we get the computer records. And as these bill of sale documents were generated, when you overlap the phone calls, Skylar’s calling Jennifer as he’s generating the documents, and then she calls him back. And then literally as they’re on the phone, he’s making changes to the legal documents while she’s on the phone with them. You can see this conspiracy going down in real time.

And Skylar’s phone, when he picked up John Kennedy, he called Jennifer. When they got to Newport, he called Jennifer. When they got onto the boat, he called Jennifer. And then when you overlap the GPS, because the boat tracked out off the south end of Catalina Island, and they turn around, which has to be where Tom and Jackie were dumped, he called Jennifer. So, Jennifer is completely up to her eyeballs on this thing. And I offered her full immunity, and thank God she turned it down. Jennifer was instrumental in this.

We interviewed Kathleen Harris. I think we interviewed her five times.

Yeardley: Who’s the notary?

Matt: Yeah, that’s the notary. So, Kathleen Harris, the notary, finally came around and said that she never– She wasn’t down there that day when they did the search warrant. This is before we’d arrested anybody besides Skylar. We did a search warrant of a guy named Adam Roerig’s house, also innocent. He’s the one that introduced Skylar to the notary. And behind a wastebasket thing, in between that and the wall was a crumpled up color copy of Tom and Jackie’s driver’s licenses. And Jackie had brown curly hair. So, Kathleen wasn’t describing Jackie based on what she saw in Newport. She was describing her based on what her driver’s license photo looked like.

Yeardley: And why do you think Kathleen lied about everything? Did Skylar just bribe her?

Matt: Yes, exactly. So, we wound up trying every one of these things separately. I charged Skylar with the murder of Tom and Jackie and the murder of John Jarvi. I charged Jennifer with first-degree murder of Tom and Jackie with the special circumstance of financial gain.

Yeardley: And did Kennedy get the same charge as Skylar and Jennifer?

Matt: Yes, Jennifer was first. Then we did Skylar and then John Fitzgerald Kennedy. We give immunity to Kathleen Harris as she would testify. Then we flipped Alonso. So, Alonso was never going to be tried.

Yeardley: Was he still charged?

Matt: Oh, yeah. But Alonso testified in all three trials, and he understood from his lawyer and from our conversations, like, dude, if you tell one lie, we’re not using you, and you have no hope of any sort of future deal. So, when the defense would get him in a position that would make him look terrible, he’d be like, “I did do that. I did that too.” Let the defense hit him with everything they’ve got because it’s very difficult to cross examine the truth. And I believed Alonso. And so, it’s like, let’s put him to the test and he testified all three times.

Dan: In every trial you encounter, there’s kind of a tipping point where the jury starts really, really tracking and going, “Okay, prosecution’s got a really good case here. And now we’re starting to figure these things out.” And I wonder what that moment was like for all three juries when they hear Alonso start talking about what went down on the boat with Tom and Jackie and how that all played out. And I’m sure you take glances over at the jury and I wonder what those moments are like for you when you experience them.

Matt: You’re absolutely right. There is that tipping point where I think– For a case like that, it’s a collage of evidence, so you’ve got Alonso. There’s going to be an inherent desire not to want to believe Alonso, because he was in on this. You know, the defense is going to go after him super hard. So, I let him tell his story, but I would repeatedly come back say, but “Hey, you don’t have to believe him. We’ve got the phone records. Forget his testimony. Here’s all the reasons why we know it’s true.” The metadata on Skylar’s laptop where he’s changing the bill of sale documents and then he calls Jennifer. So, they would call somebody like Alonso. The term you would hear would be, “Oh, the star witness.” I never believed in star witnesses. Like the star witness or the computer data, that’s what I’ll ask him to convict on.

[]

[Break 3]

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Matt: So now Jennifer went first. We did not seek death on her. We only sought life in prison. Her lawyer’s guy named Mike Molfetta. His whole defense, of course, was “This is all Skylar. She was intimidated by him.” And he gave a very powerful closing argument. “Where’s the smoking gun? Where’s the smoking gun that my client was anything other than scared to death from her psychopath husband.” But we found the video of Jennifer and Skylar entering the bank in Arizona. And they went in together and we got it enhanced. And Jennifer Deleon is standing there next to Skylar with the biggest cat-ate-the-canary grin on her face. And so, I just, in my rebuttal, I’m like, “Everybody want to see a smoking gun? Here you go. Picture says a thousand words.” And I zoomed right in on her happy little mug. “Ladies and gentlemen, Jury call. Is that a woman that’s in fear for her life because of the man standing next to her? Or is that the face of a woman who’s about to solve all of her financial problems forever?”

They convicted Jennifer hard and fast. And then we did seek death for Skylar and JFK. I sat on our committee for over 15 years to determine which cases we recommended to the DA. We sought death in less than 4% of special circumstance murders, which is only a fraction of all murders. So, the cases that we would seek the death penalty for during those years is less than 1% of all homicides. And it’s only the absolute worst of the worst. This case was so horrific and there were so many people affected by it that we thought it was merited.

And Skylar, he had a really good defense lawyer, too, Gary Pohlson. Part of the defense was saying Skylar killed Tom and Jackie to get money to get gender reassignment surgery. I’ll say it. I’m as apolitical as I can be. This is not a political statement. But the problem is Skylar had the money that he got from this other murder. 50 grand in cash that he got from John Jarvi. And this is 10 months before the murder of Tom and Jackie.

Back then, early 2000s, it cost about 27,000 out of pocket to have the best surgeon in America who lived in Colorado perform one of those surgeries. $27,000 out of pocket, and he had 50 grand in cash. You need roughly half of that. And in less than 48 hours, he and his wife blew it on the most frivolous nonsense. Anybody who believes Skylar is being manipulated.

Yeardley: Wow.

Dave: I will say the notary issue with the weird ‘s’ on Hawks. Jackie’s trying to let people know this isn’t a legit transaction. It’s like when you cross your fingers, I’m under duress. It’s a subtle way for her to leave a clue. I think she was forward thinking with that. Clearly, that was her kind of raising a big red flag. And kudos to her.

Matt: Yeah. And the way I got to argue that in all three trials was, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let’s think about that moment for a second. This is a woman who knows she’s going to die. These people, they’ve overpowered them. She’s never been more terrified in her life. They’re out to sea. This is all bad. And she’s sending a signal into the future. And what is the purpose of that? It’s not just to let people know that something’s wrong. It’s that to make sure that justice is done. And she knows that she’s doing that, she’s not going to be around herself, and so she’s asking for justice, so who is she talking to? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the police can investigate and I can present the case, the judge can preside, but the only people that can actually bring about justice, well, that’s you. So, who is Jackie Hawks talking to, ladies and gentlemen? She was talking to you.” So, they came back death on Skylar. The third to go was John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Yeardley: John Fitzgerald denied being there.

Matt: Yes, he denied being there. That’s a problem when his cell phone pinged off the liquor store in Newport right next to the mooring of the boat when they got back in. So that’s problem number one. Problem number two is Alonso of course identified him, but Alonso only knew him for that period of time. And this is a quirk that I’m sure all of you guys have encountered at one point or other. It’s a weird thing about human memory. We tend, for whatever reason not to be great about facial hair. And John Fitzgerald Kennedy had a goatee that he was beginning to braid. There’s no question he had it and Alonso just didn’t remember it. And I watched a buddy of mine give a closing when were in misdemeanor court a million years ago. His name is Larry Yellen, he’s now a superior court judge. And I completely stole this from him.

So, he had the same issue on a misdemeanor case where somebody just did not remember that the guy had facial hair. And Larry stood up and this is what I did. I had PowerPoint. And it’s like, “Hey, ladies and gentlemen, who knows who this is?” And you put up the picture of Michael Jordan flying through the air, it’s just a silhouette, doing the Air Jordan commercial. We’ve all seen him 100 million fricking times. And then you ask the jury, “Does Michael Jordan have facial hair? Take a second, ladies and gentlemen, just close your eyes and think about it. Does Michael Jordan have facial hair? Maybe half people say yes, maybe half will say no. You’ve all seen him. You know who he is. Like the fact that you can’t remember right now, does that mean that you’ve never seen Michael Jordan?” As I’m making that argument, I can see one of the jurors and he mouths, that’s brilliant.

[laughter]

Matt: Zero percent, my brilliance. It was all Larry Yellen. So, I got to give Larry like all credit for that one. And turns out Michael Jordan’s had a mustache ever since his days in North Carolina. Yeah, Michael Jordan’s got a mustache. And just because you didn’t instantly recognize it doesn’t mean you’ve never seen Michael Jordan. It doesn’t Mean that Alonso never saw John Kennedy.

Yeardley: That is so brilliant.

Matt: They came back. Death on him.

Yeardley: Death on JFK.

Matt: Death on JFK. So, it was a clean sweep. We caught everybody involved in that. So, Alonso got 20 years. Jennifer got two consecutive life without possibility of parole sentences. One for Jackie, one for Tom. Skylar got death. Kennedy got death. That’s that case.

Yeardley: Wow, that is a monster of a case.

Paul: Again, I think that was a great job that you guys did on this case. You did a great job in the prosecution. You did a great job just now relaying the story and the evil behind the people that actually committed these crimes. So great job, and I look forward to the next time we can hang out.

Matt: Love it.

Dan: Yeah, I kind of feel like Paul really wants a shot at that boat.

[laughter]

Yeardley: You actually make me want to have jury duty. If you were still trying the case, Matt, I would take jury duty all day.

Matt: Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Dan: Really good work. I’ve seen this case profiled on like a Dateline or one of those shows before, but to hear it from your perspective in a little more detail, it’s really fascinating. And you guys did a wonderful job.

Matt: Yeah, thanks. And I do a whole chapter on this in the Book of Murder, my book, where I go into a little more detail about my bad decisions and relationships that led me to meeting Gary Burns.

[laughter]

Matt: [2] It might be entertaining for some of your listeners.

Yeardley: Actually, let’s do a formal plug for that great book. It’s called the Book of Murder.

Matt: Yeah. The Book of Murder: A Prosecutor’s Journey Through Love and Death. Came out September 17th of 2024.

Yeardley: And you can get it everywhere?

Matt: Yeah, it’s basically, it sort of follows my path through the homicide unit. I talk about a dozen of my bigger cases. It’s like part memoir, part instruction man to prosecute cases. A lot of crazy behind the scenes stories on what really happens on these murder investigations.

Yeardley: Amazing. I love it. I love that you and Paul both basically have memoirs that circle around your really extraordinary careers. It’s really wonderful for the rest of us. I don’t know if you have, like, a vulnerability hangover after it came out, but I’m excited for it.

[music]

Matt: Well, once Paul wrote his, I had to write mine.

Yeardley: Sure.

[Laughter]

Yeardley: Not to be outdone. Thank you so much.

Matt: Thank you.

Yeardley: Small Town Dicks was created by detectives Dan and Dave. The podcast is produced by Jessica Halstead and me, Yeardley Smith. Our senior editor is Soren Begin and our editors are Christina Bracamontes and Erin Phelps.

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[music]

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Small Town Dicks is an Audio 99 production. Small town Fam, thanks for listening. Nobody is better than you.

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