well deserved yacht sold

The Final Voyage: Retired California couple chained to anchor, thrown off their own yacht

04/30/2018 5:44 pm pdt.

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A headline-dominating murder mystery in California. A brutal crime filled with so much greed, deception and pure evil that it will continue to be talked about for years to come.

Thomas and Jackie Hawks were living the life they always dreamed of: sailing the Pacific Ocean for nearly two years on a yacht appropriately named Well Deserved .

"The best example one could ever hope for of how couples should treat each other," said Carter Ford, a friend of the Hawks. "They were just totally devoted."

The loving couple had worked hard their entire lives, Tom as a probation officer and Jackie as a stepmom to Tom's two sons. And when they retired, they bought their dream boat, the Well Deserved , a 55-foot yacht. Life couldn't have been better on board.

"They personally were precious people to talk with," said friend Judy Weightman.

Weightman and Ford moored their boats near the Hawks in the same upscale harbor in ritzy Newport Beach, California.

"They lived on the boat better than most people can live in a house," said Ford.

The Hawks cruised the most exotic ports of call from California to the Mexican Riviera. Little did Tom and Jackie know they would soon be headed into troubled waters and a dangerous transition they never saw coming.

After two years of endless vacations, Tom and Jackie's dream is suddenly interrupted in the most wonderful way.

"They had a new grandbaby in Arizona," said author Caitlin Rother.

Crime writer Caitlin Rother says Tom and Jackie decided to embark on a new journey.

"They wanted to get back to Arizona and spend time with this little boy," said Rother.

Tom and Jackie put their beloved Well Deserved up for sale. Instead of paying a hefty commission to a boat broker, they were going to sell the yacht themselves.

"For Tom and Jackie the savings of that fee was going to be significant with what they were going to have left, so they advertised in boating magazines," said Carter Ford.

The Hawks place a small ad in Yachting World magazine, asking $435,000 for the meticulously maintained Well Deserved.

Now all they needed was a legitimate buyer. And it didn't take long.

"They got interest from a buyer for the Well Deserved ," said Caitlin Rother. "This buyer though was young, 25 years old."

The buyer tells Tom he has cash -- lots of it.

"This guy said he had made money as a child actor and made some money in real estate," said Rother.

Initially Tom, the former probation officer is skeptical. But then the buyer does something that eases both Tom and Jackie's fears.

"He brought his wife, and his wife was pregnant, and she brought their little baby daughter in a stroller and that made Jackie and Tom trust them," said Rother.

The Hawks accept an all-cash offer for their asking price of $435,000, and an additional $15,000 for some personal items. Tom and Jackie celebrate their financial windfall with one last trip on board the Well Deserved .

But before the deal is officially sealed, the buyer calls with one more request: a sea trial to inspect the hull and to test the motors.

"The idea is to take the boat out on a sea trial and then they're going to come back and finish the deal," said Rother.

Tom and Jackie expect the buyer and his wife to show up. But this time he has a different crew.

"The buyer comes with a young guy, skinny guy and a much bigger guy, who he says is his accountant," said Rother.

The Hawks are a little suspicious, but agree, and cautiously navigate their way out of Newport Harbor and into open waters for one final voyage on the Well Deserved .

Carter Ford says he made plans to meet up with the Hawks later that night. But as darkness descended over Newport Harbor, he got a troubling message from Jackie.

"'Hey Carter, we don't know why we're not back at shore yet, we're still out here on the sea trial.' We really don't know what's happening other than the fact that they're telling us that there still sea-trialing the boat," said Ford.

Jackie says they'll let him know when they get back to the harbor. But they never called.

When the sun rises, the Well Deserved is moored back in Newport Harbor, but Tom and Jackie are nowhere to be found.

"When they never turned up, it sends chills up your back, of course," said Ford.

The 55-foot yacht is moored back in Newport Harbor, but the Hawks seemed to have vanished into the ocean air.

"They're not calling their friends, they're not calling their family, they're not answering their cellphones, and you know something's wrong," said author Caitlin Rother.

Rother says Tom and Jackie's SUV was also missing, so initially friends assumed the Hawks took a road trip to celebrate their financial windfall.

But when the Hawks failed to contact anyone for more than a week, the family asks Carter Ford to cruise out to the Well Deserved and dig around a little. And when Ford steps onboard the normally meticulously kept yacht, his heart sinks.

What first alerted you that something was wrong with the boat?

"The way it was left, not only was the boat sloppy, there was a white towel hanging out the port hole on the side," said Ford. "This does not look good."

The family immediately files a missing-persons report.

"When I first got the call, I had one of the detectives, I said 'Head out to the yacht, see what you can see,'" said retired Newport Beach Police Detective David Byington.

Retired Detective Sgt. Byington says the detective smashed the lock on the cabin door and entered with caution.

"There wasn't any signs of violence," said Byington.

They find that white towel and a fresh inkpad wedged between the master bed and a wall. Then something else stops him dead in his tracks: a receipt.

"And on this receipt were bleach, cleaning supplies, heavy-duty trash bags and Tums," said Byington. "Just something in the back of my head said 'Well, if I was going to commit a murder, that would be my 'clean kit.' I'd get bags to destroy evidence, clean up and down with bleach wipes, and maybe my stomach would be upset so I would take some Tums."

Newport Police now want to know who was buying the Well Deserved.

"So the buyers were this young couple, Skylar Deleon, 25 years old, and his wife, Jennifer. Jennifer's pregnant and they have a little baby daughter," said Caitlin Rother.

Skylar Deleon may look familiar: he's a former child actor appearing on the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" TV show. His wife Jennifer, the daughter of Christian evangelical parents, worked as a hairdresser.

"He wanted to get the boat with his wife to live on and charter and so have a business on the boat and take families out fishing," said Rother.

With still no sign of the Hawks, Byington secretly puts a surveillance team on the Deleons.

Undercover officer David Moon tracks them down at a local church, but they aren't there to pray. They're actually cleaning the church.

"We show up at a church and he's volunteering his time there with his wife and baby," said Byington.

"We'd also followed Jennifer, she was a hairdresser, and to her job, and she was just walking in, cutting hair," said Newport Beach Police Officer David Moon. "They looked pretty normal. Just a young couple doing their thing.

"I'm expecting to see, you know, some bad guys that you'd get from Hollywood casting. This wasn't it. This was this husband and wife volunteering their time at a church, cleaning," said Byington.

Skylar Deleon and his wife are regulars at church, but they're not volunteering much to help police find the Hawks.

Detectives uncover that Skylar was on probation after being busted for burglary. And when they dig into their finances, they find the couple is $87,000 in debt, living in Jennifer's parents' garage.

Cops start to wonder where in the world did they get the money to buy the Well Deserved ? It certainly wasn't from Deleon's acting career.

"Skylar Deleon had told people that he had been on 'Mighty Morpin Power Rangers,' but in fact it turned out he had just had two minor non-speaking roles," said Caitlin Rother.

Detective Byington hauls Skylar in for questioning, and in the recorded interrogation, Skylar adamantly maintains they did in fact buy the Well Deserved .

"We spent like 485 on it."

"And that was cash, right? That you paid them that day?"

"I go 'How is it that you have this money that you could buy this yacht?' And he said, he almost dropped his shoulders, and said 'I have to be honest with you, the money I got was from drug sales,'" Byington tells Crime Watch Daily.

Skylar says he gave Tom Hawks a briefcase filled with mostly one hundred dollar bills he'd laundered out of Mexico; he handed over the dirty money, and Tom and Jackie signed over the Well Deserved .

"Did he seem nervous?"

"He was excited but nervous. He was just like 'Let's just close this up.'"

"Was it in the trunk so you're out of view, or was it just on the back of the trunk?"

"We were out of view."

Skylar tells Byington the Hawks then asked him if he would use his connections to help the couple open up a bank account in Mexico so they could buy a house.

"He was saying that him and his wife, they were looking at places in San Carlos."

"Did he say anything specific regarding that? 'Cause that's what we're trying to focus looking for them."

"He just said that they liked the Sea of Cortez."

Skylar takes his story one step further, telling Detective Byington that Tom and Jackie even signed a power of attorney giving him full access to move all of their money to Mexico.

"You're telling me you got these two power of attorneys specifically for that, you didn't embellish it any other way. Nothing like that."

As suspicious as it all sounds, the Deleons produce a power of attorney that looks legitimate.

"They hand them over to the police, they are signed, everything looks OK," said Rother.

"Skylar, you have nothing to do with disappearance, wife doesn't either, nobody in your family, your dad. Nobody, right?"

"Even though the story didn't ring true, my first instincts, when I talked to Skylar, was that I don't see him doing anything," said Byington.

Adding to Skylar Deleon's credibility, cellphone towers show the Hawks' phones were "pinging" near the Mexican border the morning after they sea-trialed the boat with Skylar.

Detectives are back at zero, and they turn to the Hawks family for help.

"The Hawks' son Ryan is a really good-looking individual, so we put him in front of the cameras on national news for a plea to find this car and his parents," said Byington.

Cops get the hit they've been waiting for, and it's across the border.

"We finally got a call from an American citizen down in Mexico who said 'Hey, I'm watching the news right now and you say you're looking for a car and I'm looking at it,'" said Byington. "And sure as hell, here's the Hawks' vehicle sitting there."

Thomas and Jackie Hawks did what thousands of people do: They took out an ad to sell their yacht. Little did they know they were setting themselves up for a trap.

Detectives are staring at Tom and Jackie Hawks' missing SUV. It's spotted outside a house near Ensenada, Mexico.

Is this the break Newport Beach Detective Sgt. David Byington has been waiting for? The Hawks mysteriously disappeared more than a month prior, last seen heading out to sea onboard their yacht.

A Mexican federale takes the lead and knocks on the door. Byington speaks very little Spanish, but even he understands what the man says.

"The gentleman inside the house said the name Skylar Deleon," said Byington.

The same Skylar Deleon who bought the Well Deserved , and he wasn't alone.

"And then I hear the same Mexican gentleman inside say Jennifer's name," said Byington.

The gentleman at the door is an old surfing buddy, and says Skylar gave him the car. After that, Deleon's very pregnant wife Jennifer picked him up and drove him back to the States.

"He swabbed the knobs within the car and end up hitting Skylar's DNA on the heater knob in there, so it turned out to be amazing," said Byington.

Detectives now believe something bad happened to Tom and Jackie on the Well Deserved -- but what?

Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy smells big trouble.

"This case was uniquely diabolical," Murphy tells Crime Watch Daily.

Murphy suspects Skylar and possibly his wife Jennifer are both involved in the Hawks' disappearance, but he needs proof.

So he circles back to that power of attorney. Skylar told detectives the Hawks willingly signed it, hoping Skylar Deleon could help them buy a home in Mexico.

"They had a durable power of attorney, OK. That makes no sense," said Murphy. "That would give this young 22, 23-year-old couple, strangers to them still, access to their bank accounts."

Here's the problem: the notary, a woman named Kathleen Harris, tells cops it's the real deal, claiming she witnessed the Hawks signing the papers and personally took the required fingerprints to make the documents legal.

"She said, 'I was down there, I saw the transaction. I didn't see how much money was in the suitcase,' but she tells the same story essentially that Skylar told. They also had fingerprints all over the documents," said Murphy.

But when cops ask the notary to physically describe Tom and Jackie Hawks, she stumbles.

"She describes Tom to a tee, but she described Jackie as having brown curly hair, which was odd because Jackie, when they moved onto the Well Deserved , she cut her long curly hair and she spiked it and dyed it blonde. So that was one of those things, it didn't quite make sense."

Could the notary just be confused? The fingerprints on the power of attorney are an exact match, and the signatures also appear to be legitimate.

"We send these things off to the FBI and the finest handwriting experts in the world look at it and go, 'That is Tom's signature,'" said Murphy.

The experts also confirm it's Jackie's signature -- but there is something strange.

"Their last name is Hawks with an 's,' OK, and she wrote 'Jackie Hawk,' and somebody else came in later and wrote in an 's' that's inconsistent with her signature," said Murphy.

Murphy believes Jackie may have been secretly trying to alert someone they were in deep trouble.

"She wanted to send a signal to somebody in the future that something here is not right," said Murphy.

And just as Murphy is about turn the spotlight on the Deleons, the D.A. gets tipped off that Skylar is about to scramble like a cockroach looking for cover.

"Suddenly Skylar contacts his probation officer and says 'Can I get permission to leave the country?'" said Caitlin Rother.

So the quick-thinking D.A. comes up with a plan, and it's all caught on audio tape. An arrest warrant is issued for Skylar Deleon for money-laundering. During Skylar's interrogation, he confessed to laundering money from a Mexican drug deal.

As the officer moves in to cuff Skylar, he is reportedly wearing an adult diaper at the time.

"So they arrest Skylar and Jennifer has the gall to start being angry at the police officers, like 'You have some nerve to take my husband away,' and it was just an unbelievable scene," said Rother.

Detectives also head to that converted garage apartment at Jennifer's parents' place, where the two have been living. Cops hit the jackpot.

"They find all of Tom and Jackie's stuff. They find their camera, they find driver's license and other kinds of very personal belongings," said Rother.

And detectives can't help but notice that in Jackie's driver's license, she looks remarkably similar to how the notary described her.

"So that raised suspicions about the notary, and did the notary actually witness these documents being signed or not," said Rother.

Cops are beginning to suspect there are more people involved with the Hawks' disappearance than just the Deleons.

Detectives also stumble across something else in the garage that raises a few eyebrows.

"One of my detectives found a business card from LAPD and the detective was assigned to as a liaison with Interpol," said Byington.

Newport Police contact the Interpol agent, and when detectives reveal they're investigating Skylar's possible involvement in the disappearance of the Hawks, the agent hits them with a jaw-dropper.

"He says 'That's funny because I was talking to him a year ago because we were looking at him for murder of an American citizen in Mexico," said Byington. "I go, 'They killed the Hawks, because this is no way,' you know, this is too much of a coincidence."

But Mexican federales could never link Skylar Deleon to the murder.

"We have no proof he did anything illegal but its stinks on ice," said Byington.

The noose is quickly tightening around Skylar Deleon in the disappearance of Tom and Jackie Hawks. Cops just need to figure out motive and method.

On a hunch, Murphy calls an old boating buddy he met in Indonesia named "Salty Sam."

"I'm like, 'Hey, man. What should we be looking for on a boat if we're trying to figure out if there was a murder committed?' And without skipping a beat, he said 'Look for missing anchors,'" said Matt Murphy.

Investigators go back to the ad the Hawks had placed in that yachting magazine.

"And in every single photo there were two anchors on the bow," said Murphy.

They rush back out to the harbor to check the Well Deserved . And sure enough:

"On the bow of the boat there's only one anchor, and there should have been two," said Murphy.

"Our working theory was 'Hey, they had him sign the paperwork, they shot them, they threw them overboard,'" said retired Newport Beach detective David Byington.

Cops claim Skylar Deleon is actually a master manipulator. Detectives don't believe Deleon ever intended to buy Tom and Jackie Hawks' yacht. Instead, they say, he hatched a twisted plan to steal it by murdering the Hawks in cold blood, then dumping their bodies into the Pacific Ocean.

"Utterly diabolical," said Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy. "He used his kids to get two innocent people to trust him enough that he would go out to sea with them and they'd let their guard down. And that's what happened."

Murphy has Deleon arrested for money-laundering so he can build a case. But it becomes crystal clear Skylar Deleon didn't pull of the elaborate scheme by himself. Authorities believe his pregnant wife Jennifer was his partner in crime who helped him set the trap.

"The entire investigation at that point shifted to her," said Murphy.

Still, Murphy needs solid evidence to prove Jennifer was a willing accomplice. And he finally gets it.

"We actually have video surveillance pictures of them walking up to the teller, and Jennifer's got a grin ear to ear," said Byington. "They came up and said 'We want to get money out for the Hawks, and here's the power of attorney,' and the manager comes over and says 'I know the Hawks and I'm not giving you a dime until we verify this.'"

"Physically, she wasn't on that boat, she was absolutely on that boat in every other way. She's cheerleading the whole time," said Matt Murphy.

It was all the proof Murphy needed to charge Jennifer as an accomplice. But instead he makes Deleon's wife an offer he thinks she can't refuse: immunity. All Jennifer has to do is rat out her husband.

"She's probably about seven months' pregnant, at that point, so she told us to pound sand," said Murphy. "Young love prevailed and she said no."

Murphy then goes back to Kathleen Harris, the notary that he suspects lied about witnessing the Hawks sign the power of attorney documents. But Harris doesn't flinch either.

"Everybody stuck to the same story. So we had to see if there was somebody that would tell us the truth," said Murphy.

And there in black and white is the mistake that will sink the Deleon's story, a name staring prosecutors right the face: A signature on that power of attorney of a man who witnessed the deal going down, Alonso Machain.

"So Alonso was 19 years old at the time, living with his parents, and he's working at the Seal Beach city jail," said Murphy.

Machain worked as a jail guard, and he'd befriended Deleon when he was serving time for burglary.

"They develop this weird sort of friendship. And I mean he wraps Alonso around his finger and gets Alonso to go with him for all these meetings with Tom and Jackie Hawks," said Murphy.

But when cops try to haul Machain in for questioning, he flees to Mexico. Again, Murphy offers up a deal. He can't give Machain complete immunity, but if he returns and tells his side of the story, Murphy will take the death penalty off the table.

"He decided at that point to do the right thing," said Murphy.

Detectives turn on a tape recorder and Alsono Machain tells his story.

"Skylar approaches me with this plan he has. He was going to do something that was going to make some money. So he offers me to help him."

Machain tells detectives there was another man in Deleon's crew that day. Deleon introduced him to the Hawks as his accountant. But he was actually a notorious gang-banger and a convicted killer named John F. Kennedy.

"He'd been to prison before, he was an original founding member of a gang called the Long Beach Insane Crips," said Matt Murphy.

Machain says before he, Deleon and Kennedy board the Well Deserved , Deleon gives them strict orders.

"The plan is that we were supposed to kidnap them and take them out to sea and toss them overboard."

"And how was he planning to do that?"

"Tasers. He thought of Tasers."

Machain says once out to sea, they set their plan in motion. Kennedy pretends to be seasick and goes down below into the cabin.

"Mr. Hawks becomes concerned because John F. Kennedy is not returning, so he goes down, Skylar follows Mr. Hawks down to the lower area and that's when he gets ambushed," said David Byington.

Up on deck, Jackie Hawks hears the commotion.

"She says 'What's going on,' and that's when they were actually holding him down. Then that's when I realized that I had to, you know, hold her."

"Alonso at that point produces a Taser and tasers her," said Murphy.

"I was able to cuff Mrs. Hawks. At this time I walked her down to the bedroom area where Skylar told me to go get some tape from the engine room. He got the tape and he told me to tape their eyes, tape their mouth."

"Jackie Hawks is crying and screaming through the piece of cloth over her mouth, and Alonso says the only thing he can see is Mr. Hawks stroking her hand with his fingers, the handcuffed hands, trying to calm her down, and rightly so, because I know Tom Hawks knows what's going to happen," said Byington.

"They had them one by one go up to the kitchen area where she was first. They had her sign a power of attorney."

"Skylar told them 'I'm going to let you go if you cooperate. If you don't we're going to kill you here,'" said Byington.

Alonso Machain says Deleon then heads to the cockpit and punches coordinates into the GPS to steer straight toward the deepest part of the ocean near Catalina Island.

Jackie and Tom, still cuffed and blindfolded, are led to the deck of the boat.

"Got some rope, got up to the back, tied them together."

Then a sound pierces through the ocean waves, a sound Tom and Jackie have heard hundreds of times.

"At that point Skylar disconnects one of the anchors from the bow of the boat and he drags the chain, so they're inside a fiberglass boat and he's dragging the chain to the back," said Murphy.

"He knows that sound," said Byington. "You don't need vision to know that, 'cause they're blindfolded. That chain's coming down the side."

"And she's begging for her life and she's saying 'I have to see my grandchild one more time. I have to see my grandchild again. I'm too young to die,'" said Murphy. "And Tom was stroking her hand, saying 'It's OK, we're going to be together.' So at that point they know what's going to happen. They're going overboard."

"I didn't believe what I was looking at, just pushed them."

The brand new grandparents were still alive when the 50-pound anchor plummeted to the bottom of the sea, dragging the helpless couple 3,600 feet straight down.

Alonso Machain witnessed the inhumanity, and unbearable cruelty of Skylar Deleon, the twisted mastermind behind the murders.

"Skylar picked up this massive anchor and threw it over the side of the boat, and they have the most horrific death I can imagine, and their bodies were never recovered," said retired detective David Byington.

Machain, who helped Deleon kidnap the Hawks, is now a witness against him, telling investigators after Deleon threw the Hawks overboard, he started getting rid of any sign of the Hawks.

"He collected all of Tom and Jackie's personal photographs and tossed them overboard like they were Frisbees," said Matt Murphy. "Skylar had no remorse at all. Skylar Deleon is a complete psychopath."

Once Deleon got rid of the evidence, Machain tells investigators, Deleon and John Kennedy kicked back and started fishing on the way back to harbor in Newport Beach, California.

"How was Skylar acting maybe while this was happening?"

"He was calm, like it was the most normal thing."

Skylar Deleon, John Kennedy and Alonso Machain are all charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Days later, Jennifer Deleon is still standing by her man, telling a Los Angeles television station her husband is absolutely innocent.

Cops say not only is Skylar guilty, but Jennifer is too. Prosecutors charge Jennifer with two counts of murder, claiming she helped carry out the murders from the shore. The motive clear and simple: the Deleons wanted money.

"She's a witch. She knew that they had no money, and yet she's going out to meet the people that are selling Skylar this yacht, and she's bringing her child," said Byington. "She might as well have tied the anchor to those people and thrown them over too."

Separate juries hear each case, but they all come back with the same verdict: guilty.

Jennifer Deleon is sentenced to life in prison.

Alonso Machain is given leniency and sentenced to 20 years.

John F. Kennedy is sentenced to death for the double murder.

Before Skylar Deleon's trial even begins, he's hit with a third murder rap.

"He not only murdered the Hawks, but he murdered, slit the throat of another American in Mexico a year earlier," said Byington.

Cops say Deleon slit the throat of a man named Jon Jarvi after luring him with a promise of turning an investment of $50,000 into more cash. Prosecutors say there was no deal; the motive for the murder was all for fun.

"They purchased a new car because they wanted something to tool their little brood around in," said Matt Murphy. "And then he made a bunch of internet purchases including a $658 piston-driven sex toy."

Nearly five years after the Hawks were murdered, Skylar Deleon faces trial. He was found guilty and sentenced to death.

"There was another motive, and it was a primary motive, and that was that Skylar Deleon wanted to get gender-reassignment surgery," said crime author Caitlin Rother.

Rother, who wrote the book about the Hawks' grisly murders, titled Dead Reckoning , says Deleon desperately needed $17,000 to pay for surgery to transition.

"He had already put down a $500 deposit on this surgery and had one scheduled for two weeks after the Hawks were murdered, but they didn't have the money," said Rother.

Rother knows Skylar Deleon as well as anyone. She started visiting him in prison while researching her book.

"All Skylar wanted to talk was how he wanted to get rid of his penis," said Rother.

But with no money and thinking there was no chance of making the transition while sitting in a cell, Rother says Skylar made a desperate attempt.

"He tried to cut his penis off in jail with a razor," said Rother.

But now the state of California is paying for Skylar Deleon to transition to a woman. Deleon is currently sitting in the psych ward on death row at San Quentin.

"And Skylar is now living as a woman and wants to be called 'she,'" said Rother.

"It's ridiculous," said Byington. "There are legitimate people out there with transgender issues that work their tails off their whole life, if they are lucky enough to get a surgery. Skylar doesn't deserve that right. Skylar doesn't get to kill people and then get rewarded, and that's kind of the way it feels."

Skylar Deleon and his wife have since divorced while behind bars. Deleon continues to maintain he had nothing to do with the Hawks' deaths and has appealed his conviction.

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Tom and Jackie Hawks Killed in Yacht Murder By "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" Actor and His Wife

Skylar Deleon, who appeared on  Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,  tied Tom and Jackie Hawks to the anchor of their yacht and then threw them overboard with the help of his pregnant wife.

Thomas and Jackie Hawks christened their yacht “Well Deserved.” It was a fitting name for a happy and successful seafaring couple whose hard work enabled them to retire early and realize their dream lives in Newport Beach, California.

How to Watch

Watch The Real Murders of Orange County on Peacock and catch up on the Oxygen App.

But in 2004, the dream turned into a nightmare. They were murdered in what Caitlin Rother — the  author of Dead Reckoning and former San Diego Union-Tribune reporter —  described as the “most unbelievably horrible” way to Oxygen’ s The Real Murders of Orange County ,  streaming now   on Oxygen.com .

RELATED:  19-Year-Old Ashton Sachs Shoots And Kills Parents In "Brutal Crime" Before Sobbing At Their Funeral

After spending years traveling and living on their 65-foot-boat, Tom Hawks, a 57-year-old bodybuilder and former probation officer with two sons from a previous marriage, and his wife, Jackie, 47, were ready to leave the California coast and get their land legs back. 

Destination: Arizona, where they’d wed in a joyous Hawaiian-themed ceremony years before and now had their first grandchild. In mid-November 2004, they put Well Deserved up for sale and appeared to have found buyers.

But around that time, the Hawkses vanished. They didn’t return calls. Their bank account went untouched , the San Diego Union Tribune reported at the time.

Family and friends wondered if the Hawkses had possibly taken an impromptu voyage as a celebratory last hurrah, but it soon became clear something was amiss. Jim Hawks, a former police chief in nearby Carlsbad and Tom’s older brother, called authorities, according to the outlet . Officers from Carlsbad and Newport Beach police departments got busy on the missing persons case. 

The search began at the couple’s boat, and the discovery of what could have been a bloody partial fingerprint on the Hawks’ yacht gave authorities probable cause to enter the vessel and search for clues. 

No clear evidence emerged, however. Crime Scene Investigation analysis revealed that the suspected partial bloody fingerprint was actually rust. 

How did former  Mighty Morphin Power Rangers  actor Skylar Deleon become a suspect in the yacht murders?

Detectives then turned to Skylar Deleon, 25, and his wife, Jennifer Deleon, 23, who were listed as the buyers of the boat, Well Deserved. Skylar was a former child actor who appeared in the TV series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers  and dabbled in real estate. Jennifer was pregnant with their second child.

Detectives interviewed the couple in Long Beach, where they lived with Jennifer’s parents. They told authorities that they had paid cash — a whopping three quarters of a million dollars — for the yacht. The money had been saved from Skylar’s acting days, they claimed.

Authorities expressed doubts to Skylar about his story, and they were shocked when Deleon admitted that he was actually flush with cash because he was involved in large-scale drug sales — a felony. 

RELATED: Retired Marine's O.C. Murder Traced To His Ex-Girlfriend and Her Two Accomplices

“He admitted to money laundering,” investigators told producers. However, they decided to table this revelation to focus on the missing persons case.

Three weeks after the Hawkses disappeared, there was suspicious activity on their bank accounts. The people trying to access the money were the Deleons. 

This break in the case became doubly alarming. Investigators learned that Skylar was on probation for armed robbery. Moreover, documents showed that the Hawkses had given durable power of attorney to Skylar, which defied logic. 

Skylar, meanwhile, claimed the Hawkses signed over an all-access pass to their money because he was helping them secure a vacation home in Mexico.  

Careful scrutiny, though, raised a red flag: Jackie’s surname appeared to have been signed as Hawk, not Hawks. Did someone else add the “s”? Was it a subtle signal that Jackie signed under duress? 

Despite their suspicions, the document seemed to be above reproach. It bore the name of a witness — Alonso Machain, a friend of the Deleons — and a notary, Kathleen Harris. When questioned separately, their stories confirmed the transaction was legitimate. 

By mid-December, authorities “were desperate to find” the Hawkses, retired Newport Beach Police Department Det. Sgt. David Byington told producers. 

RELATED: "His Throat Was Cut On Both Sides": 24-Year-Old O.C. Man Murdered "With Sincere Hate"

After fliers and bulletins were distributed with information about the missing couple’s car, the vehicle was found across the border. 

Detectives recovered the missing couple’s Honda CR-V in Ensenada, Mexico, the Union-Tribune reported in 2004. The person who had the car said it had been a gift from the Deleons. 

“My heart stopped right there,” Byington told producers.

Inspecting the car for evidence became an urgent priority. Skylar had insisted during police interviews that he’d never been in the Hawks’ car. DNA evidence could prove otherwise. 

While awaiting that proof, detectives learned from Skylar’s probation office that the former child actor requested permission to leave the country for work.

Investigators needed to arrest Deleon, and luckily, they had a reason to in their back pocket: his admission of money laundering. They arrested Skylar at his Long Beach residence. Searching the premises, police found personal papers, IDs, videotapes, and a laptop that all belonged to Tom and Jackie Hawks. 

“Any hope the Hawkses were alive died right there,” Byington told producers.

Meanwhile, Deleon’s DNA turned up on a dashboard knob of the Hawks’ car. 

It was potentially a game-changer, but there was still a high hurdle, according to Newport Beach retired Det. Sgt. Mario Montero. “It’s hard to have a murder case when you don’t have any bodies,” he told producers.

There was more digging to do. Detectives re-interviewed Harris, who initially swore she saw Thomas and Jackie Hawks sign a document giving their power of attorney to Skylar Deleon.  Harris eventually admitted that she never laid eyes on Tom and Jackie Hawks. Motivated by making some extra money, Harris had backdated the documents to Nov. 15, 2004, at the Deleons’ request. 

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Investigators then set their sights on Machain, who, they discovered, was in Mexico to elude arrest. Investigators believed that he was the only avenue to find out what happened to the Hawkses, so they took the death penalty off the table and Machain returned to California. 

The Yacht Murders

In early 2005 he related the details of the murder: Machain said he was present when the Hawkses were lured out to sea, forced to sign legal documents, and then tossed overboard chained to an anchor.  

Skylar had sought help from a Long Beach gang member named John F. Kennedy to help physically subdue the burly Tom Hawks. He passed Kennedy off as part of his business team. The presence of Jennifer Deleon, a mom with a baby on the way, helped convince the victims there was nothing to fear.

“She’s as evil as anybody on that boat,” Byington told producers.

How did Tom and Jackie Hawks die?

Tom and Jackie Hawks “were pulled down 3,500 feet to the bottom of the ocean,” said former San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Caitlin Rother. “They were drowned alive.”

Alonso Machain was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the heinous crime. Jennifer Deleon was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole . John Fitzgerald Kennedy was sentenced to death for his part in the murder of Thomas and Jackie Hawks. 

What happened to Skylar Deleon?

Convicted murderer Deleon was sentenced to die by lethal injection . However, because of California’s moratorium on the death penalty, the ringleader in the deaths of Tom and Jackie Hawks will live out his days on Death Row.

Where to Watch  The Real Murders of Orange County

You can watch The Real Murders of Orange County on the  Oxygen app . The first two seasons are also available on  Peacock .

Originally published Nov 15, 2020.

The Real Murders of Orange County

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Thomas and Jackie Hawks Murders: How Did They Die? Who Killed Them?

When a pair of the adventure-loving couple went missing for several days, it raised the alarm with friends and family members who were expecting to see them soon. Thomas and Jackie’s closest acquaintances were worried that something bad had happened to them. They turned to the police for help. What the police found subsequently will go down as one of the most brutal and spine-chilling crimes in American criminal history. The crime has been covered by several true-crime features and podcasts, including ABC’s ‘20/20’ under the episode titled ‘Overboard.’ The harrowing details of the crime have left us shocked and wanting to know more. We indulged in a little investigation of our own to find out more about this crime.

How Did Thomas and Jackie Hawks Die?

57-year-old Thomas Hawks and his 47-year-old wife, Jackie Hawks, were living the dream retired life. Thomas and Jackie were described as a very happy, healthy, and athletic couple who had worked hard all their life to fulfill their early retirement aspirations, living on adventures and whims of traveling. Tom worked as a Yavapai County deputy probation officer in Arizona, and his wife, Jackie, was stepmother to his two sons from a previous marriage. Shortly before commencing his retirement from his job, in August 2001, the Hawks couple sold their house and shifted to a yacht, referred to as their dreamboat. The yacht moored in Long Beach, named “Well Deserved,” had luxurious interiors with two decks, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a gallery.

Tom indulged himself in renovating the yacht, adding the latest technology and features to the yacht to make it suitable for long voyages. Tom and Jackie were known to be dedicated fitness buffs, with strict gym regimes that the two of them followed religiously. According to his sons, Ryan and Matt, Tom had also made a name for himself in the Arizona arm-wrestling circle. Tom and Jackie met during a chili cookoff and married in 1989. Tom was known for having a passion for boating. Hence, soon after the couple bought “Well Deserved,” they pulled out of Long Beach in 2002 and set sail on an almost two-year-long cruise down the coast of Baja California, around Cabo San Lucas, and into the Sea of Cortez, stopping in Baja and the Mexican mainland.

The Hawks decided to call their cruise to a rather wonderful end when they were blessed with a grandson back in Arizona. The proud and happy grandparents, eager to spend their time with the little boy, put up their adored yacht “Well Deserved” for sale. They decided to sell the yacht themselves rather than heftily commissioning a yacht broker to do so.  The Yacht advertisement in ‘Yachting World Magazine’ asked $435,000 in exchange for the fastidiously maintained “Well Deserved.”

On November 15, 2004, the couple boarded their precious ship to embark on the last trip to Santa Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles, California, to commemorate the yacht’s sale. They had finally found a buyer for “Well Deserved,” and they had informed their family of the upcoming sale, which was to take place within a few days. After this, they disappeared. The yacht was found in its usual spot in Newport Beach by the family the next day. However, the couple’s car and the couple were nowhere to be found.

The family was sure that the person to have last seen the Hawks was the buyer. Jim Hawks, Tom’s brother, also a retired police officer, left his card with his number on the yacht, hoping they would contact him. Before leaving the card, he and the Hawkses’ friend Carter Ford surveyed the yacht to find any signs. They smelled trouble as soon as Ford observed the 11-foot dinghy that ferried Tom and Jackie between the Well Deserved and Balboa Peninsula was tied sloppily to the dock. On the yacht, they noticed similar imperfections that were not characteristic of the Hawkses, for example, a towel hanging out of a porthole. On the next day, a lady called Jennifer Deleon called Jim and told him, she and her husband had paid for the boat in cash.

When there was reportedly no activity on the Hawks’ bank accounts, the family knew that something wasn’t sitting right. It was eventually revealed that Skyler Deleon and her then-wife Jennifer Deleon had entrapped the Hawkses in a heinous plan that led the Hawkses to their death.

A witness to the crime who testified against Skylar Deleon detailed the events leading up to Jackie and Thomas Hawks’ death. The yacht’s buyer had reportedly expressed a willingness to test the yacht before buying it by taking it out to the sea. The Hawkses agreed after Skylar Deleon managed to create a good impression of herself on them by bringing in her former pregnant wife Jennifer Deleon and their daughter. On the day of their last trip onboard “Well Deserved,” the Hawkses received their buyer on the yacht along with two other men, one of whom Skylar had claimed to be her accountant. Once they set sail and were on waters, Jackie and Tom were ambushed by Skylar and her two companions, who became Alonso Machain (who later testified against Skylar) and a notorious gang member John Fitzgerald Kennedy respectively. Skylar managed to make the couple hand over the ownership of their yacht by making them sign attorney papers and promised them mercy if they cooperated, according to Machain’s testimony.

However, the couple was handcuffed with their mouths and eyes shut, covered by duct tape, and then kept under watch for several hours. Alonso Machain was given the responsibility to “baby-sit” them, following which the couple was then tied to an anchor and “yanked” over the yacht and into the Pacific Ocean. Their bodies have not been recovered to this day.

Who Killed Tom and Jackie Hawks?

The primary convicts in the conspiracy and murder of Thomas and Jackie Hawks are Skylar Deleon, her wife Jennifer Deleon, Alonso Machain, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, an Insane Crips Gang member, and Myron Sandora Gardner, also a member of the Insane Crips Gang who had introduced Skylar to Kennedy.

The family filed a missing-persons report approximately two weeks after they went missing. An investigation into the missing couple was fueled by a sudden activity in the couple’s bank accounts, three weeks after their disappearance. The Deleons, who were living out of Jennifer’s parents’ garage in Long Beach at the time, were trying to gain access to the Hawks’ financial resources. The investigators found out more about Skylar, who turned out to be on probation for an armed robbery. Besides, documents suggested that Hawkses had handed him over their power of attorney, which seemed unrealistic.

When the police investigated the interiors of the “Well Deserved,” they came across a receipt from Target dated two days after friends say the couple had taken their prospective buyers on a trial trip. Newport Beach Detective Sgt, Dave Byington said , “If I was going to kill somebody, I’d have my clean kit. And it would be bags to get rid of the evidence, bleach to wipe down the scene, and maybe, if I had a conscience, some Tums to settle my stomach after killing some poor people.” The police then found the SUV the Hawkes owned in Ensenada, Mexico, at a mobile home.

The Mexican authorities got in touch with the homeowner, who said they did not know the Hawkses and that the car was given to him by his friend, Skylar Deleon. In December 2004, Skylar Deleon was arrested on money laundering charges, mostly based on the fact that he had previously told the police that the payment for the yacht to the Hawkses, of about $400,000, had been made in cash. But the investigators kept looking into the Hawkses’ murder. They found the Hawkses’ laptop and their video camera at Deleon’s home. The videocamera which initially had films of the Hawkses’ travel, suddenly cut off to Deleons celebrating Thanksgiving with their family.

Machain had turned himself in, and the police arrested Kennedy later. In 2006, Jennifer Deleon, previously arrested in connection to the murder, was also convicted of the murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks and was later sentenced to two consecutive life imprisonments without the possibility of parole in 2007. Skylar and John Kennedy were sentenced to death in April 2009 and May 2009, respectively. Machain was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2009.

Read More: Where Are Skylar Deleon and Jennifer Deleon Now?

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The Gruesome Yacht Murder Case of Thomas and Jackie Hawks

• Well Deserved

Monday, Nov. 15, 2004, was the perfect day for a cruise. Clear and bright, the temperature was in the mid-70s with winds less than 10 mph. A typical California day.

It was at times such as this that Thomas and Jackie Hawks probably felt twinges of regret for deciding to sell their beloved 55-foot yacht, the Well Deserved . The vessel had been their home for the previous three years as they had cruised the western coast of Mexico, living a life of which most people can only dream. The retired couple had advertised their yacht for sale in a boating magazine, wanting to find owners who would take good care of it.

Skylar and Jennifer Deleon seemed to fit that bill. Young, charming, good looking, with one daughter and another on the way, the Deleons appeared to be the perfect buyers. Skylar identified himself as a former actor and entrepreneur, Jennifer a hairdresser. On a prior visit to see the yacht, Jackie had been won over by the couple's infant daughter and couldn't help talking about how excited she was to see her stepson's new baby.

The deal appeared to be settled; all that remained was a test cruise. Skylar arrived around 3:30 p.m. with two men he introduced as his accountant and a friend, John F. Kennedy and Alonso Machain, respectively. The Well Deserved was docked at Newport Harbor, and the group would sail off the coast of Orange County. Jackie made a cell phone call to a friend at 4:06 p.m. saying "We're out at sea." It was the last anyone would hear from them.

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For Sale: Yacht With Chilling Past

By jonathan lloyd • published june 17, 2009 • updated on june 18, 2009 at 6:06 am.

Tom and Jackie Hawks wanted to sell their yacht -- the Well Deserved -- because they planned to move closer to their newborn grandchild in Arizona.

The 55-foot Lien Hwa trawler has two decks, two staterooms and hand-carved teak interior. The couple put about $50,000 into improvements.

All attractive features for any potential buyer.

But the Well Deserved will forever be associated with what happened on Nov. 15, 2004. That's when  the Hawks were bound, tied to a 60-pound anchor and thrown overboard. Long Beach residents Skylar Deleon , 29, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy , 43, were sentenced to death in the case. Investigators said Deleon, posing as a buyer and Kennedy, posing as an accountant, went aboard the Well Deserved under the guise of taking a test run. In a video posted on the OCRegister.com , detective David Byington explains what happened next. Byington tours the boat and describes the confrontation between the Hawks and their attackers. "I don't like being down here," Byington said while showing the camera crew the bedroom in which the Hawks were bound. "I don't even like being on this boat. I feel like I'm still invading their home. The worst part is they were downstairs for several hours, and they knew they were going to die." The Hawks' dream boat will be for sale next week. The couple intended to spend some of the happiest years of their lives aboard the boat after Tom Hawks retired after 17 years as a probation officer.

They wanted to sell the Well Deserved so they could return to Arizona to live near their newborn grandson. Tom Hawks' sons, both of whom are in their early 30s, were left with the responsibility of maintaining -- and now selling -- the boat. It will be placed on the market next week after it is returned to Newport Harbor, according to the newspaper. Ryan Hawks , one of Tom's sons, said the yacht broker indicated it will be listed for about $229,000. That's about $70,000 less than the Hawks paid in 2002.

Investigators were holding the yacht until the end of the criminal cases.

Yacht from murder for sale

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the ninth in a series of the top stories of each year since 2000. Look for the 2009 story of the year Thursday.

The 55-foot yacht where Thomas and Jackie Hawks met their fate between Newport Beach and Catalina Island is still up for sale at a local yacht brokerage firm.

Yacht broker Jerry Wakefield of Dixon Yachts International in Newport Beach has had serious buyers look at the Well Deserved, a fiberglass Lien Hwa trawler with a hand-carved teak interior, but none have been able to put the funds together to finance the boat.

Because of the bad economy, it’s harder for potential buyers to finance an older boat like the Well Deserved, Wakefield said.

“It’s just about getting the right person in it,” he said.

The Well Deserved was released earlier this year to Thomas Hawks’ sons, Ryan and Matt Hawks, after sitting in a city shipyard for the past four years, a piece of evidence in one of the most publicized murder cases of the past decade.

The sons put the boat up for sale last summer.

Attempts to reach Ryan Hawks, who has acted as a spokesman for the family in the past, were unsuccessful.

“I know it’s been tough for them because it’s pretty much the worst time to sell a yacht in this economy and it’s a notorious boat now,” said Orange County Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Murphy, who prosecuted the case.

The boat is priced at $229,000, a little more than half what the Hawkses were asking for it in 2004, when con man Skylar Deleon convinced the couple he was a successful former child actor with money to burn who wanted to purchase the vessel.

Deleon, 30, who once had a bit part on the television show “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,” was convicted in 2008 of conning the Hawkses into showing him the Well Deserved before he and two other men bound and gagged the couple, lashed them to the anchor and tossed them overboard. Their bodies were never found.

In April, Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank Fasel handed Deleon a death sentence for the Hawkses’ murders and the separate 2003 murder of Anaheim resident Jon Jarvi.

Deleon is incarcerated at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. The men’s prison is reserved for inmates with serious mental or physical health problems.

Citing state and federal privacy laws, officials from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Tuesday that they could not disclose why Deleon was being held at the medical facility instead of San Quentin State Prison, where most death row inmates reside.

Calls to Deleon’s attorney, Gary Pohlson, were not immediately returned.

Deleon’s accomplice, Long Beach Insane Crips gang member John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was also sentenced to death in May.

Deleon’s ex-wife, Jennifer Henderson, was convicted for her role in the Hawks killings in 2007 and sentenced to life without parole. Henderson helped Deleon gain the Hawkses’ trust by visiting the Well Deserved with her infant daughter. She was also pregnant with her and Deleon’s second child at the time of the murders.

Another accomplice, Alonso Machain, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the Hawkses’ deaths as part of a plea agreement. Myron Gardner, who played a tangential role in the murders, was sentenced to a year in jail and given credit for time served.

The fact that Jackie Hawks cried and begged Deleon to spare her life that November night in 2004, while lashed to the anchor of the Well Deserved will always stick with Murphy, he said.

“It was a horrific way to die, crying and begging for her life,” Murphy said. “The lingering thing for me is how do you cry and hold your breath at the same time.”

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Former child actor admits killing couple for yacht

For nearly four years, Ryan and Matt Hawks have felt certain that a former small-time child actor masterminded the vicious murder of their parents, who were tied to the anchor of their yacht and thrown to their deaths in the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island.

The brothers sat in the TODAY studio in New York Friday with the show’s co-host, Meredith Vieira, and looked at photographs of their father, Tom Hawks, and stepmother, Jennifer Hawks, tanned and smiling aboard the “Well Deserved,” the 55-foot yacht they had saved a lifetime to buy.

Two days earlier, the attorney for Skylar Deleon, who once had a non-speaking bit part in “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,” admitted in an Orange County, Calif., courtroom that Deleon was the mastermind of the plot to murder the Hawks and steal their yacht. The admission was made during opening arguments in the trial, which is no longer about whether Deleon did it, but what his sentence should be: death, or life behind bars.

Back to land Tom Hawks had planned for most of his life to retire on a yacht with his second wife, Jackie. A body builder and probation officer, he realized his dream while still in his mid-50s.

After cruising the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez off Mexico for two years, the Hawks had decided to sell their boat to move back to Arizona, where they could be closer to their first grandson. Their sons, Matt and Ryan, looked forward to having them back home and sharing their lives with them.

“They realized there was more to life than this boat and seeing the curve of the earth, and that’s what really made them want to sell the boat and come back and be a part of our lives, and especially part of their grandson’s life,” Ryan Hawks told Vieira.

He last talked to his parents by phone on Nov. 14, 2004, the day they disappeared. “I was flying to Seattle for work,” Ryan Hawks said. “It was on the last voyage of ‘Well Deserved.’ I kind of pushed them off the phone; I was running late for a plane. I just felt bad. I had no idea that was the last time I’d talk to them.”

On that day, Tom, 57, and Jackie, 47, set sail for Catalina Island on a test cruise with Skylar Deleon and two other men, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Alonso Machain. Deleon was a smooth-talking 29-year-old career criminal who bragged about being a former child television star who wanted to buy the boat. In reality, Deleon had had just one non-speaking bit part in 1994 on “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,” and had been in trouble almost ever since. He introduced Kennedy and Machain as his accountants.

Thieves fall out Machain admitted his role in 2005 and is awaiting sentencing. Kennedy is to be tried next year. The fourth member of the plot, Deleon’s former wife, Jennifer Henderson, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder last year and will spend the rest of her life in prison.

According to that confession, after overpowering the Hawks with a stun gun, the conspirators forced them to sign over title to the yacht. Then, duct-taped together and tied to an anchor, they were thrown into the ocean to drown. Their bodies were never recovered.

Now Ryan and Matt Hawks just want to see justice served on Deleon, who, according to his own lawyer, Gary Pohlson, also killed another man in 2003. Deleon committed that murder when he was on work furlough from a sentence he was serving for burglary.

Pohlson told the jury Tuesday that his purpose in admitting Deleon is guilty was to save his client from the death penalty.

Justice at last Matt Hawks said when he heard Pohlson’s statement, “I was kind of relieved in a way, just [at] the thought that they’re admitting guilt. It’s been four years; it’s been a long time. I’m looking forward to this trial, and I’m sure the jurors will make the correct decision.”

Ryan Hawks said it isn’t easy being at the trial and hearing again about the murders. But, he told Vieira, “It’s important to us as a family, because this is the last thing we’ll ever get to do for our parents. And as much as it hurts, we just need to be there and represent them. We’re a true testament to our parents’ parenting, and we feel it’s necessary.”

Matt Hawks said the hardest part for him is thinking about what he and his two children are missing. “It’s just been very difficult,” he said. “I’m raising two beautiful children now. And I don’t have the grandparents so that they can share their lives with them. It’s just very hard not having them around to share the best part of our life, and the best part of our family’s life with them.”

Both brothers said their parents had talked about their plans to sell the yacht and move back home. The parents mentioned that the man who wanted to buy it was a former child star, but neither of the two sons had ever watched “Power Rangers,” so they weren’t especially impressed.

“I was just happy they were selling the boat and coming back to spend a lot more time with [their grandchildren],” Matt Hawks recalled. “They’d be much more grounded with my family. We’d be able to travel out to see them, as I was able to back when I didn’t have children.

“I was looking forward to them coming home.”

Yacht With Chilling Past Up for Sale

By jonathan lloyd • published june 19, 2009 • updated on june 19, 2009 at 6:43 am.

Tom and Jackie Hawks wanted to sell their yacht -- the Well Deserved -- because they planned to move closer to their newborn grandchild in Arizona.

The 55-foot Lien Hwa trawler has two decks, two staterooms and hand-carved teak interior. The couple put about $50,000 into improvements.

All attractive features for any potential buyer.

But the Well Deserved will forever be associated with what happened on Nov. 15, 2004. That's when  the Hawks were bound, tied to a 60-pound anchor and thrown overboard. Long Beach residents Skylar Deleon , 29, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy , 43, were sentenced to death in the case. Investigators said Deleon, posing as a buyer and Kennedy, posing as an accountant, went aboard the Well Deserved under the guise of taking a test run. In a video posted on the OCRegister.com , detective David Byington explains what happened next. Byington tours the boat and describes the confrontation between the Hawks and their attackers. "I don't like being down here," Byington said while showing the camera crew the bedroom in which the Hawks were bound. "I don't even like being on this boat. I feel like I'm still invading their home. The worst part is they were downstairs for several hours, and they knew they were going to die." The Hawks' dream boat will be for sale next week. The couple intended to spend some of the happiest years of their lives aboard the boat after Tom Hawks retired after 17 years as a probation officer.

They wanted to sell the Well Deserved so they could return to Arizona to live near their newborn grandson. Tom Hawks' sons, both of whom are in their early 30s, were left with the responsibility of maintaining -- and now selling -- the boat. It will be placed on the market next week after it is returned to Newport Harbor, according to the newspaper. Ryan Hawks , one of Tom's sons who lives in Carlsbad, said the yacht broker indicated it will be listed for about $229,000. That's about $70,000 less than the Hawks paid in 2002.

Investigators were holding the yacht until the end of the criminal cases.

A receipt from Target, a stolen car in Mexico and a third unsolved murder: Investigation into yacht murder of California couple

Hawks worked for decades toward their dream - then, strangers took it all away.

Tom Hawks, a Vietnam veteran and father of two boys, had a beautiful dream: to retire in his 50s and live on a boat with his wife Jackie. He eventually achieved it after prudently saving and investing his money for decades. But over the course of a week, another couple — complete strangers to the Hawks — took it all away.

After planning for years, Tom and Jackie Hawks eventually bought a 55-foot trawler yacht for about $300,000 and named it the “Well Deserved,” which their tight-knit circle of friends and family agreed was perfectly fitting.

The couple outfitted the vessel with the latest technology and for two years traveled from their Newport Beach mooring along the California coast and to Mexico. Then, when their younger son, Matt, told them he and his wife were going to have a baby, they decided to sell the boat and get a house back on land to be closer to their grandchild.

Watch the full story on "20/20" FRIDAY at 9 p.m. ET

On November 12, 2004, the couple took their last trip to Santa Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles, California, to commemorate their passion project’s imminent sale. By this time, Tom and Jackie Hawks had told family and friends that they’d found a buyer and that the sale was going to take place in the next few days.

“Next thing you know is, no one could get a hold of them,” their son, Ryan Hawks, told “20/20.” “For them just to shut off their cell phones and drop off the face of the earth is...extremely out of character.”

The family found the Well Deserved moored in its usual berth at Newport Beach but the couple and their car — a silver Honda CR-V — were nowhere to be found.

“My uncle knew something was…wrong right away,” said Ryan Hawks, adding that his uncle had noticed the dinghy his parents used to get to their yacht hadn’t been tied properly to the dock and its motor hadn’t been lifted from the water. “My uncle was a hundred percent positive that my dad didn’t leave the boat that way.”

Tom Hawks’ friend Don Trefren also noticed things were out of place on the yacht.

“I noticed that the tarps up above on the deck, on the flying bridge, were all off. All the controls were just kind of peeled back and there was a towel hanging out one of the portholes,” Trefren told “20/20.” “I got a sick feeling in my stomach, you know, just like, just a sick feeling that something wasn't right.”

The receipt from Target

The couple’s tight-knit group of friends and family knew Tom and Jackie Hawks had gone with the prospective purchaser to take the boat out for a test ride. They also knew that the buyer of the boat was likely the last person to have seen them.

Jim Hawks, Tom Hawks’ brother and a retired police officer, left a note on the Well Deserved with his phone number in hopes that the buyer would contact him.

It was Jennifer Deleon who called him back, telling him she and her husband Skylar had paid for the boat with cash in full. Still suspicious, Jim Hawks reached out to Trisha Schutz, a friend of the family who managed the missing couple’s finances while they were traveling.

“Tom and Jackie, if they would have sold that boat, they would have deposited that money into their bank account,” Schutz told “20/20.” “There was no activity on their account. So we knew that something was really wrong. [Jim Hawks] told me that he was gonna contact the police department and file a missing persons report.”

Newport Beach police took on the case once a missing persons report was filed, nearly two weeks after the couple’s disappearance.

“This couple…were in the process of selling, or sold a vessel to this other couple, Skylar and Jennifer Deleon,” Newport Beach Det. Sgt. Dave Byington, now retired, told “20/20.” “Skylar happens to be a convicted felon. He's on probation. I go, ‘Geez… OK, well this doesn't sound good right now.’”

MORE: Yacht Murderer: I 'Never Really Felt Evil'

Skylar Deleon had a troubled childhood. He had been a child actor, with one of his most prominent roles as an extra in the 1990s TV show “Power Rangers.” Later, he met Jennifer online, got married, and had a little girl. He was expecting another child with her at the time that the Hawks went missing.

Jennifer, a hairstylist, was the breadwinner for the family while they lived in a converted garage behind her parents’ home in Long Beach. Given their living situation, the couple did not seem to police like buyers of such an extravagant yacht.

Police searched the Well Deserved, where they found a receipt from Target. The purchase, which was dated two days after the day friends said the Hawks were taking the prospective buyer for a test ride, listed trash bags, bleach and the antacid Tums.

“If I was going to kill somebody, I'd have my clean kit. And it would be bags to get rid of evidence, bleach to wipe down the scene and maybe, if I had a conscience, some Tums to settle my stomach after killing some poor people,” Byington said.

Target was able to provide surveillance photos of the purchaser to police. But investigators, who expected to see Skylar Deleon buying the supplies, were surprised to find Steve Henderson, Jennifer Deleon’s father, in the photos instead.

Police learned Jennifer Deleon sent her father to buy the bleach, Tums and trash bags so the couple could help clean their new boat. Henderson pointed investigators to a nearby church that he said the couple was helping to clean.

“When I see a family volunteering in a church, I was put at ease a little bit with that, thinking, ‘OK, this is going to turn out OK. The Hawks are fine,’” Byington said. “I was talking to Jennifer and basically said, ‘We're looking for the Hawks. The family's very concerned.’ And she said, and she was very genuine, she goes, ‘We're really concerned, too.’”

“Then she goes, ‘We've been trying to reach out to them continually since we bought it.’ She said they have a lot of property, clothes and stuff. ‘We don't know what to do,’” Byington continued. “She was very specific and seemed very genuine in her concern for the Hawks and finding them. Skylar…proceeded to tell me the same thing that Jennifer did.”

Skylar Deleon produced paperwork for the boat’s purchase, complete with signatures, fingerprints and a notary public’s certification.

Much to their surprise, Skylar Deleon openly admitted to police that he used drug money to buy the vessel.

“At this point, I already knew that Skylar was on probation for armed burglary, so he's a felon,” Byington said.

“‘I'm telling you, Sergeant, I want to go straight with my family. I'm a father now. I have another child on the way and I want to do the right thing. So I'm trying to invest this money in a way that I can support them,’”Byington said Deleon told him.

MORE: A Moving Love Story, Drowned by Greed

Deleon told police that on Nov. 15, 2004, he paid the couple for the Well Deserved, presenting them with a briefcase full of cash in the parking lot near the moored yacht. Deleon said that his wife, child, a notary public and a friend from Mexico, Alonso Machain, were also there for the transaction.

“According to Skylar, Tom [Hawks] asked him, ‘Is it all here?’ Skylar kind of giggled at me and said, ‘Yep, it's all there.’ And so they basically said, ‘Here's the keys to the yacht,’” Byington said. “Tom and Jackie drove off in the Honda and Skylar and Jennifer said that was the last time that they saw them.”

The 1998 silver Honda CR-V

Nearly a month after his parents vanished, Ryan Hawks was urged by his uncle to go to the media to ask the public for help after investigators hit a dead end.

A retired couple in San Miguel, Mexico, heard his plea, telling police that they saw the missing couple’s 1998 silver Honda CR-V parked next to a mobile home.

The mobile home’s owner told Mexican authorities he didn’t know Tom or Jackie Hawks, but that the car was given to him from a friend: Skylar Deleon.

“And at that moment…any possibility that the Hawks were still alive died right there, unfortunately,” Byington said.

Caitlin Rother, a consultant for “20/20” on this story and author of “ Dead Reckoning ” about this case, said with the discovery of the car, police “realized that Skylar Deleon and Jennifer, who is also described [by others at the mobile home park], had been down there.”

“They had, now, witnesses who knew them and [the witnesses] said, ‘[The Deleons] gave us this car,’” Rother said.

“Skylar murdered these people,” Byington said he concluded after finding the Hawks’ car. But investigators still didn’t have enough to prove it.

On Dec. 17, 2004, police arrested Skylar Deleon on money laundering charges while they continued investigating him for the murder of the Hawks.

Investigators searched the Deleon’s home, finding the Hawks’ laptop and their video camera, which the Deleons used to document the Thanksgiving that the Hawks never got to spend with their family.

For months after Skylar's arrest, Jennifer Deleon continued to insist on her husband’s innocence in the Hawks’ disappearance, even declining an offer of immunity in exchange for information as to the whereabouts of the Hawks.

A third murder

Newport Police discovered another interesting clue in the Deleon’s home – a business card for Los Angeles Police Department Det. Joe Bahena, who worked as a liaison with Mexican police. They found that Bahena was helping Ensenada State Police investigate the case of Jon Jarvi. Jarvi had been found murdered with his throat cut in Mexico in 2003.

Jarvi met Deleon while the two were serving time at the City of Seal Beach jail, where some inmates were allowed to go out during the day on work release. After Jarvi was freed, he stayed in touch with Deleon, who promised him a big score.

MORE: Tearful Testimony in Yacht Murder Trial

In December 2003, a year before the Hawks’ disappearance, Deleon sold Jarvi on a business proposition to make a large sum of money – Jarvi gave Deleon $50,000 in cash, then accompanied Deleon to Mexico where he was supposed to complete the big score Deleon told him about. Jarvi never returned.

“There never was any deal in Mexico,” Jeff Jarvi, Jon’s brother, told “20/20.” “He took my brother down there with, specifically with the role of murdering him.”

Mexican police questioned the Deleons at the time, but Jarvi’s case remained unsolved until Newport Beach detectives started working the Hawks case.

The dominoes fall

Kathleen Harris, the notary who certified the paperwork for the sale of the Well Deserved, was interviewed by police several times. She repeatedly denied that anything was amiss, until the day she came clean.

“She came in and she said she'd never met Tom and Jackie Hawks. She had nothing to do with the murder,” former Orange County prosecutor Matt Murphy, now an ABC News consultant, said. “She was given documents and paid in cash to backdate the documents. And so she backdated them to Nov. 15, which was the day that they went missing.”

“That was the first domino to fall,” Byington said. “Then we started pressuring everybody else because we knew everybody else had lied to us, too.”

Alonso Machain was the next to reveal his role in the murder. He told police that he first met Skylar Deleon when he was a jailer at the City of Seal Beach jail. Machain admitted he took part in the murders and revealed the full scope of the murder conspiracy to investigators.

Machain said Skylar Deleon convinced him that Deleon was an international hitman and that he needed to take out Tom and Jackie Hawks because they were evil.

Machain told police that on November 15, 2004, he, Skylar Deleon and another accomplice, John Kennedy, set out toward Santa Catalina Island on the Well Deserved with Tom and Jackie Hawks on a “sea trial,” or a test run of the boat.

Machain said Skylar Deleon and Kennedy overpowered Tom Hawks and handcuffed him, while Machain subdued and handcuffed Jackie Hawks. Machain said he, on Deleon’s orders, taped over the couple’s eyes and mouths and tied them together as Deleon navigated the boat toward the deepest point of the sea. Machain said they then tied the couple, handcuffed, to one of the yacht’s anchors – then Deleon threw the anchor overboard and it dragged the couple over the side.

Jennifer was not on the boat during the murders. So it came as a surprise to many when she, too, was arrested, just weeks after giving birth to her second child. Investigators discovered that Skylar and Jennifer spoke by phone numerous times on the day Jon Jarvi was murdered, and again when the Hawks were killed.

“That woman was physically not on the boat during the murders, but she was absolutely on the boat with guidance in spirit,” said Matt Murphy.

Machain testified in three separate trials against Jennifer and Skylar Deleon, as well as Kennedy. In a deal with the prosecution, he pleaded guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 20 years and four months in prison.

In 2006, Jennifer Deleon was convicted of the murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks and later sentenced to two life terms without the possibility of parole. She was charged in connection to Jarvi’s murder, which she denied any involvement in. In a preliminary hearing before her trial for the Hawks’ murders, a judge dismissed that charge.

Nearly two years later, Skylar went to trial for the murder of Tom and Jackie Hawks and Jon Jarvi. He was convicted of all three murders.

John Kennedy was also convicted of the Hawks’ murders, and like Skylar Deleon, sentenced to death. Both remain on death row today.

“At the end of the day, they all get what they deserve,” Byington said. “Only Alonso [Machain] will ever see the light of day again. He got sentenced to 20 years and he actually will be out soon.”

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48 Hours Mystery: Dark Voyage

June 12, 2010 / 10:19 PM EDT / CBS

This story originally aired on May 2, 2009. It was updated on June 12, 2010.

Newport Beach, Calif., Detective Dave Byington doesn't rattle easily.

"This is probably the thirtieth time I've been on this vessel and I don't like it," he says of a 55-foot yacht, which now sits in dry dock - cold as a tombstone - giving silent testimony to a crime that defies humanity.

"I get the heebie jeebies on this boat. I just don't feel comfortable on it. You start to think about - imagine, only try to imagine what they experienced, and it's too horrific," he tells "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Maureen Maher. "The boat's under way, It's nighttime. It's cold."

The only thing outweighing the horror of what happened that night is the power of Tom and Jackie Hawkses love. It is a fairy-tale romance that started hundreds of miles from any ocean, in the mountains of Prescott, Ariz., where Tom was raising his two sons alone.

Tom's boys, Ryan and Matt, are sons from a first marriage that ended in an amicable divorce.

Ryan describes his father as a "man's man."

"He was very masculine, very outdoors. And he just wanted us to appreciate what we had in life… He would take us to Catalina Island to do a lot of hiking, fishing and backpacking," he says. "Some of my better times with him were on the water."

"It was an absolute great life," says Matt. It was a life where toughness was taught early on.

"You know, stay strong. I remember if I wrecked or cried as a little kid, he'd be like, 'Toughen up boy. Toughen up,'" Ryan recalls.

Above all else, Tom Hawks played by the rules. He worked with the probation office of Yavapai County, helping those in trouble, find a second chance.

"Tom was a kind of probation officer that would take a real interest in the problems that his probationers were having," John Ryder tells Maher.

Ryder, Brian Gray and Bill Paiano were Tom's co-workers and knew what kind of a man he was. "Tom was a quality guy," says Paiano.

"I believe Tom's family life, like most of us that worked together, was really important to him," says Gray.

But something major was missing in his life. Then, the tough, single father had his heart melted by Jackie O'Neill.

"She met Tom at a chili cook-off. I believe it was July of '86," says Jackie's best friend, Patricia Shutz. "He would walk on water for her, and she would do the same for him."

It was clear where things were heading.

"He got down on his hands and knees and he asked her to marry him," Shutz says. "She was very excited and she was very happy."

And soon, Ryan and Matt were happier, too. Because, they say, there was a downside to life alone with dad - like Tom's "famous goulash."

"He would make a pot of it for a week," Ryan explains. "And every time we'd come home for dinner it'd be like, 'Ugh, this again?'"

Things changed once Tom and Jackie wed. "Dinners got a lot better," says Matt.

Matt and Ryan were still in elementary school when Tom and Jackie wed in 1989. The boys came to think of Jackie as their mother.

"She was the best mother any boys could ever have. Really," says Shutz.

Ryan describes Jackie as a real trooper. "Most of the time they do something, it's my father's idea. And Jackie never complains and she just goes with it."

So it came as no surprise when Tom sold the house and Jackie said 'yes' to a dream Tom had been nurturing for years - to retire, own a yacht and live on the sea.

"He said, 'Life's too short, and it's my life, this is our time, and I feel if I hesitate, then it would just go by and I'll miss it,'" says Ryan.

It was in Newport Beach, Calif. that Tom and Jackie Hawks came to find paradise. Their dream was rooted in two simple things: being together and being on a boat. Few people had lived better lives, so it almost seemed like fate when the couple bought a 55-foot yacht that was already named Well Deserved.

For Tom and Jackie, a dream had come true. Life was an endless cruise filled with good times and best friends, sailing from Catalina Island to Mexico's Sea of Cortez.

"Being on water for them was a solitude," Ryan explains. "It was seeing the curve of the Earth and seeing the sunset fall right behind it every night."

While Tom and Jackie were living the life they'd always dreamed of, something wonderful was happening in the mountains of Prescott, Ariz., that would alter their lives forever: Matt and his wife, Nicole, welcomed baby Jace.

"They were just very excited," Matt says. "Jackie was already buying baby clothes."

After four years at sea, Tom and Jackie decided being grandparents was worth more than all the sunsets across the Pacific.

"They wanted to come back and be a part of our lives," Matt says. "They believed very strongly in family."

The couple put a small ad in a boating magazine and the Well Deserved was on the market; all they needed was an honest buyer.

Skylar Deleon: File under loser.

"Tom and Jackie Hawks put their boat up for sale and I went to buy it," Deleon tells Maureen Maher.

If the Hawks are all about family, the man who showed up to by their boat is all about the lack of it.

"Growing up I've never really felt like loved," Deleon tells Maher. "My childhood, I hated it… the environment, my dad… I hated him. He was into manufacturing drugs. And… distributing them and selling them."

Despite those odds, Deleon did try to make something of himself as an actor. He even made it onto the TV show "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers." He'd tell people he was a major member of the show's cast, but it was a lie. He admits to Maher he was an extra "three times."

Then, eager to get away from an abusive home, Deleon joined the Marines; he ended up going AWOL.

Deleon was fast drifting nowhere. "I don't think I have a life plan," he says. And then, through a random e-mail, he met a small-town girl with big ideas.

Jennifer Henderson grew up in Long Beach, Calif., in a devoutly religious home. She'd finish high school and end up working in a hair salon. After they chatted for a few weeks online, she and Deleon agreed to meet at the mall.

Orange County Prosecutor Matt Murphy now knows everything about these two aimless young adults and their twisted relationship.

"She wasn't really doing a whole lot with her life until she met Skylar," he says. "He was a manipulator and somebody that was a complete conman and she was a spoiled brat. Basically, the two of them together was the perfect combination."

They'd marry, and soon, daughter Haley was born. The pressure mounted for Deleon to support his new family and prove his worth to Jennifer.

"I definitely loved her. I mean, to the point there's nothing I wouldn't do for her," he says.

But Deleon couldn't hold a job and couldn't find a way to move his young family out of his in-laws' garage apartment. He grew desperate.

Other than going AWOL with the military, he tells Maher that he had never committed a crime before. "Not until I met Jen."

Deleon's new ambition led him to a new line of work: burglary. He was arrested and ended up in California's Seal Beach City Jail, leaving his wife to care for their baby.

"Their relationship is characterized by debt… they were $87,000 in debt," Murphy explains. "Skylar has no job. And [Jennifer's] pregnant again."

When asked if Jennifer was happy, Deleon says "no," explaining she was tired of the bills and tired of living with her parents. "She's like, 'You know, we gotta do something.'"

It was that pressure that led Deleon to Tom and Jackie Hawks, where he used the one deadly skill he really had.

When asked how he rates Deleon as a con artist, Murphy says, "As far as his effect on other people? I've never seen anything like Skylar."

Even those who chase horror for a living are haunted by the depravity of what happened on the Well Deserved.

"It drives me nuts. It makes me so angry," Det. Dave Byington says. "And you start thinking about it … It's one of those things that you can't get out of your mind because it's that terrible."

It all began with the simple ad Tom placed in a boating magazine so he and Jackie could spend more time with their family.

Deleon says he called and talked to Tom. When asked if he was really planning on buying the boat, he replies, "Well, we really didn't have the money… Our thought at that point was to, I guess, rip them off."

But he knew he'd need help. That's when Deleon says he enlisted Alonso Machain, a young prison guard he'd met when locked up on the burglary charge.

"Alonzo is unsophisticated. He hasn't been a lot of places. He hasn't done a lot of things," Murphy explains. "So he was really ripe for Skylar to enlist as a confederate in this whole thing."

On Nov. 6, 2004, Deleon and Machain went down to the waterfront to meet Tom and Jackie Hawks. Tom, who was smart and savvy, didn't like what he saw.

"Thomas Hawks had been a probation officer for 20 years and Thomas Hawks was kinda leery," Murphy explains.

Tom was asking $435,000 for the Well Deserved. Deleon just didn't look like the kind of guy with that type of cash. When Jackie started proudly boasting about her new grandchild, he saw his opening: family.

"And the first thing that Skylar did when they got off the boat… is he picked up his phone and called Jennifer up in Long Beach, and he said, 'You gotta come down here and bring Haley and put these people at ease,'" Murphy says.

Jennifer came down that same day.

"I can't think of anything more horrific than a mother using her child," says Byington, who tears up at the thought.

But the Hawkses fell for it, convinced they had a real buyer. They couldn't imagine the trap that was being set. No one could.

The disgraced Marine sized up the life-long public servant mentally and physically.

"And what did you think when you saw Tom?" Maher asks. "The fact that he's pretty big," Deleon replies.

The gang of two needed a tough guy. Byington says Deleon recruited a gang member from Long Beach named John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Arrested more than 20 times, JFK joined the plot. Deleon set a date to test drive the boat while Jennifer stayed home - her child having served her purpose.

"Oh, she's up to her eyeballs in the whole thing," Murphy says of Jennifer's involvement.

It was Nov. 15, 2004. Machain came along and JFK even wore a suit. Deleon told Tom and Jackie that Kennedy was his accountant. The Well Deserved headed out to sea.

Good and evil were about to intersect in waters off Newport Beach, Calif.

Tom and Jackie Hawks guided their yacht, the Well Deserved, from the shelter of the harbor. But as light danced across the waves, darkness was set to descend, brought on by the very passengers they'd invited onboard: Alonso Machain, John F. Kennedy and their hapless leader, Skylar Deleon.

"I don't think anything was even 100-percent serious until it was too late," Deleon tells Maureen Maher. Too late, he says, was when they were already on the boat.

But that's one of Deleon's lies. The truth is everything was deadly serious and meticulously plotted weeks before, when he and Jennifer Deleon used their very own baby to con Tom Hawks into believing they were honest buyers.

Detective Sgt. Dave Byington and Sgt. Evan Sailor would come to know everything about Deleon's plans - right down to the tasers and handcuffs he brought on board.

"He's capable of making decisions, and making his conscious decisions and planning things out over a period of time," says Sgt. Sailor.

When asked if Deleon's plan gives a whole new meaning to the concept of premeditated, Byington says it's "beyond anything I could imagine."

That's because stealing the 55-foot yacht was only the start of the plan.

"They didn't want to get a job," Byington says. "They wanted to take other people's money."

Because of the work led by Byington and Sailor, the Well Deserved - home to Tom and Jackie - would become evidence. Incredible detective work by the two cops would eventually reveal every horrifying moment of that day at sea.

The boat was now anchored well outside Newport Beach Harbor. Deleon went below. Moments later, John F. Kennedy - the hulking gangbanger who was pretending to be Deleon's accountant - also came down, feigning seasickness.

"Eventually, Thomas Hawks also goes down to investigate, 'cause they're not returning," explains Byington. He says Jackie remained on deck with a jittery Alonso Machain.

"Jackie first hears a commotion down in the stateroom," Byington continues. "And at this point, she sees Thomas Hawks being choked by John Fitzgerald Kennedy and being struck by Skylar Deleon.

"Alonzo now knows he has to do his part. And he starts to overpower Jackie first by applying the taser. And he actually overpowers this poor woman, puts handcuffs on her. Skylar and John Fitzgerald Kennedy end up overpowering Thomas Hawks, handcuff him. And eventually, Jackie Hawks is brought downstairs with Thomas Hawks. And they are laid on their bed."

They were bound, and now, Tom and Jackie Hawks would be gagged.

"Skylar tells Alonzo to go get some duct tape. And Skylar instructs him to duct tape over their mouth and their eyes. And he proceeds to do so," says Byington.

Tom and Jackie huddled together on their bed. These are the details their sons, Ryan and Matt, would come to know - the agonizing flashbacks that will never fade:

"She couldn't stop crying. She was yelling at Skylar saying, 'You this, you that. You took your baby daughter and your wife on our boat. How could you?'" says Ryan.

"She was begging for her life, wanting to see her grandchildren again," says Matt. "I mean she was only 47 years old."

"And I think the only thing my father could move was his hands. And he just calmly stroked Jackie's hands to give her some level of comfort," says Ryan.

When Maher points out that that was the last gentle moment Tom and Jackie shared, Byington says, "I never thought of it, you're absolutely right. That is. After that, everything else was pure horror."

Finally, the depth of the depravity of Deleon's plan was about to be revealed.

He produced a set of phony documents and handed the couple a pen. Deleon says he wanted the Hawkses to sign over the boat and power of attorney for their bank accounts.

"They brought with them an ink pad," Byington explains. "Jackie's obviously still crying. She can't help herself and it's understandable. They remove one handcuff and they remove a little bit of the tape so she can see out, instruct her to sign her name, roll her fingerprints. And Skylar starts asking her various questions about her accounts, account numbers, where the banks are."

Then it was Tom's turn to sign away the honest life he's worked so hard for to a man who had hardly worked an honest day in his life.

"And if there was a chance of living, I think he was willing to just stay calm and follow their commands," Matt says of his father.

"[Tom] proceeds to sign all the paperwork, roll his fingerprints, gives him the account information that he's requesting," Byington says.

With the phony papers signed, the Well Deserved powered further out to sea.

"Skylar came up and punched in coordinates which set him out to Santa Catalina," says Byington. He says Deleon knew exactly where he was going.

The yacht and its passengers were headed out towards the deep waters off Catalina Island, where Tom and Jackie shared so many good times, and where only days before, they'd enjoyed a final cruise with friends on the Well Deserved.

Byington says, "These people were living a dream and Skylar just took it."

Handcuffed, gagged, and now tied to one another with nautical ropes, Tom and Jackie were dragged up on deck. That's when, Byington says, they heard the sound :

"He hears the chain coming. There's no doubt. Skylar gets behind and starts and actually hooks the anchor to the rope so now this anchor is now attached to these two poor people."

"He heard that sound a hundred times," says Ryan. "And he's like 'Son of a bitch. They're not gonna let us go.'"

Aware of his destiny, Matt says his father fought back one last time.

"…he basically does a reverse mule kick with his leg and kicks Skylar… and he kicks him so severely that Skylar's lifted up off his feet and lands on his backside," Byington explains. "John Fitzgerald Kennedy sees this and - JFK is a big man and he levels him, hits him. It knocks Thomas Hawks out. The punch is so severe and so violent."

With the anchor chain tied around the couple, Deleon threw the anchor overboard. The chain fed out to sea, yanking Tom and Jackie into the icy waters.

"So that's where they are now," Ryan says. "They're 3,600 feet below the cold Pacific Ocean tied to an anchor."

The deed now done, the Well Deserved headed back to Newport Beach. Deleon called his wife, Jennifer, on his cell phone.

"I remember her asking if 'I was sure'" he tells Maher, of the question of whether the couple was dead. "I was like, 'I'm sure.'"

Sgt. Sailor says Deleon had a motto: No body, no crime. Deleon thought he was going to get away with it because there were no bodies.

Friends and family believed Tom and Jackie Hawks had just sold the Well Deserved and were headed home to Prescott, Ariz., to see their new grandson. Their sons, Matt and Ryan, couldn't wait for them to arrive.

"I called my dad first. It went straight to voice mail. Then I called Jackie's and it went straight to voice mail. And they never shut off their phone," Ryan says. "I was thinking maybe they're taking a last-minute cruise… And I talked to my Uncle Jim. He's a retired police chief from Carlsbad."

Just a few days earlier, Jim Hawks spoke with his younger brother about Skylar and Jennifer Deleon buying the boat.

"It was very brief," Jim says of the call. "You know just, 'Hey ugly.' We called each other that. And, uh, 'if you need help when you get ready to move, just let us know.'"

But it had been about a week since that final conversation. Jim decided to take a look at his brother's boat, which was tied up back in Newport Beach. "We circled the boat on its mooring and noticed things out of place," he tells Maureen Maher.

Then, Jim Hawks and a friend boarded the Well Deserved. "I said, 'Be careful. Don't touch any smooth surface… Let's treat this like it could be a crime scene."

Ryan Hawks called his brother. "And he finally said it out loud. I'm like, 'Well what do you think is going on, Matt?' And he's like, 'They're dead. I think they're dead.'"

Eleven days after Tom and Jackie last left port, Jim Hawks filed a missing persons report. That's when Det. Dave Byington and Sgt. Evan Sailor drew the case of a lifetime.

"When did you first hear the names Skylar and Jennifer Deleon?" asks Maher.

"Actually, the Deleons were both listed in the initial missing persons report," says Byington.

Within days, Skylar Deleon agreed to be interviewed. Cool, calm and collected, the con man spun his tale.

Deleon told the cops he'd just bought the Well Deserved and that he'd never even taken it out of the harbor. He told police he'd paid Tom Hawks in cash, and that Tom and Jackie had said something about heading down to Mexico.

"As far as we know, they are down in San Carlos right now," Deleon told investigators.

When asked where he got over $400,000 in cash to pay for the boat, Deleon told investigators the cash was profit from a drug deal: "$60,000 here, $90,000 there."

We're talking about this money he had to launder. He was very at ease telling us this stuff," says Sailor.

Deleon confessing to a crime threw off investigators. Plus, he had all the paperwork to prove the boat was legally his - the documents he'd forced Tom and Jackie to sign. He tells police that neither he nor his wife had anything to do with the Hawkses disappearance.

Police also spoke to Jennifer Deleon. For the most part, cops bought the couple's story just like the Hawkses had.

Byington says he was convinced they were telling the truth.

But the couple's story began to fall apart when they went to Tom and Jackie's bank. With the phony power of attorney document, they tried to make a withdrawal.

"We've got surveillance video of her smiling ear-to-ear, you know, basically trying to steal these people's money," says Byington.

Then, police got a tip from Skylar Deleon's parole officer learning that he'd asked permission to leave the country. Concerned he was a flight risk, Deleon was arrested - but not for murder.

"He just kept asking me 'What am I being charged with?' Once I told him it was money laundering, I could see kind of like a sigh of relief," says Sailor.

That feeling wouldn't last long. Police moved in, searching the cramped garage apartment the Deleons had so desperately wanted to leave behind. It was there that they found items belonging to Tom and Jackie Hawks.

"We found their video camera… Jackie's laptop computer… and then the batteries to Tom and Jackie's Sprint Nextel phones," says Sailor.

On Dec. 16, police got a call from San Miguel Village, Mexico, saying that the Hawkses vehicle was there.

"And then we come to find out… the vehicle had been dropped off by Skylar about a week earlier and that following him in another car was his wife Jennifer," says Byington.

It was time for investigators to talk with the district attorney.

"We hit it out of the ballpark getting Matt Murphy as our D.A.," says Byington.

Murphy quickly grasped the enormity of what had happened.

"Tom and Jackie Hawks were not only really good people, they were totally innocent," he says.

But Murphy had a problem. He had never dealt with a crime scene like this before and he knew very little about boats. But he knew someone who did: Salty Sam, a.k.a. Gary Burns - a friend of Murphy's located 6,000 miles away in Darwin, Australia.

"He's a character. He's been on boats pretty much his whole life," says Murphy, who called Burns and described the shadowy outlines of the case.

"I called Matt back and said… 'A boat that size would probably have, for sure, two anchors,'" Burns says. "Get your guys to go on board the boat and count the anchors around there. And they'll probably be missing one."

"Sure enough, just like Gary said, there was an anchor that should have been on the boat, and wasn't," says Murphy.

Now that investigators had their theory, what they needed was an eyewitness. And Skylar Deleon provided one during his police interview: Alonso Machain.

Deleon told police Machain had been with him when he bought the boat and could back up his story. Deleon bet wrong.

"[Machain] is the only one on this investigation that actually had a conscience," says Sailor. "And it was that guilty conscience eating and eating at him."

Skylar Deleon's Police Interview Excerpts Alonso Machain's Police Interview Excerpts Pictures: Murder at Sea

After briefly fleeing to Mexico, Machain returned to Newport Beach and made a full confession about his involvement - " I was able to cuff Ms. Hawks" - and every horrific detail of the murders.

Alonso Machain : Skylar was looking for an anchor to push them over… Sgt. Dave Byington : How was Skylar acting when he threw them off the boat? Machain : He was calm. It was like the most normal thing.

Machain also told police about the muscle for the murder: gang member John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

In March 2005, Machain, JFK and mastermind Skylar Deleon are all charged with the murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks.

Jennifer Deleon told a local news crew her husband was innocent.

Reporter : Would your husband want to kill somebody for their money? Jennifer : No. That's not him.

But Matt Murphy and company weren't done yet. They had the alleged killers who'd been on the boat. Now it was time to focus on the one who dialed into the murder on a cell phone.

"In the time they were killed, he made a call to Jennifer. When they were turning back after throwing these poor people off the boat, he made a call to Jennifer," says Byington.

Reporter : What if they try and point the finger at you and say you were involved? Jennifer (holding her baby) : You have to be positive and hope that it won't come to that and take you away from your kid.

A month after her husband was charged, Jennifer Deleon was also charged with first-degree murder. Murphy was determined to get justice for Tom and Jackie Hawks.

"Thomas and Jackie Hawks were thrown overboard alive and begging for their lives," Murphy tells Maher. "It's as ruthless and dark and cold blooded as any murder capable of being committed by another human being."

Prosecutor Matt Murphy was working overtime preparing to bring Skylar Deleon and his crew, who were each charged with two counts of murder, to justice.

"This very well-thought-out diabolical plot to do this, they thought they were gonna get away with it because the bodies have never and will never be recovered," says Murphy.

With Deleon his prime target, Murphy approached Deleon's wife, Jennifer, with a deal.

"We offered her immunity," says Murphy. "We offered her a complete walk initially in the investigation… She said, "No.'"

Jennifer Deleon refused to testify against her husband. But Skylar was willing to tell "48 Hours Mystery" about Jennifer. He explains that it was actually his wife's idea to kill the couple. "She threw it out there - 'What if they're not here?' and I agreed."

Jennifer Deleon was the first to stand trial. On Nov. 17, 2006, she's found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to two life terms in a California prison.

Skylar Deleon would be tried next. But his attorney, Gary Pohlson, says there's not a chance of his client testifying, because "he's told so many lies."

And it turns out that Tom and Jackie Hawks may not be Deleon's only victim.

Pohlson wouldn't let Deleon tell "48 Hours Mystery" about John Jarvi - a man Deleon says he met at Seal Beach Jail and targeted a year before he met Tom and Jackie.

"He conned John Jarvi into taking out $50,000 on his condo and told John Jarvi some sort of story that he bought into and convinced John Jarvi to accompany him… down into Mexico," Murphy explains. "And led him down into a ravine, and there Skylar Deleon cut his throat."

Deleon is charged with John Jarvi's murder, leaving no question that the con man is also a cold-blooded killer.

"Did you kill Tom and Jackie Hawks?" Maher asks Deleon. He replies, "According to the law and stuff like that, yes."

The three killings are merged into one trial and it didn't take long for a verdict. Deleon is convicted of the murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks and John Jarvi.

Gary Pohlson was fighting to keep Deleon off death row. But those who treasure the memory of Tom and Jackie had very different ideas.

Ryan Hawks is hoping for the death penalty. So is Det. Dave Byington. "If anyone deserves the death penalty it's Skylar Deleon," he says.

Saying he is not afraid to die, Deleon's life hung in the balance; Yet, he was still blaming everyone but himself.

"The feeling I'm getting from you," notes Maher, "is that you're this little weaselly guy who's trying to make his wife happy. You concoct this big scheme and then you lost control of it… That's the part people will hold you responsible for."

"Uh, huh," he agrees.

And the people did hold him responsible. On April 10, 2009, Skylar Deleon is sentenced to death .

"It wasn't a good feeling or exciting. It was sad," Ryan says of hearing the verdict. "It was all over and my parents are still missing. And I'll never get to bury them. I'll never get to say goodbye. And that bothers me."

In death, as in life, Tom and Jackie Hawks touched everyone they ever met.

"Every day I look at the ocean, and I say, 'Hi' to Tom and Jackie. Every day I make a point of saying hello to them both." And, says Byington, he probably always will.

Alonso Machain was found guilty and sentenced to 21 years in prison.

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Sons inherit their parents’ murder yacht, the…

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Sons inherit their parents’ murder yacht, the ‘Well Deserved’

Det. David Byington of the Newport Beach police department exits grounds where the dry-docked yacht Well Deserved is wrapped in plastic and stored in a city yard near Fashion Island. The yacht was owned by Thomas and Jackie Hawks who were murdered when a band of thieves subdued them, tied them to an anchor and threw them overboard in 2004. The Hawk's sons, Ryan and Matt, are now faced with relocating and selling the yacht.

In the lower center of the photo, the weight bench Thomas Hawks attached to the mast of the Well Deserved is visible. The box at the bottom left held the weights and dumb bells Hawks would used for his workouts.

The port side of the Well Deserved shows the narrow passage that the anchor was dragged through so Thomas and Jackie Hawks could be tied to it.

The dry-docked yacht Well Deserved is wrapped in plastic and stored in a city yard near Fashion Island. The yacht is lthe argest piece of evidence preserved in an Orange County criminal case. It was owned by Thomas and Jackie Hawks who were murdered when a band of thieves subdued them, tied them back-toback to an anchor and threw them overboard in 2004. The Hawks' sons, Ryan and Matt, are now faced with relocating and selling the yacht.

The gunwale on the port side of Well Deserved can be seen past covered feet of Det. David Byington. This is the location were Skyler Deleon threw the anchor, attached to Thomas and Jackie Hawks overboard, dragging them both into the water. Jackie's head hit the gunwale as she was dragged off the yacht.

Thomas and Jackie Hawks on their 55-foot-yacht "Well Deserved."

Thomas and Jackie Hawks, a couple who had a mooring in Newport. Police believe the couple is dead. HANDOUT

Thomas and Jackie Hawks in family photograph with their new grandchild.

The 55-foot boat named "Well Deserved" is the scene of Thomas and Jackie Hawks murder, according to Orange County Disrict Attorney Tony Rackauckas.

The yacht the 'Well Deserved' being moved along city streets to dry dock so it coud be preserved as evidence in the murder trials for three defendants accused of murdering owners, Tom and Jackie Hawks, by tying them to an anchor and throwing them overboard.

A box located next the mast of the Well Deserved holds the dumb bells and weights Thomas Hawks used for workouts while on the yacht.

The plastic covering on the Well Deserved is visible on the bow where one of the two anchors is missing and was the one bound to Thomas and Jackie Hawks when they were thrown overboard in 2004.

Det. David Byington of the Newport Beach police department looks back towards the mast of the Well Deserved where Thomas Hawks had a weight lifting bench attached for his workouts.

The Well Deserved, wrapped in an evidence preserving plastic wrap is making it the largest piece of evidence preserved in an Orange County criminal case.

Det. David Byington of the Newport Beach police department climbs up a ladder to open up an entry to the plastic enclosed yacht Well Deserved. The yacht is largest piece of evidence preserved in an Orange County criminal case.

Det. David Byington of the Newport Beach police department, wearing booties and gloves, walks through the kitchen area of the yacht Well Deserved. The countertop at left is where Thomas and Jackie Hawks were brought up one at a time and forced to sign documents transferring ownership of the yacht. The stairway at right is where Skylar Deleon sat with his laptop inputting the Hawk's bank account numbers and PIN numbers.

The living and kitchen area of the Well Deserved owned Thomas and Jackie Hawks who were murdered after being subdued, tied to an anchor and thrown overboard in 2004. The Hawks' sons, Ryan and Matt, are now faced with relocating and selling the yacht.

This is the location were Skyler Deleon threw the anchor overboard that was attached to Thomas and Jackie Hawks, dragging them into the water. Jackie's head hit the gunwale as she was dragged off the yacht.

Det. David Byington of the Newport Beach Police Department points out where Thomas and Jackie Hawks were bound to an anchor and thrown overboard in 2004.

The downstairs bedroom where Thomas Hawks was subdued. Then both he and his wife, Jackie, were put on the bed, where they were restrained and duct taped.

The downstairs bedroom is where Thomas Hawks was subdued.

The kitchen area of the Well Deserved is where Alonso Machain overpowered Jackie Hawks. The counter to the left is where they brought up Thomas and Jackie one at a time to sign over the documents to the yacht. The stairway at the right is where Skylar Deleon sat with his laptop and input bank account numbers and PIN numbers the Hawkses were forced give up.

A letter dedicated to Jackie Hawks is on display in the stairway inside the Well Deserved yacht.

Above the instrument panel in the cockpit of the Well Deserved yacht, Thomas Hawks placed a label, stating: "The destination is not rewarding if you have not experienced the journey."

The cockpit of the Well Deserved yacht.

The yacht the Well Deserved being moved along city streets to drydock so it could be preserved as evidence in the murder trials for three defendants accused of murdering the owners, Tom and Jackie Hawks, by tying them to an anchor and throwing them overboard.

First of two parts

To read Part II, click here

NEWPORT BEACH Spices line a wall-mounted rack. Yachting magazines lie on a small table near the galley. VHS movies are tucked away in a drawer.

It looks neat, clean and comfortable – just the way Jackie Hawks wanted it.

A wooden locker up on deck holds barbells and other weights. Fishing poles and gear are stashed in a forward compartment. A white board displays meticulously inscribed maintenance records.

It feels competent, shipshape and professional – just the way Thomas Hawks wanted it.

It is the Well Deserved, a 55-foot Lien Hwa trawler, one of the most famous yachts in Newport Beach since The Wild Goose, actor John Wayne’s converted minesweeper.

This is the dream boat that Thomas and Jackie Hawks bought in 2001 when he retired after years as a probation officer in Arizona.

It became a nightmare in 2004 when it became the object of desire of a felon named Skylar Deleon , leading to the yacht’s removal from Newport Harbor and preservation on land as evidence in a series of murder trials .

Now, in 2009, with the court cases’ winding down, something must be done with the Well Deserved.

Soon it will be returned to Ryan and Matt Hawks – Thomas’ son and Jackie’s stepson – as both a blessing and a burden.

After all, Thomas Hawks grew up mostly near the ocean. He loving surfing and boating, and his parents had owned a yacht.

Thomas Hawks so loved the idea of a life at sea that he went to every boat show possible and subscribed to every yachting magazine imaginable.

Ryan Hawks remembers that his stepmother, Jackie Hawks, would lure her husband from his workshop in the garage by announcing that a new boating magazine had arrived in the mail.

Finally, in 2001, after years of dreaming, Thomas and Jackie Hawks got serious about finding the perfect yacht.

Both had their priorities, Ryan Hawks said. Jackie wanted a large galley and deck; Thomas wanted a large open cockpit.

But they both wanted a trawler, a workhorse among yachts, in part because it can take on a lot of fuel for long-distance cruises.

“They go three times the distance, but they’ll get there five times as slow,” Ryan Hawks joked.

But the getting there really was never the objective for Thomas and Jackie Hawks. It was the journey.

When they found a for-sale 55-foot Lien Hwa trawler with two decks, two staterooms, a galley and a hand-carved teak interior, they were intrigued.

The previous owners spent years traveling along Mexico’s coastline tutoring a young son. When the boy approached his teens, however, the owners decided to sell the boat so he could have a normal social life on land in his high school years.

The boat seemed a perfect fit for Thomas and Jackie Hawks.

But what closed the deal, Ryan Hawks said, was the name painted across the back of the boat.

“Well Deserved.”

“They looked at that and fell in love,” Ryan Hawks said.

Thomas Hawks, working on the yacht by himself at a dock in an industrial area of Long Beach Harbor, added wooden racks for a kayak and a windsurfer. He re-equipped the yacht with the latest radio communications gear and got it just the way he wanted it.

After about nine months of renovations, Thomas found a mooring for sale in Newport Harbor from friend Carter Ford. The Well Deserved was moved from Long Beach to Newport Beach.

And then it was off to sea for the Hawkses.

There was the joy of daily viewing the coastline from out at sea. There was the physical exertion of keeping the boat shipshape, something in which Thomas Hawks, an avid weightlifter, reveled. There was the exhilaration of working the boat in rough waters and the sunny days spent kayaking, swimming or just relaxing with friends.

For two years they sailed up and down the California coast and the Gulf of Mexico, returning periodically to Newport Harbor to take care of things such as taxes and voting.

The couple never tired of their life at sea, Ryan Hawks said, even though the Well Deserved required a lot of work and a lot of maintenance.

But in 2004 a new enticement beckoned back in Arizona: Their first grandson, Jace, was born to son Matt and his wife.

They decided to sell the Well Deserved and move to Arizona.

“They wanted to be around to watch him grow up,” Ryan Hawks said. “That was their next dream: to be grandparents. The boat wasn’t going to hold them back.”

The plan to sell the Well Deserved was bittersweet for Ryan Hawks.

“It was my home after college. When most kids go off to college, their bedrooms are turned into an office,” he said. “Mine happened to have a name and happened to float on water.

“I know my parents had the times of their lives on that boat,” he added.

“It’s so sad to realize that it also became the reason they died.”

Tomorrow: The Well Deserved is preserved in dry dock as evidence, but soon Ryan and Matt Hawks must decide what to do with it.

Contact the writer: 714-834-3784 [email protected]

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Skylar Deleon Murder Yacht Ready To Be Sold By Yacht Broker

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Skylar Deleon, 29, along with two co-conspirators, overpowered the couple, forced them to sign over ownership of their yacht, then tied them to an anchor and threw them overboard.

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Russia's newest robber barons are taking luxury to next level

MOSCOW — The billboard appears at mile 3 of the post-Soviet boulevard of big-ticket dreams that is the Rublyovka Highway. "Any house," the sign by a prestigious homebuilder proclaims. "Helicopter as a bonus."

Only in the millionaires' suburb of Rublyovka are houses so pricey that a helicopter is thrown in like a carpet upgrade.

How elite is Rublyovka? So tony that real-estate prices have streaked skyward even on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, the "Rublyovka adjacent" avenue in northwest Moscow — presumably because people who drive along it, as almost anyone who is anyone in Russia does, are probably on their way to Rublyovka.

The Rublyovka Highway shuts down twice each day as President Vladimir Putin is chauffeured between work and his Rublyovka estate in his black Mercedes 600 Pullman, prompting an elite traffic jam that locals love to fume about to acquaintances consigned to lesser bottlenecks.

Russians throughout history have lived large, from the gilded palaces and Fabergé eggs of the czars to the epic miseries of World War II.

Today's prosperity is no exception. Fourteen years after the arrival of capitalism, Forbes magazine's annual survey of the wealthy last year found Moscow with more billionaires than any other city on Earth. (But a new survey shows the city dipping slightly below New York, thanks to the Yukos Oil prosecution's disastrous effect on the company's stock.)

Crass consumerism gone

The net worth of the nation's 36 richest men and women, according to Forbes' calculations, is more than $110 billion, equal to 24 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.

In some cases, the new "new Russians" are the same businesspeople who got rich in the shady privatizations of the 1990s. Now, most have reached their late 30s and 40s, and they've moved their businesses toward legitimate operations. They own oil companies and huge metal mining operations, cellphone companies and real-estate development enterprises.

And after more than a decade of traveling among Paris, London, New York and Moscow, they have begun to expect at home — in districts such as Rublyovka and a growing number of other high-end Moscow neighborhoods — the kind of amenities they have long enjoyed abroad.

Rublyovka, once the exclusive retreat of Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders, has become the subject of a best-selling new novel, "Casual," the first-ever portrayal of the privileged lifestyle behind its towering, closely guarded walls.

Lots in the community are being snatched at the equivalent of $5 million apiece, and miles of forest are falling under the bulldozers to make way for $10 million homes, some with elaborate turrets, Russian Empire facade styling, private chapels and, in one case, a motorboat grotto. But the trail of Russia's millionaires doesn't end there.

Crocus City, on the north side of Moscow, bills itself as the largest luxury mall in the world — and that's before construction begins on an expansion that will double the size of the shopping center and include 15 high-rise office buildings, a yacht mooring terminal, helipad, 1,000-room hotel, 216,000-square-foot casino and 16-screen movie theater.

Meanwhile, Gucci, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada and Armani are ensconced fewer than 10 miles away, in a cobblestone nook off fashionable Tverskaya Street downtown. They are within walking distance of an array of high-end clubs and restaurants distinguished mainly by the scowling bodyguards standing beside cars with tinted windows outside and the jewel-and-mink-draped beauties inside — often until 5 or 6 in the morning.

Café Galleria, this year's hot spot, requires a weeklong wait for reservations to dine in its sleek, yellow-and-black-columned halls. Even then, it won't admit those who might "spoil the atmosphere," as owner Arkady Novikov puts it.

California rolls — in a city suddenly mad for sushi, not a single fashionable restaurant can afford to be without it — go for $17 each. A hunk of creamy burrata cheese with cherry tomatoes costs $24. "Practically every restaurant in Moscow has to have this cheese now. Russians can't live without it," Novikov says of the coveted mozzarella, which must be flown in fresh from Italy.

Novikov owns a network of eateries that have at one time or another been at the center of Moscow's social beehive, including the tiny but tony Vogue Cafe downtown and the popular Czar's Hunt and Veranda u Dachi restaurants in Rublyovka. He operates 15 acres of greenhouses outside the city to keep his clients in arugula and wild strawberries throughout the Russian winter.

"People are becoming more sophisticated," he says. "The attitude of people with money had changed toward many things, first of all toward the money itself. Now the money is no longer falling on your head from the sky, like before, and the culture of the people has changed for the better.

"We learned a lot of things from the West, including how to dress, how to behave and how to eat."

Poor little rich girl

Ksenia Sobchak, Russia's 23-year-old answer to Paris Hilton, grew up far from underprivileged circumstances — her father was mayor of St. Petersburg — but insists she's no spoiled debutante.

"Me myself, I never considered myself to be rich, though I get a real big salary. So how did I get this image of this golden rich girl?" wonders Sobchak, who hosts a reality television show and lives with her millionaire fiancé in an apartment on Tverskaya Street.

Then she answers her own question: "I really am a socialite. I don't like to spend time at home in a cozy armchair. I really enjoy going to cinemas, visiting friends, going to restaurants. For me, Moscow is the best city in the world. If you want to have fun for 24 hours, you can have fun."

This summer, Sobchak is preparing for the "it" marriage of the season, to Russian-American businessman Alexander Shustorovich, a Harvard graduate who helped broker a $2 billion business deal when he was 30. Sobchak is planning a "simple" and "nice" wedding, at a resort near St. Petersburg, for 300 people.

Today's wealthy Russians, she says, are sensitive to the issues that have sent thousands of pensioners into the streets to protest the partial loss of their benefits. There are 25 million Russians who live on less than $87 a month, and the average monthly wage is less than $240. Many of the well-to-do, the young celebrity says, remember what it's like to have nothing.

"I was a Pioneer," Sobchak recalls, referring to the old Communist youth groups. "I remember the songs about Lenin. I remember those huge lines. I remember buying kilos of green bananas and putting them under the bed to ripen, because you didn't know when you'd be able to get bananas again."

Russia's wealthiest classes, says Eduard Dorozhkin, editor of Rublyovka's local newspaper, Na Rublyovkye, "know they made mistakes in the past, and their mistake was to show how rich they are. It's impolite to look rich in a country with so many poor people."

At the same time, many say, the memory of penury is what inspires an abundance of wealthy Russians to spend with abandon.

"If Americans have $1 million, they're not going to spend $200,000 on a car," said Alla Verber, vice president of Mercury Ltd., which operates luxury shopping centers in downtown Moscow. "The Russians, they will. The Russians think, 'You only live once, and God knows what's going to happen in five years.' "

These days, though, most ostentation is anonymous — a phenomenon attributable as much to nervousness about government tax crackdowns and the ever-present possibility of Mafia violence as to a lingering sense from the Soviet years that being splendidly rich is anything but politically correct.

The city's many Humvees and their even-more-fortified Russian equivalent, the $144,000 Kombat, have tinted windows. Neighbors often have no idea who lives in the gated palace at the end of their street. The magazine Arkhidom, Russia's equivalent of Architectural Digest, features glossy pages of ornately decorated mansions and penthouse apartments but not a word about who owns them.

Oksana Robski's "Casual," which sold 50,000 copies in the first 10 days after publication, provided ordinary Muscovites with another peek at life in Rublyovka, which even in the Soviet era was the storied enclave of Politburo members, nuclear scientists and presidents. Today, former Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev have homes there; so does Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

The world Robski portrays, however, is mostly about Rublyovka wives: the thin, carefully coiffed, Dior-clad women who were lucky enough to snag a business mogul, then spend much of the rest of their lives plotting to keep from being dumped for a younger woman.

"These women in the book, they exist," says Roman Kondratov, a stylist at the Place in the Sun hair salon in Zhukovka, one of several elite neighborhoods that make up the district known as Rublyovka.

He says, "Let's see. The typical Zhukovka woman: First, she gets up at 2 p.m. Then gym, spa, hair. They come in here and some of them look like Christmas trees, jewels everywhere. And the things they talk about, they're mind-boggling for me.

"Where they're going on vacation. What they're going to buy. Mostly, they think about clothes. What they're wearing, what their friends are wearing, where they're going to buy the clothes they want, where they're going to fly to buy them. The kind of money they talk about spending is almost incomprehensible to me. And plastic surgery, endless talk about plastic surgery. Most of them go to the States, to the guy who did all Michael Jackson's work."

"It was important for me to portray this world not as it is reflected in tabloids and magazines. It's interesting to show that these people not only go to hairdressers and get manicures, but they live there," says Robski. "They live their lives and lose their loved ones and die of incurable diseases. They fall in love and get betrayed. I think it's stupid to say that only those people who possess nothing have feelings inside."

Robski knew whereof she wrote when her heroine's husband was killed in a contract hit. Her second husband died the same way.

Her next book will deal with Rublyovka as well, but it will take readers far into the world beyond it. Robski plans to write about the female bodyguard agency she once ran, providing stylish armed protectors to wealthy businessmen throughout Russia.

Indeed, for a growing number of wealthy Russians, even Rublyovka is too confining — especially now, when tawdry new dachas are lined up on the roadside and Putin's traffic jams are simply impossible.