Former Power Ranger’s Actor Skylar Deleon Sentenced to Death in Yacht Murder of Tom and Jackie Hawks

From Power Rangers to Death Penalty …

29 year old former Power Ranger’s child actor Skylar Deleon was sentenced to death for the 2004 yacht murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks. Deleon was not one of the Power Rangers, but appeared on the show. Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank F. Fasel handed down the death sentence.  The Arizona couple, Tom and Jackie Hawks, were murdered by Skylar Deleon as he tied them to the anchor of their yacht and threw them overboard. The Hawks’ bodies were never found.

Prosecutors say the Long Beach man and a teen actor in a “Power Rangers” TV series feigned interest in buying the couple’s yacht and killed them during a test cruise in 2004.

Deleon overpowered them on a test cruise, tied them to an anchor and tossed them into the Pacific Ocean as they begged for their lives, according to the prosecution.

After the yacht killings, the prosecution said, Deleon and his then-wife Jennifer Henderson scrubbed the boat clean with bleach wipes in Newport Harbor.

Tom and Jackie Hawks aboard their boat “Well Deserved”

Details of the horrific accounts can be read here in A “Well Deserved” Guilty Verdict” by crime reporter Tina Dirmann.

I remember, when doing press for the book, I often told interviewers that in all my 15 years as a crime reporter, I’d never covered anyone so bereft of humanity as 27-year-old Skylar Deleon. This is a man who, minutes after slitting the throat of one victim, boasted to a relative, “You’re dealing with the devil now.”

The Orange County jury also recommended the death penalty for John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a 43-year-old Long Beach gang member convicted of helping Deleon kill the Hawks. Deleon’s ex-wife, Jennifer Deleon, was found guilty by a jury in 2006.

Skylar Deleon and his wife Jennifer Deleon

A jury has also recommended death for John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a 43-year-old Long Beach gang member convicted of helping Deleon throw the Hawkses off their 55-foot yacht, named the “Well-Deserved.”

Deleon’s ex-wife, Jennifer Henderson Deleon, was found guilty by a jury in 2006 of murder and sentenced to life in prison in connection with the yacht murders.

Another man on board the boat when the couple was killed, Alonso Machain, cooperated with the government and awaits trial.