Original subtitles

Orange county is basically known

for the rich lifestyle.

However, that doesn't mean that life is stable.

Jackie and Tom had disappeared.

Maybe they had taken

a quick trip down to Mexico or up to Santa Barbara.

I'm so glad you could join US

on our last voyage on well deserved.

The hawks, a pair of seafaring lovebirds,

had suddenly disappeared.

When the phone calls stopped

from Jackie and Tom, we were devastated.

The Newport beach police department

get their first big break in the case.

Someone had walked into the bank

and were trying to access the hawks' account.

This is not looking good.

The deeper the detectives looked,

the darker the investigation became.

I see a little,

partial fingerprint in red,

and I think, "that's blood."

Our job was to look at it

from the possibility it might be a homicide.

And a whole league of accomplices was revealed.

They're lying. They're all lying.

We were hoping to god they'd find them.

Alive.

Orange county,

a glittering southern California gem.

It's both home and playground to some of the wealthiest people

in the world.

Beautiful location to live,

raise your children, shop. Dream.

When you finally hit those lottery numbers,

that's where you want to live.

The wealth there is tremendous.

At the heart of orange county's glitzy riviera,

sits Newport beach, an alluring alcove nestled

amidst 40 miles of pristine beaches

and swanky yacht harbors.

The privileged yacht culture allows immense freedom

to cruise to the horizon at the drop of a hat.

Newport beach is probably

the most affluent place in orange county.

It's been called the golden orange.

These homes are very expensive.

You're talking tens of millions of dollars.

Just like every other place in our country

and in California, there's crime here.

There's people who are willing to kill

to-to have this lifestyle.

Thomas and Jackie hawks, they just didn't seem

the kind of people who would have those problems

and wind up disappearing on their families.

Tom and Jackie hawks were living the orange county dream.

They had worked hard, saved their money,

bought a beautiful yacht, were living on it

in one of the most beautiful harbors in the world.

Newport beach, they have moorings out in the water.

You can just tie up to a mooring and you live the life

on your yacht.

Life was good.

Long before Jackie and Tom hawks

found their charmed life

off the sunny shores of orange county,

Jackie grew up in another world,

through frigid Ohio winters.

This is one of my favorites.

This is Jackie with her baby doll

at Christmas in 1959.

She was adorable.

When Jackie was born, she was the happy-go-lucky kid.

Jackie loved everybody.

And it just emanated from her.

She was just wonderful.

I met Jackie in high school.

We were fast friends.

She was my maid of honor.

And all we did was laugh.

She was tons and tons of fun.

Jackie longed for a life out west,

where the sun was warm and anything seemed possible.

So at 18, she left for Arizona

and soon met her own dreamboat, Tom hawks.

Here they come. Here's Thomas, in all his glory.

When she met Tom,

you could tell he truly loved her and she was crazy about him.

In love with you.

I love you, too.

Tom was a probation officer

and a bodybuilder.

He was a fun-loving guy.

He was always playing jokes.

You are such a big boy.

I'm a big boy.

I liked him.

He was good to my daughter.

And now the bride. -Aw.

They had a Hawaiian-themed wedding

at their house in Arizona.

There were hundreds of people there.

Jackie, she was gorgeous.

...faithful husband

as long as you both shall live? -I do.

Jackie, do you take this man to be your wedded husband?

I do.

Matt and Ryan are Tom's boys,

from when he was married before.

She loved his kids.

Jackie always wanted to be a mother,

but, um, she couldn't ever have children.

She accepted it, and here is this man with two children.

It turned out great.

Jackie and Tom, they had a very busy life.

They were entrepreneurs.

They went and bought this 65-foot boat.

It was beautiful. It was all teak.

And they named it the well deserved,

because they had saved so long for it.

They both retired early

so they could live on their boat in Newport beach.

Tom originally was from California,

and they liked orange county.

It's like a rich man's paradise.

Orange county called to Tom and Jackie.

Like a beacon, it drew them into a world

of endless freedom on the sparkling seas,

and a lifestyle desired by many, but attained by few.

She was actually living her dreams.

She would send me shells

from different places that she was at.

They called US every weekend.

And, we'd talk for a while,

just catch up on what they were doing and where they were at.

But Tom and Jackie's California dream wouldn't last.

In November of 2004, family members

became unsettled when they couldn't get in touch with them.

I tried to call Jackie because she hadn't called me.

Call went right to voice mail.

I thought, "well, she's...

...down scuba diving or they're busy,"

so I waited a while and I called again.

Went right to voice mail.

And I knew... Something's wrong.

Back in November 2004, a missing persons report

was faxed to our records.

A couple by the name of Tom and Jackie hawks were missing.

When we got this report, it didn't seem typical.

From the get-go,

the circumstances behind the case told US

that there was more than just a simple missing persons.

The reporting party was Jim hawks,

Tom hawks's older brother.

This missing persons report was very detailed.

I learned that this couple, Tom and Jackie, they loved

traveling to Mexico on the drop of a hat,

but still having their family connections.

But on November 15, 2004, contact stopped.

There were no phone calls, no radio messages.

No texts.

This was very unlike the hawks,

to just drop off the face of the planet

and not reach out to their family.

The family had some theories.

Matt, their son, had a new grandbaby,

and they really wanted to be with the grandbaby.

They were living the life that they dreamed of,

but they decided that it was time to go back to Arizona,

get a residence, and share with this experience

of having a new grandchild arrive.

Tom and Jackie told family and friends

that they had a prospective buyer for their yacht,

and it looked like it pretty much was gonna happen soon.

Maybe they had

taken a quick trip down to Mexico

or up to Santa Barbara,

just for a last bon voyage kind of party.

But after eight days, nobody's heard from them,

and the family and friends started to wonder,

what happened to them?

The longer

that both Tom and Jackie weren't heard from,

the more concern family and friends had.

And they were not sure if the sale of the yacht happened.

Jim hawks had gone out on the 23rd of November

to the boat to try to find his brother and his wife,

and they're not there.

Jim hawks filed a missing person report.

It was immediately faxed to the Newport beach police department,

where I worked.

We need to go out there,

take a look at that boat.

See if we can find what happened to these people.

The well deserved was docked

in the middle of the harbor.

So, we board the yacht,

and right away, we can tell it's lived-in.

I went up to the second level,

I see a little...

What seems like a partial fingerprint in red.

And I think, "that's blood."

And my first thought is, "okay,

"something happened on this boat.

I need to check in to this."

We needed to get inside and find out

if potentially, Tom and Jackie hawks were inside,

injured, being held captive.

It's exigent circumstances.

We decide we're gonna cut that lock,

and we're gonna go in.

The more I was told,

the more distressed I got.

There may be more to this

than just a missing persons.

Now we have a cash transaction.

How much did she know or not want to know?

This is not looking good.

Jackie and Tom hawks were living

the picture-perfect o.C. Life

aboard their yacht, the well deserved,

when they mysteriously disappeared.

Detectives uncovered a possible bloodstain

on the exterior of the yacht,

which gave them probable cause to enter.

We cut the lock on the door and...

...there's no one there.

I notice the boat is lived-in.

It's not terribly messy,

but it's not neat, either, which is the opposite of what

James hawks describes his brother,

as being very meticulous and neat.

Had to explore the possibility that it's changed hands.

I see personal pictures

and plaques and things that you wouldn't leave

on a boat you sold.

There were family things.

There's little flags that go off in your head

that just aren't right.

Couldn't find anything that

would really raise the suspicions

that any type of crime had occurred.

But we needed to really clear up what's going on

and look into this.

It was noted in the missing person report

that the potential buyers of this yacht

were a young couple, Skylar and Jennifer deleon.

We needed to talk to them, because they

potentially were the last people to see the hawks.

Skylar and Jennifer were located

in the city of long beach.

They were living

in Jennifer's parents' house.

In long beach, they have

a middle-class lifestyle.

The deleons had

a background that wasn't rich,

yet sometimes lived kind of a rich lifestyle.

My first impression of Skylar,

he was very soft-spoken.

They had a small child with them,

and it was obvious that Jennifer was pregnant.

We advised them that we were investigating

a missing person case involving Tom and Jackie hawks.

Both Skylar and Jennifer said that they were very concerned

about the hawks themselves,

and that they had been actively looking for the hawks.

Skylar confirmed buying the vessel,

that he had purchased it with cash, and...

They were considering living on the vessel.

Jennifer explained to me that the hawks still had

numerous items of personal property on the vessel

and that they needed to get 'em off,

so that they could move their own property in.

How was it possible that

this young long beach couple living with their parents

could afford to purchase a luxe yacht?

Was the sale of the well deserved legitimate?

A bill of sale would have sealed the deal.

Skylar produced the paperwork that documented

the sale of the well deserved to them.

It appeared to be legitimate.

It had a price.

It was notarized. It was witnessed.

Fingerprints were applied.

Skylar told me that he had the cash,

which was in a large briefcase--

three-quarters of a million dollars--

and that he simply slid this briefcase

across the hood of the car, and that Tom hawks

had opened it up and appeared very nervous but excited.

Both Tom and Jackie entered their vehicle

with this three-quarter million dollars in cash

and drove away in their Honda, and that that was the last time

that, Skylar and Jennifer had seen the hawks.

I confronted Skylar.

I go, "you're a young man, and that's quite a lot of money.

How is it that you were able to afford this?"

Skylar told me

he was a child actor

and also dabbled in real estate in Mexico.

I started pressing Skylar,

'cause this wasn't ringing true.

If he legitimately had this much wealth,

why isn't he living in his own residence?

Skylar took a pause and said he wanted to come clean.

Said that the money that he used

to purchase the hawks' vessel, the well deserved,

was money that he had earned from the sale of narcotics.

Skylar was a self-proclaimed

socal cocaine cowboy.

By purchasing a yacht from the hawks,

he was effectively washing his money

in the waves of the pacific ocean.

I knew that

what Skylar just did was admitted to money laundering.

That kind of took me aback, 'cause then I'm thinking,

okay, he just admitted to a felony he didn't have to.

That would just give it more legitimacy to me.

At this point, my gut told me that maybe Skylar and Jennifer

weren't involved with the hawks being missing.

Now we have a cash transaction.

That means the hawks took custody

of almost three-quarter of a million dollars in cash

and drove away.

This is not looking good.

When the detectives look at the paperwork, they get

two more pieces of information.

One, that there's a witness

who saw the sale, and that was Alonso machain.

There's also...

A notary who witnessed the sale,

and that's Kathleen Harris.

Could that briefcase of cash

have given one of the witnesses motive to turn on the hawks?

Alonso machain was a friend of Skylar's.

He maintained the same story, that he was present,

he witnessed a...

Suitcase full of money being transferred,

and, he never even went on the boat,

he just went home after that; He was doing a favor for Skylar.

We also talked to Kathleen Harris.

She was certified by the state as a notary.

She seems very up-front and honest-- she says,

"this one stands out and is unique,

because we did it on site in Newport beach."

And she actually gave the location

of 15th street on the bay, which was where Skylar

had claimed this transaction had taken place.

Every one of these witnesses

were all maintaining the same story.

Skylar and Jennifer deleon did not hesitate

in giving permission for US to search and take custody

of the vessel.

The crew that went out to search

and conduct a CSI investigation on the well deserved

did not recover anything of significance.

The initial statement,

detective montero had observed that he thought

might have been, blood of some type

actually turned out to be rust.

So we were kind of grasping at straws,

'cause we were coming up with leads fairly quickly

early on in the investigation, but then it stalled.

When the phone calls stopped

from Jackie and Tom, we were devastated.

Gayle kept me informed of what was going on.

The more I was told...

The more distressed I got.

I could not believe it.

I mean, they were missing.

This is our last trip to the island

because, we sold the boat.

Tom was a little ambivalent

about the sale of that boat.

He said, "how does a kid come up with that much money?"

But Jackie was really happy

that they were selling the boat to someone

that had a family.

I think it put Jackie's mind at ease.

I'm so glad you could join US on our last voyage

on well deserved.

Jackie and Tom would never leave

and not notify people where they were gonna be.

You just keep hoping in the back of your mind

that they're safe.

So in the third week of the hawks being missing,

the police department is still looking for them.

They're not quite getting as much information as they want

until, finally,

there's been some activity

at the hawks's bank.

It had been three weeks since Jackie and Tom hawks vanished

from the affluent community of Newport beach.

And it was worrisome that when last sighted,

they were allegedly driving away

from the sale of their yacht

with close to a million in cash.

As detectives scoured the shimmering o.C. Harbors,

some suspicious activity on the hawks' bank account

raised an alarm.

The bank manager said that

someone had walked into the bank and were trying

to access the hawks' account.

They were in possession of a durable power of attorney,

which was signed by both Tom and Jackie hawks.

This document basically allowed access

to all of the hawks' accounts.

The customer service representative

basically says, "we're gonna have to check this out."

So she actually flagged the bank accounts.

And told them that they'd have to return with a court order

before she'd hand over any of the hawks' money.

A freeze-frame of the video was faxed to US,

and to our surprise,

we identified the two individuals as being

Skylar and Jennifer deleon.

Not only could we identify their faces,

but we saw an ear-to-ear grin on Jennifer's face at the time.

This is definitely an incriminating piece of evidence

against Skylar and Jennifer.

Their apparent concern

for the hawks's well-being

or trying to find them,

that no longer played.

That just didn't make any sense.

'Cause if they were truly doing that, what are they doing

trying to access and basically drain their accounts?

Also...

We were able to find out that Skylar deleon was

on active probation

for armed burglary.

Our suspicions were raised

why Skylar would possess this document.

It was a big break, and we needed it.

Sunshine and smiles

can be deceiving in orange county,

so why would the hawks have trusted Skylar

with their assets?

The detectives need some way

to get Skylar to come back in

so he doesn't suspect anything.

And they say, "hey, we're gonna give you your boat back,

"but you just need to come in

and answer a few more questions."

Skylar proceeded to tell me that

he had spoken with Thomas hawks about their future plans,

and they wanted this vacation house in Mexico.

Skylar told them he'd be more than willing to assist him,

but in order to do that,

he'd need to open several accounts in Mexico

in Thomas and Jackie hawks's name.

And...

Well, a durable power of attorney just makes no sense

in the sale of anything, but here we had

a notarized durable power of attorney, which gave over

all of Tom and Jackie hawks's assets

to the deleons.

He gave US an excuse

why he had the durable power of attorney,

but no one bought it.

The family was concerned, and rightly so.

All their papers giving them power of attorney,

when I heard that,

I knew better that Tom and Jackie

would never do that kind...

They had too much business sense.

An FBI lab had verified thumbprints,

and the signatures appeared to belong

to both Tom and Jackie hawks.

There was one exception, however.

The hawks' last name was spelled h-a-w-k-s.

On Jackie's, it looks as if she had signed

Jackie hawk and omitted the "s."

It was cursive writing,

and it almost looked like someone, after the fact,

had added a printed "s."

When I see any documents altered like that,

whether it's this case or any case,

that raises your suspicions as the authenticity,

that it's maybe not genuine.

There was a number of things going through my mind,

but one is that they were the victim of foul play.

For them to all of a sudden cut off all connection

to their boat, their money, their bank accounts,

it was pretty obvious that

there may be more to this than just a missing persons.

While interviewing Skylar,

he maintained his statement every time.

If we were gonna find him being untruthful

or lying in any of his statements,

we wanted to try to-to marry him to those statements.

One of the ways we did that was

we told Skylar, "you're sure you've never been

in the hawks' car?" He would maintain,

"no, the hawks were given the money

and they drove away, and I've never seen the vehicle since."

We knew that his DNA was on the vessel

because he had been on it.

So we wanted to get his DNA to, to use that as an elimination.

He agreed, consented.

Dave byington always kept US up to date,

so you don't want to get your hopes up

until they know something for sure.

It was very frustrating.

My instinct

was...

Something bad had happened.

It's nothing but frustration wondering what you could do,

which is nothing.

And, hoping to god they find them.

Alive.

The once sparkling seas of Newport beach

turned gray and sullen, as the fate of the hawks

seemed more dire with each passing day.

We were desperate to find Tom and Jackie hawks.

So a lot of the focus was trying to find

the hawks's vehicle, the-the Honda cr-v.

This was uploaded into a national database,

so that if it happened to be stopped by law enforcement,

they would be alerted.

And it was imperative that we put it out to the media,

so they could blast it, 'cause they had

a lot further reach than we ever would.

Police in this affluent

seaside community are puzzled. The question--

why did Thomas and Jackie hawks vanish in mid-November

after selling their 55-foot yacht the well deserved?

The couple's silver Honda cr-v

with Arizona plates is also missing.

At this point in the investigation,

all the parties that we can identify have been interviewed,

but we still haven't had any leads

to where they're actually at.

The hawks family was doing the best it could.

They put up flyers, put out bulletins.

They helped get the word out.

And boom!

Somebody saw the car.

Jackie's coming today, so waiting to see her.

Hi, honey, I'm so glad to be home.

She's home.

The disappearance

of Jackie and Tom hawks rocked

the sun-kissed orange county enclave of Newport beach.

A friend described Thomas and Jackie hawks

as a happy, loving couple,

something that makes the news

of their suspicious disappearance

all the more shocking.

Sometimes stoking the media

can bring new answers to the surface.

The Newport beach police department

get their first big break in the case.

There's a woman

who saw that silver Honda cr-v on TV.

And she calls up the police department and she says,

"I'm looking at this car right now."

It's a young lady in Baja, Mexico.

We asked, "can you take a picture with your phone

and send it to US?"

And that's exactly what she did.

Here we are, our whole group of detectives, huddled around

the computer, looking at Tom and Jackie hawks's car.

My heart, my head was telling me that the potential

was that the hawks were with that car

and we'll be able to find that they're just fine,

you know, and that we can close the case.

But, at least, we had a lead,

something we could actively work on.

We had to start circling the wagons

to figure out how we were gonna get down there to Mexico

and take custody of that vehicle.

American law enforcement, once you cross the border,

you no longer have any powers of arrest.

For a police officer, that's huge.

You have no say-so whatsoever in Mexico.

It's someone else's house.

You have to play by their rules.

Dave byington and his crew

drove straight down there

to talk to the police, in, Mexico.

And they all together went to this house.

And there's the car.

We all first laid eyes on the hawks' car

and saw the plates, everything matched up,

so number one, we have the right car.

The owner of the house told

law enforcement that the vehicle in the driveway was actually

a gift that was given to his son.

And at that point, the older Mexican gentleman says

his name was Skylar deleon.

And then I heard the name Jennifer deleon.

So my heart stopped right there.

'Cause I go, "they're lying."

Witnesses that had participated in this alleged transaction--

Alonso machain, Kathleen Harris--

they're all lying.

This man said, "yeah,

"they showed up on November 26 in two separate cars.

"One of them was the silver Honda cr-v.

"And they basically handed it over

and said, 'here, this is yours.'"

so now I knew at that moment

that Jennifer had been down there, as well as Skylar.

The hawks never drove away in their vehicle.

There was no transaction.

We advised the Mexican authorities

that we needed to take possession of the vehicle

and transport it back to the United States.

The lieutenant explained to US that it would involve

a lot of paperwork and that we'd have to complete that paperwork

at their office, which was an hour away.

We finally found this car that we'd been searching

for desperately, and now we're told that we need

to leave it there and go fill out paperwork.

Investigation 101-- if you've got evidence,

you want to preserve it as best you can.

My concern was that someone was gonna remove

potential evidence from that vehicle

or tamper with it somehow.

Luckily I had a senior

CSI investigator with US and I explained to him

we're allowed to process it, but we can't take anything.

He was swabbing the steering wheel,

the rearview mirror, the knobs

on the heater and radio, so he did

a very thorough job in a very quick, short time.

We were able to process the vehicle partially,

but the vehicle was still in Mexican custody.

So we ended up going directly to the police department.

Finally I'm given the keys.

And we made a plan that I would drive,

Tom and Jackie's car back across the border.

I tried to reduce my DNA imprint as much as I could.

I double gloved.

Put, booties around my shoes.

I was on an emotional roller coaster.

I was still trying to process the fact that the hawks

could be dead, murdered by Skylar

and potentially his wife.

I knew the dominoes were gonna start to fall.

This was gonna be the thing that got US to the next step.

Detectives anxiously awaited

DNA proof from the hawks' vehicle to make an arrest

and compel an explanation from the shifty deleons.

I worried about Jackie and Tom a lot.

You just want it to be over with,

but you want to know what's going on and...

It's desperation.

You wish you could do something, but what can you do?

You just, um, start thinking

all these horrible thoughts in your mind.

You can't sleep, you can't eat,

you can't do anything-- just worry.

You kind of think something bad has happened,

but you hope you're wrong.

You just hope you're so wrong.

The case takes another turn

when Skylar's probation officer

calls the Newport beach police department and says,

"Skylar's asking for permission to leave the country."

He says he's got some job in Bermuda

and he wants to leave." They don't want to lose Skylar.

They think he could have murdered the hawks,

but they don't have a case built for it yet.

So, based on what the probation officer has said,

they know they've got to arrest him

and they've got to arrest him now.

All the witnesses had lied at this point, so

who was gonna be the first one to be honest with US?

This devil had a heart.

By this time on the investigation,

almost a month had gone by.

There's still questions that needed

to be answered with this case.

While DNA evidence

from the hawks' SUV was being processed,

detectives learned that lead suspect Skylar deleon

was attempting to jump the border to Mexico.

Skylar was on felony probation

for an armed burglary

that had happened several years prior,

which meant he was subject to search and seizure,

and didn't have the-the freedoms

that normal people have.

He had admitted to me freely that he w-- had purchased

this vessel with ill-gotten gains,

which constituted money laundering.

With this concern he's gonna flee,

we need to get on this now,

'cause if this turns out to be

the homicide case we think it might be,

last thing we want is to now go have to find this guy.

Rather than having to prove up a murder case

in a finite period of time--

'cause the clock starts ticking once you make the arrest--

we decided that we would arrest him for the money laundering.

That maybe is a ruse, but that gave US

a few extra valuable days to collect more evidence.

I write a search warrant for the residence,

where Skylar deleon lives,

for evidence in the money laundering case

as well as anything we may find that'll answer questions

on what happened to Thomas and Jackie hawks.

They got the search warrants.

They went to the house in long beach.

They went inside,

and they got Skylar.

Immediately, Jennifer had joined him at his side

and was demanding to know why he was being arrested.

Skylar wasn't, saying much

but, was obviously distraught,

you could tell.

A calm came over Skylar's face,

almost like he was waiting for a murder charge to be put on him

and it was only money laundering.

In this little, tiny, cramped garage

where Skylar and Jennifer were living

behind her parents' house,

they found a whole cache of stuff.

I found a green backpack,

belongs to Skylar deleon.

In that backpack, I find ID and voter ID information

for Thomas and Jackie hawks.

Those are things that he has no business having.

They found the hawks's laptop,

and they found a whole bunch of the hawks's personal papers

in a briefcase.

We found a hi8 recorder,

which still had tape in it

of various adventures that Tom and Jackie took in Mexico.

And as we're watching it, it abruptly ends,

and then it splits to some type of celebration

that involved Skylar and Jennifer's family.

Not only did they steal this camcorder,

but rather than just putting their own tape in,

they just taped over the hawks's memories...

And started creating their own.

Any hope that the hawks were still alive died right there.

There was no reason for them to have that stuff.

Jennifer deleon, there wasn't enough evidence

to show her as an accomplice at that time.

How much did she know or not want to know?

Jennifer was being the good wife and saying,

"my husband didn't do it; I have nothing to do with this thing."

It's hard to have a murder case when you don't have any bodies.

So there's more investigation that needs to happen here,

but the fact that he's not going anywhere,

that's a big help for US.

When the DNA results came back from the cr-v,

they hit a bingo.

Skylar's DNA was on the heater knob.

The fairy tale story spun by the deleons

didn't hold up now that the hawks' SUV

was found across the border with Skylar's DNA inside.

We're working on theories up to this point

on how this murder could have occurred,

who was involved in it.

All the witnesses had lied at this point.

Alonso machain, which was one of Skylar's friends

that was there to sign the paperwork as a witness,

and the notary, Kathleen Harris.

So we had to set them up for re-interviews

to-to challenge them on that and to find out

who was gonna be the first one to be honest with US.

Out of all the witnesses that had participated

in this alleged transaction

where the hawks had sold their vessel,

we thought the weak link might have been Kathleen Harris.

She had no personal ties to any of these people.

It appeared that she had just gained financially

by participating as a notary.

We put a lot of pressure on Kathleen

because we thought she was lying.

One of my detectives

decided to be the bad cop.

She went from "I remember it" to "I think I remember it"

to hesitating and vacillating a little bit.

At least more than she had in previous interviews.

I think pure fear was driving her to maintain that line,

but within 24 hours,

we got a phone call from an attorney

that was representing Kathleen Harris

and said that she wanted to make a statement.

And she was given immunity by the district attorney.

With the pressure that we put on her,

eventually she did tell US the truth.

She was actually asked by Skylar if she would do some

unscrupulous stuff as a notary,

and she agreed, for extra money, to do that.

She then proceeded to backdate these documents

to the date of the alleged sale.

She notarized them

and she collected several thousand dollars and left.

She never did meet the hawks.

That was our first major break

to get the murder charge going forward.

Alonso, who was also supposedly there during this time,

his story matched Skylar's,

which now doesn't match Kathleen's.

That's when it all broke apart.

We need to get Alonso.

He's arrestable now because of the lies we've heard,

but he's also probably the one person

that may tell US the real truth about what occurred.

We were trying to get ahold of him,

and all of a sudden we discovered he's gone.

He had left not only the city, the state, but the country.

He had gone back to Mexico to live with relatives,

fearing that he would be arrested.

We learned that Alonso would cooperate

and explain everything that had happened,

but that he wanted some consideration

on his culpability in this crime.

We really didn't have a choice.

We needed him as a witness. We needed to find out

if he was willing to tell US the truth.

We needed someone to.

So the death penalty was taken off the table

in order to get Alonso

to return back to the United States.

I think he decided to come back

and do the right thing.

The next morning

he came out with his attorney.

We took him into custody, drove him back to our station,

and participated in an interview

that I'll never forget in my entire life.

Key suspect Alonso machain was finally spilling

the haunting details of the hawks' horrific

final moments aboard the well deserved.

I told him that what I'd like to do is

start from the beginning when you first met Skylar deleon.

Skylar promised him

at least a million dollars to help him

get rid of the hawks.

Skylar realized

that Thomas hawks was not gonna be a pushover,

that he was a hulk of a man; It was gonna take

several people to overpower him.

Another person that he got to help was

a man named jfk, which is John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

He was a gang member from the long beach area.

So Skylar and Alonso and jfk show up,

and Skylar says, "this is my accountant,

and we're gonna go out on a sea trial."

They went out, sailed past the harbor...

And that's when jfk and Skylar deleon

took down Mr. Hawks.

Jfk and Skylar are basically

punching Mr. Hawks into submission

and then placing him in handcuffs.

What Jackie was trying to do was send a message

that something was wrong, so she signed her signature

"Jackie hawk," and left off the "s".

This huge yacht had two huge anchors. Massive.

And they unhinged one and brought it back.

Alonso said he heard the chain dragging,

so he knows that Thomas hawks heard that chain dragging.

They tie them to the chain of the anchor.

And Alonso broke down crying

while he was telling US this part.

So this... this devil had a heart.

And they basically were pulled down 3,500 feet

to the bottom of the ocean by the weight of this anchor,

and they were drowned alive.

And that's got to be the most unbelievably

horrible, horrible way to die that I can imagine.

It seemed this was business as usual for Skylar.

Just a step in his plan to steal the lives of the hawks

and take their place at the helm.

Could Alonso's chilling admission be trusted?

I believed it was the truth, and that we have reason

to doubt any of it.

When everything's said and done, Alonso machain,

he was duped by Skylar, there's no doubt in my mind.

But greed was his primary motivating factor

for being involved.

Just like everybody else in this.

Once the arrests were made,

I knew that we had to tell the family

what we had found out.

You're waiting for the phone to ring,

but when it rings,

you're afraid to pick it up.

You didn't know whether it was good news

or bad news.

And it was bad news.

Very bad news.

When you lose a child, you lose a part of yourself.

Your heart just breaks in half and stays that way.

It was absolutely horrible to me

that someone would do that to Jackie and Tom.

I think I cried for a week.

I lost the best friend I ever had.

It was a relief to know what had happened,

but it was also-- I was very angry

that someone can be that heartless and cruel.

Skylar is a sociopathic liar

and one of the best con men I've ever met,

but the lynchpin in this whole case was Jennifer deleon.

In the initial meetings regarding the purchase

of the vessel, Jennifer-- she went on that vessel

with her child for one reason,

and that was to convince the hawks,

to put them at ease so that they would go through

with this transaction.

Without her participation,

none of this would have happened.

She's as evil as anybody on that boat.

Skylar was found guilty of first-degree murder,

and was sentenced to death.

Jfk, he also was

sentenced to death.

However, now, the governor of California

has put a moratorium on the death penalty.

In essence, they are gonna live out their lives on death row.

After Alonso machain

filled US in on everything, he was convicted of the murder,

but was given 20 years

instead of the death penalty.

Jennifer, she was convicted and got life

without the possibility of parole.

This pin I'm wearing is in honor of Jackie and Tom.

It's the name of their boat,

and two hawks flying for their names.

I want people to remember Jackie and Tom for their kindness,

what good people they were.

For more information on real murders of orange county,