Selling your yacht? Careful who wants to test sail...

by Crimesider/Sail-World Cruising on 19 Jun 2009 It was the most natural thing in the world. Tom and Jackie Hawks had spent four years of idyllic cruising together, and now wanted to sell their boat. Some people wanted to buy it, and therefore wanted a test sail. The 'test sail' was to cost them their lives.

The yacht is now up for sale since their murderers have been brought to justice.

It was in Newport Beach, California 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 already had a fitting name: Well Deserved. For Tom and Jackie, a dream had come true. Life was a seemingly endless cruise filled with good times and best friends, sailing from Catalina Island to Mexico's Sea of Cortez.

'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 Hawks, one of the couple’s sons, who provided the photo below right.

After four years at sea, and when a new grandchild came along, Tom and Jackie decided to return to Arizona. They put their boat up for sale.

Skylar Deleon, a former child actor, whose latest line of work was burglary, hatched a twisted plot with his young wife to kill the Hawks, sell the boat, drain their accounts and be set financially for life. Deleon and two accomplices got the Hawks to take them on a test cruise from Catalina Island into the Pacific. The trio overpowered the unsuspecting Hawks, forcing them to sign over the boat and their bank account information. Deleon and the two others tied Tom and Jackie Hawks to the anchor and threw them overboard off Newport Beach.

Their bodies have not been found.

Skylar Deleon, his former wife Jennifer Henderson and John Kenned have been convicted of charges relating to the murder of Tom and Jackie Hawks.

Investigators had kept the yacht Well Deserved in dry storage for the past four years as evidence after the 2002 murders. Now the boat is for sale again, and 'Well Deserved' seems still, tragically, to be a fitting name.