New details have emerged of how a former child actor who once appeared in Power Rangers used his young daughter to lure a couple into taking him out on their boat only to throw them over in a 2004 murder plot to steal their money.
Skylar Deleon was 14 when he appeared in one episode of the 1993 series of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The troubled son of a convicted drug dealer, he had been abused as a boy and turned to a life of crime.
Now 40, he is in prison for murdering Tom and Jackie Hawks in Newport Beach Harbour in a plot to steal their money.
He had answered an ad the couple placed in a newspaper in an attempt to sell their 55ft yacht, Well Deserved.
Skylar responded to it with his then pregnant wife Jennifer Henderson and his toddler daughter Haley, pretending to be a prospective buyer.
Jackie and Tom Hawks were murdered on their yacht in 2004. They were grandparents and were moving to be closer to their family when Skylar Deleon killed them. They are shown a year before their deaths
Skylar Deleon was sentenced to life without parole in 2009. He remains in prison aged 40. His wife Jennifer was pregnant at the time of the murders. She was also jailed for life
In previously unseen footage of his police interview, Skylar Deleon is shown holding his daughter while being quizzed about the murders he committed
He then went with two male accomplices on a test sail but once at sea, overpowered them with tasers, forced them sign over their assets to him in legal documents then tied them to the boat’s anchor and tossed them overboard, drowning them. Their bodies were never found.
Deleon had already committed another murder; that of Jon Jarvi, a man he’d met in prison and murdered in Mexico after receiving $50,000 from him for a fake investment opportunity.
Never-before-seen video of Skylar’s police interview after the Hawks’ murders will be aired in a 20/20 special on Friday in which he is seen holding his baby daughter while being quizzed over their disappearance.
His daughter spat up on him and squirmed in his lap as police asked him what he knew about Tom and Jackie’s then disappearance.
He feigned obliviousness, insisting he was telling the truth – that they had
At the time the murders, Deleon’s TV and film career had dried up.
He became prone to forgetting lines as he got older and the work stopped. He enlisted in the Marines Corps but left just 15 days later and then turned to a life of crime which involved stints in jail for burglary.
In 2003, he killed Jon Jarvi after luring him to Mexico on the pretense of an investment opportunity.
The couple had recently become grandparents and were selling their boat to purchase a house and settle closer to their family when they were murdered brutally
The Well Deserved, the 55-yacht which Tom and Jackie had saved years to buy and enjoy in retirement
He told Jarvi – who had been in jail himself for selling counterfeit jewelry – to come up with $50,000 for the deal.
Jarvi remortgaged his house and sold some belongings.
After giving Deleon the cash, he had his throat slit and was left at the side of a Mexican highway.
In December 2004, he answered an ad that had been placed by the Hawks in a newspaper.
Skylar was a child actor and once appeared as an extra in an episode of Power Rangers in 1993
The couple were happily retired and well off but they wanted to sell their yacht and move closer to their grandchildren.
At Deleon’s trial, prosecutors laid bare how he presented himself as a family man in his first meeting with the couple.
He the enlisted John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Alonso Machain to come with him on at test sail with the couple.
It was during that outing that they overpowered the couple, tying them to the anchor before tossing it overboard.
Deleon and his accomplices returned to shore and moored the boat, saying nothing to anyone about what had happened to the couple.
When family and friends noticed they were gone and that the boat had not been returned or moored in its normal way, they contacted the police.
Deleon and his wife insisted that they had completed the purchase of the boat and that they did not know where the couple was.
When police looked further into the couple and realized Deleon was a convicted felon, they became more suspicious.
But it was only when a public appeal a month later revealed that the couple’s Honda had been left in a mobile home by Deleon that he was arrested.
Then, the notary who Deleon said had witnessed the sale of the yacht to him in a marina parking lot revealed that she had lied to cops and backdated the paperwork in exchange for cash.
The accomplices then confessed. All are serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.
ABC’s 20/20 episode about the killings will air on Friday at 9pm.