Final arguments made; trial to jury

SANTA ANA — In her first correspondence to her husband after their preliminary hearing in the slaying of Tom and Jackie Hawks, Jennifer Henderson-Deleon wrote a love letter to her imprisoned husband, which was read Thursday in the prosecution’s final argument in her trial.

After listening to two weeks of emotional testimony, jurors will deliberate today to decide if Henderson-Deleon had a role in the 2004 killing of Tom and Jackie Hawks. Authorities have never found the bodies, but Alonso Machain, one of the four charged in the couple’s slaying, testified last week that the Hawkses were tied to an anchor on their boat and thrown overboard alive.

Henderson-Deleon’s husband, Skylar Deleon, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy have also been charged with murder. Their trials and Machain’s trial are scheduled for next year.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Murphy read excerpts of the letter to try to prove Henderson-Deleon’s callousness about the trial. Henderson-Deleon’s attorneys have tried to portray her as a woman scared of her husband, but the love letter contradicts that, Murphy said.

In the letter, Henderson-Deleon refers to her husband as “lovebug” and expressed how “good it was to see” him at a 2005 preliminary hearing.

“I’ll surely be dreaming about you,” Henderson-Deleon wrote, closing her letter.

Murphy told the jury to read the letter and many others written by the 25-year-old woman as they evaluate the evidence.

“Is this a woman whose husband duped her into killing two people or a woman who has been involved from the get-go?” Murphy asked the jury.

Michael Molfetta argued that Henderson-Deleon is a confused young woman. Molfetta characterized Henderson-Deleon as naive, blinded by love, and a “Godly woman raised to see the best” in people.

“This exploded in her face with murder,” Molfetta said, adding it took her time to believe her husband could be a “murderer.”

But Murphy maintained that based on Skylar Deleon’s prior armed residential burglary conviction and his alleged involvement in the killing of John Jarvi of Anaheim, among other “red flags,” she had to have known her husband was up to no good when he told her to go aboard the Hawkses boat with their 9-month-old daughter to help convince the couple to sell their boat to the Deleons.

“She has to be in on it or Skylar Deleon wouldn’t have let her within 10 miles of Tom and Jackie Hawks,” Murphy argued.

Molfetta has argued that Henderson-Deleon didn’t know about her husband’s role in the slaying, let alone have any part in it, but in his closing argument he said she assuredly committed crimes, only none of them were murder.

“There are a lot of things she did which are bad,” Molfetta said. But he argued the jury needs to evaluate “what she knew and when she knew it.”

But Murphy pointed out lies he said Henderson-Deleon told her accountants, a real estate agent, her family and detectives about the killing and where the money was coming from. He also pointed to the calls she made to Jim Hawks, Tom Hawks’ brother, telling him if she or her husband heard from the couple, she would let him know.

From the initial Nov. 6, 2004, meeting with Tom and Jackie Hawks to her behavior in jail, Murphy said she has not acted as an innocent woman would. Molfetta urged the jury to look only at the evidence and not at the interpretations of the facts from prosecutors and the defense.

The Hawkses’ family is glad to see the trial coming to an end and are happy with the way the prosecution laid out the case.

“I think Matt Murphy did an excellent job of presenting the case to the jury,” said Ryan Hawks, the son of Tom Hawks. “I was super impressed on how good the detective work from Newport Beach Police [was]…. They did a tremendous job with the evidence.”