Police: Deleon in debt

A Long Beach man and his wife owed family and credit card companies about $50,000 combined in October 2004, a month before prosecutors say he followed through on a plot to rob and kill a Newport Beach couple, police testified during the man’s trial Tuesday.

Skylar Deleon, 29, and his then-wife, Jennifer Henderson-Deleon, ran up more than $25,000 in credit card debt in less than a year and owed her dad about $24,000, Newport Beach Sgt. Evan Sailor testified.

Skylar Deleon is accused of killing Newport Beach couple Tom and Jackie Hawks in November 2004 after forcing the couple to sign legal documents giving Deleon control over their property and finances.

Deleon is also being tried simultaneously for the murder of John Jarvi in 2003, whom he met in jail.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Henderson was convicted for her role in the Hawkses’ murders last year and was sentenced to life without parole.

Prosecutors claim that through lies to Jarvi and the Hawkses, half-truths to select friends and the promise to his accomplices of making it rich, Deleon led four other people to help him kill Tom and Jackie Hawks. The two men who authorities say helped in the murder face trial next year.

Defense attorney Gary Pohlson has so far made minimal effort to rebut the prosecution’s case, telling the jury in his opening statement that Deleon is guilty.

Pohlson said his job is to persuade them to spare Deleon the death penalty. He’s doing that in part by shifting responsibility to Deleon’s ex-wife.

Henderson’s dad, Steven Henderson, testified that his daughter gave him money to buy cleaning materials they were going to use on the boat.

Later that day, he testified, he was bleaching the Hawkses’ boat while Skylar and Jennifer were below, rummaging through the couple’s things.

It was, as prosecutors claim, just another lie benefiting Deleon.

In forged military documents, Skylar Deleon claimed that he was part of a special forces unit that doesn’t exist outside of an Xbox video game, a staff sergeant in the Marine Corps testified.

In documents Deleon showed to friend Adam Rohrig to impress him, Deleon’s listed unit with the Marines was the “Yankee White” special forces unit, prosecutors said.

Staff Sgt. Shamar Underwood testified that among other things wrong with the document, the only “Yankee White” he could find was in a video game.

Rohrig was one of the first men Deleon turned to when he put his plan in motion to kill the Hawkses, prosecutors said.

Rohrig testified he played an unknowing part in that plan.

He testified he gave Deleon scuba diving lessons in early 2004, the two formed a friendship and, eventually, Deleon asked him to drive a boat while Deleon made “two people disappear.”

“I guarantee I didn’t believe it at first because that’s not what you normally approach people about,” Rohrig testified, chalking it up to Deleon trying to impress him.

Witnesses throughout the trial have testified that Deleon had a habit of exaggerating his circumstances to impress others.

But Deleon persisted, and Rohrig testified that he ultimately turned down a role in the mysterious plot.

He did, though, recommend Deleon to his friend, Kathleen Harris, a notary.

Rohrig and Harris were not charged in the murders and have cooperated with authorities.

Alonso Machain, one of the two other men accused of killing the Hawkses, is expected to testify this morning.

Prosecutors said they will also show police interviews with Deleon and possibly rest their case by the afternoon.

JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at joseph.serna@latimes.com.