Eerie Encounters : Murdered by a Child Star || Skylar Deleon

Selling "Well Deserved"

 In 1986, a 39-year-old father of two teenage boys named Tom Hawks met a stunningly beautiful woman named Jackie and they madly fell in love with each other. In 1989, they got married in front of 150 of their closest friends and family and Jackie moved in with Tom and his sons after the marriage. Jackie had earlier met with an accident which left her unable to bear kids. So, she accepted the boys as her own and the boys started to accept her as their mom. With time, this beautiful family of four gelled wonderfully, making their house a happy place. When their sons were old enough, they moved out of their house to start their own life and they felt it was the right time for them to enter their perfectly planned retirement.

 The couple planned to spend their post-retirement lives in a yacht sailing around the sea. So, putting in all their savings, they purchased a yacht. Although this yacht was not luxurious, they loved it dearly and named it “Well Deserved”. They spent the next two years sailing around the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California cherishing each other’s company. When Jackie got to know the news that one of her sons was expecting a baby, she was elated and excited to have her grandchild in her hands. Thus, the couple felt it was time to return back to the land and be with their son. So, in 2004, they decided to sell their yacht and move to Newport Harbor to stay with their son.

Jim's Investigation

 In the November of the same year, their ad was answered by the Deleon couple who finalized the deal in a couple of days. They told this news to their sons and told them that they would follow up. With their sons expecting their call anytime, they never got a call from their parents for over a couple of days. As this was completely unusual of them, they informed their uncle Jim who was a retired police chief. When Jim heard about this, he drove to Newport Beach with his friend to see if the couple had actually sold the yacht or if were they still in it. He found “Well Deserved” on the dock and decided to walk into it to see if his brother and his wife were inside it.

 The Yacht was completely not in order and the things inside it were in a mess. This made Jim conclude that the Yacht was sold as Tom and Jackie was an extremely orderly and tidy couple who took really good care of “Well Deserved”. So, he left a note to the new owner asking them to contact him as the previous owners were missing. When he was about to leave the area, Jim got a call from a 21-year-old woman named Jennifer Deleon saying that she got his note on the yacht. 

 She confirmed that she and her husband Skylar had purchased the yacht from the Hawks but just like Jim, they were trying to contact them but they couldn’t. She told him that, there were a couple of controls on the boat that she did not know how to use and tried reaching out to Tom but his whereabouts were not known. She also told Jim that a few personal belongings of Tom and Jackie were left back in the drawers and she wanted to return them.

 When Jim asked Jennifer when was the last time she saw them, she told him that it was on the day they sold the yacht. According to Jennifer, Tom and Jackie get the money from her, hopped in their car and drove away. She also told Jim that, Jackie told her that their plan was to buy a house in Mexico and settle there. Jim thanked her for her input, asked her to inform him if she gets to know their whereabouts and left.

 On thinking further, Jim got reminded of a woman named Patricia who managed the finances of Tom and Jackie for the previous two years. While the couple spent their time in the seas, they had poor connectivity which made it hard for them to pay their bills and taxes. So, they hired Patricia who was a friend of theirs to do it for them.

 When Jim asked her if she knew anything about where they were, she immediately told no. Jim asked her to check if a big sum of money was recently deposited in their account but she told him nothing of that sort had happened. This actually confused both Jim and Patricia as they could not find a reason for Tom and Jackie not depositing half a million dollars in their bank account. Sensing something was off, Jim called the Newport Beach Police and officially reported Tom and Jackie missing.

Primary Investigation

 Initial investigations revealed that Skylar Deleon, who purchased the yacht from them was already convicted of armed robbery and they grew suspicious of him. They called him over for an investigation and questioned him. Skylar was extremely helpful and he told them that he liked their boat and bought it from the Hawks in front of a Notary and one of his friends who acted as a witness. Similar to his wife’s statements, he too told the police that the missing couple got the money from them, hoped in their SUV and drove away.

Skylar Deleon

 When the police asked him about how he got enough money to purchase the yacht, he told them that he was a child star in the “Power Rangers” and he had saved up the money he gained then. But within moments, he told them that he was sorry for lying and told them that he had previously stolen the money of a drug kingpin which was the cause for his conviction. When he came from jail, he had to launder the stolen money to make it clean and to do it, he purchased the yacht. Because of his honesty and cooperation, the police did not book him for money laundering and set him free.

 They investigated the remaining people who had apparently seen the couple for the last time, but all of their testimonies were similar. This led the investigation to a dead end and the police started spreading missing notices with the picture of Tom’s SUV.

 A couple of days after putting these notices, the police got a call from a person in Mexico who told them that the SUV in the notice was present in a house on her street. When the police rushed to this place in hopes of finding the couple, they got to know that the SUV was not parked there by Tom or Jackie but, by Skylar himself.

The Second Investigation

 The police investigated Skylar and Jennifer once again but since they did not break, they decided to investigate Skylar’s friend and the Notary once again. On persistent investigation, the Notary named Kathleen revealed that she did not even know who Tom or Jackie was and Skylar paid her a huge sum to forge these documents. She told them that she knew nothing of their disappearance. When they investigated Skylar’s friend named Alonso who acted as a witness, he kept saying Skylar’s narrative. But when the police told him that the notary actually confessed and he was caught red-handed and offered him a reduction in his punishment, he opened up.

Actual Occurrence

 Seeing the advertisement, Skylar approached the Hawks and persuaded them into a sea trial. So, Skylar, Alonso and another goon named John whom Skylar had recruited just that day turned up in front of the Hawks. Tom who was a long-time probation officer, immediately figured out they were actually not good people and tried to avoid the sea trial. Seeing that the Hawks were apprehensive about getting on the boat with them, Skylar called up his wife Jennifer. When Jennifer arrived with her baby, Jackie immediately started playing with the baby and the couple became comfortable with the group which made them agree to the sea trial. When they were about to start, Jennifer got off the boat saying that the baby was not fond of the sea.

 A few moments later, Jackie and Tom understood that the group was not there for the boat but for them. Jackie and Tom were handcuffed and their eyes and mouths were tapped by Skylar and Co. Skylar forced them to sign the transfer papers where Jackie intentionally made a mistake on her second name while signing. After getting their signatures, Skylar locked them up in a room and took the boat to the deepest part of the sea. When the boat reached this zone, Skylar bought Tom and Jackie to the back of the boat. He ordered Alonso to bring the anchor from the front of the boat. Hearing his order, Tom and Jackie understood that something wrong was going to happen. Fuelled by adrenaline, Tom shook off his restraints and kicked Skylar hard on his groin. However, John jumped on both of them and connected their handcuffs to each other.

 With John’s help, Skylar connected their handcuffs to the chain of the anchor and threw it into the water. As the anchor went down it pulled the Hawks along with it. While they were yanked off the boat, Jackie’s head hit so hard on the boat that Alonso heard a clear cracking sound. As their bodies disappeared in the water, Skylar squealed in joy and drove the boat back to the dock. It turned out that this was actually planned by Skylar’s wife Jennifer. The couple was so cold-blooded that without any remorse, they started using the camera that Tom and Jackie used to capture their memories without even deleting the older footage.