SANTA ANA, Calif. – A judge sentenced a onetime child actor to death for murdering an Arizona couple by tying them to an anchor and throwing them overboard from their yacht off Southern California.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank F. Fasel on Friday imposed the sentence recommended by the jury that convicted 29-year old Skylar Deleon of killing Tom and Jackie Hawks of Prescott, Ariz.
Prosecutors say the Long Beach man and a teen actor in a "Power Rangers" TV series feigned interest in buying the couple's yacht and killed them during a test cruise in 2004.
Deleon overpowered them on a test cruise, tied them to an anchor and tossed them into the Pacific Ocean as they begged for their lives, according to the prosecution.
After the yacht killings, the prosecution said, Deleon and his then-wife Jennifer Henderson scrubbed the boat clean with bleach wipes in Newport Harbor.
The Hawks' bodies were never found.
Three others also were convicted of related charges.
Deleon was also convicted in the 2003 killing of Jon Jarvi, an Anaheim man he met on a work furlough program.
The defense had pleaded with jurors to help spare his client's life, arguing Deleon was abused by a drug dealing father and abandoned by his mother, leaving him predisposed to violence.
Deleon's attorneys were upfront about his guilt in the murders from the beginning of the trial, hoping to maintain his credibility when he asked them to recommend a sentence of life in prison without parole.
Deleon's former wife Henderson was convicted in 2006 of murder and murder for financial gain in the Hawks' deaths and was sentenced to two terms of life in prison without parole.
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