DEAD RECKONING-Caitlin Rother

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access the Hawks's bank accounts. As police investigated the case, they not only found a third homicide victim with ties to Skyler, they also uncovered an unexpected and unusual motive Skyler had wanted gender reassignment surgery for years. By killing the Hawkses with a motley crew of assailants and plundering the couple's assets, the deleons had planned to clear their one hundred thousand dollars in debts and still have money

for the surgery, which Skyler had already scheduled. Now, in this up to the minute updated edition, which includes extensive new material, New York Times best selling author Caitlin Rother presents the latest breaking developments in the case. Scholar, who was ultimately sentenced to death row for the three murders, transitioned to a woman via hormones while living in the

psych unit at San Quentin Prison. Recently, she legally changed her name and gendered a female, apparently a strategic step in her quest to obtain taxpayer subsidized gender confirmation surgery and transfer to a woman's prison. Combined with Governor Gavin Newsom's recent moratorium on executions, this only adds insult to injury for the victim's families, who wants Skylar to receive

the ultimate punishment for her crimes. The book of her featuring This evening is Dead Reckoning extensively revised an updated edition with my special guest, journalist and author Caitlin Rother. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for a Greenness interview. Kaitlin Rotherhi, good evening, Thank you very much for joining us to talk about this newly updated and revised version of Dead Reckoning.

Tell us about the interviews that you did before he was sentenced and then this quest to interview him again after he was on death row in San Quentin.

Tom put the boat up for sale. He advertised it with a broker and also without a broker because he was trying to save himself commission. And Skylar de Leone, who at the time was presenting as a man. And this is why this is a tricky story to kind of talk about back and forth in time because Skuyler. It's one of the reasons for the update is Skyler has now legally changed her name and gender to female, but at the time of the murder, Skyler was presenting as a man. But the motive for the murder was

to get money for gender confirmation surgery. So it's kind of a I just wanted to give kind of some update. But anyway, Skyler brings Jennifer, his wife, who's pregnant with their second child, with their ten month old daughter, out to the boat to meet Tom. And Jackie to gain their trust. And then Skyler comes back another few times, once with a nineteen year old guy he met in jail who was actually one of the guards there who

he made friends with. And then he brought also an older, bigger guy, muscular, muscle guy named John F. Kennedy, and he was what we call a shot callar in the gang culture from the Long Beach insane crips. So he supposedly had turned his life over and was about to become a minister. Meets Skyler and within twenty minutes has already agreed to go onto this boat and help Skyler commit these murders. So yeah, that's, you know, a hypocritical story.

I also though, think that Skyler probably didn't may not have told him exactly what they were going to be doing, but did promise him, you know, like a million dollars. These people are rich, they've got this yacht. So anyway, Skyler and Alonzo mc chain who is the young former jail guard, and this guy who I'll call JFK three of them come on there. They overtake Tom and Jackie with tasers and handcuffs and force them to sign power of attorney documents. And promise that they'll, you know, save

their lives as long as they sign these documents. But then instead they take them back on the deck. They're blindfolded, they're gagged, and Tom tries to fight back and Skylard just laughs, laughs it off. They basically tape them together with Jackie's back to Tom's chest tape, put the tape around them, and then tie them to the anchor, throw the anchor overboard, and they are basically pulled down to the depths of the ocean and drowned alive. So this

is this horrible, horrible murder. And in the course of investigating this murder, detectives also find that Skyler killed another guy who he also met in jail, who was in for counterfeiting, and he was a drug addict named John Jarviy.

He took him down to Mexico with some other ploy took fifty thousand dollars from him and said, I apparently that they were going to go buy drugs and probably make a bunch of money, and instead Skyler cut his throat and left him to die at the side of a road in Mexico and was actually in jail at the time, went back to jail because he was supposed to be out on work furlough, signed in with Alonzo mcchain still in charge at the jail, and got there

two hours late, but nobody said anything, and proceeded to use the jail computer to buy an anal sex machine that evening with his credit card. So this is this is just a quick quicks and hopes of the murder. Anyway, So here we are, all these years later. The detective, the lead detective on the case, David Byington, told me that as far as he was concerned, the primary motivation for this murder was, you know, Skyler and Jennifer one

hundred thousand dollars in debt. But more importantly for Skyler, Scaler wanted a sex change operation, which is what they called it back then and now they call it a gender confirmation surgery. But in court, the prosecutor chose to just go with a greed motive because my opinion as that's just an easier, less complicated argument to make for for a jury in what was at that time more conservative kind of a county law enforcement kind of county.

So all these years later, anyway, Skyler Jennifer was convicted for life without the possibility of parole. Skyler tried to cut off his penis in jail and they wouldn't give him hormones, so he was trying to transition in jail, wasn't allowed, got to death row at San Quentin and that's where he went. Finally got hormones and transitioned to a female and now done it legally. So to answer your question, when I went to go visit Skyler in the county jail, Skyler was still presenting as a man.

So it's if I go back and forth between he and sheets, because it's kind of hard to keep it straight sometimes. But from a journalistic standpoint and out of respect to the LGBTQ community, you know, especially now that Skyler is a woman, you know, you're supposed to refer to someone who wants to be a woman to as

a sheep. So it's complicated, and I'm not trying to offend anybody, because there are other people, a whole other group of people who feel that inmates don't deserve any rights at all, and especially someone like Skyler who actually committed murder to gain a gender reassignment surgery should not be given the respect to be given the female pronoun. So this is the this is the balance I have to walk when I do these interviews. And it's a long preface, but I just wanted to make all that clear.

So to ask me what you'd like to know about the first set of interviews.

the story, honestly. So it's an important part of the story.

And I can talk about the legal aspects of this, and I can talk about what I saw, I can talk about my observations, but I can't I'm not legally allowed to discuss what she said to me, which is a little frustrating, But to be honest, a lot of it was stuff that she already said to me when we were sitting in the county jail, and I was able to reproduce, you know, the entire scene because I got a lot of the same information from third parties.

So I had sources at sam Quentin. You we're correctional officers who actually were in the psych unit with Skuyler, and could you know, basically, you know, reconfirm some of the many of the things that she told me. So I just want to make that clear that I am not violating any kind of legal barriers here, that I am doing this, you know, working around that. But the fact of the matter is that Schuyler wanted to look and felt like a woman inside, and that the penis

was not. She didn't even want to say the word penis. That that was how distasteful it was to her, Like she would not use that word.

for all the specific diagnoses. But you know, severe gender dysphoria, that that is the diagnosis for people who are born one gender and feel differently on the inside than they look physically on the outside. So that's that matches. There were a number of do you have those in front of you usually do? I know, you're really good at this. I don't have them all memorized, but anyway, she go ahead.

and do it anyway. But to me, me Skyler always seemed as though she just basically wanted to know whatever I wanted her to say. So and I know this is pretty much how she must have operated with everybody else. And that is and that's pretty similar with with con men and con women. They're very manipulative. They try to read whoever they're talking to to tell them whatever they want to hear. And you know, I think you and I talked about that with Charles manson the book that

I did. They came out last year hunting Charles Manson, same thing. That's what That's what these people do. They lock onto you, they look dear in your eyes, and they test out. They say things and they test test you out and see what what you respond to. And I could see Skyler doing that with me, where I would try to ask her a question and she looked at me to try to see what I wanted her to say, and try to tell me what I wanted to hear, which is not what I want to hear.

I want to hear the truth, right, but with somebody like this, it's very difficult. So the most truthful thing, honestly, that we could talk about was her gender dysphoria. But I could tell you from my observations at San Quentin, she seemed happy. She seemed relaxed. She was on medication

that she had not been on previously. She seemed more rational and more lucid, and frankly, just happier in her own skin than she she ever had all the times I'd seen her in court, the four times I visited her in the county jail, she was finally not having to pretend to be you know, a man number one, or a provider or a father or any of those things.

And you know, I think she liked the attention to obviously me being there and talking to her, But then you know, she also has lawyers who you know, shut all that down. As soon as I got home, I had this letter waiting for me saying, you know, you can't use anything she said because she's not mentally competent, and he wouldn't talk to me. That lawyer wouldn't talk to me about this. But it's pretty complicated and you

can't have it both ways. So if she wants to get taxpayer subsidized gender confirmation surgery, which is now possible in California for inmates in California prisons, much to the dismay of pretty much everyone I talked to, taxpayers and the victims' families alike, you have to be mentally competent and able to make a medical decision. So I don't

know how that's going to play. If she is in fact applying for this surgery, which she's wanted her whole life, and in fact wanted so badly that she killed the Hawks for it, if she's not mentally confident, then she's not gonna be able to get that surgery. And second of all, one of the other crag peria that the state uses to decide who gets this surgery, and they've only I think they've only approved something like ten requests. And these numbers keep changing and growing, but they keep

recategorizing gender and the way people identify. So there are all these different terms being used now and they change all the time, and so I can't keep up with them. But you know, there's non binary, there's you know, all kinds of stuff where people want to be called they instead of he or she, And so the prison system is now having to figure out where to house these people because the straight men and the straight women don't want these people living with them because they feel whether

they're right or not. I think that in at least the women, they say, well, these people were born as men and you know, they could be more violent and hurt us, and we don't want them, we don't feel safe. And the men sexually assault the transgender females who were you know, in the men's prison with them. So it's actually quite a quandary for the prison system on trying

to figure out where to put these people. And once somebody in Skyler's situation who has now gone to court and gotten the judge to sign a petition that says Skuyler's middle name is now Preciosa, which means jem. It was previously Skyler was born John Julius Jacobson and changed her name to Schuyler Julius Jacobson, and now it's Skyler Preciosa Dillon. I'm sorry, Skyler Dillon, and then Skyler Preciosa Dillon.

And and she picked Skyler, I think because it was kind of one of those names that could be male or female. And now she has legally become a woman, she can ask to be transferred to a women's prison, because that was what she wanted to do way back since she was in the county jail. That was one

of the things we talked about. And at the time, they housed people according to their genitalia, so as long as you still had a penis, regardless of whether you said you were a transgender female or not, if you still had a penis, you were still housed with the men. Now today that's changed because of the court precedence and cultural changes that now if you ask to be transferred

to it's how you identify. So if you identify as a as a woman, but you still have a penis they have to take your petitions seriously, and if you've gone to court, presumably they have to take it even more seriously. So she's either getting pretty good legal advice to get what she wants, and she's you know, using the system to her advantage. I keep watching, you know, the inmate locator computer system to see if she's been

moved or not. But you know, San Quentin has its own psych unit, and she's been in and out of there since it opened, which was in twenty fourteen. And before that, there's a state prison facility at Vacaville, which you might have heard of, and she was back and forth between Vacaville and San Quentin repeatedly. One other thing I can talk about was when I was sitting in the in the cage with her at San Quentin. This

was pretty scary. I came to visit her and they said, okay, give us the paper that you brought and the pen, which was supposed to be preapproved. They took away my paper and my pen and they gave me a notepad that was theirs. Because you know, I'm probably going to smuggle in something, right, I No, I'm not. And so I sat there and they go go sit in that cage over there. So I'm sitting in this cage and

then Skyler. They walked Skyler in, who now looks like a woman with a side ponytail and breasts and the whole thing, and they lock her in with me.

plastic combination fork spoon. Because part of the deal when you go and visit an inmate, you buy them lunch if you're going at lunchtime, because you're basically they don't get to eat otherwise, and it's just a nice thing to do so that you know the person will talk to you if you're someone in my situation. So I bought her a casadilla chicken casado with a couple avocados, which is what she wanted. And gave her the spork, right,

I purposely did not hand her a plastic knife. And then and then she wanted to draw me something with the pen, and I just thought to myself, nothing's gonna could possibly end up in my and I, you know, and by the time the guard gets over there, who knows, you know, what would happen anyway. But again, you know, that didn't happen because she got to talk about what she wanted to talk about, and I didn't upset her

or say anything to confront her or anything. So but my point is, you know, she wants to be housed with the women, and it looks now that she's taken legal steps to further that. And I am presuming that she's applied. I'm not allowed to get that information legally because of privacy laws and hippo laws. But she told me always that she wanted that operation, and she was even trying to get private money to pay for it.

So that's the deal. She's still trying to get what she wants, and there's no end in sight for her or anyone who's on death row in terms of executions, because the governor, Gavin Newsom basically put a moratorium on executions, which looked like it was going to end because we had a lethal injection protocol that was under review that was a new one because the last one was deemed unconstitutional and deemed that the chemical they used was too

painful and was like torture and that's the violation of the Constitution. So they were looking for a one drug cocktails, not really cocktails, it was just one drug, but anyway, a new protocol using just one drug, and Gavin Newsom basically stopped that whole process. He basically took apart the whole new chamber that the previous governor, a couple of governors back Arnold Schwarzenegger, had built to start up executions again. He dismantled that and he basically said there will be

no executions for as long as I'm governor. So that could be, you know, another few years, it could be another seven years. So there's really no end in sight for anybody on death row. There's more than seven hundred people on death row in California, and that makes people mad. That makes people mad who think that Skuyler should not be able to get what she wants after killing people.

They didn't want to hear it, so she was kind of stuck. Got back to the case you're referring to Norsworthy here in California. Again, a federal judge here granted the surgery, and rather than appeal it and go through all that nonsense, the parole board basically granted her parole rather than having to open that Pandora's box. Because they said, well, she's up for parole. She's allowed to have parole, even though they had denied it I think six times previously.

This time they just let her go and that way they didn't have to deal with the controversy. But then there was another lawsuit that came before them and the same federal judge said, hey, this person's going to get the surgery too, and this person wasn't and eligible for PEARL. So the California system basically said, well, I guess we're going to need to act because we don't want to be told by the court on who gets the surgery

and who doesn't. We want to come up with our own criteria and our own application process, and then we will determine who gets the surgery and not the court. And this also along the way, there was a during the Obama administration, the Department of Justice got involved in a case in Atlanta where there was an inmate who

had been taking hormones. Another transgender female who had been taking hormones for seventeen years got to jail and they just wouldn't give her hormones anymore because she still had

a penis. And this is Georgia, and this is way more conservative down there, and so she basically started turning back into a man with a beard, and you know, that was very distressing for her and upsetting for her, and you know, filed the lawsuit whatever, and the Department of Justice, the Federal Department of Justice weighed in and said, look, the Constitution requires under the eighth Amendment that you must

provide quote unquote adequate medical care to inmates. And when someone has severe gender dysphoria, that is a medical condition as well as a mental condition, and you must treat it just like any other. And so again, rather than deal with all that, they released her three years early. And so that's what kept happening. And it's come up in other states, and I think I mentioned also in the update. I think it was Iowa or Idaho, one of the estates where they were about ready to have

to deal with something too. So California has been in front of this, but only because I think of you know, some of the judges here are probably more progressive. But you know, I'm surprised, actually, well, I guess in Massachusetts it would have it would have gone further, but the Supreme Court didn't want to hear it, and it didn't get to the Supreme Court. The California cases didn't get to the Supreme Court. And now if it got to the Supreme Court, I'm sure and they would reject it.

twenty three thousand dollars. I don't really know if that's the total cost, if that's the cost the hospital charged, but anyways, that's what she, as a private resident, a private citizen, paid under her state provided insurance. Now, so because she's a state employee. Okay, so she's getting insurance through her government job as a correctional officer. So again that may not be a real figure. But the reason that it's higher for the inmates to get surgery is

because they've got to be guarded around the clock. They these surgeries and procedures, and there's usually more than one, so it's more than just one snip snip. You know, You've got to go in for some procedures and then there may be multiple procedures, and then that you've got to be guarded by I think one or two correctional officers who sit outside your room, right make sure you don't escape and someone doesn't come in and try to free you or whatever. And you know, same thing with Manson.

I mean, he must have been an incredibly expensive patient because every time he had an issue, he was bleeding inside.

He had a heart problems, he had emphysema, he had ended up with cancer, and he was bleeding in you know, down in his lower intestine, I believe, and you know, I had all kinds of things going on, and he was at the hospital for days at a time, and it must have cost him a fortune, you know, heart surgery and then cancer and and they and the state is required to provide that, so discount just you know, in terms of it is a medical it is considered

a medical condition that is required under the Constitution, under the eighth Amendment.

police chief, her husband's a police officer. So these are law enforcement people and they just are you know, and and they're related to, you know, their loved one with murdered, so they don't want they don't want Skyler to get what Skyler wanted, which was the surgery. And they also I mean, Leanne was mentioning, you know, she was concerned.

She wrote a letter to Governor Knwsom saying, look, this whole thing, the moratorium, and I can't remember she wrote a separate if she wrote a separate letter about the surgery thing, or if I just I think I just did an interview because it was several years between those

two things happening. But she sent me a copy of the letter, and so she basically just said to the governor, Look, you know it's not just me, but there are other victims families who are just really concerned that you start doing things like this and then these people are somehow going to be able to be released into the community. That's not happening. I mean, death row is death row. These people. Just because these people aren't going to be

executed doesn't mean they're also going to be released. They're not. They they they're just not going to be executed in the next seven years, and it doesn't mean they won't ever be But as long as he's governor. You know, she was just concerned. I guess that this was going to lead to other moves that were maybe more lenient, but she, you know, definitely didn't want to see Skuylar play in the system. Jack. He's mother, Gail O'Neil. She's

a sweet woman. We stayed in touch. She's just she just doesn't know what to saying, and she's just disgusted by all of it and just doesn't you know understand. She called the governor's office. She was so mad when she heard about the moratorium on the executions because you know, they were promised that, you know, they were going to get some kind of they wanted the death penalty for Skyler, so and now it's not coming anytime soon. And I don't know. Tom's son, Ryan Hawks was also upset as well.

So they're all very upset. And when I've talked to them about the surgery, they're upset about that too. They don't think that Skyler should be able to get the surgery, and frankly, they don't think that. They don't they don't agree with the taxpayers paying for that at all, for any for any inmate, frankly, but certainly not one who killed somebody in order to get the surgery.

And even though a lot of people don't agree with that, that's the country we live in, and that's the constitution. And when Leanne was talking to me, she's like, what do I tell my kids? And I say, well, you're a law enforcement family. You explain to them, this is what the constitution requires. You know, because that's the simple answer, regardless of whether you support it or not. You know, that's where we live, and that's what kind of country

we're supposed to be, and that's the basis for these decisions. Now.

you have to treat their medical problems. And if you have somebody who's got severe gender dysphoria that is causing them so much distress that they are trying to kill themselves and I'm trying and are trying to mutilate themselves by trying to cut their penises off by any means possible, whether it's a razor blade that they shouldn't have or some kind of tool that they've stolen or found because they just really want to do this to themselves and

you know, or bleeding everywhere. You know, they have to take that seriously.

but I think they have safety razors. They're they're you know, made specifically, I think for inmates, and so if somebody really wants to do that, they just have to kind of take this apart and you know, try to figure out attach it to a piece of paper or something. I think that the scholar said that she did at the jail, but she didn't really. My understanding was she didn't really do herself that much damage. But then I

you know, I looked at her arms. Her arms had visible purple welts on them from where she cut herself. And I know that she cut herself from the correctional officers telling me. And I believe she used a plastic cup that you know, was sharp, So that's not that sharp. That you're literally dragging a sharp plastic edge which is not metal, which is not a knife, and so you're causing pretty bad scarring. And it was vertical, it was not horizontal. And vertical means you mean business. You know.

If you're just slashing little ones across, that's generally a call for attention. If you're going vertical, that means you're really trying to kill yourself, right, And those were the welts that I saw on her arms from the scars of trying to do that. And I also understood from the correctional officer that Skyler would bang her head against the wall to make a huge bump like a he said, like a unicorn, just to.

than I've been an author. When I was a reporter at the San Diego Union Tribune, i also covered this as part of my beat for many many years in California had lawsuits against it because they were not providing proper mental health care to the inmates, and they ended up having to have a federal agency basically set up as a monitor to come in and make sure that these inmates were getting proper care because they weren't. And so this is bigger than California. This goes way back,

and it's not just a transgender thing. This is a mental health is a mental health issue, and you know, our jails, even here in San Diego, there have been stories about how bad our county jails are. These inmates, even at the jail, the county level, the local level, are killing themselves at an alarming rate. And this is because we are not providing proper mental health care in

our society in general. And so these people are ending up in the county jails and in the state prisons when they've got mental pretty severe mental health issues, and you know, some of them commit crimes, you know, and so they've become our modern you know, state institutions for the mentally ill. And yes, so you know you can say, well,

people are playing the system. A lot of these people are pretty seriously mentally ill and have a lot of issues, and you know, they self medicate and they kill people, or they've just got these deep seated genetic or environmental predispositions. They don't have any control over it, and they kill people. And there are some people who make choices. And so the question is are these people evil or are they mentally ill? Or is it a little bit of both?

And I'm not saying, you know, you can't say they're all the same, because they're not. Each case is different. But with Skuylar, there really wasn't a lot of attention paid. In fact, there was almost none paid to mental health issues in Skyler's case. And when I asked Skyler's trial attorney about that, you know, did you do a psychiatric examination? He said yeah? And I go, well, how come you didn't bring that into court? And he said, well, I

didn't think it would help our case. So the thing of it is is I've been covering this case longer than any other case in my entire career, which is saying something. I mean, this case started, the murders were in two thousand and four. It's now twenty nineteen, and I've seen a lot of changes, you know. I've seen a lot of changes in Skyler. I've seen a lot of changes in the California system and how they deal

with these issues. And I've seen a lot of changes in like I said, in the jails, in the prisons, in terms of how many people who are mentally ill are ending up behind bars because they're not getting treatment in the community. John Gardner, who is in a state prison after raping and killing two teenage girls here in our county San Diego, tried to get help and couldn't get help because he was a sex offender, and they wouldn't let him into any of the substance abuse or

mental health facilities because he was a sex offender. So that's a big giant hole in the system too. So these people are out there committing crimes, and sometimes they know that there's something wrong and they try to get help and they can't. So it's a complicated thing. And I know a lot of people want to just dismiss these people and say lock them up, let's not think

about it. Well, that's expensive. I mean, there's a facility in California for sexual for violent sexual predators, and at the time when I wrote the book Lost Girls, I think it was like one hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars a year to treat one inmate. So I mean, even if you do take it seriously and you do lock them away and you do try to get them treatment, and some people say you can't ever rehabilitate these people because it's just part of who they are, it's costs

a lot of money. So there's no really good answer here, you.

It's funny to me that the people in Canada look at all of these issues that you and I are talking about today in a completely different light than they do in the United States, and in California in particular, with a much more condition kind of you know, perspective.

But I'll just tell you I do believe that if people knew how much the death penalty system and death sentences and death penalty trials cost compared to trials where you're just sending somebody for life with that parol, and then how much it costs to house these people in single cells, and you know it takes twice as I don't know, it can take five, seven, eight years to get to trial. It's just there's so many more eyes and teas that they have to dot and cross with

the death penalty case. They have to call more witnesses, they have to take a lot more steps to be more careful because they know their appeals. And it's just a much costlier system. And it really doesn't make sense to keep trying people for the death penalty if you're never going to execute them, because what's the point. But I guess there are families who still really want this.

And as some of the prosecutors have said, and I think I quoted one in my update, as long as the law is still in place to keep trying people under the death penalty system, they're almost required to because it's well, it's somewhat up to the DA. I guess they pursue the death penalty or not. But as long as the laws still in place, it's still part of their job to try a case under the death penalty and give people death sentences. And it doesn't make sense.

The system's broken, clearly, and they should just you know, get all that in line and you know, use that money for you know, trying people and whatever. It's just it's it's not a good system at the moment. It's not the end and the means are not matching.

much scrutiny as as a death penalty case. And so you have these retrials where the family is dragged again. I'm dragged again.

weighing Adam Ford from my book Body Parts. Again four

different counties. They consolidated them and they tried the case in San Bernardino, which is a very conservative county where if the prosecutors put somebody up for the death penalty that you're usually agree Whereas where he turned himself in, you know, because he figured he was going to kill again and he knew that was wrong and he didn't want to keep doing it was a very progressive county in northern California, where they don't send anybody to get

the death penalty. And I don't know if he thought about it, but probably when he turned himself in, he wasn't Maybe he wasn't even thinking about whether he'd get the death penalty or not. But you know, even in California, it depends on what county you're tried in. There are certain counties that have a record of, you know, sending more people per capita, you know, to the to the

death chamber. And as we've discussed, nobody's being executed. They're they're dying of suicide or they're dying of natural causes, and that's it. And it just costs a lot of money to house each individual inmate in a single cell, because that's what you have to do on death row. And they don't have room for all these people either.

and it still has not been rejected entirely. And so it's pretty well known, at least in California that the appeal process takes a really long time, and then they fight that, and then once they exhaust the state system, then there's the federal system and then they go through that. And yeah, and people were paying for that. I mean, schuylars, I think considered indigent. So the taxpayers have to pay

for that. And meanwhile, the you know, the families. I thought he was going to be killed, you know, executed. I didn't know it was going to take this long, you know. But that's why in the John Gardner case, the DA said, look, the death penalty system is broken. Let's take the death penalty off the table and make a plea deal, and that way everybody gets justice. Because

they didn't have enough evidence for the second murder. He led them to where he killed, raped, and killed Amber Duba, but they were not able to find any independent, corroborating evidence, and therefore they weren't going to be able to prosecute him on that murder, even though he took them to

where they found her remains. And so the DA down here said hey made a deal and said if he pleads guilty life without parole, that Amber's family will get justice and so will Chelsea Kings when they did have enough evidence to prosecute him for the death penalty on that because she said, our system's broken. You know, who knows when he'd be executed, if at all? Anyway, So what's the point And so that you know, if you have a DA who does that, that makes sense? Right?

San Diego County, it didn't get covered. And so when I sat down to do this update, I found some news articles that I hadn't seen before, and it turned out that basically, I'll try to simplify this if I can, but the Public Defender's Office in Orange County was they had a death penalty case which is completely unrelated to this one, and they were looking into it and found evidence somehow that the Sheriff's Department, which runs the county jail,

was basically running some kind of system off the books where they were setting up inmates to basically do interviews, get information from other inmates, and then the Sheriff's department get that information and give it to the DA's office. The prosecution and the defense wouldn't know anything about it. So this guy put together a brief. It was like five hundred and fifty pages full of evidence and examples

of this, and it just blew up. And so the judge ultimately you know, ended up taking the DA's office off the case, and the DA's office retaliated and papered him essentially, you know, objecting to having him serve on a whole lot of their other cases. It just got really really ugly, with a lot of accusations going back and forth. Ultimately, it was pretty much shown that this was going on and nobody really ever paid for it, and that's one of the things that Kamala Harris has

as a presidential candidate. She was the attorney general for the state. It went up to her and she just lets I'm going to let the local authorities handle it, and so she didn't get involved. Her predecessor still hasn't really, you know, done anything, and they kind of quietly closed whatever quote unquote probe they were doing. There's still supposedly a federal probe into this whole thing. The DA was thrown out of office, there's a new DA in there

who's trying to clean things up. And then this prosecutor on this case actually got pulled into it because he did, in fact use a couple informants to talk to Skuyler and wired him up and put him in a cell. And that's exactly what this whole informant scandal was alleging this public defender, and apparently Matt Murphy was not allowed to talk about it for a long time. This was these records were sealed. I couldn't get access to it.

I called the d's office multiple times, could not get a response, could not get anything out of them, And then I ultimately found a news article that said that

he was cleared by a judge of no wrongdoing. But you know, I I went through five trials on this case and another case for another book, I'll take care of You, with Matt Murphy as the prosecutor, and you know, I didn't want to believe that he did anything wrong, and there wasn't anything proven that he did wrong, but it definitely there was definitely some accusations hanging there for a while that seemed, you know, to be similar to

what was alleged in the other cases. So I don't, you know, no, I guess you can't say that you know, he personally had anything to do with it. It was a pre existing system that was kind of set up within the sheriff's department, and they basically tried to blame specific people within the sheriff's department, and nobody really took accountability for it. And it was just a mess. And I

don't know, hopefully it's it's not still going on. But basically, what they were using inmates against each other and feeding it to, you know, get them favors, to get them some lenient They were hoping for leniency on their own cases, right, And that's what snitches do. I mean, that's not something new, but in this case, when you're not telling the defense and you're doing a whole secret, covert thing off the books,

that that ended up trickling down into this. But ultimately met Murphy was apparently cleared by a judge of any wrongdoing. So and he's now since left the office and has gone into TV and a private practice.

I mean, she told me that, and I would think that that would just bolster her request, because I've already been told by the prison spokespeople if an inmate identifies as a woman and they're in a male prison, we have to take their request seriously. It's by a case case by case basis, and we take it under revisement and we we you know, consider it. So there's not like any rule, any steadfast rule, like if you request it,

you get it. But I'm I'm thinking that that definitely must help her case legally, you know, because it's no longer based on genitalia, and unless and until she gets that up. And again, I mean, there's one other thing. I don't think I mentioned that. There's another criteria, one of the criteria in the in the rules for this application process for this taxpayer subsidized surgery, and that is

the elements of the crime. So I'm thinking that number one, gender dysphoria, that's a medical condition, Okay, that that would and she definitely qualifies for it from that standpoint. However, if if she's still quote unquote mentally incompetent, well then she can't give medical consent, you know, in a conscious fashion to have the surgery. That is a criteria. She must be mentally competent to make her own medical decisions. And according to her attorney some years ago, she wasn't

mentally competent to talk to me. Therefore, we can't have both ways. You know, you're either mentally competent or you're not. And so I think I'm pretty sure that's why they wouldn't talk to me, because I clearly pointed out how they were trying to have it both ways. And then the other criteria you know, if the motive in the murder is I want money to pay for gender confirmation surgery, that's an element of the crime. I would think they

would take that into consideration. That why should they grant that if that's why they killed, why she killed people? I think that I would think that would matter. I wasn't able to get any answer. I did ask that, but they're like, you know, we don't know what our doctors would say. That's the answer I got.

It's her boyfriend. She was found and hanging from an exterior balcony here in Coronado, California. So that's a small island here right off the coast of San Diego. The two harbors face each other. Essentially, there's a lot of naval bases and military and retired military who live on that island, and wealthy people and people from Arizona where it's hot come to stay in the summer, which is

where they're from. They spent the rest of the year in Scottsdale, and anyway, they'd been living together for a couple of years, and Jonah had a six year old son who Rebecca was very attached to and took care of. And Jonah had two x wives, and so that was the son with the second wife, and then he also had a son and a daughter with the first wife. And Rebecca did not get along so well with his

older daughter. Anyway, so there was a lot of drama, and basically what happened is Rebecca's thirteen year old sister came out to visit, and Jonah's son and daughter left to go visit their mother back in South Carolina, and Jonah went off to the gym, and Rebecca was downstairs in the bathroom and her sister was upstairs in the bathroom, and suddenly Rebecca heard this crash and came out and found little six year old Max on the floor in the lobby area with a broken chandelier and a scooter

and the dog was barking, and there was a soccer ball. Anyway, he was on his back and he wasn't breathing, and so they called nine one one, and basically he was

severely injured. And anyway, two days later, Rebecca was found dead hanging from this exterior balcony one morning by Jonah's brother, who came out from Memphis, Tennessee to show support for you know, the family was in the hospital by the bedside of this boy, and he called nine one one and said, I got a girl hung herself in the guesthouse where he was staying, and she was in the main house. So right away, first words out of his mouth don't make sense compared to what actually he said happened.

So anyway, it's a mystery. Okay, So it looks it looks pretty suspicious because she's naked. She's naked, she's got her hands tied behind her back, her feet are tied together, and she's got like a T shirt wrapped around her neck and in her mouth, so she's gagged and bound and she's naked hanging outside by this like you know, jet ski rope, this orange boating kind of rope with these weird knots. So anyway, the Coronado police are used

to dealing with bicycle staff. That's like their big crime on Coronado, so they aren't clearly capable of dealing with this, so they call in the Sheriff's department. Sheriff's department comes out and they do this whole investigation, and long story short, took him, I don't know some weeks and they say, oh, it's a suicide. And Max's Max you know, ended up having fatal injuries and dying at least being brain dead.

A couple of days after Rebecca was found dead, and they the sheriff said that Rebecca was the only adult in the house and felt guilty and killed herself because she felt guilty about Max's deaf because she was so attached to him and felt so bad about what happened to him, and Max had a tragic but accidental fall. So anyway, it just turned into this huge monumental controversy because this Rebecca's family said, there's no way she would

commit suicide. There's no way she would commit suicide like that, it was murder, and the sheriff's department said, no, it's suicide. And so it's just been going on and on for years, and then finally there was a civil trial. Her family accused Jonah's ex wife and her sister and his brother of conspiring to kill Rebecca, and then the attorney dismissed the two women and just left the brother. And when it went to trial last year, the jury found the

brother responsible for her death. And then the sheriff was basically running for reelection and said, well, okay, fine, you know it's suicide, until his election opponent said, well, if I were elected, I'd immediately reopened the murder case, and so the sheriff said, okay, fine, we'll reopen. We won't reopen the criminal case. We will review the court trial transcripts and review whatever theories came out. And then they waited until long after the election was over he was reelected,

and they basically said, no, it's still a suicide. So this has just been raging on and on, and the whole community of Coronado and everyone that I talked to always says, that's a murder. No, there's no way she would have done that to herself. It doesn't make any sense. The family still says it was murder. The sheriff still says it's suicide. There's been a bunch of documentaries on

TV about it. But I'm basically just approaching it from a neutral standpoint, and I'm just seeing where the truth takes me, and trying to look into the background of everybody, the context, who was doing what when, what was going on at the time between all these parties, you know, what does the public not know that would help put all this into context and see if I can find out what really happened. And so that's it's called Justice for Rebecca, at least tentatively, that's what the title is.