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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 5: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 6: Good Evening. Tom and Jackie Hawkes love their life in
Speaker 6: retirement sailing on their yacht, The Well Deserved, But when
Speaker 6: the birth of a new grandson called them back to Arizona,
Speaker 6: they put the boat up for sale. Skylar DeLeon and
Speaker 6: his pregnant wife Jennifer showed up as prospective buyers with
Speaker 6: their baby and a stroller, and the Hawkses thought they
Speaker 6: had a deal. Soon after a sea trial and alleged purchase, however,
Speaker 6: the older couple disappeared and the Delyons promptly tried to
Speaker 6: access the Hawks's bank accounts. As police investigated the case,
Speaker 6: they not only found a third homicide victim with ties
Speaker 6: to Skyler, they also uncovered an unexpected and unusual motive
Speaker 6: Skyler had wanted gender reassignment surgery for years. By killing
Speaker 6: the Hawkses with a motley crew of assailants and plundering
Speaker 6: the couple's assets, the deleons had planned to clear their
Speaker 6: one hundred thousand dollars in debts and still have money
Speaker 6: for the surgery, which Skyler had already scheduled. Now, in
Speaker 6: this up to the minute updated edition, which includes extensive
Speaker 6: new material, New York Times best selling author Caitlin Rother
Speaker 6: presents the latest breaking developments in the case. Scholar, who
Speaker 6: was ultimately sentenced to death row for the three murders,
Speaker 6: transitioned to a woman via hormones while living in the
Speaker 6: psych unit at San Quentin Prison. Recently, she legally changed
Speaker 6: her name and gendered a female, apparently a strategic step
Speaker 6: in her quest to obtain taxpayer subsidized gender confirmation surgery
Speaker 6: and transfer to a woman's prison. Combined with Governor Gavin
Speaker 6: Newsom's recent moratorium on executions, this only adds insult to
Speaker 6: injury for the victim's families, who wants Skylar to receive
Speaker 6: the ultimate punishment for her crimes. The book of her
Speaker 6: featuring This evening is Dead Reckoning extensively revised an updated
Speaker 6: edition with my special guest, journalist and author Caitlin Rother.
Speaker 6: Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 6: a Greenness interview. Kaitlin Rotherhi, good evening, Thank you very
Speaker 6: much for joining us to talk about this newly updated
Speaker 6: and revised version of Dead Reckoning.
Speaker 7: AH, happy to be here now.
Speaker 6: Caitlin, tell us what this revision and update includes. We're
Speaker 6: not going to go back into for people are very
Speaker 6: familiar with this story from a past interview about Dead Reckoning,
Speaker 6: So let's concentrate on the revised and updated version of
Speaker 6: this and what news do you have brought to this
Speaker 6: incredible story you talked about you had been in touch
Speaker 6: with Skuyler and watched her appearance in Psychological State Evolve.
Speaker 6: Tell us about the interviews that you did before he
Speaker 6: was sentenced and then this quest to interview him again
Speaker 6: after he was on death row in San Quentin.
Speaker 7: Okay, Just in case there's anybody who doesn't know about
Speaker 7: this case, I'm just going to give just a few
Speaker 7: sentences just so people understand what the basic cases and
Speaker 7: that is Tom and Jackie Hawks, who were retirees from
Speaker 7: originally from Prescott, Arizona, bought a boat called the Well Deserved.
Speaker 7: They sailed around Mexico for a couple of years. One
Speaker 7: of the Tom's sons had a grand baby had a
Speaker 7: baby obviously that was Tom's grandbaby, and they wanted to
Speaker 7: come back to Arizona to be with their grandson. So
Speaker 7: Tom put the boat up for sale. He advertised it
Speaker 7: with a broker and also without a broker because he
Speaker 7: was trying to save himself commission. And Skylar de Leone,
Speaker 7: who at the time was presenting as a man. And
Speaker 7: this is why this is a tricky story to kind
Speaker 7: of talk about back and forth in time because Skuyler.
Speaker 7: It's one of the reasons for the update is Skyler
Speaker 7: has now legally changed her name and gender to female,
Speaker 7: but at the time of the murder, Skyler was presenting
Speaker 7: as a man. But the motive for the murder was
Speaker 7: to get money for gender confirmation surgery. So it's kind
Speaker 7: of a I just wanted to give kind of some update.
Speaker 7: But anyway, Skyler brings Jennifer, his wife, who's pregnant with
Speaker 7: their second child, with their ten month old daughter, out
Speaker 7: to the boat to meet Tom. And Jackie to gain
Speaker 7: their trust. And then Skyler comes back another few times,
Speaker 7: once with a nineteen year old guy he met in
Speaker 7: jail who was actually one of the guards there who
Speaker 7: he made friends with. And then he brought also an older,
Speaker 7: bigger guy, muscular, muscle guy named John F. Kennedy, and
Speaker 7: he was what we call a shot callar in the
Speaker 7: gang culture from the Long Beach insane crips. So he
Speaker 7: supposedly had turned his life over and was about to
Speaker 7: become a minister. Meets Skyler and within twenty minutes has
Speaker 7: already agreed to go onto this boat and help Skyler
Speaker 7: commit these murders. So yeah, that's, you know, a hypocritical story.
Speaker 7: I also though, think that Skyler probably didn't may not
Speaker 7: have told him exactly what they were going to be doing,
Speaker 7: but did promise him, you know, like a million dollars.
Speaker 7: These people are rich, they've got this yacht. So anyway,
Speaker 7: Skyler and Alonzo mc chain who is the young former
Speaker 7: jail guard, and this guy who I'll call JFK three
Speaker 7: of them come on there. They overtake Tom and Jackie
Speaker 7: with tasers and handcuffs and force them to sign power
Speaker 7: of attorney documents. And promise that they'll, you know, save
Speaker 7: their lives as long as they sign these documents. But
Speaker 7: then instead they take them back on the deck. They're blindfolded,
Speaker 7: they're gagged, and Tom tries to fight back and Skylard
Speaker 7: just laughs, laughs it off. They basically tape them together
Speaker 7: with Jackie's back to Tom's chest tape, put the tape
Speaker 7: around them, and then tie them to the anchor, throw
Speaker 7: the anchor overboard, and they are basically pulled down to
Speaker 7: the depths of the ocean and drowned alive. So this
Speaker 7: is this horrible, horrible murder. And in the course of
Speaker 7: investigating this murder, detectives also find that Skyler killed another
Speaker 7: guy who he also met in jail, who was in
Speaker 7: for counterfeiting, and he was a drug addict named John Jarviy.
Speaker 7: He took him down to Mexico with some other ploy
Speaker 7: took fifty thousand dollars from him and said, I apparently
Speaker 7: that they were going to go buy drugs and probably
Speaker 7: make a bunch of money, and instead Skyler cut his
Speaker 7: throat and left him to die at the side of
Speaker 7: a road in Mexico and was actually in jail at
Speaker 7: the time, went back to jail because he was supposed
Speaker 7: to be out on work furlough, signed in with Alonzo
Speaker 7: mcchain still in charge at the jail, and got there
Speaker 7: two hours late, but nobody said anything, and proceeded to
Speaker 7: use the jail computer to buy an anal sex machine
Speaker 7: that evening with his credit card. So this is this
Speaker 7: is just a quick quicks and hopes of the murder. Anyway,
Speaker 7: So here we are, all these years later. The detective,
Speaker 7: the lead detective on the case, David Byington, told me
Speaker 7: that as far as he was concerned, the primary motivation
Speaker 7: for this murder was, you know, Skyler and Jennifer one
Speaker 7: hundred thousand dollars in debt. But more importantly for Skyler,
Speaker 7: Scaler wanted a sex change operation, which is what they
Speaker 7: called it back then and now they call it a
Speaker 7: gender confirmation surgery. But in court, the prosecutor chose to
Speaker 7: just go with a greed motive because my opinion as
Speaker 7: that's just an easier, less complicated argument to make for
Speaker 7: for a jury in what was at that time more
Speaker 7: conservative kind of a county law enforcement kind of county.
Speaker 7: So all these years later, anyway, Skyler Jennifer was convicted
Speaker 7: for life without the possibility of parole. Skyler tried to
Speaker 7: cut off his penis in jail and they wouldn't give
Speaker 7: him hormones, so he was trying to transition in jail,
Speaker 7: wasn't allowed, got to death row at San Quentin and
Speaker 7: that's where he went. Finally got hormones and transitioned to
Speaker 7: a female and now done it legally. So to answer
Speaker 7: your question, when I went to go visit Skyler in
Speaker 7: the county jail, Skyler was still presenting as a man.
Speaker 7: So it's if I go back and forth between he
Speaker 7: and sheets, because it's kind of hard to keep it
Speaker 7: straight sometimes. But from a journalistic standpoint and out of
Speaker 7: respect to the LGBTQ community, you know, especially now that
Speaker 7: Skyler is a woman, you know, you're supposed to refer
Speaker 7: to someone who wants to be a woman to as
Speaker 7: a sheep. So it's complicated, and I'm not trying to
Speaker 7: offend anybody, because there are other people, a whole other
Speaker 7: group of people who feel that inmates don't deserve any
Speaker 7: rights at all, and especially someone like Skyler who actually
Speaker 7: committed murder to gain a gender reassignment surgery should not
Speaker 7: be given the respect to be given the female pronoun.
Speaker 7: So this is the this is the balance I have
Speaker 7: to walk when I do these interviews. And it's a
Speaker 7: long preface, but I just wanted to make all that clear.
Speaker 7: So to ask me what you'd like to know about
Speaker 7: the first set of interviews.
Speaker 6: When you went and first interviewed him, you you talked
Speaker 6: about how he was presenting, and you can tell us
Speaker 6: about that or looking.
Speaker 7: Like a man, but the whole, the whole inner for interviews,
Speaker 7: and most of what we talked about was how Skyler
Speaker 7: did not want his penis her penis attached, because it
Speaker 7: didn't feel like it belonged there. So clearly Skyler wanted
Speaker 7: to look like a woman and felt like a woman
Speaker 7: inside and said that repeatedly.
Speaker 6: To me when you went to San Quentin, Well, in
Speaker 6: those interviews, what did you try to get? What kind
Speaker 6: of information did you try to get from him? What
Speaker 6: did he want to concentrate on in terms of information?
Speaker 7: Well, here's and I have to make another preface here.
Speaker 7: I'm allowed to talk about what we talked about at
Speaker 7: the Santa Anna jail. But when I even though Skyler
Speaker 7: invited me to come and visit her at San Quentin
Speaker 7: and I interviewed her for two and a half hours.
Speaker 7: I got a nasty threatening letter from her attorney saying,
Speaker 7: You're not allowed to use anything that Skyler said to
Speaker 7: you at San Quentin because Skyler is not mentally competent
Speaker 7: to consent to give an interview, which is part of
Speaker 7: the story, honestly. So it's an important part of the story.
Speaker 7: And I can talk about the legal aspects of this,
Speaker 7: and I can talk about what I saw, I can
Speaker 7: talk about my observations, but I can't I'm not legally
Speaker 7: allowed to discuss what she said to me, which is
Speaker 7: a little frustrating, But to be honest, a lot of
Speaker 7: it was stuff that she already said to me when
Speaker 7: we were sitting in the county jail, and I was
Speaker 7: able to reproduce, you know, the entire scene because I
Speaker 7: got a lot of the same information from third parties.
Speaker 7: So I had sources at sam Quentin. You we're correctional
Speaker 7: officers who actually were in the psych unit with Skuyler,
Speaker 7: and could you know, basically, you know, reconfirm some of
Speaker 7: the many of the things that she told me. So
Speaker 7: I just want to make that clear that I am
Speaker 7: not violating any kind of legal barriers here, that I
Speaker 7: am doing this, you know, working around that. But the
Speaker 7: fact of the matter is that Schuyler wanted to look
Speaker 7: and felt like a woman inside, and that the penis
Speaker 7: was not. She didn't even want to say the word penis.
Speaker 7: That that was how distasteful it was to her, Like
Speaker 7: she would not use that word.
Speaker 6: And you asked her about sorry, go ahead, you asked
Speaker 6: her about about her psychiatric diagnosis by doctors and also
Speaker 6: the medication that she was on. So tell me about
Speaker 6: the county jail.
Speaker 7: And I also did that when I was at San Quentin,
Speaker 7: but again in San Quentin, I'm not allowed to tell
Speaker 7: you what she told me, so it's a little tricky.
Speaker 7: But what was already in the in the first edition
Speaker 7: of the book pretty much still stands. But Skyler, you know,
Speaker 7: Skyler is a liar. So some of what she said
Speaker 7: checked out, and some of it, you know, didn't, for example,
Speaker 7: and I don't have the book in front of me
Speaker 7: for all the specific diagnoses. But you know, severe gender dysphoria,
Speaker 7: that that is the diagnosis for people who are born
Speaker 7: one gender and feel differently on the inside than they
Speaker 7: look physically on the outside. So that's that matches. There
Speaker 7: were a number of do you have those in front
Speaker 7: of you usually do? I know, you're really good at this.
Speaker 7: I don't have them all memorized, but anyway, she go ahead.
Speaker 6: Go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 7: I honestly I didn't review all those right before I called,
Speaker 7: but I'm just doing them for memory. She's something about
Speaker 7: I know she had epilepsy when she was growing up. Yes,
Speaker 7: And I asked her something about, you know, sociopathy and
Speaker 7: and and she said, oh, I asked them about that,
Speaker 7: and they said, that's not true. Well, that's that's a
Speaker 7: generic term for somebody who doesn't, you know, doesn't seem
Speaker 7: to know the difference between right and wrong, or if
Speaker 7: they do, they sure they you know, ignore it and
Speaker 7: and do it anyway. But to me, me Skyler always
Speaker 7: seemed as though she just basically wanted to know whatever
Speaker 7: I wanted her to say. So and I know this
Speaker 7: is pretty much how she must have operated with everybody else.
Speaker 7: And that is and that's pretty similar with with con
Speaker 7: men and con women. They're very manipulative. They try to
Speaker 7: read whoever they're talking to to tell them whatever they
Speaker 7: want to hear. And you know, I think you and
Speaker 7: I talked about that with Charles manson the book that
Speaker 7: I did. They came out last year hunting Charles Manson,
Speaker 7: same thing. That's what That's what these people do. They
Speaker 7: lock onto you, they look dear in your eyes, and
Speaker 7: they test out. They say things and they test test
Speaker 7: you out and see what what you respond to. And
Speaker 7: I could see Skyler doing that with me, where I
Speaker 7: would try to ask her a question and she looked
Speaker 7: at me to try to see what I wanted her
Speaker 7: to say, and try to tell me what I wanted
Speaker 7: to hear, which is not what I want to hear.
Speaker 7: I want to hear the truth, right, but with somebody
Speaker 7: like this, it's very difficult. So the most truthful thing, honestly,
Speaker 7: that we could talk about was her gender dysphoria. But
Speaker 7: I could tell you from my observations at San Quentin,
Speaker 7: she seemed happy. She seemed relaxed. She was on medication
Speaker 7: that she had not been on previously. She seemed more
Speaker 7: rational and more lucid, and frankly, just happier in her
Speaker 7: own skin than she she ever had all the times
Speaker 7: I'd seen her in court, the four times I visited
Speaker 7: her in the county jail, she was finally not having
Speaker 7: to pretend to be you know, a man number one,
Speaker 7: or a provider or a father or any of those things.
Speaker 7: And you know, I think she liked the attention to
Speaker 7: obviously me being there and talking to her, But then
Speaker 7: you know, she also has lawyers who you know, shut
Speaker 7: all that down. As soon as I got home, I
Speaker 7: had this letter waiting for me saying, you know, you
Speaker 7: can't use anything she said because she's not mentally competent,
Speaker 7: and he wouldn't talk to me. That lawyer wouldn't talk
Speaker 7: to me about this. But it's pretty complicated and you
Speaker 7: can't have it both ways. So if she wants to
Speaker 7: get taxpayer subsidized gender confirmation surgery, which is now possible
Speaker 7: in California for inmates in California prisons, much to the
Speaker 7: dismay of pretty much everyone I talked to, taxpayers and
Speaker 7: the victims' families alike, you have to be mentally competent
Speaker 7: and able to make a medical decision. So I don't
Speaker 7: know how that's going to play. If she is in
Speaker 7: fact applying for this surgery, which she's wanted her whole life,
Speaker 7: and in fact wanted so badly that she killed the
Speaker 7: Hawks for it, if she's not mentally confident, then she's
Speaker 7: not gonna be able to get that surgery. And second
Speaker 7: of all, one of the other crag peria that the
Speaker 7: state uses to decide who gets this surgery, and they've
Speaker 7: only I think they've only approved something like ten requests.
Speaker 7: And these numbers keep changing and growing, but they keep
Speaker 7: recategorizing gender and the way people identify. So there are
Speaker 7: all these different terms being used now and they change
Speaker 7: all the time, and so I can't keep up with them.
Speaker 7: But you know, there's non binary, there's you know, all
Speaker 7: kinds of stuff where people want to be called they
Speaker 7: instead of he or she, And so the prison system
Speaker 7: is now having to figure out where to house these
Speaker 7: people because the straight men and the straight women don't
Speaker 7: want these people living with them because they feel whether
Speaker 7: they're right or not. I think that in at least
Speaker 7: the women, they say, well, these people were born as
Speaker 7: men and you know, they could be more violent and
Speaker 7: hurt us, and we don't want them, we don't feel safe.
Speaker 7: And the men sexually assault the transgender females who were
Speaker 7: you know, in the men's prison with them. So it's
Speaker 7: actually quite a quandary for the prison system on trying
Speaker 7: to figure out where to put these people. And once
Speaker 7: somebody in Skyler's situation who has now gone to court
Speaker 7: and gotten the judge to sign a petition that says
Speaker 7: Skuyler's middle name is now Preciosa, which means jem. It
Speaker 7: was previously Skyler was born John Julius Jacobson and changed
Speaker 7: her name to Schuyler Julius Jacobson, and now it's Skyler
Speaker 7: Preciosa Dillon. I'm sorry, Skyler Dillon, and then Skyler Preciosa Dillon.
Speaker 7: And and she picked Skyler, I think because it was
Speaker 7: kind of one of those names that could be male
Speaker 7: or female. And now she has legally become a woman,
Speaker 7: she can ask to be transferred to a women's prison,
Speaker 7: because that was what she wanted to do way back
Speaker 7: since she was in the county jail. That was one
Speaker 7: of the things we talked about. And at the time,
Speaker 7: they housed people according to their genitalia, so as long
Speaker 7: as you still had a penis, regardless of whether you
Speaker 7: said you were a transgender female or not, if you
Speaker 7: still had a penis, you were still housed with the men.
Speaker 7: Now today that's changed because of the court precedence and
Speaker 7: cultural changes that now if you ask to be transferred
Speaker 7: to it's how you identify. So if you identify as
Speaker 7: a as a woman, but you still have a penis
Speaker 7: they have to take your petitions seriously, and if you've
Speaker 7: gone to court, presumably they have to take it even
Speaker 7: more seriously. So she's either getting pretty good legal advice
Speaker 7: to get what she wants, and she's you know, using
Speaker 7: the system to her advantage. I keep watching, you know,
Speaker 7: the inmate locator computer system to see if she's been
Speaker 7: moved or not. But you know, San Quentin has its
Speaker 7: own psych unit, and she's been in and out of
Speaker 7: there since it opened, which was in twenty fourteen. And
Speaker 7: before that, there's a state prison facility at Vacaville, which
Speaker 7: you might have heard of, and she was back and
Speaker 7: forth between Vacaville and San Quentin repeatedly. One other thing
Speaker 7: I can talk about was when I was sitting in
Speaker 7: the in the cage with her at San Quentin. This
Speaker 7: was pretty scary. I came to visit her and they said, okay,
Speaker 7: give us the paper that you brought and the pen,
Speaker 7: which was supposed to be preapproved. They took away my
Speaker 7: paper and my pen and they gave me a notepad
Speaker 7: that was theirs. Because you know, I'm probably going to
Speaker 7: smuggle in something, right, I No, I'm not. And so
Speaker 7: I sat there and they go go sit in that
Speaker 7: cage over there. So I'm sitting in this cage and
Speaker 7: then Skyler. They walked Skyler in, who now looks like
Speaker 7: a woman with a side ponytail and breasts and the
Speaker 7: whole thing, and they lock her in with me.
Speaker 6: Like, oh my god.
Speaker 7: And she puts her hands through the hole in the
Speaker 7: door and they take her cuffs off. So I'm sitting
Speaker 7: in there, locked inside a cage with someone who's killed
Speaker 7: three people, you know, and had and showed no remorse
Speaker 7: about it whatsoever. And I'm sitting there with a pen,
Speaker 7: and I'm sitting there with a spork, you know, a
Speaker 7: plastic combination fork spoon. Because part of the deal when
Speaker 7: you go and visit an inmate, you buy them lunch
Speaker 7: if you're going at lunchtime, because you're basically they don't
Speaker 7: get to eat otherwise, and it's just a nice thing
Speaker 7: to do so that you know the person will talk
Speaker 7: to you if you're someone in my situation. So I
Speaker 7: bought her a casadilla chicken casado with a couple avocados,
Speaker 7: which is what she wanted. And gave her the spork, right,
Speaker 7: I purposely did not hand her a plastic knife. And
Speaker 7: then and then she wanted to draw me something with
Speaker 7: the pen, and I just thought to myself, nothing's gonna
Speaker 7: could possibly end up in my and I, you know,
Speaker 7: and by the time the guard gets over there, who knows,
Speaker 7: you know, what would happen anyway. But again, you know,
Speaker 7: that didn't happen because she got to talk about what
Speaker 7: she wanted to talk about, and I didn't upset her
Speaker 7: or say anything to confront her or anything. So but
Speaker 7: my point is, you know, she wants to be housed
Speaker 7: with the women, and it looks now that she's taken
Speaker 7: legal steps to further that. And I am presuming that
Speaker 7: she's applied. I'm not allowed to get that information legally
Speaker 7: because of privacy laws and hippo laws. But she told
Speaker 7: me always that she wanted that operation, and she was
Speaker 7: even trying to get private money to pay for it.
Speaker 7: So that's the deal. She's still trying to get what
Speaker 7: she wants, and there's no end in sight for her
Speaker 7: or anyone who's on death row in terms of executions,
Speaker 7: because the governor, Gavin Newsom basically put a moratorium on executions,
Speaker 7: which looked like it was going to end because we
Speaker 7: had a lethal injection protocol that was under review that
Speaker 7: was a new one because the last one was deemed
Speaker 7: unconstitutional and deemed that the chemical they used was too
Speaker 7: painful and was like torture and that's the violation of
Speaker 7: the Constitution. So they were looking for a one drug cocktails,
Speaker 7: not really cocktails, it was just one drug, but anyway,
Speaker 7: a new protocol using just one drug, and Gavin Newsom
Speaker 7: basically stopped that whole process. He basically took apart the
Speaker 7: whole new chamber that the previous governor, a couple of
Speaker 7: governors back Arnold Schwarzenegger, had built to start up executions again.
Speaker 7: He dismantled that and he basically said there will be
Speaker 7: no executions for as long as I'm governor. So that
Speaker 7: could be, you know, another few years, it could be
Speaker 7: another seven years. So there's really no end in sight
Speaker 7: for anybody on death row. There's more than seven hundred
Speaker 7: people on death row in California, and that makes people mad.
Speaker 7: That makes people mad who think that Skuyler should not
Speaker 7: be able to get what she wants after killing people.
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Speaker 6: How did California Because you write in this book about
Speaker 6: how California got to this where other states haven't even
Speaker 6: considered this. So you talk about a case that started
Speaker 6: from a lawsuit in twenty fifteen that started the state
Speaker 6: ball rolling.
Speaker 7: It actually started at Massachusetts. There was an inmate in Massachusetts,
Speaker 7: Michelle coslc. I believe she was Philip before that or
Speaker 7: Robert I can't remember. Anyway, Michelle coselec. Another person, another killer.
Speaker 7: And this is what's curious to me, the person in
Speaker 7: Massachuset Sis who was the one that started this ball
Speaker 7: rolling and the case actually, you know, she had a trial,
Speaker 7: blah blah blah. She was supposed to get the surgery.
Speaker 7: It got overturned. They sent it up to Supreme Court.
Speaker 7: They didn't want to hear it, so she was kind
Speaker 7: of stuck. Got back to the case you're referring to
Speaker 7: Norsworthy here in California. Again, a federal judge here granted
Speaker 7: the surgery, and rather than appeal it and go through
Speaker 7: all that nonsense, the parole board basically granted her parole
Speaker 7: rather than having to open that Pandora's box. Because they said, well,
Speaker 7: she's up for parole. She's allowed to have parole, even
Speaker 7: though they had denied it I think six times previously.
Speaker 7: This time they just let her go and that way
Speaker 7: they didn't have to deal with the controversy. But then
Speaker 7: there was another lawsuit that came before them and the
Speaker 7: same federal judge said, hey, this person's going to get
Speaker 7: the surgery too, and this person wasn't and eligible for PEARL.
Speaker 7: So the California system basically said, well, I guess we're
Speaker 7: going to need to act because we don't want to
Speaker 7: be told by the court on who gets the surgery
Speaker 7: and who doesn't. We want to come up with our
Speaker 7: own criteria and our own application process, and then we
Speaker 7: will determine who gets the surgery and not the court.
Speaker 7: And this also along the way, there was a during
Speaker 7: the Obama administration, the Department of Justice got involved in
Speaker 7: a case in Atlanta where there was an inmate who
Speaker 7: had been taking hormones. Another transgender female who had been
Speaker 7: taking hormones for seventeen years got to jail and they
Speaker 7: just wouldn't give her hormones anymore because she still had
Speaker 7: a penis. And this is Georgia, and this is way
Speaker 7: more conservative down there, and so she basically started turning
Speaker 7: back into a man with a beard, and you know,
Speaker 7: that was very distressing for her and upsetting for her,
Speaker 7: and you know, filed the lawsuit whatever, and the Department
Speaker 7: of Justice, the Federal Department of Justice weighed in and said, look,
Speaker 7: the Constitution requires under the eighth Amendment that you must
Speaker 7: provide quote unquote adequate medical care to inmates. And when
Speaker 7: someone has severe gender dysphoria, that is a medical condition
Speaker 7: as well as a mental condition, and you must treat
Speaker 7: it just like any other. And so again, rather than
Speaker 7: deal with all that, they released her three years early.
Speaker 7: And so that's what kept happening. And it's come up
Speaker 7: in other states, and I think I mentioned also in
Speaker 7: the update. I think it was Iowa or Idaho, one
Speaker 7: of the estates where they were about ready to have
Speaker 7: to deal with something too. So California has been in
Speaker 7: front of this, but only because I think of you know,
Speaker 7: some of the judges here are probably more progressive. But
Speaker 7: you know, I'm surprised, actually, well, I guess in Massachusetts
Speaker 7: it would have it would have gone further, but the
Speaker 7: Supreme Court didn't want to hear it, and it didn't
Speaker 7: get to the Supreme Court. The California cases didn't get
Speaker 7: to the Supreme Court. And now if it got to
Speaker 7: the Supreme Court, I'm sure and they would reject it.
Speaker 6: You talk about that, you talk about a correctional officer.
Speaker 6: Cite an example, twenty three thousand dollars, but that's not
Speaker 6: the entire cost. And you say that the state is
Speaker 6: now paying between fifty and one hundred thousand dollars for this.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's free.
Speaker 6: The assignment with.
Speaker 7: That, I had to use some kind of numbers. But
Speaker 7: so okay, because you know how insurance works. You know,
Speaker 7: there's a cost, and then there's a cost that they
Speaker 7: assign it, which isn't a real cost, but it's what
Speaker 7: the hospital tries to charge. And then the insurance comes
Speaker 7: up with some number and they say all right, well
Speaker 7: we'll pay this much, and then you have a deductible
Speaker 7: and blah blah blah. So she told me it was
Speaker 7: twenty three thousand dollars. I don't really know if that's
Speaker 7: the total cost, if that's the cost the hospital charged,
Speaker 7: but anyways, that's what she, as a private resident, a
Speaker 7: private citizen, paid under her state provided insurance. Now, so
Speaker 7: because she's a state employee. Okay, so she's getting insurance
Speaker 7: through her government job as a correctional officer. So again
Speaker 7: that may not be a real figure. But the reason
Speaker 7: that it's higher for the inmates to get surgery is
Speaker 7: because they've got to be guarded around the clock. They
Speaker 7: these surgeries and procedures, and there's usually more than one,
Speaker 7: so it's more than just one snip snip. You know,
Speaker 7: You've got to go in for some procedures and then
Speaker 7: there may be multiple procedures, and then that you've got
Speaker 7: to be guarded by I think one or two correctional
Speaker 7: officers who sit outside your room, right make sure you
Speaker 7: don't escape and someone doesn't come in and try to
Speaker 7: free you or whatever. And you know, same thing with Manson.
Speaker 7: I mean, he must have been an incredibly expensive patient
Speaker 7: because every time he had an issue, he was bleeding inside.
Speaker 7: He had a heart problems, he had emphysema, he had
Speaker 7: ended up with cancer, and he was bleeding in you know,
Speaker 7: down in his lower intestine, I believe, and you know,
Speaker 7: I had all kinds of things going on, and he
Speaker 7: was at the hospital for days at a time, and
Speaker 7: it must have cost him a fortune, you know, heart
Speaker 7: surgery and then cancer and and they and the state
Speaker 7: is required to provide that, so discount just you know,
Speaker 7: in terms of it is a medical it is considered
Speaker 7: a medical condition that is required under the Constitution, under
Speaker 7: the eighth Amendment.
Speaker 6: Right now, you provide reactions. You you talked to Dave Byington,
Speaker 6: retired Newport Beach Police Department Gail O'Neill Leanna tell us
Speaker 6: what Dave Byington had to say about the prospect tax.
Speaker 7: But all came from the same place, and that was
Speaker 7: its outrage. Uh. Dave Byington was the lead detective sergeant
Speaker 7: on this case who helped put Jennifer Skyler JFK in prison,
Speaker 7: and he knows. He's the one who told me from
Speaker 7: the very beginning that this was the motive for the murder.
Speaker 7: And he was, you know, really upset that and upset
Speaker 7: for the families too. Who that's who. The McCullough is
Speaker 7: Tom's Leanne McCullough's Tom Hawk's niece, So Tom's brother's daughter.
Speaker 7: She is a police officer, her father is a retired
Speaker 7: police chief, her husband's a police officer. So these are
Speaker 7: law enforcement people and they just are you know, and
Speaker 7: and they're related to, you know, their loved one with murdered,
Speaker 7: so they don't want they don't want Skyler to get
Speaker 7: what Skyler wanted, which was the surgery. And they also
Speaker 7: I mean, Leanne was mentioning, you know, she was concerned.
Speaker 7: She wrote a letter to Governor Knwsom saying, look, this
Speaker 7: whole thing, the moratorium, and I can't remember she wrote
Speaker 7: a separate if she wrote a separate letter about the
Speaker 7: surgery thing, or if I just I think I just
Speaker 7: did an interview because it was several years between those
Speaker 7: two things happening. But she sent me a copy of
Speaker 7: the letter, and so she basically just said to the governor, Look,
Speaker 7: you know it's not just me, but there are other
Speaker 7: victims families who are just really concerned that you start
Speaker 7: doing things like this and then these people are somehow
Speaker 7: going to be able to be released into the community.
Speaker 7: That's not happening. I mean, death row is death row.
Speaker 7: These people. Just because these people aren't going to be
Speaker 7: executed doesn't mean they're also going to be released. They're not.
Speaker 7: They they they're just not going to be executed in
Speaker 7: the next seven years, and it doesn't mean they won't
Speaker 7: ever be But as long as he's governor. You know,
Speaker 7: she was just concerned. I guess that this was going
Speaker 7: to lead to other moves that were maybe more lenient,
Speaker 7: but she, you know, definitely didn't want to see Skuylar
Speaker 7: play in the system. Jack. He's mother, Gail O'Neil. She's
Speaker 7: a sweet woman. We stayed in touch. She's just she
Speaker 7: just doesn't know what to saying, and she's just disgusted
Speaker 7: by all of it and just doesn't you know understand.
Speaker 7: She called the governor's office. She was so mad when
Speaker 7: she heard about the moratorium on the executions because you know,
Speaker 7: they were promised that, you know, they were going to
Speaker 7: get some kind of they wanted the death penalty for Skyler,
Speaker 7: so and now it's not coming anytime soon. And I
Speaker 7: don't know. Tom's son, Ryan Hawks was also upset as well.
Speaker 7: So they're all very upset. And when I've talked to
Speaker 7: them about the surgery, they're upset about that too. They
Speaker 7: don't think that Skyler should be able to get the surgery,
Speaker 7: and frankly, they don't think that. They don't they don't
Speaker 7: agree with the taxpayers paying for that at all, for
Speaker 7: any for any inmate, frankly, but certainly not one who
Speaker 7: killed somebody in order to get the surgery.
Speaker 6: Well, it's an interesting argument too, when you say that
Speaker 6: someone's doing an eighty year sentence, they're not going to
Speaker 6: get out. They're convicted of an incredibly heinous murder or murderers.
Speaker 6: What is the use of even providing that necessary medical treatment?
Speaker 6: When somebody asks, how about the psychiatric or psychological treatment
Speaker 6: for the victims' families for life? I don't think that's
Speaker 6: provided right.
Speaker 7: That's what the textive frying and said exactly that. You know, hey,
Speaker 7: if you're going to spend money on this kind of stuff,
Speaker 7: why aren't you help the families deal with the trauma
Speaker 7: and being so upset about being basically reinjured. Every time
Speaker 7: you give something to these inmates, Well, the thing of
Speaker 7: it is whether you agree with it or approve of
Speaker 7: it or not, inmates or people, and inmates have rights.
Speaker 7: And even though a lot of people don't agree with that,
Speaker 7: that's the country we live in, and that's the constitution.
Speaker 7: And when Leanne was talking to me, she's like, what
Speaker 7: do I tell my kids? And I say, well, you're
Speaker 7: a law enforcement family. You explain to them, this is
Speaker 7: what the constitution requires. You know, because that's the simple answer,
Speaker 7: regardless of whether you support it or not. You know,
Speaker 7: that's where we live, and that's what kind of country
Speaker 7: we're supposed to be, and that's the basis for these decisions. Now.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: The thing is the Eighth Amendment is the one that says,
Speaker 7: you know, you're not allowed to inflict cruel and unusual
Speaker 7: punishment on an inmate. And so what that means is
Speaker 7: you have to treat their medical problems. And if you
Speaker 7: have somebody who's got severe gender dysphoria that is causing
Speaker 7: them so much distress that they are trying to kill
Speaker 7: themselves and I'm trying and are trying to mutilate themselves
Speaker 7: by trying to cut their penises off by any means possible,
Speaker 7: whether it's a razor blade that they shouldn't have or
Speaker 7: some kind of tool that they've stolen or found because
Speaker 7: they just really want to do this to themselves and
Speaker 7: you know, or bleeding everywhere. You know, they have to
Speaker 7: take that seriously.
Speaker 6: They are required to, well there there already is a
Speaker 6: suicide watch and protocols for that for somebody that would
Speaker 6: be bent on suicide.
Speaker 7: That's this mutilation with with knives and razors and blood,
Speaker 7: which is different than Jeffrey Epstein. If you believe that
Speaker 7: he killed himself.
Speaker 6: Who knows what to believe.
Speaker 7: But I mean, if you want to kill yourself, you can.
Speaker 7: You know, they do provide razors because there are other
Speaker 7: reasons why they want inmates to you know, be hygienic
Speaker 7: or whatever, especially if they deal with food or if
Speaker 7: they work in a cafeteria or something like that. You know,
Speaker 7: but I think they have safety razors. They're they're you know,
Speaker 7: made specifically, I think for inmates, and so if somebody
Speaker 7: really wants to do that, they just have to kind
Speaker 7: of take this apart and you know, try to figure
Speaker 7: out attach it to a piece of paper or something.
Speaker 7: I think that the scholar said that she did at
Speaker 7: the jail, but she didn't really. My understanding was she
Speaker 7: didn't really do herself that much damage. But then I
Speaker 7: you know, I looked at her arms. Her arms had
Speaker 7: visible purple welts on them from where she cut herself.
Speaker 7: And I know that she cut herself from the correctional
Speaker 7: officers telling me. And I believe she used a plastic
Speaker 7: cup that you know, was sharp, So that's not that sharp.
Speaker 7: That you're literally dragging a sharp plastic edge which is
Speaker 7: not metal, which is not a knife, and so you're
Speaker 7: causing pretty bad scarring. And it was vertical, it was
Speaker 7: not horizontal. And vertical means you mean business. You know.
Speaker 7: If you're just slashing little ones across, that's generally a
Speaker 7: call for attention. If you're going vertical, that means you're
Speaker 7: really trying to kill yourself, right, And those were the
Speaker 7: welts that I saw on her arms from the scars
Speaker 7: of trying to do that. And I also understood from
Speaker 7: the correctional officer that Skyler would bang her head against
Speaker 7: the wall to make a huge bump like a he said,
Speaker 7: like a unicorn, just to.
Speaker 6: Get attention to me. You know, yeah, sure, but some
Speaker 6: people claim that all of it is to gain attention
Speaker 6: because it does people afford him that attention.
Speaker 7: Yeah. And I am not sympathizing with Skuyler. I am
Speaker 7: just talking specifically generically about this condition and gender dysporya,
Speaker 7: and I've been talking a lot about it. And you know,
Speaker 7: I don't have a medical degree, I am not a psychologist,
Speaker 7: but I have written many books about a lot of
Speaker 7: mental health issues with these killers and I've been covering
Speaker 7: mental illness in the California prison system for far longer
Speaker 7: than I've been an author. When I was a reporter
Speaker 7: at the San Diego Union Tribune, i also covered this
Speaker 7: as part of my beat for many many years in
Speaker 7: California had lawsuits against it because they were not providing
Speaker 7: proper mental health care to the inmates, and they ended
Speaker 7: up having to have a federal agency basically set up
Speaker 7: as a monitor to come in and make sure that
Speaker 7: these inmates were getting proper care because they weren't. And
Speaker 7: so this is bigger than California. This goes way back,
Speaker 7: and it's not just a transgender thing. This is a
Speaker 7: mental health is a mental health issue, and you know,
Speaker 7: our jails, even here in San Diego, there have been
Speaker 7: stories about how bad our county jails are. These inmates,
Speaker 7: even at the jail, the county level, the local level,
Speaker 7: are killing themselves at an alarming rate. And this is
Speaker 7: because we are not providing proper mental health care in
Speaker 7: our society in general. And so these people are ending
Speaker 7: up in the county jails and in the state prisons
Speaker 7: when they've got mental pretty severe mental health issues, and
Speaker 7: you know, some of them commit crimes, you know, and
Speaker 7: so they've become our modern you know, state institutions for
Speaker 7: the mentally ill. And yes, so you know you can say, well,
Speaker 7: people are playing the system. A lot of these people
Speaker 7: are pretty seriously mentally ill and have a lot of issues,
Speaker 7: and you know, they self medicate and they kill people,
Speaker 7: or they've just got these deep seated genetic or environmental predispositions.
Speaker 7: They don't have any control over it, and they kill people.
Speaker 7: And there are some people who make choices. And so
Speaker 7: the question is are these people evil or are they
Speaker 7: mentally ill? Or is it a little bit of both?
Speaker 7: And I'm not saying, you know, you can't say they're
Speaker 7: all the same, because they're not. Each case is different.
Speaker 7: But with Skuylar, there really wasn't a lot of attention paid.
Speaker 7: In fact, there was almost none paid to mental health
Speaker 7: issues in Skyler's case. And when I asked Skyler's trial
Speaker 7: attorney about that, you know, did you do a psychiatric examination?
Speaker 7: He said yeah? And I go, well, how come you
Speaker 7: didn't bring that into court? And he said, well, I
Speaker 7: didn't think it would help our case. So the thing
Speaker 7: of it is is I've been covering this case longer
Speaker 7: than any other case in my entire career, which is
Speaker 7: saying something. I mean, this case started, the murders were
Speaker 7: in two thousand and four. It's now twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 7: I've seen a lot of changes, you know. I've seen
Speaker 7: a lot of changes in Skyler. I've seen a lot
Speaker 7: of changes in the California system and how they deal
Speaker 7: with these issues. And I've seen a lot of changes
Speaker 7: in like I said, in the jails, in the prisons,
Speaker 7: in terms of how many people who are mentally ill
Speaker 7: are ending up behind bars because they're not getting treatment
Speaker 7: in the community. John Gardner, who is in a state
Speaker 7: prison after raping and killing two teenage girls here in
Speaker 7: our county San Diego, tried to get help and couldn't
Speaker 7: get help because he was a sex offender, and they
Speaker 7: wouldn't let him into any of the substance abuse or
Speaker 7: mental health facilities because he was a sex offender. So
Speaker 7: that's a big giant hole in the system too. So
Speaker 7: these people are out there committing crimes, and sometimes they
Speaker 7: know that there's something wrong and they try to get
Speaker 7: help and they can't. So it's a complicated thing. And
Speaker 7: I know a lot of people want to just dismiss
Speaker 7: these people and say lock them up, let's not think
Speaker 7: about it. Well, that's expensive. I mean, there's a facility
Speaker 7: in California for sexual for violent sexual predators, and at
Speaker 7: the time when I wrote the book Lost Girls, I
Speaker 7: think it was like one hundred and eighty seven thousand
Speaker 7: dollars a year to treat one inmate. So I mean,
Speaker 7: even if you do take it seriously and you do
Speaker 7: lock them away and you do try to get them treatment,
Speaker 7: and some people say you can't ever rehabilitate these people
Speaker 7: because it's just part of who they are, it's costs
Speaker 7: a lot of money. So there's no really good answer here, you.
Speaker 6: Know what I mean. Well, people think that possibly putting
Speaker 6: somebody to death would save some money, and you know,
Speaker 6: especially that doesn't save any money at all, and it's
Speaker 6: far more expensive.
Speaker 7: My question was the sense of the house them in
Speaker 7: a secure environment like that. And so where are you
Speaker 7: in Canada?
Speaker 6: I'm in Ontario.
Speaker 7: In Ontario because it's funny, you know, my mom and
Speaker 7: stepdad have a place on Salt Spring Island, and I
Speaker 7: did a couple of talks at the library there and
Speaker 7: one of them was about Lost Girls, and it was
Speaker 7: about John Gardner and our system and the holes in it,
Speaker 7: and they could not understand how the California government was
Speaker 7: treating these mentally ill people, you know, even though they're criminals.
Speaker 7: It's funny to me that the people in Canada look
Speaker 7: at all of these issues that you and I are
Speaker 7: talking about today in a completely different light than they
Speaker 7: do in the United States, and in California in particular,
Speaker 7: with a much more condition kind of you know, perspective.
Speaker 6: I think they do, But there's there's issues there as well.
Speaker 6: What I was there, Yeah, I'm sure what I was
Speaker 6: talking about was the prosecution. I find it odd and
Speaker 6: maybe I can ask you why you would think that
Speaker 6: prosecutors would still opt for the death penalty in cases
Speaker 6: where they know that likely, almost absolutely, these people won't
Speaker 6: be put to death, and with the incredible cost of
Speaker 6: the appeal process.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well that's a very good point. And you know,
Speaker 7: I usually try not to take a position on the
Speaker 7: death penalty. I try not to take a position on
Speaker 7: gun control. I try not to take a position on religion.
Speaker 7: I try not to take a position on presidential politics
Speaker 7: because there are such lightning raws and I'll just lose readers.
Speaker 7: But I'll just tell you I do believe that if
Speaker 7: people knew how much the death penalty system and death
Speaker 7: sentences and death penalty trials cost compared to trials where
Speaker 7: you're just sending somebody for life with that parol, and
Speaker 7: then how much it costs to house these people in
Speaker 7: single cells, and you know it takes twice as I
Speaker 7: don't know, it can take five, seven, eight years to
Speaker 7: get to trial. It's just there's so many more eyes
Speaker 7: and teas that they have to dot and cross with
Speaker 7: the death penalty case. They have to call more witnesses,
Speaker 7: they have to take a lot more steps to be
Speaker 7: more careful because they know their appeals. And it's just
Speaker 7: a much costlier system. And it really doesn't make sense
Speaker 7: to keep trying people for the death penalty if you're
Speaker 7: never going to execute them, because what's the point. But
Speaker 7: I guess there are families who still really want this.
Speaker 7: And as some of the prosecutors have said, and I
Speaker 7: think I quoted one in my update, as long as
Speaker 7: the law is still in place to keep trying people
Speaker 7: under the death penalty system, they're almost required to because
Speaker 7: it's well, it's somewhat up to the DA. I guess
Speaker 7: they pursue the death penalty or not. But as long
Speaker 7: as the laws still in place, it's still part of
Speaker 7: their job to try a case under the death penalty
Speaker 7: and give people death sentences. And it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 7: The system's broken, clearly, and they should just you know,
Speaker 7: get all that in line and you know, use that
Speaker 7: money for you know, trying people and whatever. It's just
Speaker 7: it's it's not a good system at the moment. It's
Speaker 7: not the end and the means are not matching.
Speaker 6: You know. The thing that I see the worst effect
Speaker 6: of this is that the victims' families have no idea,
Speaker 6: regardless of what they've read before, they have no idea
Speaker 6: what they're going to experience in terms of the appeal process,
Speaker 6: in terms of how I'm not sure the term well no,
Speaker 6: in terms of how an ordinary case, if it were
Speaker 6: to be life without parole or a life sentence with
Speaker 6: conditions of parole, would not be looked at with so
Speaker 6: much scrutiny as as a death penalty case. And so
Speaker 6: you have these retrials where the family is dragged again.
Speaker 6: I'm dragged again.
Speaker 7: And sometimes they force these families, you know, they'll hold
Speaker 7: multiple trials and they sometimes now consolidate them but you know,
Speaker 7: the Golden State Killer, for example, they've consolidated, you know,
Speaker 7: all these murders. I don't even I've lost count how
Speaker 7: many there are, but I think there's something like five
Speaker 7: counties where these murders and rapes occurred up and down California,
Speaker 7: and they've decided to try the case in Sacramento. I
Speaker 7: had another case that was a death penalty case of
Speaker 7: weighing Adam Ford from my book Body Parts. Again four
Speaker 7: different counties. They consolidated them and they tried the case
Speaker 7: in San Bernardino, which is a very conservative county where
Speaker 7: if the prosecutors put somebody up for the death penalty
Speaker 7: that you're usually agree Whereas where he turned himself in,
Speaker 7: you know, because he figured he was going to kill
Speaker 7: again and he knew that was wrong and he didn't
Speaker 7: want to keep doing it was a very progressive county
Speaker 7: in northern California, where they don't send anybody to get
Speaker 7: the death penalty. And I don't know if he thought
Speaker 7: about it, but probably when he turned himself in, he
Speaker 7: wasn't Maybe he wasn't even thinking about whether he'd get
Speaker 7: the death penalty or not. But you know, even in California,
Speaker 7: it depends on what county you're tried in. There are
Speaker 7: certain counties that have a record of, you know, sending
Speaker 7: more people per capita, you know, to the to the
Speaker 7: death chamber. And as we've discussed, nobody's being executed. They're
Speaker 7: they're dying of suicide or they're dying of natural causes,
Speaker 7: and that's it. And it just costs a lot of
Speaker 7: money to house each individual inmate in a single cell,
Speaker 7: because that's what you have to do on death row.
Speaker 7: And they don't have room for all these people either.
Speaker 6: But isn't isn't it ridiculous to consider that you would
Speaker 6: you would say, listen, we're going to execute you. Here's
Speaker 6: your date. But if you have a medical okay, but
Speaker 6: you know, the idea, the idea that you would be
Speaker 6: convicted and sentenced to death, but then somebody be worrying
Speaker 6: about your medical or mental health along the way to
Speaker 6: the journey to the death chamber to some people would
Speaker 6: seem quite absurd.
Speaker 7: Yeah, But in California it takes It took Skyler, i
Speaker 7: think seven years just for her appeal to be filed period,
Speaker 7: let alone resolves. It's still pending, and here we are
Speaker 7: in twenty nineteen, she's been in prison for ten years
Speaker 7: and it still has not been rejected entirely. And so
Speaker 7: it's pretty well known, at least in California that the
Speaker 7: appeal process takes a really long time, and then they
Speaker 7: fight that, and then once they exhaust the state system,
Speaker 7: then there's the federal system and then they go through that.
Speaker 7: And yeah, and people were paying for that. I mean, schuylars,
Speaker 7: I think considered indigent. So the taxpayers have to pay
Speaker 7: for that. And meanwhile, the you know, the families. I
Speaker 7: thought he was going to be killed, you know, executed.
Speaker 7: I didn't know it was going to take this long,
Speaker 7: you know. But that's why in the John Gardner case,
Speaker 7: the DA said, look, the death penalty system is broken.
Speaker 7: Let's take the death penalty off the table and make
Speaker 7: a plea deal, and that way everybody gets justice. Because
Speaker 7: they didn't have enough evidence for the second murder. He
Speaker 7: led them to where he killed, raped, and killed Amber Duba,
Speaker 7: but they were not able to find any independent, corroborating evidence,
Speaker 7: and therefore they weren't going to be able to prosecute
Speaker 7: him on that murder, even though he took them to
Speaker 7: where they found her remains. And so the DA down
Speaker 7: here said hey made a deal and said if he
Speaker 7: pleads guilty life without parole, that Amber's family will get
Speaker 7: justice and so will Chelsea Kings when they did have
Speaker 7: enough evidence to prosecute him for the death penalty on
Speaker 7: that because she said, our system's broken. You know, who
Speaker 7: knows when he'd be executed, if at all? Anyway, So
Speaker 7: what's the point And so that you know, if you
Speaker 7: have a DA who does that, that makes sense? Right?
Speaker 6: Yeah, but you know you include go ahead, sorry, you include.
Speaker 6: One other thing that re interesting to people following this
Speaker 6: case is that the snitch scandal twenty fourteen and what
Speaker 6: has happened since. Just tell us about this snach scandal.
Speaker 7: Back and forth on whether to include that, because it's
Speaker 7: pretty complicated. But basically I kind of wondered when I
Speaker 7: heard about this thing explode up in Orange County, whether
Speaker 7: this case was going to get you know, implicated, and
Speaker 7: whether the prosecutor was going to get sucked into it.
Speaker 7: And eventually he did, except that because I lived in
Speaker 7: San Diego County, it didn't get covered. And so when
Speaker 7: I sat down to do this update, I found some
Speaker 7: news articles that I hadn't seen before, and it turned
Speaker 7: out that basically, I'll try to simplify this if I can,
Speaker 7: but the Public Defender's Office in Orange County was they
Speaker 7: had a death penalty case which is completely unrelated to
Speaker 7: this one, and they were looking into it and found
Speaker 7: evidence somehow that the Sheriff's Department, which runs the county jail,
Speaker 7: was basically running some kind of system off the books
Speaker 7: where they were setting up inmates to basically do interviews,
Speaker 7: get information from other inmates, and then the Sheriff's department
Speaker 7: get that information and give it to the DA's office.
Speaker 7: The prosecution and the defense wouldn't know anything about it.
Speaker 7: So this guy put together a brief. It was like
Speaker 7: five hundred and fifty pages full of evidence and examples
Speaker 7: of this, and it just blew up. And so the
Speaker 7: judge ultimately you know, ended up taking the DA's office
Speaker 7: off the case, and the DA's office retaliated and papered
Speaker 7: him essentially, you know, objecting to having him serve on
Speaker 7: a whole lot of their other cases. It just got
Speaker 7: really really ugly, with a lot of accusations going back
Speaker 7: and forth. Ultimately, it was pretty much shown that this
Speaker 7: was going on and nobody really ever paid for it,
Speaker 7: and that's one of the things that Kamala Harris has
Speaker 7: as a presidential candidate. She was the attorney general for
Speaker 7: the state. It went up to her and she just
Speaker 7: lets I'm going to let the local authorities handle it,
Speaker 7: and so she didn't get involved. Her predecessor still hasn't really,
Speaker 7: you know, done anything, and they kind of quietly closed
Speaker 7: whatever quote unquote probe they were doing. There's still supposedly
Speaker 7: a federal probe into this whole thing. The DA was
Speaker 7: thrown out of office, there's a new DA in there
Speaker 7: who's trying to clean things up. And then this prosecutor
Speaker 7: on this case actually got pulled into it because he did,
Speaker 7: in fact use a couple informants to talk to Skuyler
Speaker 7: and wired him up and put him in a cell.
Speaker 7: And that's exactly what this whole informant scandal was alleging
Speaker 7: this public defender, and apparently Matt Murphy was not allowed
Speaker 7: to talk about it for a long time. This was
Speaker 7: these records were sealed. I couldn't get access to it.
Speaker 7: I called the d's office multiple times, could not get
Speaker 7: a response, could not get anything out of them, And
Speaker 7: then I ultimately found a news article that said that
Speaker 7: he was cleared by a judge of no wrongdoing. But
Speaker 7: you know, I I went through five trials on this
Speaker 7: case and another case for another book, I'll take care
Speaker 7: of You, with Matt Murphy as the prosecutor, and you know,
Speaker 7: I didn't want to believe that he did anything wrong,
Speaker 7: and there wasn't anything proven that he did wrong, but
Speaker 7: it definitely there was definitely some accusations hanging there for
Speaker 7: a while that seemed, you know, to be similar to
Speaker 7: what was alleged in the other cases. So I don't,
Speaker 7: you know, no, I guess you can't say that you know,
Speaker 7: he personally had anything to do with it. It was a
Speaker 7: pre existing system that was kind of set up within
Speaker 7: the sheriff's department, and they basically tried to blame specific
Speaker 7: people within the sheriff's department, and nobody really took accountability
Speaker 7: for it. And it was just a mess. And I
Speaker 7: don't know, hopefully it's it's not still going on. But basically,
Speaker 7: what they were using inmates against each other and feeding
Speaker 7: it to, you know, get them favors, to get them
Speaker 7: some lenient They were hoping for leniency on their own cases, right,
Speaker 7: And that's what snitches do. I mean, that's not something new,
Speaker 7: but in this case, when you're not telling the defense
Speaker 7: and you're doing a whole secret, covert thing off the books,
Speaker 7: that that ended up trickling down into this. But ultimately
Speaker 7: met Murphy was apparently cleared by a judge of any wrongdoing.
Speaker 7: So and he's now since left the office and has
Speaker 7: gone into TV and a private practice.
Speaker 6: So it's it's fortunate because that is the kind of
Speaker 6: thing if if it were to reprove that he gave
Speaker 6: leniency to Danny Elliots jail house snitch, and especially under
Speaker 6: the conditions that you have reported where they had to
Speaker 6: sell wired on behalf of these inmates that were trying
Speaker 6: to reform. So that's well though at.
Speaker 7: Least in this case that wasn't hidden. I mean that
Speaker 7: did come out in court, so it wasn't like they
Speaker 7: hid that from the defense, right, But I think in
Speaker 7: the other case that was the allegation that they had
Speaker 7: hidden that from them.
Speaker 6: So what is Schuyler, What is her position today, what's
Speaker 6: her status today? What is she trying to do?
Speaker 7: Well? I haven't been able to communicate with her since
Speaker 7: I went to go visit after the attorney shut me down.
Speaker 7: She won't respond to my letters anymore. I did get
Speaker 7: one of her other attorneys on the phone. She was
Speaker 7: very curt with me.
Speaker 1: She hung up on me.
Speaker 7: She said, I don't think it's in Sklar's best interest
Speaker 7: to communicate with her with you, and I'll have her
Speaker 7: send you a letter to that effect, which I never got.
Speaker 7: But you know, Skuyler, as far as I know, I mean,
Speaker 7: I've I got the court petition for her. She's now
Speaker 7: legally female, she's legally changed her name, and so I'm
Speaker 7: basically just speculating at this point that she did that
Speaker 7: not just because she really wants to say, hey, I'm female,
Speaker 7: but because she wants to get to a female prison.
Speaker 7: I mean, she told me that, and I would think
Speaker 7: that that would just bolster her request, because I've already
Speaker 7: been told by the prison spokespeople if an inmate identifies
Speaker 7: as a woman and they're in a male prison, we
Speaker 7: have to take their request seriously. It's by a case
Speaker 7: case by case basis, and we take it under revisement
Speaker 7: and we we you know, consider it. So there's not
Speaker 7: like any rule, any steadfast rule, like if you request it,
Speaker 7: you get it. But I'm I'm thinking that that definitely
Speaker 7: must help her case legally, you know, because it's no
Speaker 7: longer based on genitalia, and unless and until she gets
Speaker 7: that up. And again, I mean, there's one other thing.
Speaker 7: I don't think I mentioned that. There's another criteria, one
Speaker 7: of the criteria in the in the rules for this
Speaker 7: application process for this taxpayer subsidized surgery, and that is
Speaker 7: the elements of the crime. So I'm thinking that number one,
Speaker 7: gender dysphoria, that's a medical condition, Okay, that that would
Speaker 7: and she definitely qualifies for it from that standpoint. However,
Speaker 7: if if she's still quote unquote mentally incompetent, well then
Speaker 7: she can't give medical consent, you know, in a conscious
Speaker 7: fashion to have the surgery. That is a criteria. She
Speaker 7: must be mentally competent to make her own medical decisions.
Speaker 7: And according to her attorney some years ago, she wasn't
Speaker 7: mentally competent to talk to me. Therefore, we can't have
Speaker 7: both ways. You know, you're either mentally competent or you're not.
Speaker 7: And so I think I'm pretty sure that's why they
Speaker 7: wouldn't talk to me, because I clearly pointed out how
Speaker 7: they were trying to have it both ways. And then
Speaker 7: the other criteria you know, if the motive in the
Speaker 7: murder is I want money to pay for gender confirmation surgery,
Speaker 7: that's an element of the crime. I would think they
Speaker 7: would take that into consideration. That why should they grant
Speaker 7: that if that's why they killed, why she killed people?
Speaker 7: I think that I would think that would matter. I
Speaker 7: wasn't able to get any answer. I did ask that,
Speaker 7: but they're like, you know, we don't know what our
Speaker 7: doctors would say. That's the answer I got.
Speaker 6: So I think by the language, it sounds like a
Speaker 6: disqualifier in terms of the motive being related to being
Speaker 6: transgender defenses of the individual.
Speaker 7: I think though, that it would still be a legal
Speaker 7: battle because they would say, hey, under the Amendment, you're
Speaker 7: subjecting her to cruel and unusual punishment by forcing her
Speaker 7: to to be subjected to this severe mindtional distress caused
Speaker 7: by her penis. I mean, that would be their argument.
Speaker 6: Yeah, incredible, which we.
Speaker 7: Don't understand because we don't have that condition. But I'm
Speaker 7: not trying to kill myself. I'm not trying to mutilate myself.
Speaker 7: And that's their argument. Clearly, it must be bad enough
Speaker 7: for her to do that. It must be pretty bad.
Speaker 6: It's a definitely an incredible twist to an already incredible story,
Speaker 6: and Dead Reckoning to make.
Speaker 7: The stuff up.
Speaker 6: No, I want to thank you very much Caitlin for
Speaker 6: coming on and talking about the extensively and revised and
Speaker 6: updated version of Dead Reckoning. For those that might want
Speaker 6: to take a look at Thank you for those that
Speaker 6: might want to take a look at other work. Tell
Speaker 6: us about a website page. I know this is a
Speaker 6: Wild Blue Press release, tell us about where they might
Speaker 6: look at other work and Facebook page. Website.
Speaker 7: Wild Blue Press has this book in trade paperback and
Speaker 7: also as a kindle, and you can get it on
Speaker 7: Amazon or you can get it direct off the Wild
Speaker 7: Blue Press site. Wild Blue press dot com. I've got
Speaker 7: a website I've got If people want signed copies, they
Speaker 7: can contact me. I've got this is the I've got
Speaker 7: thirteen books. This is one of thirteen. I'm working on
Speaker 7: two more.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 7: If I could just talk briefly about one of them,
Speaker 7: that would be great.
Speaker 6: Sure. Absolutely.
Speaker 7: The Rebecca is a Howe case I just yesterday or
Speaker 7: today actually was just announced in Publisher's marketplace. I have
Speaker 7: a deal with Kensington Citadel to do a trade paperback
Speaker 7: which is bigger, you know, than those mass market paperbacks
Speaker 7: that they were doing before. The bigger paperback that looks
Speaker 7: more like a hardcover, but it's paperback. On this case
Speaker 7: of this young woman who was thirty two years old
Speaker 7: living with this older, very wealthy multimillionaire named Jonah shack Ny.
Speaker 7: It's her boyfriend. She was found and hanging from an
Speaker 7: exterior balcony here in Coronado, California. So that's a small
Speaker 7: island here right off the coast of San Diego. The
Speaker 7: two harbors face each other. Essentially, there's a lot of
Speaker 7: naval bases and military and retired military who live on
Speaker 7: that island, and wealthy people and people from Arizona where
Speaker 7: it's hot come to stay in the summer, which is
Speaker 7: where they're from. They spent the rest of the year
Speaker 7: in Scottsdale, and anyway, they'd been living together for a
Speaker 7: couple of years, and Jonah had a six year old
Speaker 7: son who Rebecca was very attached to and took care of.
Speaker 7: And Jonah had two x wives, and so that was
Speaker 7: the son with the second wife, and then he also
Speaker 7: had a son and a daughter with the first wife.
Speaker 7: And Rebecca did not get along so well with his
Speaker 7: older daughter. Anyway, so there was a lot of drama,
Speaker 7: and basically what happened is Rebecca's thirteen year old sister
Speaker 7: came out to visit, and Jonah's son and daughter left
Speaker 7: to go visit their mother back in South Carolina, and
Speaker 7: Jonah went off to the gym, and Rebecca was downstairs
Speaker 7: in the bathroom and her sister was upstairs in the bathroom,
Speaker 7: and suddenly Rebecca heard this crash and came out and
Speaker 7: found little six year old Max on the floor in
Speaker 7: the lobby area with a broken chandelier and a scooter
Speaker 7: and the dog was barking, and there was a soccer ball. Anyway,
Speaker 7: he was on his back and he wasn't breathing, and
Speaker 7: so they called nine one one, and basically he was
Speaker 7: severely injured. And anyway, two days later, Rebecca was found
Speaker 7: dead hanging from this exterior balcony one morning by Jonah's brother,
Speaker 7: who came out from Memphis, Tennessee to show support for
Speaker 7: you know, the family was in the hospital by the
Speaker 7: bedside of this boy, and he called nine one one
Speaker 7: and said, I got a girl hung herself in the
Speaker 7: guesthouse where he was staying, and she was in the
Speaker 7: main house. So right away, first words out of his
Speaker 7: mouth don't make sense compared to what actually he said happened.
Speaker 7: So anyway, it's a mystery. Okay, So it looks it
Speaker 7: looks pretty suspicious because she's naked. She's naked, she's got
Speaker 7: her hands tied behind her back, her feet are tied together,
Speaker 7: and she's got like a T shirt wrapped around her
Speaker 7: neck and in her mouth, so she's gagged and bound
Speaker 7: and she's naked hanging outside by this like you know,
Speaker 7: jet ski rope, this orange boating kind of rope with
Speaker 7: these weird knots. So anyway, the Coronado police are used
Speaker 7: to dealing with bicycle staff. That's like their big crime
Speaker 7: on Coronado, so they aren't clearly capable of dealing with this,
Speaker 7: so they call in the Sheriff's department. Sheriff's department comes
Speaker 7: out and they do this whole investigation, and long story short,
Speaker 7: took him, I don't know some weeks and they say, oh,
Speaker 7: it's a suicide. And Max's Max you know, ended up
Speaker 7: having fatal injuries and dying at least being brain dead.
Speaker 7: A couple of days after Rebecca was found dead, and
Speaker 7: they the sheriff said that Rebecca was the only adult
Speaker 7: in the house and felt guilty and killed herself because
Speaker 7: she felt guilty about Max's deaf because she was so
Speaker 7: attached to him and felt so bad about what happened
Speaker 7: to him, and Max had a tragic but accidental fall.
Speaker 7: So anyway, it just turned into this huge monumental controversy
Speaker 7: because this Rebecca's family said, there's no way she would
Speaker 7: commit suicide. There's no way she would commit suicide like that,
Speaker 7: it was murder, and the sheriff's department said, no, it's suicide.
Speaker 7: And so it's just been going on and on for years,
Speaker 7: and then finally there was a civil trial. Her family
Speaker 7: accused Jonah's ex wife and her sister and his brother
Speaker 7: of conspiring to kill Rebecca, and then the attorney dismissed
Speaker 7: the two women and just left the brother. And when
Speaker 7: it went to trial last year, the jury found the
Speaker 7: brother responsible for her death. And then the sheriff was
Speaker 7: basically running for reelection and said, well, okay, fine, you
Speaker 7: know it's suicide, until his election opponent said, well, if
Speaker 7: I were elected, I'd immediately reopened the murder case, and
Speaker 7: so the sheriff said, okay, fine, we'll reopen. We won't
Speaker 7: reopen the criminal case. We will review the court trial
Speaker 7: transcripts and review whatever theories came out. And then they
Speaker 7: waited until long after the election was over he was reelected,
Speaker 7: and they basically said, no, it's still a suicide. So
Speaker 7: this has just been raging on and on, and the
Speaker 7: whole community of Coronado and everyone that I talked to
Speaker 7: always says, that's a murder. No, there's no way she
Speaker 7: would have done that to herself. It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 7: The family still says it was murder. The sheriff still
Speaker 7: says it's suicide. There's been a bunch of documentaries on
Speaker 7: TV about it. But I'm basically just approaching it from
Speaker 7: a neutral standpoint, and I'm just seeing where the truth
Speaker 7: takes me, and trying to look into the background of everybody,
Speaker 7: the context, who was doing what when, what was going
Speaker 7: on at the time between all these parties, you know,
Speaker 7: what does the public not know that would help put
Speaker 7: all this into context and see if I can find
Speaker 7: out what really happened. And so that's it's called Justice
Speaker 7: for Rebecca, at least tentatively, that's what the title is.
Speaker 6: Well, it sounds like a fascinating investigation.
Speaker 7: It is. It's haunting, honestly. And the reason it's haunting,
Speaker 7: especially for me, is because my husband committed suicide and
Speaker 7: he hung himself. So that's part of the reason why
Speaker 7: the publisher gave me this deal is because I am
Speaker 7: going to be looking at this case through the lens
Speaker 7: of my own experience, because I have a perspective that's
Speaker 7: pretty unique on this case.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, and that's what's going to take. That's
Speaker 6: what's going to take for this book. Yes, incredible. Thank
Speaker 6: you for sharing that preview this incredible book coming up.
Speaker 6: Justice for Rebecca. Thank you very much for coming on
Speaker 6: and talking about Dead Reckoning the newly revised an updated version.
Speaker 6: You have a great evening and I'm sure we'll be
Speaker 6: talking to you soon.
Speaker 7: Great.
Speaker 6: Thanks so much, Dan A right, Thank you, Kaitlyn.
Speaker 7: Bye.