Under watch: Skylar Deleon and a former hedge fund manager
Under watch:
Skylar Deleon, 29, convicted in the gruesome murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks, who thought they were dealing with a prospective buyer of their yacht when they took Deleon and his pregnant wife Jennifer on a cruise to show the vessel in 2004. After being forced to sign over ownership of the boat, the Hawks were tied to an anchor and tossed overboard somewhere between Long Beach Harbor and Catalina Island off the coast of Southern California. While Deleon’s ex-friends and family testified that Skylar did not “abuse”alcohol or other drugs, there’s little question that his behaviors were addiction-related. His father abused him, left his mother when he was five and was sentenced to three years in federal prison for selling cocaine when Skylar was nine or ten. His mother and step-mother testified that they “abused”alcohol and other drugs. As I wrote to the Hawks’ son Ryan, rare though it may be, if Skylar really wasn’t an addict he wouldn’t be the only son of one whose behavioral response to the alcoholic abuser in his life was murder. According to James Graham in The Secret History of Alcoholism, Albert De Salvo, better known as the Boston Strangler, and James Earl Ray, confessed assassin of Martin Luther King, were not alcoholics. However, their fathers were extremely abusive ones. As I said to Ryan, I often prove addiction to a psychotropic drug when journalists or historians don’t even consider the possibility. It took five days and a dozen articles after the anthrax killer Bruce Ivins’ suicide before I had any proof of alcoholism (the story of which is recounted in the August 2008 TAR. I told Ryan that while psychotropic drug addiction explains only 80-90% of such tragedies, he should keep looking. After all, Adolf Hitler’s addiction to amphetamines wasn’t even suspected until some three decades after his suicide.
Former United Capital Markets hedge-fund manager John Devaney, whose $600 million fund went belly-up earlier this year after he made a big wrong-way bet, began to rant on why the markets were wrong and he was right at an annual conference for the asset-backed securities industry. The audience booed and the microphone was taken from him. That night he hosted an invitation-only party on board his mother’s 125-foot yacht, featuring plenty of free drinks. While he is no longer seen on his own 124-foot yacht and Sikorsky helicopter, his taste for the high life is still evident”as are indications that alcoholism might explain his “I am God”attitude.