Lawyer: Killer suffered beatings

Facing a potential death sentence for killing three people including a Newport Beach couple in 2004, a Long Beach man’s defense attorney said all he can do now is tell his client’s story.

On Monday, that’s just what Gary Pohlson began to do. Only two witnesses testified for him Monday: his client’s stepmother, Melissa Wildin, and his half-sister, Stephanie Jacobson. Together the two testified about 29-year-old Skylar Deleon’s upbringing, with his formative years becoming a mix of physical and mental abuse, tagging along with his dad on drug deals and later visiting him in prison.

From an early age, the Jacobson children — Deleon’s birth name is John Jacobson Jr. — grew up in a divided household. Wildin and the elder Jacobson had a turbulent relationship, she testified. He would beat her and the kids, and encouraged her to use cocaine, leaving a few lines on the dresser for her in the morning when she’d wake up. As she recalled for the jury, Jacobson had a short fuse and impossible standards for his children, especially Deleon.

From as early as 5 years old, Deleon was supposed to be perfect. If he had tousled hair or a wrinkly, half-tucked-in shirt, Jacobson would yell and beat him. A pimple meant he wasn’t washing his face properly, and that meant a beating. If he was biting his nails — a bad habit of his — Jacobson would shove toothpicks underneath them. Even when he bandaged his sister’s wounds after a bicycle accident, it was “Little Johnny’s” fault, relatives testified.

“It was always something,” Stephanie Jacobson told jurors.

But through it all, Deleon’s dad needed him, she testified. Little Johnny, or John-John as his siblings and stepmother also called him, went with John Jacobson Sr. on drug deals, at times being in the same room when men would lay out kilos of cocaine to buy and sell, or use. He was the target of most beatings and held to a higher standard, Stephanie Jacobson testified. Even when Deleon grew bigger and stronger, he never retaliated against his father.

“Skylar always tried to keep the peace. He always tried to keep the peace in our family,” Stephanie Jacobson testified. John Jacobson Sr. died earlier this year.

The portrait relatives presented Monday was starkly different from the man who in 2003 slashed a man’s throat in the Mexican desert for $50,000 and then threw Newport Beach couple Tom and Jackie Hawks overboard alive, tied to an anchor, in 2004.

Yet it is the same person, and attorneys for both sides are presenting their case to jurors on why Deleon should or should not be sentenced to death for his crimes.

From his earliest days, Deleon was treated as a possession by his father, relatives testified — one he was allowed to berate, beat and discard at will, Wildin told jurors.

Wildin remembered one time at a gas station when Deleon, whom she still calls “Little Johnny,” tried to cheer up his stepmother. Jacobson had just walked into a gas station after yelling and screaming at her, and Deleon, no older than 8 at the time, said there’d be a time she wouldn’t have to deal with that.

“He said ‘Don’t worry Mommy, one day I’ll be 18 and I’ll marry you, and Dad won’t be able to be mean to you ever again,’” Wildin told jurors, her voice cracking. “He was sweet. He wanted to make everybody happy.”

Prosecutor Matt Murphy attacked claims that Deleon was abused as a child. Why, he asked, did no one ever report Jacobson Sr. to social services? When she spoke to the parole board about her then-husband, why did Wildin scribble on paper that he never intentionally abused his kids? Wildin didn’t have an answer.

Family testimony will continue today with Deleon’s grandmother and mother testifying, Pohlson said.

JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at [email protected].