The deputies kept talking about how eerie it was. A hoarder’s house, packed to the ceiling with boxes and clothes, and dead quiet. When Richard Smith didn’t show up for work, his coworkers knew something was wrong. He was dependable as the day was long.
Days passed. Nothing. His supervisor drove to the family home, saw the cars still in the driveway, and called 911. “He’s a very large man,” the supervisor told the dispatcher.
“He hasn’t come to work for three days. His car is here, doors locked, windows drawn. I want someone here when I break a window. ”
Law enforcement arrived, forced their way inside, and moved through stacks of stuff.
The odor hit them first. They pulled back piles of clothing and found the bodies. Vona Seal Smith, the matriarch, lay dead in John’s bedroom under a mound of clothes. Richard was sprawled on the den floor, covered in blood, a bullet wound in the side of his head.
John sat on the couch, the top of his skull bashed in. All three had their throats slit. One detail made no sense. Vona was missing part of her pinky finger.
The house hadn’t been broken into. No locks forced, no windows shattered. Whoever walked in had been let in, or had a key. The family didn’t mix with neighbors.
Vona stayed inside watching QVC and ordering things online. Richard worked for the Department of Homeland Security and came home to care for his mother. John, described as a little slow, worked at Walmart and was in his forties. There was a third son, Donald Hartung, from Vona’s first marriage.
He lived a few miles away and came over every Tuesday to cook dinner for the family. On the surface, they seemed like a blended family that got along fine. When deputies knocked on Donald’s door to tell him his mother and half-brothers were dead, he showed no shock, no sadness, no anger. Just flat, blank indifference.
When police pressed him about it, he kept repeating, “I am emotional,” without a single tear. His home gave them chills. Shelves of books on the Wiccan religion, shrines, a Ouija board, artifacts that made the Bible Belt deputies uneasy. The sheriff went public, speculating the murders were ritualistic, tied to the occult, a blue moon killer.
Reporters ran with it. But the deeper they dug, the clearer the real motive became. Donald had long complained that his mother favored Richard and John. He called himself the black sheep.
He had a drinking problem, DUIs, a bit of a criminal past. And statements to coworkers caught investigators’ attention. Donald had told people he expected to inherit money if something happened to his family. Vona’s will left everything to Richard and John.
A specific clause excluded Donald Hartung completely. The estate was worth around nine hundred thousand dollars. There was also cash in a safe in the house. Three weeks after the murders, Donald resigned from his job as a security officer at a local hospital.
Forensic teams went through the crime scene with painstaking care. In a trash can, they found bloody rags used to clean up the crime scene and cigarette butts with Donald’s DNA on them. They also found Donald’s DNA on Richard’s belt. Investigators believed they had their killer.
Donald was arrested and charged with three counts of first-degree murder. He pleaded not guilty. Held without bond, he sat in jail awaiting trial. Fellow inmates treated him as something dangerous, a warlock.
But one cellmate befriended him, claiming to share an interest in the Wiccan religion, and Donald opened up. The cellmate went to the state attorney’s office with a story. Donald had admitted to killing his family for money. He told the cellmate he cut off his mother’s pinky finger to torture her into revealing the safe combination.
He said he had been planning it for three or four years. And when asked what drove him to do it, he told the cellmate the Ouija board had made him do it. At trial, that cellmate’s testimony was a pivotal blow. It revealed details only the killer could have known.
The jury found Donald Hartung guilty of all three counts of premeditated murder. He was sentenced to three life sentences, narrowly avoiding the death penalty. Investigators later said his greed was his undoing. But in the end, witchcraft had little to do with the murders.
Donald Hartung’s anger and greed had finally boiled over into slaughter. He will spend the rest of his life in prison, locked away with plenty of time to wonder how his plan went so wrong. Chris Smith emailed his family to tell them he was leaving everything behind. He was selling his interest in the company, going to the Galápagos first, then sailing around the world with a former Playboy model he’d met in Vegas named Tiffany Taylor.
It sounded spontaneous but not surprising. Chris had always hated working and loved the ocean. He used to say he wanted to make enough money to stop working and make the ocean a bigger part of his life. He had done it.
His company, 800 Exchange, which he’d started with his friend and business partner Ed Shin, had brought in over twelve million dollars in gross revenue their very first year. Chris was creative, Ed was the businessman, and the partnership worked. Over the next few months, Chris kept emailing his family. South Africa.
India. Exciting and happy. Then the tone changed. He said Tiffany had left him.
He was all alone. He wrote that he had contemplated doing the worst thing. His parents begged him to call, but he said he’d thrown away his phone to stay off the grid. His dad grew suspicious and asked him questions only Chris would know, like what lake they grew up on and what boat they’d had.
The reply came: “Relax, Dad. We grew up on Kelly Lake. ” The dad felt better. But the emails grew darker.
Chris said he was going to buy Krugerrand gold coins in the Congo for a markup, then try to buy a conflict diamond for his brother Paul. After that final email, Chris went silent. His family searched everywhere. Internet searches, state department, jails, hospitals.
A needle in a haystack. Almost a year later, the State Department gave them shocking news. Chris’s passport had never left the country. The entire trip had been a lie.
Chris’s dad drove to Laguna Beach to get answers. He met with Ed Shin, who told him Chris had gotten a fake passport to stay off the grid. The dad wasn’t sure what to believe and filed a missing person report. A private investigator named Joe Doo got involved by accident.
Ed had moved out of an office building, sticking the landlord with tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid rent. The landlord hired Joe to find Ed, and Joe learned about Chris’s disappearance. Something didn’t sit right. Joe asked for all the emails Chris had sent.
One detail stood out. When Chris’s dad asked about the boat they’d grown up with, Chris never answered the type of boat. But weeks later, an email to Chris’s brother Paul asked the same question again: what boat pulled the ski? Paul answered it.
Joe knew in his gut that whoever had been writing those emails didn’t know the answer the first time. It wasn’t Chris. He asked the landlord about the old office. The space had been vacant since Ed moved out.
Joe went inside and saw blood splatter in the door jam. He called law enforcement. The Orange County crime lab found blood splatter all over the walls and ceiling, cast-off patterns consistent with someone striking a person’s head with a blunt object in an up-and-down motion. Blood had seeped through the carpet and stained the concrete.
DNA testing confirmed it belonged to Chris Smith. There was no body, but investigators knew they were hunting a killer. Ed Shin had a dark side. A gambling addiction.
A conviction for embezzlement. Chris had been worried Ed was stealing from him and had asked to see the books right before he disappeared. The moment he saw those books, he’d have learned Ed had stolen millions and blown it in Vegas. Ed was arrested.
He stuck to his story: Chris left, they had a shouting match, never touched him. But when detectives told him about the blood, Ed changed his story. He said Chris grabbed him, they fought, Chris hit his head on the desk, fell, and bled to death. A self-defense story.
Cell phone records told a different story. At three in the morning, the day after the alleged fight, Ed’s phone pinged off a transponder near the Mexican border, at a place called Hito Hot Springs. He stayed there for more than an hour, about the time it would take to bury a body. Seven years after his arrest, Ed Shin finally stood trial.
With the family and the beautiful fiancée Chris had left behind. The prosecutor told the jury the case was about nothing but greed. “There was not a single drop of Ed Shin’s blood at that scene, and nobody saw a single injury on him,” the prosecutor said. “Ed Shin ambushed and murdered Chris Smith for financial gain.
”
The jury agreed. First-degree murder. Life in prison without the possibility of parole. Chris Smith’s body has never been found.
Thomas and Jackie Hawks were retired and happy in Newport Beach. Tom was a former probation officer, an entrepreneur, a man with a dream of sailing off into the sunset. He bought a fifty-foot fishing trawler called the Well Deserved, and the couple lived on it for two years, cruising the Sea of Cortez. When they decided it was time for a new adventure, Tom placed an ad to sell the boat.
A young couple came to look at it. Skyler DeLeon, a former child actor who had appeared on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and his wife Jennifer. They rolled up in a Dodge Viper, appeared to have money. They negotiated for four hundred thousand dollars.
Tom, a wheeler-dealer, suggested they declare the price as two hundred thousand to save on taxes. Skyler was interested. The two couples took the boat out for a sea trial. Tom and Jackie were thrilled.
They told a friend they were just showing the buyers how to work the equipment and would be back in a couple of hours. Nobody ever heard from them again. Two weeks passed. No sign of the Hawks.
Police talked to Skyler and Jennifer DeLeon. They had documents proving they’d purchased the boat. Tom and Jackie’s phones had pinged near the Mexican border at two in the morning the night of the transaction. It looked like they’d simply left town.
The family grew nervous. Forensic workups of the boat turned up nothing. No struggle, no blood, no foul play. The investigation stalled.
Skyler and Jennifer seemed like the perfect all-American couple, but the deeper police looked, the darker the picture became. Skyler had grown up with a father who was a felony drug trafficker, learning to lie, cheat, and steal. Jennifer wanted nice things, and Skyler would do anything to give them to her. He’d already done time for an armed residential burglary.
Then the notary public who had notarized the boat sale broke. After five interviews, she admitted she had never actually witnessed the transaction. Skyler and Jennifer had paid her cash to backdate the documents. Another breakthrough.
The Hawks’ Honda CRV turned up in a trailer park outside Ensenada, Mexico. The family who had it said their friends Skyler and Jennifer DeLeon had given it to them. Investigators went back to the boat and discovered a missing anchor. An accomplice, Alonzo Machain, a former correctional officer, had witnessed the sale.
He had fled to Mexico, but negotiating through his lawyer, the detective offered him immunity. Alonzo came back and turned himself in, and he told them everything. The plan had been to force the Hawks to sign a power of attorney, giving Skyler access to their bank accounts. Skyler, Jennifer, Alonzo, and a fourth accomplice, a man named CJ Kennedy, all went out on the boat that day.
Kennedy, a big man with a long braided beard, had been brought along for his physical capabilities. He pretended to be seasick and went down to the state room. Skyler told Tom he wanted to check the hull underneath. Tom went downstairs with him.
Alonzo stayed up top with Jackie. They separated the couple, then blindfolded, gagged, and handcuffed them, forcing them to sign the power of attorney. Tom fought back. Kennedy threw a punch and won the fist fight.
Then, knowing they had little time left, Tom and Jackie spent their final moments together on the bed. Tom positioned himself so that he could stroke Jackie’s hand, trying to comfort her because she was so terrified. Jackie pleaded with Skyler. “Skyler, why are you doing this?
You know we trusted you. Don’t hurt us. ”
But time had run out. They dragged the anchor across the deck, the chain scraping against the wood.
Tom and Jackie must have known what was coming. The killers tied them to the anchor and pushed them overboard. The weight of the anchor pulled them under the water, three thousand eight hundred feet down. Alonzo told police the whole plan had been about money.
Skyler needed to complete a surgical procedure he had started, and he wanted gender reassignment surgery. He’d put fifteen thousand dollars down and had no way to pay the rest. After Alonzo’s testimony, police arrested everyone involved. Jennifer DeLeon received two life sentences without parole.
CJ Kennedy went to death row. Alonzo Machain headed to prison for at least twenty years. Skyler DeLeon received the death penalty. In the end, the killers walked away with nothing.
Each of them, Alonzo, Skyler, and CJ, got thirteen hundred dollars in cash found on the boat, nothing more. Tom and Jackie Hawks drowned thirty-eight hundred feet below the surface. All for Skyler DeLeon and his gang to steal from a couple who only wanted to enjoy their golden years.
They pursued their ill-gotten gains all the way to prison, with all that time to think about why they thought they could get away with it.
