“He killed my daughter and son-in-law, now he gets what he wants”

John Jacobson Jr., known as the “Yacht Killer,” was on death row in 2009 and spoke about murdering couple Thomas and Jackie Hawks to get money for gender reassignment surgery. Five years earlier, Jacobson lured the Hawks onto their boat off the California coast, tied them to the ship's anchor and threw them overboard before grabbing a beer from the fridge and starting fishing.

“I wanted the surgery and I knew I wanted it 100 percent,” Jacobson told ABC News.

Harris' support for inmates like Jacobson became a campaign issue when a CNN report revealed that she had pledged in a 2019 ACLU questionnaire to support taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries for illegal immigrants and prisoners in federal custody. But her history on the matter dates back to at least 2015, during her tenure as the Golden State's top cop — a period that Harris cited on the campaign trail as evidence of her tough-on-crime approach.

California began offering hormonal treatments to prisoners who claim to have gender dysphoria before Harris was elected California attorney general, Jacobson said in his letter to Free beacon that he began hormone treatment when he arrived at San Quentin in 2009. But during her tenure, the state's treatment of transgender inmates radically changed.

In 2015, Jeffrey Bryan Norsworthy, who was serving a prison sentence for murder, sued the state prison system to force it to pay for gender reassignment surgery. A federal judge ordered the state to foot the bill for the surgery, saying it was part of the medical care the Constitution requires states to provide to prisoners.

Harris initially oversaw the state's fight to deny Norsworthy access to the operation, arguing that it was not medically necessary. When a district judge ruled against the state, Harris vowed to appeal to the Ninth Circuit. However, the appeal never materialized, and then-California Gov. Jerry Brown (D.) allowed Norsworthy to be paroled before the state had to cover the costs of the trial.

When another inmate, Rodney Quine, serving a life sentence for murder, filed a similar lawsuit during the state's battle with Norsworthy, Harris negotiated a settlement in which the state paid for Quine's sex reassignment surgery and hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys' fees. Quine made no concessions to force the state to act.

When California publicly announced the settlement, it also announced a sweeping policy change: “California is the first state with a policy of offering gender reassignment surgery to some prison inmates,” the said New York Times reported. In the future, the state would pay for mastectomies and genital reconstruction operations.

Harris spoke about the Norsworthy and Quine cases during her first presidential run in 2019, apologizing for her initial opposition to Norsworthy's lawsuit and telling reporters that she takes “full responsibility” for the legal briefs her office originally filed.

“I was, as you rightly point out, two terms as Attorney General of California and had a variety of clients that I had to defend and represent, and I couldn't fire my clients, and unfortunately situations arose where my clients took positions.” “that were contrary to my beliefs,” Harris said, placing blame on the state’s Department of Corrections.

The former attorney general made her beliefs clearer in subsequent interviews and statements. In a 2019 interview with the National Center for Transgender Equality, Harris said she ensured that California changed its policy “so that every transgender inmate in the prison system could have access to the health care they wanted and needed.”

“I worked behind the scenes to not only make sure that this transgender woman received the services that she deserved — so it wasn't just about this case,” she said. “I made sure they changed policies in the state of California so that every transgender inmate in the prison system had access to the health care they wanted and needed.”

“I actually believe it was one of the first, if not the first, in the country that I advocated for this policy in a corrections department,” Harris continued. “So you can just look at all the work that I've done over the years… This is something that's very close to my heart, and at its core… it's a question of humanity.”

The ACLU questionnaire underscored her commitment to these policies: She promised that if she became president, she would “use her executive authority to ensure that transgender and non-binary people who rely on the state for health care – including those in prison or immigration detention – will have access to comprehensive treatment related to gender reassignment, including all necessary surgical treatments.”

Harris' campaign, which did not respond to a request for comment, has since expressed uncertainty about whether it still supports the policy. A spokeswoman for Harris told CNN in September that “as president, Harris will take the same pragmatic approach and focus on common-sense solutions in the interest of progress.”

The gruesome nature of the Hawks murders made the case a tabloid sensation, as did the fact that Jacobson had been an extra on the series Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers gave the story a Hollywood touch.

On the afternoon of November 15, 2004, the Hawks boarded their 55-foot yacht with Jacobson, who had come forward to purchase the boat.

After the ship left a dock off the California coast, Jacobson attacked the couple with a stun gun. After tying the couple up with the anchor and forcing them to sign their bank account details and the boat's title, Jacobson threw them overboard along with his accomplices.

Jacobson then took the boat back to port, but not before he and his friends fished and drank beer from the refrigerator below deck.

Police later determined that Jacobson was responsible for the killing of another man in Mexico. Jacobson murdered this person, his former cellmate, in a scheme that netted him $50,000. Jacobson was convicted of all three murders in 2008.

Jacobson told the Free beacon he expects he will be transferred to a women's prison “pretty quickly.”

“I was supposed to be transferred relatively quickly, but the prison is forcing us to go before a committee to decide which prison to go to or not, even though I had both surgeries,” Jacobson said Free beacon. The California prison system did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, the family members of his victims are speechless. “I don’t know what right (Harris) had to have surgery now. I mean, why should they get all these benefits?” Jackie Hawks' mother, Gayle O'Neill, told the Free beacon. “You killed people, right? They cost people their lives. He killed my daughter and son-in-law and now he gets what he wants.”

A feature about Jacobson from 2015 Orange Coast The magazine noted that this year “385 transgender prisoners are taking hormones; all but 22 of them are in men's prisons.” The number of transgender or “non-binary” inmates in California prisons and jails was 1,617 in 2022, a 234 percent increase from 2017. The high number of California inmates undergoing surgeries for Gender reassignment requests have resulted in the system being overloaded. According to the state's projections, 462 inmates would apply for gender reassignment surgery in 2024, although staff could only process three applications per week. CalMatters reported last year.

“I was a registered Democrat, but I've changed since then,” said O'Neill, the mother of Jacobson victim Jackie Hawks. “But I think the Democrats are all just crazy. Harris is just too lenient.”

You can read Jacobson's letter to the Free beacon below: