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

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

Harris’ support for prisoners like Jacobson emerged as a campaign issue when a CNN report revealed that she pledged in a 2019 ACLU questionnaire to support taxpayer-funded sex change operations for illegal immigrants and prisoners in federal custody. But her history on the issue goes back at least to 2015, during her stint as the Golden State’s top cop — a period Harris has cited on the campaign trail as evidence of her tough-on-crime approach.

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

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, arguing that it was part of the medical care states are constitutionally required to provide to prisoners.

Harris initially oversaw the state’s fight to block Norsworthy’s access to that surgery, arguing it was not medically necessary. When a district judge ruled against the state, Harris vowed to appeal to the Ninth Circuit. But the appeal never came, and then-California Governor Jerry Brown (D.) granted Norsworthy parole before the state had to pay the costs of the proceedings.

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 gender reassignment surgery and hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys. compensation. Quine made no concessions to force the state’s hand.

When California publicly announced the settlement, it also announced a major policy change: “California has become the first state with a policy to offer gender reassignment surgery to certain prisoners.” New York Times reported. In the future, the state would pay for mastectomy and genital reconstruction surgery.

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

“I was, as you rightly point out, the Attorney General of California for two terms and I had a large number of clients that I was obligated to defend and represent, and I could not fire my clients, and there are unfortunately situations that arise have occurred. where my clients took positions that conflicted with my beliefs,” Harris said, placing blame on the state Department of Corrections.

The former attorney general laid out her beliefs more clearly in subsequent interviews and statements. In a 2019 interview with the National Center for Transgender Equality, Harris said she worked to get California to change its policy “so that every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care they wanted and needed.”

“I was working behind the scenes to not only make sure that that transgender woman got the services that she deserved, so it wasn’t just about that case,” she said. “I got them to change the policy in the state of California so that every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care they wanted and needed.”

“I believe it may have been one of the first, if not the first, in the country where I pushed for that policy in a Department of Corrections,” Harris continued. “So you can just look at all the work I’ve done over the years… I feel very strongly about this, and at its core… it’s a matter of humanity.”

The ACLU questionnaire highlighted her commitment to policy: She promised that if she became president, she would “use executive power to ensure that transgender and nonbinary people who rely on the state for medical care—including those in prison and immigration detention – will have access to comprehensive treatment related to gender transition, including all necessary surgical care.”

Harris’ campaign, which did not respond to a request for comment, has since muddied the waters on whether it still supports that policy. A spokeswoman for Harris told CNN in September that “As president, Harris will take the same pragmatic approach, focusing on common-sense solutions for the sake of progress.”

The gruesome nature of the Hawkses’ murders made the case a tabloid sensation and the fact that Jacobson had been an extra in the series Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers gave the story a Hollywood twist.

On the afternoon of November 15, 2004, the Hawkses boarded their 57-foot yacht with Jacobson, who had contacted them about purchasing the boat.

After the ship left a dock off the coast of California, Jacobson attacked the man and woman with a stun gun. After tying the couple to the anchor and forcing them to sign over their bank account information and the boat’s title, Jacobson threw them overboard along with accomplices.

Jacobson then returned the boat to port, but not before he and his friends went fishing and drank beer from the refrigerator below deck.

Police later realized that Jacobson was responsible for the murder of another man in Mexico. Jacobson killed that 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 to be transferred to a women’s prison ‘fairly soon’.

“I was supposed to be transferred pretty quickly, but the prison is forcing us to go to the committee to determine whether or not we go to which prison, even though I’ve had both surgeries,” Jacobson told the newspaper. Free beacon. California’s prison system did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, relatives of his victims are stunned. “I don’t know what right (Harris) had to decide that he needs surgery now. I mean, why should they get all these benefits?’ Jackie Hawks’ mother, Gayle O’Neill, said this Free beacon. “They killed people, right? Cost people their lives. He killed my daughter and son-in-law, and now he gets what he wants.”

A 2015 article about Jacobson in Orange Coast magazine found that as of that year, “385 transgender prisoners use hormones; all but 22 are in men’s prisons.” That number of transgender or “non-binary” inmates in California jails and prisons reached 1,617 in 2022, a 234 percent increase from 2017. The high number of California inmates requesting gender reassignment surgery has caused the system to experience a backlog . According to the state’s projections, 462 inmates would request gender reassignment procedures by 2024, even though staff could handle only three requests 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 have just gone crazy, all of them. Harris is just too lenient.”

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