HANFORD -- A Kings County jury will begin deliberations today to decide whether Dave Hawk was the only person with a motive to kill his ex-wife or whether the prosecution failed to put Hawk at the murder scene.

Those were the key points hammered home Tuesday as the 11-day trial reached closing arguments.

Hawk, 51, of Lemoore, was charged in mid-2007 with embezzlement in connection with his three children's trust accounts and was awaiting trial in that case when he was arrested in May 2008 in connection with the murder of his ex-wife, Debbie Hawk. She disappeared in June 2006. Her body has never been found.

The murder and embezzlement charges are being tried together.

During closing arguments Tuesday, prosecutor Larry Crouch told jurors that Hawk's motive for killing his ex-wife was simple: She was questioning his misuse of his children's trust funds, and he didn't want to be exposed.

"Debbie Hawk never got a hearing" on her embezzlement allegations, Crouch said. "She had issues that she wanted raised in the courtroom, and she never got that hearing. She is going to get a hearing from you people," he said to jurors.

Dave Hawk's attorney Mark Coleman countered that Hawk's use of the money from the funds was already public record, so he would have no reason to kill his ex-wife.

Coleman said that Debbie Hawk's attorney, Kim Aguirre, had filed public documents questioning Dave Hawk's use of the trust money about a month before Debbie Hawk went missing.

Prosecutor Shane Burns asked jurors to recall a taped interview investigators conducted with Chelsa Hawk, who quoted her father saying after a family dinner he hosted shortly after his ex-wife's disappearance, "See how everybody gets along now?"

To Dave Hawk, Burns said, "Debbie Hawk's death was not a tragedy. It was a blessing."

Scattered trust documents in Debbie Hawk's Hanford home and the removal of her body from the house, where her blood was found, implicate Dave Hawk as her killer, Crouch said.

Coleman said that Hawk has an alibi: Chelsa testified that her father picked her up from a party about 10:30 p.m. and did not see him leave his Lemoore home the night Debbie Hawk was last seen.

Coleman also reiterated that no DNA or fingerprints belonging to Dave Hawk were found in Debbie Hawk's home or van.

Police focused on Dave Hawk as a suspect early in their investigation and essentially made him their sole target, Coleman said.

Their thoughts were, "since we haven't found anybody else who did it, it must be Dave Hawk," he said. Coleman said Hawk did not have to prove he wasn't at the crime scene, but prosecutors had to prove that he was -- and they did not.

Visiting Judge Daniel Creed, who gave jurors instructions before closing arguments, said late Tuesday afternoon that he would give about five more minutes of instructions this morning and then turn the case over to the jury.

A male juror was dismissed Tuesday from the trial after he fell and hit his head and had to be hospitalized. He was replaced by an alternate juror. Earlier in the trial, a female juror was replaced with an alternate after she fell ill.