Michele Hughes, also known as Mechele Linehan, surrendered to the Olympia Police Department on Wednesday morning. After an initial court appearance today, Hughes, 33, will likely face extradition to Alaska, authorities said.
Hughes and an ex-lover, John T. Carlin III, have been charged with the slaying of Kent Leppink, whose body was found shot three times with a .44-caliber magnum pistol in the woods off the Hope Highway in May 1996.
Carlin, 49, a New Jersey Department of Transportation worker, flew to Alaska this week after he learned a warrant had been issued for his arrest and turned himself in at the Anchorage courthouse.
Alaska State Troopers say the pair schemed to kill Leppink, a Michigan man from a well-to-do family who came to Alaska to commercial fish. The motive may have been a $1 million life insurance policy payout, court papers filed by prosecutors indicate.
Alaska State Troopers spokesman Greg Wilkinson said police in Olympia went to Hughes' residence Wednesday morning, where only her husband was home. Police told Hughes' husband, Colin Linehan, he had one hour to find his wife and bring her to the station, Wilkinson said. "They told him, 'We could do this in a small way, or in a big way.' "
In less than an hour, Hughes, her husband, and a lawyer showed up at the police station, Wilkinson said.
Meanwhile, Wednesday afternoon in the Olympia suburb of Tumwater, friends and neighbors reacted to the arrest.
"She's a great gal," said Jan Henry, who has known Hughes about a year. "She is one of the sweetest people I know. I don't think I've ever been so shocked in my whole life."
"I don't know or hang out with people that do things like that, really," Henry said in a telephone interview. She said she had no idea her friend had been an exotic dancer or ever lived in Alaska.
"She's so beautiful, though, I can see how she could be a dancer," she said.
Henry described her friend as a stay-at-home mom with a young child who just entered elementary school and who, with her husband, bought a $400,000 office space in the spring to set up a medical day spa that was going to offer Botox, laser hair removal, facials and massages.
Hughes' husband is a civilian family doctor at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, an Army spokesperson said. According to public records and previous media reports, he is retired but had been in the military and served as a doctor to a Stryker brigade in Iraq.
The life Hughes created for herself in recent years seems to be very different from the one she had a decade ago when she was a stripper at the Great Alaskan Bush Company in Anchorage. She was in her early 20s then and had been an exotic dancer since she ran away from her Louisiana home at age 14, court documents say.
Prosecutors say that before Leppink's death, Hughes was engaged to three men simultaneously -- Leppink, Carlin, and a third man. She met all while dancing at the Bush Company.
Prosecutors say Hughes took out a $1 million life insurance policy on Leppink and persuaded him to transfer his commercial fishing business boat and real estate into her name.
Days before his slaying, Leppink began to distrust Hughes, prosecutors say, and mailed his father a sealed envelope to be opened only if he died. The letter predicted why he might have been killed and who did it. He named Hughes, Carlin, and a third man, who has not been charged.
Leppink was shot three times with a .44-caliber Desert Eagle handgun, and prosecutors believe they can trace the gun to Carlin and Hughes. One of the recent breakthroughs in the case came when Carlin's son told investigators he saw his father cleaning the weapon with bleach shortly after Leppink went missing. He said he believed his father killed Leppink.
A woman who answered the phone at the Bush Company on Wednesday said she remembered Hughes well. She said it was the company's policy, however, not to comment on anyone who has worked at the club.
Daily News reporter Megan Holland can be reached at mrholland@adn.com.
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