Anchorage Daily News

On a bright sunny morning in May 1996, a Chugach Electric worker repairing a power line in the woods near Hope found the bullet-riddled body of a man. Kent Leppink, a commercial fisherman who lived in Anchorage, had been shot at close range three times -- in the back, abdomen and cheek.

Ten years passed before investigators suggested how Leppink ended up there, alone and 90 miles from home.

Alaska State Troopers say his friend, John Carlin III, lured him to Mile 13 of the Hope Road and into the trees, then shot him with a .44-caliber pistol.

Both men, Carlin, 39, and Leppink, 36, were in love with the same woman, a 23-year-old exotic dancer named Mechele Hughes.

Now known as Mechele Linehan, she was strikingly pretty, small and blond, a Michelle Pfeiffer type, equal parts sultry and girl next door.

Neither Carlin nor Leppink was much to look at.

Leppink was crazy in love with her and asked her to marry him. She said yes. In the weeks leading up to his death he was anxiously finalizing wedding details.

But, unknown to him, Carlin, his roommate at the time, had also proposed to Linehan and she had also accepted him.

Detectives say Linehan wanted Leppink dead for his $1 million life insurance, which she wrongfully believed named her as beneficiary. They say she had such power over Carlin that he would do anything for her.

In April, Carlin was convicted of Leppink's murder. Now it's Linehan's turn before a jury.

During Carlin's trial, troopers offered up Linehan as a femme fatale, a modern-day black widow, the dark mind behind murder for profit. She is a woman so totally selfish she will use anyone for her own gain, the prosecution said. A woman who loves the thrill of connivery. Men fell under her spell. Cash. Jewelry. Fur coats. They would empty their bank accounts to win her attention.

That's the police version.

But look at her today. At 34, Linehan holds a master's degree from Evergreen State College in Washington in public administration. She is married to a physician, is reportedly a devoted mother, a regular PTA member at her daughter's Catholic school and works at a medical day spa in Tacoma, Wash.

Who is this woman? We know where she ended up -- an educated, respectable Washington suburban mom, about to be tried for murder.

Where did she come from?

There are at least two Mechele Linehans, and several versions of her history. Police and ex-boyfriends call her cruel and manipulative, bouncing from one place to another, from one gold-digging scheme to another, from one victim to another.

But the people who know her best, family and friends, know a generous, open-hearted woman, hard-working, determined to get an education, to make a good life for herself and others.

Linehan isn't talking. Neither are her lawyers. This is what others have to say. Her mother in particular wanted people to know Linehan is not the monster pictured by the prosecution but followed defense lawyers warnings not to talk about the case.

'I KNEW WE WOULD BE MARRIED'

Linehan was born in New Orleans and moved from city to city as a child, at first with her Air Force father, then with her stepfather who worked for the airlines. After the second divorce, mom resettled herself and her daughters near New Orleans, where she had relatives and a long family history.

Linehan was an active child who did well in school, said her mother, Sandy McWilliams. "She got A's and B's, (but) then C's in conduct because she talked too much."

Childhood was not easy for Linehan. When she was about 12, she was diagnosed with scoliosis, which put her in and out of the hospital for a year and in a body brace for nine months. The condition required a steel implant to straighten her spine -- a rod that left a scar from her neck to the small of her back and gave her the perfect posture noticeable to this day.

At the same time she was battling medical problems as a young teenager, her father died.

Police say Linehan ran away at 14, stealing her older sister Melissa's identification, which said she was four years older. She became a teenage stripper, they say.

According to her mother, Linehan left home with permission at 16 to work at a modeling agency in New York. Mom didn't approve but knew she couldn't stop her. "She was better off going with my blessing. Then I knew where she was," McWilliams said. "She didn't run away."

Modeling didn't work out.

Pat Giganti, a boyfriend from that era, says he met her at the Iguana Club on Park Avenue in about 1990. Back then Giganti was in his late 30s, Linehan in her late teens.

"I'm from New York City. I come from a pretty fast place," he said in an interview. "And let me tell you, she made me feel like I was standing still."

The pair dated for three years, he said. They lived together and worked together at a deli Giganti owned in Bricktown, New Jersey. He said he didn't know if she was stripping. She was a lot of fun. She could charm and impress, he said. But he thought she had a split personality.

"She's like a thoroughbred racehorse bred for being cruel," is his opinion.

Now 53, Giganti lives in New Jersey and owns a construction business. When Linehan left New Jersey about 1993, he said, she signed his name to buy a Volvo sedan and he got stuck with the payments. However, a search of New Jersey police records didn't turn up any record of this or any criminal history for Linehan.

Linehan's friends say Giganti isn't telling the truth and is still bitter about the breakup.

According to her mother's version of Linehan's past, she returned to New Orleans after a few years and got her GED, working in restaurants to support herself. Linehan then sat down with her family, including her great grandmother, and told them she was going to start stripping at a local club. She would only have to work a few nights and could save for college.

The family didn't like it, McWilliams said. "I didn't approve, but I couldn't argue with her. It made sense."

"She didn't go around telling people about it, and it wasn't something she was proud of," McWilliams said. Her daughter wanted to be a veterinarian.

When she was 21, Linehan told her mother she could make more money dancing in Alaska than in New Orleans. She and another young woman from the club ended up at the Great Alaskan Bush Company. Her stage name was "Bobby Joe."

It was at the Bush Company on October 1994 that she first met Leppink. He took a friend to the bar to celebrate a birthday, saw her come down the stairs, and told his friend she was the best-looking woman in the place.

"From the moment I met Mechele at the Bush, I fell in love with her," Leppink wrote in an e-mail two months before his death.

"When she would do table dances for me, I was watching her eyes. Sure it's hard not to see the naked body in front of you, but I felt more for her than just as a sex object. I knew that we would be married to each other almost from the beginning."

THEIR FAIR LADY

Leppink was from a well-to-do family near Grand Rapids, Mich., where the Leppinks owned a chain of grocery stores. He was about 6 feet, 5 inches tall, polite and mild-mannered, colleagues said after his death. He was college educated, had thought about going to medical school and loved the outdoors, especially hunting (an issue that he and Linehan, who was still thinking about vet school, would disagree on until his death). He was awkward and shy around women and never had much luck with them.

Friends called him "T.T." It stood for Tennessee taxidermist -- his previous residence and occupation. In Alaska about a year when he met Linehan, Leppink fished mostly out of Whittier and Cordova and spent his free time in Anchorage.

About a month after he met Linehan, Leppink proposed to her with a diamond ring. He celebrated their love by postponing sex until after marriage, according to his e-mails written at the time. They talked about what their lives would be like together. They talked about having children.

Linehan bought a $64,000 house on East Portage Drive in Wasilla. Men would come and go while Leppink was away fishing, according to a neighbor at the time. Tom Namtvedt said he didn't think it was his place to say anything to his friend Leppink.

At the end of 1995, they were forced out of the house because of major repairs. They moved into the South Anchorage home of Linehan's friend, John Carlin III, someone else she met while dancing at the club.

Carlin had recently moved to Alaska with his son. A former steelworker and recent widower, he had won a $1.2 million judgment in a lead poisoning lawsuit against a former employer. He was quiet and private, someone who didn't like to divulge personal information, his son, John Carlin IV, testified.

The people in the house on Brook Hill Court were friends -- Linehan, Leppink, Carlin and Carlin IV, a teenager at the time who attended Service High School. They played cards at night. Watched television. The adults drank beer. The men loaned each other money. They both gave her money. Knots of possessiveness, loyalty and greed developed, according to testimony and contemporary e-mails, an unhealthy emotionalism that police say contributed to what happened.

One of Linehan's favorite movies at the time was "My Fair Lady" with Audrey Hepburn. She loved the story line of a dirty flower girl transforming into a classy woman, a fantasy that foreshadowed her own archetypal molding later from exotic dancer to upper-class physician's wife.

BAGS OF CASH

Alaska State Troopers say Linehan was the queen of the house. Leppink and Carlin competed for her affections, with various degrees of naivete. The men doted on her, buying her diamond jewelry and expensive furs from David Green Master Furrier. She continued to dance and brought home Crown Royal bags full of cash -- thousands of dollars -- which she'd pour onto the dining room table.

Leppink ran errands. He ironed. John Carlin IV said everyone in the house depended on him. He also said Leppink followed Linehan around like a puppy.

Linehan, meanwhile, kept up her relationships with other men. Scott Hilke, another fiance, visited from California. He and Linehan got matching pink dinosaur tattoos on their ankles. She used his frequent-flier miles to visit him on weekends. She'd often bring pets with her, especially her parrot, Sybil.

Hilke testified at Carlin's trial that he knew about the other men in her life but described Linehan's relationship to them as "dancer-client" -- not personal, not like his.

What was so appealing to these men? Linehan is obviously intelligent and alluring. Former fiances and boyfriends in recent interviews say she was also generous and warm, especially with children and animals. She lit up around them. In Carlin's house, she took care of several dogs, a couple of birds and a cat.

In the months leading to Leppink's death, Linehan quit the Bush Company and took classes at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She was excited about plans to get involved in a bird sanctuary in Costa Rica.

In the days before Leppink died, Linehan flew to California to see Hilke and lied to Leppink about it. Carlin covered for her -- because he was involved in a murder plot, say prosecutors.

Because he was trying to provide respite for Linehan from the obsessive Leppink, Carlin's lawyers said.

Police say Linehan's California trip was just an alibi for a murder well planned by her, the dirty work done by Carlin.

During his March trial, Carlin's lawyers poked at that theory, questioning whether Linehan really was in California. Carlin maintains his innocence to this day.

Examined critically, the case against Linehan seems scant, with no hard evidence: Carlin's son, who is now in his late 20s, testified he saw his father and Linehan washing a handgun in a bathroom sink shortly after the murder, but troopers never found the murder weapon. They have no witness to the slaying, no one who saw Carlin or Linehan near Hope that day, no one to say Carlin or Linehan told them about it. What they have is a circumstantial case sewn together after 10 years of investigation that they argue illustrates motive, means and opportunity.

It was enough to convict Carlin. Is it enough to convict her?

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Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.

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Part 2 Monday: Mechele Linehan's life after leaving Alaska, examined by her hometown newspaper.

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Who's who

KENT LEPPINK: A 36-year-old commercial fisherman from a well-to-do Michigan family, was shot and killed in May 1996. His body was found in the woods near Hope, 90 miles from his Anchorage home.

MECHELE LINEHAN: Known as Mechele Hughes in 1996. She was a 23-year-old stripper who met Leppink and Carlin at the Great Alaskan Bush Company. Prosecutors say she conspired with Carlin to kill Leppink. Jury selection has begun for her trial in Anchorage.

JOHN CARLIN III: A 39-year-old millionaire and recent widower from New Jersey when he met Linehan. He was convicted in April of conspiring with his former fiancee to murder Leppink.He is in jail awaiting sentencing.

Photos courtesy of APD

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