Anchorage Daily News

John Carlin, convicted last year in a notorious Alaska murder, has died under suspicious circumstances, state prison officials said today.

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John Carlin III

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According to his letters written from the Spring Creek Correctional Center, Carlin had been in protective custody within the facility this month because another prisoner or prisoners beat him up. On Monday, he was out of that protective custody, a prison official said.

Alaska State Troopers were notified of a disturbance at the prison shortly after 11 p.m., trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters said.

Carlin was taken to the Providence Seward hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The Alaska Bureau of Investigations, a unit within the troopers, is investigating the "foul play," Peters said.

Carlin was convicted last year of conspiring with Mechele Linehan, a former Anchorage stripper turned doctor's wife and PTA mom, in the 1996 shooting death of commercial fisherman Kent Leppink.

Prosecutors say Linehan and Carlin orchestrated the killing in the mistaken belief that Linehan would receive life insurance money.

Both Carlin and Linehan were sentenced to 99 years for the crime. Both said they were innocent. Both were appealing their cases.

Carlin, 51, was transferred from the Anchorage Jail to the more permanent Spring Creek prison in mid-August. It is the state's biggest facility for sentenced prisoners.

In a letter to a reporter dated Oct. 13, Carlin wrote that he was beat up after a re-run of the CBS show "48 Hours" about the murder.

"Some people here apparently didn't like the way I looked, so I got a prison makeover of sorts," he wrote.

As is standard in prison altercations, he was put into protective isolation after the incident. "Living in the hole here is somewhat like living in the primate section of the zoo," he wrote.

He was still in protective custody two weeks ago, according to the letter.

On Monday night, he was in what is called "general population" with the rest of the prisoners when whatever incident occurred that led to his death, prison spokesman Richard Schmitz said.

He was in a unit of the prison where relatively new prisoners are brought, Schmitz said.

Marjorie Allard, Carlin's appeal attorney, said Carlin was actively involved in his appeal. She talked to him regularly. "This was very, very important to him," she said today.

On Monday, they spoke two or three times, she said. Asked if he said anything about being in danger, Allard said she couldn't comment because of the ongoing investigation.

"Our condolences go out to the family. This was a tremendous shock."

Carlin was a big man who said he kept to himself in jail, preferring to read history or biography books to socializing with other prisoners. In an Aug. 20 letter to a reporter, he wrote that he was excited about the transfer to the Seward prison because of its library. He wrote that he had just checked out the first volume of Winston Churchill's "A History of the English Speaking Peoples."

In 1996, Carlin, a recent widower and ex-steelworker from New Jersey, invited Great Alaskan Bush Co. dancer Linehan and her commercial fisherman friend, Leppink, to stay with him while repairs were done on Linehan's Wasilla home. Carlin had recently won nearly $1 million in a work-related lawsuit, and he was living off that while raising his teenage son.

Prosecutor Pat Gullufsen said Linehan was a young seductress who used men for money. He said that she plotted to kill Leppink and gain $1 million from a life insurance policy by pretending to be in love with him and getting engaged. Gullufsen said she then used Carlin, who was enamored with her, to shoot Leppink.

Both Linehan and Carlin say Leppink was just a friend. In the months leading up to the 36-year-old fisherman's death, he was obsessed with Linehan, 23 at the time, and fabricated their relationship to his friends and family. He was exhibiting odd behavior, sometimes stalking her, they say. At the time of Leppink's death, he was angry at both of them because Linehan had chosen another boyfriend and Carlin was protecting her.

In a letter written days before his death, Leppink wrote to his parents that if he were to end up dead to blame Linehan, Carlin and the boyfriend, Scott Hilke.

Investigators built their case based on circumstantial evidence. No hard evidence linked Linehan or Carlin to the crime.

No arrests were made until 2006. Linehan had moved on, left dancing behind to marry, have a child, and earn a master's degree. Linehan was opening a medical day spa in Olympia, Wash., with her husband, a doctor, when she was arrested. Carlin had moved back to New Jersey.

The arrests followed new forensic technology that retrieved more e-mails deleted from computers. In addition, Carlin's son, John Carlin IV, told investigators that he saw his father washing a handgun shortly after the murder. The handgun was a Desert Eagle, the same kind used to murder Leppink.

Carlin last year said from jail that he washed the gun because it had disappeared before Leppink's death and re-appeared after his death in a different spot in the house. His son found it in a plastic bag in the hallway closet. Carlin was already under investigation and was nervous he would get blamed for the death, so decided to wash his son's fingerprints from the gun and then threw it in a garbage can at a local grocery store, he said.

Carlin's death is only the second homicide to ever occur within the state's prisons, prison spokesman Schmitz said. The first was in 2004, also at Spring Creek, when convicted killer Carl Abuhl strangled his cellmate, Gregory Beaudoin.

In a letter written to a reporter this summer, Abuhl, still at Spring Creek, wrote, "Security needs to become proactive, instead of reactive, and implement immediate deterrents within the prison."

He also wrote: "(The Department of Corrections) is not responsible for my actions, they had never encountered someone like me before but again if their security was pro-active instead of re-active -- inmates would conduct themselves more appropriately."

The Department of Corrections is letting the troopers investigate Carlin's death. Troopers were answering few questions about it today.

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

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