Michele linehan murder trial alaska

They both subsequently filed an appeal against their verdict, maintaining their innocence. His estate, though, was allowed to continue the process. Therefore, today, Mechele Linehan, who had married Dr. Kriti Mehrotra. Linehan's murder trial made national headlines in , in part because prosecutors alleged that Linehan had convinced three men that she was engaged to them at the same time and two of them lived in the same house with her.

But prosecutors also convinced an Alaskan jury that Linehan was the mastermind who lured Leppink to his death and pushed Carlin III to do the shooting. The story was made all the more shocking because it took more than 10 years for investigators to bring anyone to trial at all. Leppink, a fisherman, was killed in By the time cold case investigators hauled Linehan back to Anchorage, she had left Alaska and exotic dancing behind, married a doctor in Washington State, and had become a PTA mom.

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His body was found in the woods in Hope, 90 miles outside of Anchorage. Carlin and Leppink had met Hughes while she was working as a stripper and all three had lived together for several months in Anchorage. The police obtained a note that Leppink had sent to his family in Michigan before his death. The note, which carried instructions that it was to be opened only if he died, said that if he died under suspicious circumstances, Carlin and Hughes were probably responsible.

For years, no one was arrested for the crime. In , the Alaska State Police cold case unit re-opened the investigation. Based on new witness interviews and an examination of emails recovered from two computers, police came to believe that Hughes had solicited Carlin to kill Leppink and that Carlin had lured Leppink to Hope and shot him there.

By then, Hughes was married to a physician and living in Olympia, Washington under her married name of Linehan. Police accused Linehan of helping compose a note to Leppink saying that she was staying in a cabin in Hope, which police claimed prompted Leppink to travel to Hope to search for her. Carlin, who had moved to New Jersey, and Linehan were arrested in the fall of and charged with first-degree murder. Linehan went on trial before a jury in Anchorage Superior Court in September The case against Linehan was circumstantial.

The prosecution presented the note written by Leppink before his death saying that if he were murdered, Carlin and Linehan were likely behind it.