Mechele Linehan On ’48 Hours’ – Did Ex-Stripper Commit Murder For Insurance Money?
Mechele Linehan is one controversial figure. As reported by CBS News, Mechele was featured in the 48 Hours report called Love and Death in Alaska. For those viewers who might remember Linehan from a previous report, the publication notes that Mechele’s story was broadcast more than five years ago — on August 7, 2010. However, new updates to Mechele’s case have changed the nature of Linehan’s tale, and as such, CBS updated the show and aired it on December 26, 2015.
Somebody should write a book. …Appeals court overturns murder conviction of man in Mechele Linehan case http://t.co/8mvV9xCzHV
— Julia O'Malley (@julia_omalley) January 22, 2015
Mechele was portrayed as a woman of many faces. To some, Linehan was a mastermind in a murder — a beautiful and manipulative woman who had been engaged to at least six men, a woman who’d danced as a topless dancer. To others, Mechele was a wife and mom who enjoyed an education that included garnering a Master’s degree.
No matter what, by 2006, Mechele found herself no longer a stripper who got men to do her bidding, but a suburban Washington state woman charged with a 10-year-old murder case from Alaska. The murder case involved the death of Kent Leppink, a death for which Mechele was convicted in October 2007.
John Carlin III was also convicted in the 1996 murder, earlier than Mechele’s conviction. Lora Aspiotis, who once danced with Mechele as an exotic dancer from more than a decade prior to her trial, showed the court a diary whereby she claimed Mechele’s favorite movie was The Last Seduction. That favorite movie claim was important, because the plot involved a woman who talked her boyfriend into killing her husband to make money to help set the lovers up for their own future.
Mechele reportedly told her old stripper pal that she wanted to be just like the woman in the movie. Based on the original movie called Double Indemnity, the updated movie featured a similar plot. When the lover kills the husband, it’s the lover who goes to jail while the woman gets away with the cash.
Reports of Mechele washing a gun with bleach or some such chemical are the type of eye-witness reports that don’t make Mechele look good. Neither does the fact that Mechele called the insurance company mere days prior to Kent’s death. The state trooper who reported Kent’s death to Mechele said that it didn’t sound like Mechele was truly sincere about being upset over the death.
Mechele, meanwhile, thought that whatever reaction she had in front of the jury was the wrong one. Whether she laughed, cried, smiled or looked angry, she thought the jury would believe she wasn’t being real and truthful. Instead of Mechele taking the stand, her husband Colin takes the stand.
Mechele was accused of using her beauty to meet men and take advantage of them. With Mechele being pretty enough to dance in the 1990s as a stripper at “The Great Alaskan Bush Company,” she was used to getting tons of money from men and attention. There were quite a few men that wanted to marry Mechele, although she claims she wasn’t engaged to as many of them as has been reported.
With a million dollar life insurance policy on the line, Mechele had plenty of motive to kill Kent, said prosecutors. Formerly known as Mechele Hughes in 1994, Mechele went to Alaska at only 18 years of age after traveling to other locales. Mechele ending up meeting Kent, then a shy 35-year-old fisherman, at the strip club. Before long, Kent — who had already been in trouble for taking money from his family’s firm — found a fresh start in Alaska and asked Mechele to marry him.
It wouldn’t end up being Kent’s shot at true love, and ultimately, Kent would wind up dead.
[AP Photo/Al Grillo]
