N.J. man found guilty in '96 murder

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A New Jersey man was convicted yesterday of first-degree murder in the death 11 years ago of his roommate and romantic rival.

John T. Carlin III, 50, was charged with killing Kent Leppink, 36, a crime that authorities said had come at the urging of a woman they both hoped to marry, former stripper Mechele Linehan.

Linehan also is charged in Leppink's death. Her trial is scheduled for September.

Leppink had moved to Alaska from Shelby, Mich., to work in a fish-tendering business and eventually bought a boat of his own.

In early 1996, he lived with Linehan, Carlin and Carlin's teenage son in Carlin's Anchorage home. Carlin was accused of luring Leppink to the tiny community of Hope, about 90 miles away, then shooting him in the back as they walked on a nearby remote trail.

Prosecutors portrayed Linehan as a master web weaver who accepted money, furs and jewelry from not only Leppink and Carlin, but also another fiance in California and a boyfriend who worked on Alaska's North Slope.

According to prosecutors, Linehan wrongly believed she was the beneficiary of Leppink's $1 million life-insurance policy. Shortly before his death, he named his parents as his beneficiary.

Leppink's body was found within a day of the May 1996 killing. No arrests were made, however, until last October, when Carlin was living in Elmer, N.J., and working for the state Department of Transportation.

At the time of the killing, Carlin prevented investigators from speaking to his son, John Carlin IV, a minor. The case got new life when the younger man was interviewed years later.

The younger Carlin testified that he had seen his father cleaning a pistol with bleach shortly after Leppink was killed and that Linehan had been present.

Investigators also used new technology to retrieve e-mails between Carlin and Linehan, which they say Linehan tried to erase from a computer she took from Leppink.

Prosecutors contend that Carlin and Linehan used a fraudulent note to lure Leppink to Hope.

Leppink, in a letter to his parents that was sealed until his death, named Linehan, Carlin and Linehan's third fiance as likely suspects if he died suspiciously.

Carlin did not take the stand. His attorneys called two witnesses that they hoped would show that Alaska state troopers conducted a shoddy investigation. Defense attorneys said any number of others could have killed Leppink, including Linehan, her other lovers or even Carlin's son.

The jury of eight men and four women began deliberations Monday and were finished by midmorning yesterday. One woman juror dabbed tears away from her eyes as the verdict was read.

Carlin, wearing a double-breasted gray suit, white shirt and blue tie, showed no reaction to the verdict. His attorney, Marcy McDannel, bowed her head. Outside the courtroom, McDannel maintained that Carlin was innocent.

"I'm dismayed, to be quite frank, very dismayed," she said of the verdict.

McDannel, a former prosecutor, said the verdict would mean that the "real, evil participant" in the case, Linehan, would have a better chance of acquittal.

"She can say he acted on his own," McDannel said. "She can say he was misguided. She can say he was the one who pulled the trigger and they don't have evidence that she did it."

Carlin will be sentenced Nov. 9.

Linehan posted $150,000 cash bail and is living at home in Olympia, Wash., waiting for her murder trial. The former stripper was living a soccer-mom life with her young daughter and physician husband until her arrest in October. *