The dancer and the dead body

He was a Jersey steelworker with a million dollars from a legal settlement. She was an exotic dancer with at least four fiances - one of whom, police said, she wanted dead.

Their yearlong engagement ended poorly. He wound up broke, the prime suspect in the murder of a man in the Alaskan wilderness. She left him in New Orleans for an Army doctor, whom she later married.

Last week, a decade after the breakup, John T. Carlin III and Mechele Hughes were back together. Both were charged in the 1994 murder of Kent J. Leppink, who owned a fishing business in Anchorage and was deeply in love with Hughes.

"You can't make this stuff up," said Greg Wilkenson, spokesman for the Alaska State Police. "It's got everything going for it.

Carlin, 49, a steelworker from Elmer, Salem County, first traveled to Alaska in 1994 so that his dying wife could see the aurora borealis. With their 16-year-old son, John Carlin IV, they settled in Anchorage. Two months later, his wife died.

Mechele Hughes, 33, originally from New Orleans, also arrived in Alaska by way of New Jersey.

She had quit school when she was 14, and used her older sister's ID to find work in a Brick Township, Ocean County, strip club. She moved to Anchorage when she was 21. There was a lot more money to be made there.

She was 23 when Carlin stumbled into the Great Alaskan Bush Co. strip club in 1995 for a lap dance. He was instantly captivated by the lithe beauty with piercing blue eyes, investigators said.

He showered her with gifts, including an $11,000 diamond ring and a $3,200 fur coat.

He could afford the extravagances. Days after his wife died, Carlin received a check for $1.3 million - part of a settlement in a lead-poisoning case. His attorney, Clifford Van Syoc of Cherry Hill, had successfully argued that Carlin suffered brain damage from exposure to lead paint while repairing the Ben Franklin Bridge.

After six months of watching Hughes dance, Carlin proposed on Christmas Day 1995. Hughes accepted.

Soon, Carlin learned that there were other men. Other fiances. Three, maybe four. One was Carlin's housemate, Leppink.

Anchorage court documents paint the saga of the steelworker and the dancer as if they were grifters out of a pulp novel.

Hughes was already engaged to Scott Hilke, a traveling salesman from California, according to the Alaska court documents. She was also engaged to another man, who worked on the oil rigs on the state's Northslope.

'He just didn't see it'

She had also promised to marry Leppink, 33, a recent transplant from Michigan who had hoped to build a fishing business on the outskirts of Anchorage.

Leppink told his friends that Hughes was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He said he was a virgin and was saving himself for her.

"He was in severe denial," said one investigator. "Even with the evidence swirling all around him, he just didn't see it."

Carlin knew that Leppink planned to marry Hughes. The dancer, police said, told Carlin that Leppink was gay and that the marriage plans were a sham.

At the same time, she told Leppink that Carlin was no threat because he was impotent from lead poisoning.

Leppink named the dancer co-owner of his fishing business, opened a joint checking account, and made her beneficiary of his $1 million life insurance policy.

Less than one month after the policy took effect, Leppink was found dead along a desolate wilderness trail. He had been shot in the head, back and chest. Three .44-magnum casings were recovered nearby.

Police found a postal receipt and a life insurance change-of-beneficiary form in his pocket. The receipt was for a certified letter he had mailed to his father.

"I talked to you about 'insurance policies,' " Leppink wrote. "This is mine. . . . If you think anything fishy has happened to me, then you can open up the other envelope I sent."

Inside the other sealed envelope was another handwritten letter.

"Since you're reading this, you assume that I'm dead. . . . Use the information enclosed to take Mechele DOWN. Make sure she is prosecuted.

'Make sure they get burned'

"Mechele, John, or Scott were the people, or persons that probably killed me. Make sure they get burned. "

Hughes had an alibi. She told police she had been visiting one of her other fiances in California the day Leppink was killed.

Just before he died, Leppink had discovered that his fiancee was romancing at least two other men, police said. He had stormed into his lawyer's office, tore up the will that named Hughes as the inheritor of his estate, and made his father the beneficiary. Hughes didn't receive a dime of the dead man's money.

Leppink's words weren't enough evidence for the police to bring murder charges. At least not then.

A firearms expert determined that the bullets that killed Leppink had been fired by a .44-caliber Desert Eagle pistol, one of the most powerful handguns made.

Police knew that Carlin's son had shown such a gun to friends before the slaying. A manager at a local firing range had seen Hughes with the uncommon magnum.

After Leppink's murder, Carlin and Hughes bought a $75,000 motor home. It was the last big purchase he would make. Hughes drove it to New Orleans, where they set up house, according to police.

Carlin was now penniless. Hughes went to work at a Bourbon Street strip club. She met a young Army doctor who was studying at Tulane.

She dumped Carlin a week later.

The murder probe languished. Investigators couldn't find the murder weapon and couldn't conclusively tie a magnum to Carlin.

In 2004, the Alaska State Police formed a Cold Case Unit. Leppink's slaying was the new unit's first case. Investigators called it the "Black Widow" investigation.

An old ad, a new lead

An Alaska state trooper, Linda Branchflower, found an old newspaper classified ad for a Desert Eagle pistol. She tracked down the seller, who told her he had sold the pistol to a man who looked like John Carlin III.

Investigators also persuaded Carlin's son and Hughes' sister to turn against the two suspects.

In the days after the murder, Carlin had forbidden detectives from speaking with his son because he was a minor.

But in 2004, John Carlin IV, then 26, told investigators he suspected that his father had killed Leppink. He said he remembered seeing his father with the imposing magnum.

"His father told him that bleach will get rid of evidence on a gun," the court papers say. The son never saw the gun after that.

Hughes' sister, Melissa Williams, had called detectives in the days after the murder to ask whether the dancer was involved. She told police that Hughes had sent her Leppink's laptop computer several days after he died, and, while visiting her in Moab, Utah, told her that Leppink "deserved it. "

"Too bad he wasn't tortured before he died," the sister said Hughes added, according to the court papers.

New forensic computer techniques allowed detectives to recover e-mail from the laptop in which Leppink and Hughes corresponded about their engagement, police said.

Working in Collingswood

Carlin, a Marine Corps veteran who until recently worked as a laborer on the Collingswood Circle construction, returned to Anchorage last week to surrender on the murder charge. He was jailed on $500,000 bail.

Two days later, the exotic dancer - now the Army doctor's wife and a stay-at-home mom in Olympia, Wash., was charged as a murder conspirator. She awaits extradition to Alaska.

Van Syoc, who said he was Carlin's friend as well as his lawyer, said he was sure his former client would be cleared.

"I've known him for 16 years," Van Syoc said, adding that Carlin is a "peaceful guy" whom he has never seen angry and husband to a beautiful Russian bride.

"He's not a real talkative kind of guy," Van Syoc said. "The lead poisoning he got gave him brain damage."

Van Syoc also knows Hughes.

"First time I met Mechele in the flesh, she was working in a club on Bourbon Street" in New Orleans, he said. "She was so pretty, I walked off and left my favorite cowboy hat at the club."

Van Syoc drove Carlin to the airport last week for the flight to Alaska.

"He wanted to go there voluntarily to face the charges," Van Syoc said. "He expects to be vindicated."

Contact staff writer Sam Wood at 856-779-3838 or samwood@phillynews.com.