Love And Death In Alaska

The Cold Truth In Alaska - A Crime Of Money, Power, Greed And Sex

(CBS)  Prosecutors say the note was meant to lure Kent to Hope in search of Mechele, who was actually in Lake Tahoe with Hilke.

The note worked. At least once, a few days before his murder, a distraught Kent drove to Hope. Frustrated, he returned to Anchorage, only to be found dead back in Hope a few days later. There was no proof how he got there or who killed him.

Investigators had no witnesses, no murder weapon, and no direct evidence. Over time, officers were transferred out of the area and the investigation stalled.

Though police at the time had the insurance policy and Kent's letters home, Det. Branchflower says there were no charges.

Hilke was already living in California, and Carlin and Mechele were free to leave Alaska. Months after the murder, each separately soon did.

Mechele finally settled in Washington State, neatly shedding her past. And for eight long years, Alaska seemed forgotten, until one day detectives knocked on the door of her suburban home.

"They asked for clarification of certain statements I had made in the past. I tried to help them as much as I could," she remembers. "I was shocked by it…I was just really shaken up."

Mechele insists she always saw stripping just as a means to an end. "I would go to work and I kept my goal in mind. My goal was to make money and leave," she says.

"I went to school full time," she says. "I studied biology and psychology, and I got a master's in public administration."

In 1998, in New Orleans, she married a young doctor named Colin Linehan, just a day after he graduated medical school. A year later, they had a daughter.

"I have known this woman for ten years. I catch myself like 'Wow. She’s amazing.' Our daughter adores her," Colin says.

Their life together in Olympia, Mechele says, was the very definition of normal.

But Branchflower says Mechele's whole life is a façade. She came to that conclusion in 2004, soon after joining Alaska's new cold case unit.

Investigators quickly made the eight-year-old Leppink murder a top priority.

"Did you really look for any other suspects when you started probing this again?" Spencer asks Branchflower.

"We went where the evidence led us and there wasn't anything in our investigation to indicate anybody else could have done it," she says.

Scott Hilke was soon ruled out, despite the failed polygraph. "We did try to investigate if there was anything that indicated Hilke knew that the murder was going to take place. And there was nothing at all," Branchflower says.

Branchflower badly needed break, and on a pair of old computers seized in the original investigation she found it. Many of the e-mails had been deleted back then but investigators where able to restore them.

"They were able to pull up e-mails between Kent and Mechele, Mechele and Carlin, Mechele and Hilke that described different aspects of their relationship," Branchflower says.

One exchange between Mechele and Kent read: "You should not be concerned about John...he is more a brother or even a father to me." But in an e-mail to John Carlin, she wrote, "You are the most important thing in my life…I need you more than you will ever know."

"They show how manipulative she is being," says special cold case prosecutor Pat Gullufsen.

But manipulation and murder are two different things. Asked if there's any specific evidence in the correspondence that connects Mechele to Kent’s death," Gullufsen says, "I think you come real close with the 'Seychelles e-mail.'"

The so-called "Seychelles e-mail" was sent from Mechele to Carlin just days before the murder. It seems to suggest the tiny island chain off the African coast just might be a safe haven from the law. "Did you know that you can buy a citizenship in the Seychelles for around ten mil?" the e-mail reads. She asks, "No matter what crimes you have committed, they will not extradite?"

Investigators decided the e-mails were a very good start, but not strong enough to make a solid case in court. They needed the missing murder weapon. They knew from markings on the bullets it was an unusual gun, a .44 caliber Desert Eagle.