Love And Death In Alaska

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

(CBS)  Carlin consistently denied ever owning one. But Branchflower shot his story full of holes with information from an unlikely source: Carlin’s own son. He'd been only 17, a juvenile, at the time of the crime.

Confronted by police in 2005, Carlin's now-adult son decided to talk. He says his father bought the gun after seeing a classified ad in the newspaper.

Branchflower not only dug up the old ad, she also found the seller.

And Carlin's son kept talking about what he’d seen just days after the murder. "I came into the house. Mechele was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, my father was there as well, and the gun was in the sink, and it was soaking in sort of chemical," he says.

At the time, Carlin’s son couldn't be sure if it was a Desert Eagle, and to this day, he's unsure about the implications of what he saw.

Carlin's son thinks a "party yet to be discovered" killed Kent, but that his father was not involved.

But Branchflower had no doubts. She was sure Carlin did have a role in the murder, and just as sure he'd not done it alone.

She headed for Seattle with some tough questions for Mechele.

Mechele says from the first time police questioned her in the days after the murder she always cooperated fully. She points out that she actually told them about Kent's life insurance policy and the note she and Carlin wrote about that fictitious cabin in Hope.

Investigators dismiss all this initial cooperation as Mechele just trying to cover all the bases; Mechele says they would say that, since they’ve never listened.

In the fall of 2006, a decade after the crime, Mechele and Carlin were indicted for Kent's murder.

Mechele posted bail and was free to return to her family in Washington. But unlike Mechele, Carlin would spend the next six months under arrest awaiting trial.

Now the state has to prove its case, first against John Carlin, who maintains he is innocent.

Prosecutor Pat Gullufsen tells jurors this was in effect an execution. He is intentionally vague as to whether Carlin pulled the trigger, or just pulled the strings, with Mechele firing the shots. Under Alaska law, Carlin can be convicted either way.

Even though Kent named Carlin as one of his probable killers in his letter, Carlin's lawyers Marcy McDannel and Sydney Billingslea think they can win this circumstantial case.

In fact, they say, the only significance of Kent's letters is that police got lazy. "I think they ignored the potential for other suspects," Billingslea says.

The defense tries to cast suspicion on anyone but Carlin. They even offer up Carlin's then-teenaged son by suggesting he could have had a relationship with Mechele, and trying to discredit him before he takes the stand with his story of the gun washing.

But the defense's chief suspect is Mechele herself. "His lawyers pointed the finger at Mechele and said that she was a manipulative seductress. They said that she was an evil woman who committed the crime herself, that John had nothing to do with it and that she just used him as a scapegoat. She pulled the trigger and killed him for the million dollar life insurance policy," reporter Megan Holland explains.

Mechele, meanwhile, was back home in Olympia, awaiting her trial. But Gullufsen insists none of this would have happened without her. "John Carlin was in love with Mechele. He had spent a great deal of money on Mechele," he says.

With twin motives of love and money, all the two needed, he says, was a plan: enter that phony “Hope note.”

The note would lure a jealous Kent to Hope, the prosecutor says, where Mechele or Carlin would kill him.

Wrong, says Carlin. It was just a prank, he says, to mislead Kent, nicknamed "TT," so Mechele would be free of him on her trip to see Hilke.

Carlin says he didn't really want her to go, but desperately wanted to please her. "I wrote the note. I know what I wrote the note for and it wasn't to get TT out of the house. It wasn't to get TT down to Hope," he says.

Carlin's problem, of course, is that Kent's body turned up in Hope.