Love And Death In Alaska

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

(CBS)  Given Mechele's grip on the men in her life, Hilke isn't surprised. He says Kent never could see that Mechele was using him. "I think he followed her around like a puppy dog. I think he was certainly willing do anything for her that would ingratiate him to her, no question," he says.

When she wasn't with her boyfriends in person, Hilke says Mechele was always on e-mail.

E-mails which, according to Branchflower, prove that Carlin in particular would have done a lot more for Mechele than just write the Hope note. "The one I’d do anything in the world for - including give up my life," the detective read while on the witness stand.

Anything including murder, Branchflower says. Why else does Mechele write the Seychelles e-mail, helpfully explaining that for $10 million the islands are a safe haven from the law?

No answer from Carlin to Mechele was ever found, but for Branchflower the Seychelles e-mail helped clinch the case.

But the defense stresses that most of the e-mails are ambiguous, or even make Carlin's case for him by showing that he and Kent were close. "I value my friendships more than I value most things," Kent wrote. "Thanks for being a friend."

But the defense is about to run up against a potentially devastating witness, Carlin's son, who reluctantly drops his bombshell on the jury, and on his dad.

He describes in court seeing the pistol in the sink. "I remember coming around the corner and seeing Mechele and my father, and there was a firearm in the sink, and the sink was about half full with a clear liquid," he testifies.

"I felt like I was betraying my father. I felt like I was betraying myself," Carlin's son admits.

So much so, that he went to visit his father in jail just a few days later. "He's doing good," Carlin's son says. "Just kind of gave him a nod...it was strange."

"We're hoping he walks out the door and onto a plane by the end of the month," the son adds. Apparently, he didn't fully understand the impact of his testimony on his father’s case.

By closing arguments, Gullufsen is singling out Carlin as the actual shooter, manipulated by Mechele into killing Kent for the insurance money.

With Mechele out of town, he says Carlin took Kent to Hope. "And that’s when the Desert Eagle comes out ready to go and that’s when Kent initially gets it in the back. Turns around, falls down, gets it in the stomach and gets it in the face," Gullufsen says.

That is not at all how the defense sees things. If Carlin later helped wash a gun, his lawyer says he was just cleaning another of Mechele's messes. But will the jury agree?

After almost four days, jurors reached a verdict, finding John Carlin guilty as charged, first degree murder. At sentencing, he gets the maximum of 99 years in prison, not even eligible for parole until 2041.

Back in Olympia, Mechele’s friends are struggling to accept that the churchgoing PTA mom, entrepreneur and devoted wife they know, had such a colorful past.

Her husband Colin says he knew all about her past as a stripper. "Her goal was to save up money for college. And it was something that I could definitely respect. She had absolutely no intention of doing that the rest of her life!" he says.

As for all those fiancés, Colin says, "I didn't really ask any probing questions. I mean, I understood that she had relationships with all three of them at one point in time."

Mechele says while all three men - Kent Leppink, Carlin, and Hilke - may have thought she wanted to marry them, she says the only person she agreed to marry was Scott Hilke.

And none of this, she says, was because she casts some spell on men or somehow manipulates them. Mechele says she never asked the men in her life for more than they already wanted to give. "So you tell me how a 22, or a 21 year-old girl, can make grown men do these things?" she asks.

Her lawyers insisted on ground rules for the 48 Hours interview - no discussion of specific trial evidence, like the e-mails, the life insurance and Kent’s letters home. But fiancés were fair game.

Mechele says Carlin did ask her to get married but that she said no. And she says Kent never thought he was a fiancé.

But prosecutors say a message to Kent suggests he had every reason to think he was very much in the picture. "If you still want to marry me, we should just go and do it. We should get married within the next month," she wrote.

But Mechele maintains Kent wasn't her fiancé.