(CBS) They were all infatuated, but she says she truly loved only Hilke. Carlin, she says, was like a big brother, and Kent became a bother. He’d been obsessively collecting information about her, including her Social Security number, credit cards, and phone bills. He was even reading her e-mails, and tracking her every move.

Asked if she was afraid of him, Mechele says, "I think I had become afraid of him toward that time."

"Did he have any reason to be afraid of you?" Spencer asks.

"No," Mechele says.

She only pretended to be "engaged" to get Kent off the hook with his parents, she says, because "TT" as Kent was called, was hiding a painful secret. "I think TT was gay. I think he wanted to have a life that was thought to be normal," she says. "He could never tell his family he was gay."

Kent's mother insisted they wouldn't have cared for a second but that, in fact, Kent was not gay.

But Mechele's lawyer, Kevin Fitzgerald, says his behavior kept everyone guessing about a lot. "Kent Leppink was an odd guy. I mean a very odd guy. And frankly, I think in the period of April 1996 I don’t think he was well, mentally," he says.

Fitzgerald says Kent's mental state explains much of the evidence, including those eerie letters home. "I mean, is he gonna say 'Hey, I’ve been lying to you guys extensively for a year and a half about the true nature of this relationship.' Or is it easier for him to say, 'Mechele’s a bad person…and she’s involved with kinda bad people?' I think that’s a pretty convenient out for him," he says. "If you look at the content of the letters themselves, I mean there’s nothing in there to suggest that he’s aware of a plan to kill him."

"So it’s just a coincidence that five days later he’s dead?" Spencer asks.

"Yeah, I think in this case it’s just a coincidence," Fitzgerald says.

Fitzgerald dismisses the e-mails as well, even the "Seychelles e-mail."

"If you were contemplating a murder, would you have put something like that in that would be so incriminatory? I mean that would be nuts!" he says.

The same goes for the "Hope note." The set-up, Fitzgerald says, was all Carlin's idea to get rid of a rival.

But surprisingly, Mechele herself lets Carlin off the hook. "I have a hard time thinking that John did it," she says.

Mechele insists she had nothing to do with the crime either. "You can call her a lying bitch. You can call her a psychopath. You can call her a sociopath. But the bottom line is, that’s not who she is," her husband Colin says.

Who she really is will be at the heart of her upcoming trial.

Another jury already had convicted Carlin of actually pulling the trigger. Now prosecutor Pat Gullufsen must convince this jury that Mechele was the mastermind.

And if he can prove that, then, under Alaska law, Mechele will be just as guilty of murder as if she’d fired the fatal shot herself.

Gullufsen feels that this is a very strong case. It's also very similar to the case against Carlin - so similar in fact, that prosecutors will be calling many of the same witnesses. The evidence will be much the same too: the life insurance, the Hope note, the Seychelles e-mail and the washing of the gun.

Defense attorneys Wayne Fricke and Kevin Fitzgerald worry that Mechele's past will get in the way of the jury seeing what they say is the real Mechele today - a well-educated wife, a home and business owner, and no longer that stripper that was so good at get men to do her bidding.

But prosecutors say "So what?"

"Underlying the whole defense was that she’s a changed woman," Gullufsen says. "That doesn’t mean that we forget about a murder that she was involved in and instrumental in committing eleven years ago."

To keep the focus on Mechele's past, Gullufsen calls another former exotic dancer, a friend from 11 years ago, Lora Aspiotis.

Remarkably she produces a diary, in which she wrote down who watched what movie, and when, although her memory’s a bit hazy. In court, Aspiotis can't find reference in the diary to the one movie she swears was Mechele’s favorite, the 1994 thriller "The Last Seduction," starring Linda Fiorentino.

Produced By Josh Yager
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