Gunman In Alaska Murder Plot Found Dead

(CBS/AP)  A spokesman for the Alaska Department of Corrections says John Carlin, the gunman in a notorious Alaska killing, has been found dead at the state prison in Seward.

Corrections spokesman Richard Schmitz says Carlin was found dead under suspicious circumstances Monday night.

Carlin was convicted of conspiring with Mechele Linehan, a former Anchorage stripper-turned-soccer-mom, in the 1996 shooting death of Linehan's fiance, Kent Leppink. Leppink's body was found off a trail south of Anchorage.

Prosecutors say Linehan and Carlin orchestrated the killing in the mistaken belief that Linehan would receive insurance money.

Linehan was arrested in 2006 in Olympia, Wash., where she was living with her husband, a physician, after a cold case investigator in Alaska revived the probe.

The notorious case was featured in an edition of 48 Hours, "Love and Death in Alaska."

Prosecutors had fingered Carlin (one of three "fiancés" of Linehan, who was working as an exotic dancer at the time) as a shooter manipulated by Linehan into killing Leppink for his insurance money.

In April 2007 jurors found Carlin guilty of first degree murder. He received the maximum sentence: 99 years in prison.

In a jailhouse interview with 48 Hours Carlin denied that he pulled the trigger, though he admitted finding the murder weapon and tossing it into a dumpster.

Mechele Linehan was found guilty last October and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. She'll be 68, when she gets her first chance at parole.

[forgivethemfather]

Previous post should have said, can't the media get anything right? And they get way too much wrong.

[forgivethemfather]

Linehan was never a soccer mom. Can't the media get anything wrong? No journalistic integrity left at all, just creative fiction for ratings. Garbage.

[JoanShort]

I see that this story and comment is quite old, but I'm going to respond to it anyway.

forgivethemfather expresses his or her displeasure of the description of the female subject in this story as a "soccer mom" because the woman "was never a soccer mom" saying, "Can't the media get anything (right)? No journalistic integrity left at all..."

Allow me to offer a correction, friend.

forgivethemfather, "soccer mom" isn't a term that is reserved only to describe the mother of a soccer player. It is a commonly used term used to characterize "a typical American suburban woman with school-age children." Actually, that is the exact definition of it. Go to dictionary dot com and look up "soccer mom" and this is what you'll find:

"soccer mom: noun - a typical American suburban woman with school-age children."

In this situation, the subject of this story, Ms. Linehan, was at the time of the writing of the article, in fact, a "soccer mom."

I fear the lack of "integrity" of which the writer has bemoaned is not of a "journalistic" nature as he or she has described, but rather a lack of integrity in some people who are simply angry, hateful people at heart and miss no opportunity to spread that in the world.

Then, there are others, like me, who are the defenders of the recipients on whom that anger and hatefulness has been spread, and who hope that by merely pointing it out that someone could possibly see themselves and adjust that which they share with the world to a more positive, productive message.

It could happen.

[whateverinak]

Wow, there are some really heartless and ignorant of the facts posters in here. God help you if a backwater state's authorities every go after anyone you love.

[guest173]

mccain isn''t with a soccer mom, he is with a hockey mom arlvabear

[treeyed]

Looks like the chickens come home to roost...

[myopinion381]

Guess they won''t have to feed and house him for the next 99 years. Tax money saved!!!