Started: 7/6/09
Finished: 7/11/09
Year: 2009
Pages: 223
Genre: True Crime
Grade: B-
Reason for reading: Review for MyShelf.com
Blurb (from back cover): "Mechele Hughes came to Wasilla, Alaska (pop. 4200), looking for a new life and easy money. As an exotic dancer at the Great Alaskan Bush Company in nearby Anchorage, she was soon earning thousands a night-and getting expensive gifts from admiring male clients. Three in particular fell under her spell. Each claimed to be engaged to her...and they all lived with her together in the same house. But in May 1996, the bullet-ridden body of Kent 'T.T.' Leppink, a local fisherman and one of her fiances, was discovered in a wooded area ninety miles away-possibly slain by suitor number two, John Carlin III, at the stripper's urging.
"Ten years would elapse before the arrests and trials of Mechele Hughes Linehan and John Carlin III. Was the real Mechele a murderess, a ruthless sexual manipulator as the prosecution claimed, killing for insurance money-or the loving wife and mother she had since become, dedicated to children, animals, and charitable causes?"
Opinion: An interesting story but is was evident that not a lot of first hand interviews were received-author also makes a note of that. For a more complete review, please check out MyShelf.com in the upcoming months.
1 comment:
I live in Alaska, and I used to live in the same community as the Linehans, although I never knew them. Having lived in her community, I see where the media gets many details wrong in order to tell a steamier story.
Following this case up close here in Alaska, I witnessed the local media engage in a tabloidesque frenzy over Ms. Linehan, continually repeating the story told by the prosecution without ever asking for any proof, so that by the time she went to trial, she couldn't get a fair trial in Alaska. Isolated, the Alaska justice system has not been held accountable, and that should be scary for all of us.
I can see that this author did a lazy, lousy job. Rather than do actual investigative research, he merely rehashed the unsubstantiated tabloid fantasies of the prosecution. In fact, he didn't even read the trial transcripts because if he had, he would have found his Real story: how did this woman end up charged, convicted, and with the same sentence as the person found guilty of actually committing the murder? With no criminal record, how did she end up with a 99 year sentence despite not having been accused of being the actual killer?
With no physical evidence and very little other evidence to convict the accused shooter, Ms. Linehan was convicted on even Less evidence! Why? Who stood to gain?
What was the true story on Leppink? Why did the judge allow the entire trial to be based upon Ms. Linehan's character, but the refused to allow the defense to introduce anything about Leppink, when there was plenty to introduce because the judge refused to let the trial be about character? Huh? How was the fair to the accused?
Why did Leppink's family banish him, his brother tell the press Kent Leppink was a liar, cheat, and fraud, but the the family, especially Leppink's mother, played the distraught family traumatized by that evil woman. (BTW, at the time of the killing, Leppink was old enough to have fathered Linehan-she was just a girl.) could it have had anything to do with the fact that if the insurance company thought Leppink died either from his own doing or while engaged in an illegal act, the family wouldn't have received the one million dollars?
The Real story is more interesting than the ridiculous and unsubstantiated titillating fantasies made up by our hick investigators and unethical prosecutor, but the media and lazy authors wanting to make a quick buck off the tragedy that befell Linehan and her family have not bothered to do any real investigative work on this case. They just keep repeating the steamy story without regard to ethics or validity.
What Leppink was really like and what he was up to when he died, and what the backward and professionally incestuous justice system in Alaska did to Mechele Linehan are the real story here, if only someone were willing to do some actual research and digging.
This book, however, is trash.
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