ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Alaska officials said the state has decided against pursuing a second indictment against Mechele Linehan, an Olympia woman convicted in 2007 of conspiring to kill a man.
Linehan was released in January after the Alaska Court of Appeals ruled in 2010 that the trial judge wrongly allowed as evidence a letter the victim wrote to his parents before his death implicating Linehan and John Carlin III. Linehan’s conviction was overturned, and the original indictment was thrown out. She had been sentenced to 99 years in prison.
The former Anchorage stripper was convicted of conspiring to kill fisherman Kent Leppink, whose body was found on an isolated trail south of Anchorage in 1996.
Prosecutors said the decision to not seek another indictment was made after a careful review.
Carlin was convicted in a separate trial and later killed in prison.
Linehan worked as an exotic dancer in Alaska in the mid-1990s.
She was living in Olympia with her husband, Colin, a former civilian doctor at Madigan Army Medical Center, and their school-age daughter when she was charged with Leppink’s shooting death in October 2006.
She was 35 at the time of her conviction.
Alaska authorities accused Linehan and Carlin of planning Leppink’s murder to collect on Leppink’s $1 million life insurance policy, which they mistakenly thought named Linehan as the beneficiary.
Leppink changed his policy a week before his death to make his father the beneficiary instead of Linehan, court documents state. Carlin was convicted of firing the gun that killed Leppink, but Alaska Superior Court Judge Philip Volland said during the sentencing hearing that he made no distinction between Carlin and Linehan.
Prosecutors said Linehan was inspired by a 1994 movie, “The Last Seduction,” in which a woman persuades a lover to kill her husband for money.
Olympian staff contributed to this report.
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