The stripper and the steelworker

On the way out of Anchorage, Alaska, on a curving road leading out of the city, stands a giant warehouse sort of structure. All cold, hard edges. The Anchorage Correctional Complex. The new home of a bitterly unhappy man named John Carlin III.

John Carlin III: I don't feel good about sitting in here. I'm wasting my life for nothing. I'm not happy about it. And I think I’ve been, quite frankly, I’ve been rather nice about it.

His misfortune, Carlin tells us, is that he, quote, "has the face of an ax murderer." He just knew, he said, what the jury was thinking.

John Carlin III: "We know he's guilty. We just don't know why. We don't know how. We don't know anything. But we're gonna say he's guilty." John Carlin ain't guilty.

But in fact, the jury had decided John Carlin III would have done anything for the woman he loved. Even commit murder.

And one of the worst things about it, said Carlin, was having to sit there in court and not say anything. His silence is now his biggest regret.

John Carlin III: I wanted to testify. It was my attorneys, day in and day out, yapping at me not to do that, not to do that, not to do that. And I should have.

His lawyers said they had good reason for advising him not to testify: it would have opened the door to some very damaging prosecution questions.

Still, said Carlin, he would have told the jury that anybody could have killed Kent Leppink, even Mechele. 

Of course, on cross-examination his credibility might have suffered just a little.

He had, after all, lied to investigators, claiming he never owned the type of gun used in the murder.

And at first, as we visited with Mr. Carlin here in jail, he was, frankly, not forthcoming on that question.

Keith Morrison: Is there any particular reason why you had a Desert Eagle?

John Carlin III: I didn't say I had one.

Keith Morrison: You're telling me that gun was not yours.

John Carlin III: No, I’m saying I can't talk about it right now.

But as we talked, he opened up. He did have a story about the gun, he said. And 11 years after it happened, he was finally ready to tell it.

Carlin said the Desert Eagle had been missing for weeks when his son found it in a closet after Kent's murder:

John Carlin III: I heard "Don't touch it. Don't touch it. Don't touch it." And I went around the corner this way and I see John standing there holding the gun that was missing.

When he saw that gun, Carlin said, he was struck by the fear that he or his son would be blamed for the murder.

His first and continuing belief, he told us: the real killer planted the gun in his house in an effort to frame him.

John Carlin III: I cleaned John's prints off the gun. I put ammonia and water, that's what we did in the Marine Corps, hot water and ammonia. When I was cleaning it, Mechele came walking in and she stood there and she saw the solvent in the sink and just looked. And then John came around a minute later because he followed her in and he stood there and he watched it.

Then, he said, he decided to get rid of it. He told Mechele he was going to bury it under the house. But instead, he stuck it down his pants, tossed it in a dumpster behind a grocery store.

Keith Morrison: You didn't want Mechele to know where you buried it.

John Carlin III: No, I didn't trust her.

And what about that "Hope Note," which the jury felt was a carefully calculated lure to get Kent to Hope where he'd be shot?

John Carlin III: The note was specific for one reason - so he wouldn't be tracing around thinking she was out of state. Scott was her boyfriend. That was - that's the bottom line of that.

Keith Morrison: Well, so why didn't somebody just say to T.T., "Scott’s her boyfriend. Lay off. This is over for you."

John Carlin III: Why didn't she do that? I don't know.

Keith Morrison: Why didn't you do that?

John Carlin III: Not –

Keith Morrison: Why did –

John Carlin III: --my job.

Besides, Carlin pointed out, Kent - or T.T. - went to Hope, showed Mechele's picture around, and - the first time at least - came back just fine.

As for the e-mail exchange in which Mechele said you can buy citizenship in the Seychelles for $10 million and they won't extradite no matter what you've done?

Pure trivia, said Carlin.

He was interested in that sort of thing, and Mechele knew it.

Anyway, he could never have $10 million.

John Carlin III: You would have to kill a lot of T.T.’s to attain that amount of money to make that possible.

Carlin says the jury got it wrong, the idea that he was so lovestruck he would actually give up his life or take someone else's for Mechele. In fact, he says, the relationship was fizzling.

Keith Morrison: At that point, you still thought she might want you?

John Carlin III: No. If you read (laughs) no, if you read that last note of mine a week before T.T. Dies, I said, don't go to Scott. If you go to Scott, it's over. It's the end. There is no more."

Keith Morrison: And she went to Scott.

John Carlin III: And she went to Scott. And that's fine. You know, you made your choice.

And though the prosecution presented evidence to dispute it, Carlin said he has an alibi for the day Kent died.

John Carlin III: During that time I was actually in John's school because John was being expelled from school at that time, mighta given me an alibi if they bought it up. My phone records, well, I’m on the phone. Computer records, I’m on the computer. I'm not there.

The jury, of course, bought the prosecution's argument that Carlin had plenty of time between the school visits and phone calls...

But Carlin himself said he just didn't have a reason to kill Kent. He didn't need to get him out of the way - he was going anyway. Fishing season was just about to begin.

John Carlin III: I don't have any motive whatsoever to kill this man. None.

He is convinced, he said, there was someone else, still unidentified, who wanted Kent dead. But nobody will believe him.

John Carlin III: From the very beginning, they had this Hollywood scenario in their brain. And that's what they wanted to prove. And it's wrong. They owed me more. They owed T.T. more. They owed T.T.'s parents more. They owed Mechele more. They owed everybody more.

Carlin says he knew Kent had changed the beneficiary on his life insurance. And the will?

John Carlin III: I knew T.T. stopped his will so Mechele wasn't gonna get anything. So for me to go ahead and kill him, where's the motive?

As for Mechele, she would have her own jury to decide who did what to whom.  And John Carlin III was not the only one to offer the following prediction. From jail, awaiting sentence, it was his parting shot.

John Carlin III: She'll get out of it. You know why? Because they're still arguing the same things that are wrong.

And, like so many others who claim they were wrongly convicted, he said:

John Carlin III: I'm here because my lawyers were bad.

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