Gunman In Alaska Murder Plot Found Dead

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.