ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Church-going soccer mom or cold-hearted killer?  That's what jurors in Alaska must decide in the murder trial of an Olympia woman, accused of killing her fiancé more than a decade ago.

Mechele Linehan was active in the Olympia community, liked by neighbors and married to a doctor.

It's a far cry from the life she lived in Alaska many years ago as a stripper and a murder suspect.

Prosecutors say Linehan had help murdering her fiancé, and it came from her other fiancé', John Carlin.

"All she needed was somebody to do the dirty work.  Somebody to pull the trigger," said Alaska assistant attorney general Paul Gullufsen.

"There's not going to be any evidence that Michele wanted it to happen," said Linehan's attorney, Wayne Fricke.

Linehan was known as Mechele Hughes in 1996.  She met Kent Leppink at a strip club she was working at.  They eventually were engaged, although Mechele already had a wedding date with Carlin.

Carlin was recently convicted of shooting Leppink to death.  Leppink was found by utility workers lying on his back on the ground near a trail in Hope, Alaska,  shot three times with a .44 Magnum handgun.

Prosecutors say the pair killed Leppink for his $1 million life insurance policy, not realizing that Leppink removed Mechele as full beneficiary just five days before Leppink was found dead on May 2, 1996.

Fricke said what actually happened between 1994 and 1996 was that Linehan had gotten in over her head with several men she met while working at the Great Alaskan Bush Co. strip club in Anchorage.

She became engaged to traveling businessman Scott Hilke, a man she actually loved, he said.

Months before getting engaged to Hilke, she had met Leppink at the club. He became infatuated with her and began buying her gifts. While Leppink was smitten with her, there was no sexual relationship between the two, he said.

She bought a house in Wasilla and Leppink moved in.

Then in the summer of 1995, she met Carlin, Fricke said.

"He becomes smitten with her as well," he said. He took her to Europe and bought her expensive gifts, he said. She learned to shoot a .44 Magnum at a gun club.

In the fall of 1995, Linehan moved into Carlin's home in Anchorage while her home is being repaired for dry rot. Leppink followed in January 1996 and slept on the coach. Hilke stayed there as well.

In the meantime, the engagement with Hilke was off and he moved out of state. However, the sexual relationship between the two continued, Fricke said.

"Things are getting, in essence, out of hand," Fricke said

Jurors were shown e-mails that lawyers say will reveal the true nature of the relationships between Linehan and the men.

Leppink, now engaged to Linehan, was angry about the disappearance of a computer, antique rugs and the purchase of cabinets for Linehan's home. The two argued in e-mails while she was in New Orleans visiting family that she needed about $2,500 to pay for a wedding dress.

He apologized if he misled her by giving her the impression he had money.

"The only value he is to Miss Hughes, as the evidence will show, is dead," Gullufsen said.

Carlin, who also was engaged to Linehan, professed his love for her in an e-mail April 24, indicating that he would do anything for her, even giving up his own life.

In late April, Linehan went to Lake Tahoe in California to spend a few weeks with Hilke. Leppink began looking for his fiancDee in Alaska.

Prosecutors point to an e-mail from Carlin to Linehan on April 25 indicating she was staying at a cabin in Hope. However, there was no cabin. The two fabricated the phony note knowing that Leppink would read it, Gullufsen said.

The jury will also see a letter Lippink sent to his parents in which he was concerned that Mechele would try to kill him.

Leppink at least went twice to Hope, where he was killed, prosecutors said.

Fricke said Carlin operated alone in the killing. He believed that Leppink was stalking Linehan and also was depressed that she loved someone else.

Fricke said evidence points to another reason for the shooting. He said Leppink likely was either bisexual or homosexual and had made sexual advances toward Carlin's 16-year-old son.

"Where we part ways is the suggestion that Mechele Linehan, then Mechele Hughes, is in any way responsible for his death," Fricke said.

The law caught up with Mechele a year ago in Olympia, where she was a school volunteer, active in church, and remarried as Michele Linehan to an army doctor who has stood by her side.