Poll: Vote on Daniel Wade Moore

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Daniel Wade Moore: Juror Speaks

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For those of you who have interest in the Daniel Wade Moore case, a juror from the 2nd trial (that ended in a hung jury this past week) left a comment on my blog last night that is interesting reading.

It is in response to my post on Daniel Wade Moore and Dr. Tipton, and the comments made back in November 2005: An Innocent Man Convicted.

Click on label below to see ALL MY POSTS ON THIS TOPIC.

Mechele Linehan

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Mechele Linehan was profiled on 48 Hours this past weekend. The segment was titled Love and Death in the Wild.

Mechele was a beautiful girl who knew the power of attraction, and she learned at a very young age how to use it. She had no problem attracting men so when she took a job as an exotic dancer at the age of 18 in Alaska, it would come as no surprise that the men encircled her off the stage as well.

48 Hours found several men with whom she dated, and who wanted to marry her. And supposedly she was engaged to three men at one time (or at least they thought they were). Each of the guys being much older than her. Two of the three talked to 48 Hours.

Read more The story is long and involved, but Linehan never married any of them men, and one of them, Kent Leppink, turned up dead during the time Linehan was seeing him. At the time of Leppink’s murder, however, Linehan was out of town.

With that, Linehan was never charged, and eventually moved on to Washington state, married a doctor, got a master’s degree and had a child.

Eight years would pass before a cold case unit picked up the case and followed up on it, and when they did, they narrowed in on Mechele.

Leppink left behind a letter from the grave professing his love for Linehan, but also said that if anything happened to him that looked suspicious to look at Michele or the other people in her life.

I am not going to detail all the events of the story as you can read all about it on 48 Hours website yourself, but I will tell you that Linehan was finally arrested, charged and convicted of the first degree murder of Kent Leppink yet she still swears to this day she had nothing to do with his murder.

Linehan’s husband and a friend appeared on 48 Hours to stand beside her in their belief she is innocent as did a handful of people who swore Mechele was a manipulative, deceitful liar.

With that, I wanted to share with you what I saw. Is Mechele a decent person whose life story is being twisted and used against her, or is she a mastermind deceiver?

First off, I think the facts don’t bode well for Mechele at all. I think most people will see logically her behavior and actions don’t add up to “love” as she led these men to think it was. The life insurance policy for Kent is exceptionally unusual. Most young 20-year-olds don’t think of taking out a life insurance policy on someone — let alone someone they now profess was likely gay (which I don’t believe for a minute). It defies logic. I find the timing of Mechele’s calls about Kent’s life insurance policy before his death is exceptionally odd, too. I see a whole host of red flags, and I could probably post an entire post about those, but putting all of this aside, what do I see?

Mechele plays the part of a sweet, innocent, demure women in the interview with 48 Hours. She is soft-spoken, and gentle (she reminds me a bit of Melanie McGuire in that sense). She softly weeps as she wipes the tears from her eyes begging for you to sympathize with her.

I find this classic deceptive behavior. When I see people talking really soft and demure, when they are a grown adult, no matter happy or sad, it is almost always a red flag for me. It’s unusual behavior for adults unless they are especially shy and reserved which clearly Mechele wasn’t, or she wouldn’t have stripped in a club for a living. Any time I see this mousy behavior, I go into high alert. It’s a big red flag.

Furthermore, Mechele’s emotions don’t jive for me. They are off, not on target, or as they should be. You can see her assessing the situation, and playing the interviewer. She even gets so brash as to say that if she cried in front of the jury, the jury would hold it against her, or if she didn’t, they would hold it against her. It was the manner, and way she said it that raised a red flag for me. Clearly, she was thinking how she could manipulate the jury. Unfortunately, 48 Hours didn’t load any video of Mechele for me to critique for you.

This case is about circumstances that are a too unusual, about a suspect whose stories don’t add up, and about a woman who was an incredible manipulator who I suspect learned to harness the power of sex in men who were lonely and longing to get what she craved: money.

I also don’t trust her other boyfriend or friend Carlin either. He makes my hair stand on edge.

I feel sad for Mechele’s husband, her daughter and her friend. They can’t see the real Mechele. She’s a cold, calculating woman who obviously had no problem using people and disposing of them to suit her needs–no matter how ruthless it was.

Karissa Boudreau

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Karissa Boudreau was a 12-year-old girl from Nova Scotia who disappeared after her mother says they got into an argument in the parking lot of a grocery store at 5:30 pm on January 27.

Penny Boudreua, Karissa’s mother, says she went into the grocery store for 15 minutes, and when she came back, Karissa, who had never run away before, was gone. Three hours later, Penny reported her daughter missing after conducting her own search.

Two weeks later, Karissa’s body was found on the bank of a nearby river, and now a homicide investigation is under way.

Karissa’s mother, Penny, made two emotional pleas for her daughter. Here is one of them.

What are your thoughts?

“Who Killed the Beauty Queen?”

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Click here for an update on August 24, 2008

Last Saturday night, 48 Hours profiled the case of Nona Dirksmeyer, a 19-year-old pageant queen who was found dead by her boyfriend Kevin Jones. She was murdered.

Jones was with his mother when he discovered her lifeless body, and his mother called 911. Jones wanted to assist the police with the case, but ultimately he ended up getting charged with her murder and faced a trial by jury.

Read moreSeveral of you have asked me, do I believe Kevin Jones in innocent? The jury let Jones go free, but Dirksmeyer’s family believes he is getting away with murder even still.

The police found Jones’ behavior odd on multiple occasions. When they came to the crime scene after the 911 call, Jones went to shake the police detectives hands, but Jones then realized he was covered in blood from trying to revive Dirksmeyer, and so he pulled back his hands. The police found this odd behavior.

I do not. If Jones was a polite man, his manners are a part of his normal behaviors, and they wouldn’t dissipate in a difficult time. This does not raise my eyebrows.

The police also found Jones behavior in the interrogation room suggestive that he could be a violent person. When detectives left the room where Jones was at, he hit the back of the chair he was sitting in hard multiple times. He was angry and visibly upset. Why would he do that? Does it mean he is violent?

If Jones loved Dirksmeyer, and he wasn’t able to protect her, and someone killed her, he may have felt like a failure. He may have felt like he let Nona down even though he wasn’t there when this happened. This is likely an emotional response due to the feelings of being helpless after the fact. That’s what I suspect was going on here. Or he was frustrated that he wasn’t being believed when he was telling the truth. Could his actions be suggestive of violence? They absolutely could, but it is nothing definitive own its own. If there are not any character witnesses to corroborated that Jones had violent behavior, I would discount this, personally.

Jones volunteered to help the police by submitting to DNA tests and by taking a polygraph, but surprisingly he failed the polygraph which only caused police to look at him even closer. Polygraphs, in my eyes, are not reliable so I wouldn’t much too much into this.

At the crime scene, the police believe they found the smoking gun when they found Jones palm print on the light-bulb of the lamp police believe was used to deliver a fatal blow to Dirksmeyer.

I suspect that Jones could have easily grabbed that light-bulb when he found Dirksmeyer and tried to revive her. Perhaps it was in the way? I do not see this as any smoking gun.

Another interesting fact in this case is that at the scene police found a used condom wrapper, and with that, they theorized that Jones found it and went into a rage, and killed Dirksmeyer because Dirksmeyer had been seeing other men behind his back.

Those other men were ruled out by police.

When I watch Jones, I do not see a man who is violent, and while all people have the potential to be violent, he doesn’t hit me as a man who would kill his girlfriend over her finding a condom wrapper. He is more likely the type to buy into a story that Dirksmeyer would make up to cover herself. Jones was a trusting, honest guy as seen by his willingness to assist the police so freely. I also think it would take more than infidelity with his girlfriend to get Jones murderous. He is not a man who has a temper. Those who knew Jones testified to that fact.

Furthermore, the police only checked the condom wrapper for finger prints, but not DNA. They said the lab would only do one or the other but not both because each test could potentially render the other useless. I find that unusual, but I am not a forensic expert. In either case, no finger prints were found.

And the jury? It took less than 2 days to find Jones not guilty, and I agree with the jury. When I watch Jones’ behavior, I do not see one red flag. I see nothing that alerts me to deception. I see honesty through and through. I believe Jones without any doubts. He is a good person caught in a horrible situation as is his mother.

And it looks like this case isn’t over yet. Remember that condom wrapper? Well, Jones defense attorneys had it tested for DNA and they found some. It belongs to a male other than Jones. Of course, people who thinks Jones is guilty will say this makes sense.

I think this DNA may provide important clues to help solve who really killed Dirksmeyer because it wasn’t Jones, if you want my personal opinion.