From Child Actor to Serial Killer : The True Story of Skylar Julius Deleon

By Pete Dove

Some crimes are so vile that they stick in the mind. Attacks on children, assaults on the elderly. Skylar Deleon's murder of a middle-aged couple fits into this category. It is one of the coldest, most mindlessly cruel killings in the history of the US.  
Skylar Deleon considered his victims' lives in the way most of us regard the wrapper off a chocolate bar. It does a job, but when the luscious center it protects has provided its short-term thrill, it is thrown away, disregarded. Not with any purpose, or any intent, but just because it is no longer needed.
Skylar Deleon and his small crew of cronies murdered Jackie and Thomas Hawks by tying them to the anchor of their yacht, then pushing that heavy anchor over the side, dragging them to an inevitable death by drowning. His motive was pure greed...even if it meant killing...again and again...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201969509

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KILLER STRIPPER : THE TRUE STORY OF MECHELE HUGHES

JAMES MORRIS

Kent Leppink’s death

Kent Leppink was a commercial fisherman from a relatively comfortable background. He had lived several places in Alaska by the time he settled down in Anchorage, and shared a house with Mechele Hughes and another man named John Carlin III.

His body was left on a hiking trail near Hope, Alaska, an hour from Anchorage. He was discovered by utility workers making their way to a job. But perhaps because of the conditions on that remote hillside, or because of the carefulness of the murderers, no physical evidence was found that could have tied anybody to the crime.

What little evidence there was, and common sense, pointed towards Mechele and Carlin, but not enough to bring them to trial. Leppink’s death, however, was almost overshadowed by Mechele Hughes’ story: a stripper who had perhaps had her boyfriend murdered in cold blood, by her lover. The salacious story gripped headlines around the country when the case went to trial, a full decade after the crime.

The murder

Details of what happened on the day of Kent Leppink’s death are difficult to come by, and were only pieced together during the trial- which came after more than a decade of waiting.

What Kent Leppink may or may not have known, was that Mechele had been seeing at least two other men while living with him, including their housemate Carlin. There was also another man named Scott Hilke, who lived in California. According to allegations that later came out at trial, she had been engaged to them all at some point or another, and maintained relationships with all three at the same time.

On May 2nd 1996, Leppink was found dead courtesy of three gunshot wounds from a .44 calibre handgun. He had been shot at point blank range, and according to the pathologists’ report had been murdered anywhere between 6 and 48 hours before his body was recovered.

Whether Mechele and Carlin kept their affair a secret is impossible to say, but perhaps it was the threat of it being revealed that led to Leppink’s murder. This, at least, was what State Troopers investigating the case believed. They interviewed Hughes, Carlin and Hilke to try to get to the bottom of what had happened but couldn’t definitively pin the crime on any one of them, nor on anybody else.

No charges were brought against Hughes, or against anybody else connected to the crime. And because of the lack of any new evidence coming to light, the case went cold.

A breakthrough after a decade

Michele finally faced court only ten years later, in October 2006. While no fresh physical evidence had been unearthed, the State of Alaska’s cold case team- just three people, as it happens- had made a breakthrough during an interview with Carlin’s son. He had been underage in 1996, and hadn’t been allowed to speak to police. His testimony was so damning that charges were brought against both his father and Mechele Hughes.

The cold case team were also able to confiscate Kent’s old computer, which gave them important clues going forward in the case. According to Betsy Leppink’s interview with NBC in 2008, she described how information on the computer had been vital: It held information that was very important to both trials, and she added that the technology to access the information simply hadn’t been available all those years ago.

The team had recovered emails from the computer which heavily implied that Carlin and Hughes had lured Leppink out to Hope, Alaska that day. The pair had said that they were renting a cabin in the area, and invited Leppink along; but in reality, there was no cabin, no holiday, and no return home for Leppink.

Another startling piece of evidence was a stolen bronze statue, which John Carlin had kept through all the intervening years. That was very, very big in the trial, Betsy said during her interview. At that point, it had been returned to Betsy and Ken, and sat in their living room. She [Hughes] stole it from him. They found it just before Carlin’s trial on his fireplace mantle in New Jersey. On the back side of it, our son’s name is printed on it, Ken added.

Based on both new and old evidence, as well as testimony from interviews, the cold case team concluded that Hughes had not murdered Leppink; she had persuaded Carlin to shoot him instead. This made her an accomplice, just as guilty and just as liable for his death. He was sent to a prison in Seward,