Last Frontier’s femme fatale

Like all good Americans, Mechele Linehan believed in the creed of self-invention. It very nearly worked for her. But because it didn't, she has just begun a 99-year jail term for murder.

Fifteen years ago, she was working the strip clubs of Alaska, the state that calls itself 'the Last Frontier'. A pretty woman, she had no trouble being the most alluring girl in the joint.

After a few good years Linehan yearned for respectability, just like a girl in a Western who cashes in her takings from the brothel and rides the stage to a new life in a new city. So she headed south and settled in the lumberjack-and-tourist town of Olympia in Washington state, just far enough away from Alaska to go unrecognised.

She married a doctor, joined