Wicked Intentions

January 15, 2009
A routine well-being check on developmentally disabled Kenneth Countie in March 2006 turned up a grisly discovery. A bloody mattress, pruning shears, and a burn pit with what looked like human bones signaled that something awful had happened on the farm of Sheila LaBarre, just outside of Epping, NH. Suspicion immediately fell on LaBarre, the charming but unstable woman who had inherited the farm and often brought young lovers to live with her, many of them drifters who were never seen again. Flynn, the television journalist who covered the case from its beginning, takes the reader through LaBarre's disturbing life story, covering her abusive childhood, her failed marriages, her violent rages against the passive (and often developmentally disabled) boyfriends she charmed and then controlled, and finally the evidence that pointed to at least one murder and perhaps many more. The tragedy of the story is that nobody in town believed her incapable of these monstrous acts but that the very fear she inspired kept anyone from intervening until it was too late. For public libraries.Deirdre Bray Root, Middletown P.L., OH

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