The Burn Farm

July 20, 2009
True crime author and conspiracy theorist Benson (Betrayal in Blood
) chronicles the real and disturbing life of Sheila LaBarre, who lured vulnerable men back to her remote New Hampshire farmhouse and abused them psychologically and physically. After some of her victims disappeared, a police investigation uncovered the remains of two young men in burn pits on the farm. In 2008, LaBarre—who believed that she was an “avenging angel” ridding the world of pedophiles—pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of first-degree murder, launching one of the longest trials in New Hampshire's history. Benson commendably refrains from sensationalizing the shocking details of sadomasochism, pedophilia, incest and sexual abuse, but the brisk pacing suffers tremendously during some of the drawn-out trial sequences, and the ending to this “X-rated retelling of 'Hansel and Gretel' ” leaves some major questions unanswered.

September 1, 2009
Worried that truly bizarre murders are a dying breed? Glom this story of a southern belle on the prowl for weak, diminutive, slow-witted men to dominate sexually and every other conceivable way before killing and cremating them. Alabaman Sheila LaBarre (n'e Bailey), putatively sexually molested by her father, spent much of her adult life seeking cosmic payback. At 29, she took up with chiropractor Wilfred LaBarre, thanks to the personals. Never officially married, she took the doctors name and, gradually, control of his life, practice, and possessions, alienating other LaBarres and pretty much all the neighbors in and around rural Epping, New Hampshire, where he owned a horse farm. Sheila didnt wait for her much older husband to die before entertaining a parade of boyfriends at the farmhouse. The neighbors noticed the goings-on, but it wasnt until two young men went missing that Sheilas penchant for taping the boyfriends coerced confessions to pedophilia and homosexuality before terminating and incinerating them came to light. Great ultracreepy stuff, the better for Bensons comprehensive, atmospheric treatment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)