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You are now listening to True Murder The most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker vck. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good evening, This is your host Dan Zepanski for the program True Murder, The most shocking Killers in True crime History and the authors that have written about them. Sheila Labarre liked to troll the personal ads and homeless shelters, looking for men whom society had rejected for one reason or another, men she could easily dominate, both verbally and sexually.
One by one, she invited them to her remote New Hampshire farmhouse, where she engaged them in s and m But over time sex gave way to brutal acts of torture, as she mercilessly flogged and beat her captives until they confessed to committing unspeakable acts. Once satisfied that they had paid for their sins, Sheila savagely slaughtered them and burned
their remains on her farm. From the disturbing audio tape Sheila made of her victim's confessions to her own bizarre statements, which she claimed to have returned from the dead to be God's avenger. The Burn Farm takes you behind the scenes of the scandal that rocked a quiet New Hampshire town, a New England town and in the twisted, depraved mind of a manipula bit of cold blooded murderer. Our book this evening is Burn Farm with my special guest, journalist
and author Michael Benson. We don't have him on the line as of yet. I'm hoping that I had a little bit of mix up with daylight Saving time. I had no idea that not everybody was on the same page with the daylight saving time, so the confusion. I take the responsibility for that not making it very clear exactly what time we were on slated for today, and Michael was good enough to there was another mix up.
I had a hard drive fry and a lot of information I had to piece back together via email, and so I've got a couple of the guests their order of the schedule of the to appear on the program. Mixed up. So Michael Benson was good enough to who was originally scheduled for last week to come on this week, and here we have Michael Benson. So all's well, do you think, Michael Dan, how are you?
I'm doing well. I didn't realize I was supposed to call you.
Ah, there we go. There's always something that's well explained by me. I apologize, but thank you very much for agreeing to come on this program, and welcome to the program True Murder. Michael Benson, thank you very much, thanks for having me. Thank you very much. I just went and gave the description of Sheila Lebar and what this
story is basically about. But let's get into the Let's get into the nitty gritty here with The main character in this incredible story is a woman named Sheila Labar formerly Sheila Bailey, raised in a place called Fort Payne, Alabama. Tell us about her life growing up. What was her life like in Fort Payne, Alabama. What kind of community was she from?
Well, you know, it was a brural Alabama town and she was the youngest of six. They didn't have a lot of money. Dad smoothed out blacktop during the day and drank at night. Sometimes mom worked in a hospital, but a lot of times she was home. The problem was that, according to Sheila and her older sister, Lynn, Sheila was sexually abused by her father and his friends, and that her mom knew about it but failed to
protect her. Her sister said that not only had she seen Shila be abused, but she herself had been abused as well. Are using trouble hearing me? I have a lot of static.
There is a lot of static, but it seems to be emanating from your from your US, your location, but I'm not sure.
Okay, could you try giving me a quick call?
I can't do that as it's set up right now. We're live and I can't break from this.
All right, give me the number again quick and I'll call a second time.
Okay, it's three four seven seven four zero six four.
Okay, I'll be back in thirty seconds. Sorry about this.
We're gonna wait for Michael to call back in. He's right. That line was extremely noisy. See if we can pick a little headway. I know that the blog talk introduction or instructions to me were distorted somewhat, but I didn't have that background noise as a feature, so we're hoping to have Michael back on. This is an incredible book by the way, Burn Farm not for the faint of heart. A lot of a lot of these books are that I have covered. Are some of these subjects which I
find most interesting. This is one of those, Burn Farm on the more extreme ends of true crime. And here we are back with Michael Benson.
It has something to do with the weather here in New York. We're having both sleet and thunder, so maybe problems with the connection to the satellite or something. Anyway, hopefully you can hear me.
Yeah, it's a little bit better for sure.
Now, her sister backed up her story that she'd been abused, and Sheila said that she grew up into a woman who liked men, but she had trouble having a fulfilling sex life during her early adult years because she still had infantile genitalia and couldn't handle the well endowed men she attracted. Now it's uncertain exactly how many times she was married, but it was a few, and everyone agrees that her first marriage was in the early nineteen eighties
to Alabama local named Ronnie Jennings. Later in life, Shila would develop an obsession with being in control at all times, but that personality trait wasn't fully developed when she was a young woman. I mean, later on, I think she had just beaten the crap out of him. But when she was a younger woman, she decided to hurt herself instead.
So when she couldn't have her way with her first husband, she swallowed an overdose of pills and then drove her car until she passed out at the wheel and cracked up. She was taken by a helicopter to a hospital where she spent days in a coma, and she woke up believing she had died, gone to heaven, and had been sent back by God to rid the world of pedophiles. Wow, so that's her psychological makeup. Now we next pick her up in nineteen eighty seven, and she is in Nashville, Tennessee.
She wants to be a country and Western singer, and she's putting ads in sex oriented newspapers looking for submissive partners men who are willing to endure her discipline. And that was how she met doctor William Labam as sixty year old mild mannered chiropractor who lived in a farm house in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire.
That is go ahead, go ahead, you Now.
The nearest town was a small village called Epping, and the nearest city was Portsmouth, which is why I was early to find out about this case. My agent, Jake Elwell of Harold Obern Associates, grew up in Portsmouth, and as soon as this all went down, you know, he gave me a call and said you should do a book, call it the Burn Farm. And it was never called anything else. So anyway, she she eventually comes back to Epping with doctor Lebar and they are not husband and wife.
They were never married, and she starts to take control of his life. She changes the name of his farm, she takes over the business end of his chiropractic practice, and with a meanness that went right down to her bones, she humiliated him at every turn. She became the town tramp as well as the tramp of several surrounding towns as well. Now, like I said, she never married doctor
Lebar son. Certain how she felt she could get away with taking his name, but she did, and she referred to herself as Shila Lebar from that point on, and a judge after doctor Lebar died ruled that she was indeed his common law of wife, so everyone called.
Her sorry it wasn't. There also that he actually modified his will to will her everything that he owned in a couple a couple of properties. He was well off, the business, the properties, the farm.
Well, yeah, the legitimacy of that particular will is in question, so especially since when she was while she was living in his house she married another man. She had several living lovers. First was a Jamaican man named Dwayne Ennis, and she married him and the marriage didn't last long and eventually us escape back to Jamaica unharmed. But there was a steady string of lovers she had right in
doctor Lebarr's home. Next came Jimmy Brackett, who was a mentally slow individual who did chores around the farm and became Shila's increasingly abused sex slave. He too, managed to get away with his life, but not until Sheila broke his teeth with the handle of a basting brush as they bathed together. And it's unknown why they had the basting brush, and that's help with them now. In December two thousand, doctor Lebar passed away and Sheila assumed control
of his estate. Pulling out the will. You mentioned that Bill's kids do nothing about They had no idea he had made out a new will. She immediately had doctor lebar cremate it boom. There wasn't going to be any autopsies there. And although there were those who said doctor Lebarre's complexion had gone green during the last days of his life, indicating that something was making him sick. During his last days, says his common law wife, Sheila, assumed
control of the farm. The will said the doctor was stiffing his kids and giving everything to the kind and wonderful woman known to the world as Shila Labar and it was without him as her anchor that her life really started to spiral out of control. In two thousand and five, she takes in a homeless man named Michael Deloge, whose small man mentally slow, and she beats him up
repeatedly and he would run away. People would see him walking down the road heading away from Shila's with his face bleeding, and she would just get in the car and go to the homeless shelter to pick him up. You know, he couldn't get away. He didn't have the mental capacity to figure out how to escape from her, and she eventually tortured him, hitting him to confess to being a pedophile with an incestuous past. Then she tort until he was dead, cut up his body and threw
it into the burn pile for incineration. And then in February two thousand and six, she meets Kenneth County, a memorley handicapped young man with the sophistication of an eleven year old, and he turns out to be her final victim.
Now, how did you talk about Sheila Lebar and how everyone, including the police kind of stayed away from her. You talked about the numerous complaints that Sheila made to police about everything, her neighbors all kinds of numerous complaints about the officials that wouldn't respond to any of her complaints. There was a litany of complaints that this woman made. City officials and neighbors wanted to stay clear of her. Tell us a little bit more about her bizarre behavior.
You say that it really took a turn when doctor Lebar act he passed away. So tell us a little bit about her relationship with the neighbors and some of her odd behavior.
Well, I think that she had the police of Epping lulled into it. That's just Sila being Sheila attitude. She the police went out there tens of times. You know, she would she would call saying that her boyfriend was beating her up. You know, they would call saying she was beating them up. Uh. Sometimes she would be beating them up. They would they would call nine one one, and then she would punch herself just before police arrived
and said he hit me. Police had a rule, it was the Shila rule that node they had to go in Paris to her house because if they went by themselves, she would expose themselves and try to and trap them into some sort of sexual situation.
Right now, there was the Kenneth County County was spotted in a walm days before he was officially somebody was reporting him missing. Tell us about who initiated the search for this man that had the capacity of eleven year old, and also tell us where the couple was spotted away from the farm a couple of times.
Well, Sheila met Kenneth County on a singles phone chat line. He was a nice kid. He wasn't terribly bright. He lived with his mom. He had tried to go into the army and wasn't able to make it through basic
training and felt miserably felt like a failure. He really wanted to get out and be an adult on his own, so he got an apartment not far from where his mom lived, had a roommate, and everything was fine until he called a sex chat line that he saw a commercial for on TV and Sheila was on the other end of the line. Next thing you know, they're having their first date on Valentine's Day in two thousand and six.
They meet at a hotel in Hampton. They go out in the parking lot and have sex twice, and a week later, County leaves his Massachusetts home, telling his roommate that he'll be back, but he never comes back. He leaves his personal items behind and begins living at the farm with Sheila. So it's only six days after their first date when Kenny calls his mom and he sounds bad. He's complaining about mistreatment, and Sheila grabs the phone away from him and says, you know, we want to be
left alone. Kenny's happy with me and hangs up. So Kenny's mom, Carolyn, relives that Sheila hadn't counted on picking up a man that somebody cared about. And this turned out to be her big mistake because Carolyn Lodge kept tracks of her Kenny, and she called the state police immediately to express her alarm. You know, my son step.
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Is mentally handicapped. He's been taken by a strange woman. Please go get him. So by the twenty fourth, so it's ten days after their first date. Now, County is reported missing to the Epping police for the first time by his mother and they go out to Shield's farm to see if he's okay. You know, she said, oh yeah, go ahead.
So what happens when police go out to the farm.
What is it? Yeah, and she says he's in the tub. He can't come out. He says, sorry, man, we have to see him. So Kenny gets out of the tub and comes out, comes to the door. He's got a towel around him. She says, there he is now leave and the cops leave, every indication that they're a little bit frightened of her, and when she barks at them to go, they go.
Now.
The next day, she faxes the Epping police a document that, in theory Kenny wrote. Kenny signed it anyway, and it says, I trust only Shila Labar and we are happy a couple of two adults, and we want to be left alone as far as the cops are concerned. That's that does it? You know, the mother no longer has any rights over me. He's an adult man. Then comes the
Walmart incident. It's it's March eleventh now, and Sheila walks into Walmart with Kenny, who's starting to look a little beat up, but he's walking around and she suddenly makes a big fuss and complains that another customer has just hit her husband. And she looks in and she says, look at him, he's all beat up. Look he just got beat up by one of your customers. And the Walmart employee says, it doesn't look like he just got beat up, and she says, all that those come from
a car accident he was in. Those come from an explosion where there was glass, but he just got hit by We're going to sue. So he said, what if you mentioned the word sue to a Walmart employee, you are asked to leave immediately, And she was and it was chalked up as just a strange incident until six days later when she comes back to the same Walmart, and this time she's got Kenny in a wheelchair and
he is really looking bad. He is green in color, the same bad complexion people noticed in doctor Lebar during the last days of his life. And she's pushing around in a wheelchair and he's got a huge cut across his no and these battered they're looked like burn marks on him. And she again causes disturbance and police are called this time and the officers they come and they see they see Kenny in the wheelchair looking beaten, and again Chila takes charge and says, you know, just leave
us alone. We're happy, we're fine, And they said, well, we got to make sure that he can walk. So Kenny gets out of the wheelchair, walks three steps, gets back in the wheelchair, and she takes them out, puts them into the car, and gets in and gets him out of there. Now, the question here, I think is is not as well. I mean, there is a question why didn't the police intervene at that point? But why did Sheila do it at all? What is it that
she's trying to establish here? She's making a public record of her lover's slow demise for some reason in her head, but we don't know what it is. Anyway, that would be the last time that anyone would see Kenny alive. On March twenty third, Kenny's mom calls Sheila and tells her that she wants Kenny to come home right away, and Sheila says, well, sorry, can't do that. Kenny has left. He's gone back to Massachusetts. Don't know where he is
by well. Carolyn Lodge finds this very disconcerting news and again reports her son missing. So that same day, same two cops go back out to Sheila's house and there's
a mattress that's burning outside. There's a couple of burn piles going and one of the cops looks into one of the burn piles and sees what he thinks as a human bone, and he figures that's enough to get probable cause for a surge warrant, and they tell her not to touch anything, and they leave to get the warrant, come back several hours later her and sheill is covered with ashes and she's crying and she's saying that her Kenny is gone, and she plays a tape for the
policeman of a tape recording she made of a conversation with Kenny in which he admits to having raped several children, and Kenny can be heard in the background agreeing with her, and she's constantly yelling at him and abusing him, and toward the end he could be heard vomiting, and she tells him to stop faking that he's fainted. She knows he hasn't really fainted. But the cops say, well, where is he now, and she says, well, I left, he left,
I'm not sure where he is. And again they bring attention hills, attention to the bone in the fire, and they said well, where did that bone come from? And she says it either came from a rabbit or a pedophile. She borts that out and then immediately denies saying it.
So, how does the police proceed from there?
I'm sorry, I say it again?
Well, so how did the police proceed from there?
Oh?
Boy, I can't sure you Dan, I'm so sorry.
I want to say, how did the police proceed from there?
Okay? Well, with the search warrant, they go over everything. They confiscate, among other things, a wide array of cutting tools in the house. They find blood in the house. All over the walls of the house are blood. Some of it's covered with dust and some of it's fresh, which would indicate that this is continuing behavior. She's making people bleed over a space of time. Now, the question I have is why is she allowed to go free? But she is. They're being very careful going to arrest
her until this year. But while the search of the house and the grounds is going on, she takes off. She makes arrangements for her animals to be taken care of, and she's pitch hiking around New England, being picked up by a series of men who all have sex with her and take her to where she wants to go, which is almost always further away from having New Hampshire. It isn't until March thirty first that it warrant is
issued for her arrest and the manhunt begins. And finally, her last boyfriend, the last one who picked her up, sees her picture on the TV set and calls the cops and says, I know where she is. She's at the shopping mall and she is arrested in Revere, Massachusetts. And when she stouted you, yeah, what.
Did she tell that last person about her coming back and being an avenger?
Well, she if she is pretending to be crazy, She never ever stops pretending, because she tells her or her lovers that she has come back to life after dying and that she is an avenging angel. You just slept with an angel, she says to them. And then I'm here to take care of all the sex offenders of the world. So if you're a sex offender, watch out, and if you know any sex offenders, let me know and I'll take care of them for you.
Well then when they finally go ahead, well when they find her, she's got a small quantity of marijuana with her because she likes to smoke before sex.
She's got eighty five thousand dollars in cash and checks in her possession, and she has cut and dyed her hair. It looks a lot like flight.
Now.
She's arraigned in Massachusetts on April third and brought back to New Hampshire, which.
And how yeah, so she she is escorted back to New Hampshire, And how does the what happens in terms of her representation by lawyers or her questioning by police? What happens in that in that case with the questioning from police.
What happens in the case with the questions of the police.
Yes, what's what happens in terms of the questioning from police? And does she immediately request the lawyer at that time?
Well? She, you know, she she chats with them for a long time. She she has to bring a bunny with her from the farm and she sits in an interrogation room with a rabbit on her lap. You know. The rabbit urinates on her and she wipes it up with a paper towel and then wipes her mouth with the same paper towels. Very bizarre behavior as far as her representation goes. Because of all the publicity. She gets a good lawyer, she gets Brad Bailey out of Boston, who is going to do his best to convince a
New Hampshire jury that she is insane. And I think that the main question of the book is is Sheila crazy or is she just pathologically statistic? You know, insanity defenses rarely worked and in insanity defense and defense has never worked in New Hampshire, not once. But one of the things that makes this case compelling is that the insanity defense here has a couple of points going for it.
Shilabaum may have known that her murders were construed as wrong in the eyes of society and in the eyes of the law, but there's a serious question if she herself appreciated that her actions were wrong. She those behavior before and after the murders, before and after her arrest indicate that she had delusions she believed, and those delusions were determining her violence. Where reality starts and where her
delusions begin, of course, is a question. But she claims to have been a victim of incest and of pedophiles as a little girl, and her sister backs that up. Now we know that that as an adult you know she wasn't a coma, and so it's her claims that she she was brought back, returning to mortality with a mission is feasible in her own mind. She has every reason to hate pedophiles, she has every reason to hate
people who commit incests. And she actually had biblical quotes that, on the surface anyways, seemed to back up her plans, including a verse from Daniel that noted God's favorite form of capital punishment with in feneration, and that was basically her defense that she was on a mission from God when she committed the murders. It sounds like criminal insanity. The trouble is Sheila blended that delusional mission with her other personality disorders. She was a nimphomaniac, She was a sadist.
She had grand illusions regarding her her delusions regarding her own sexual appeal. Her sadism was always there, not just during sexual encounters. She was mean every single time she had an opportunity to be mean, and in the long run, the jury in New Hampshire decided it was means Sheila who was in charge. You know, she may have believed her mission was a legitimate excuse to commit the crime
she committed, but it was just an excuse. Nonetheless, Sheila got off on hurting people and in the long run it might have mattered to her, but it didn't matter to the jury how much prurience and religious zeal she put into the mix.
Now, in terms of not criminally response because of insanity, the lawyer her defense did raise some issues that when she had the opportunity to conceal her actions often she didn't. The case in point where she offered to play the audio tape for police officers. So you know, I'm in Canada talking about cases here and we have a lot more leeway in terms of insanity and not primarily responsible
in cases. But part of that is that there was some indication at some point, at different times where she didn't try to conceal her actions, like the Walmart and like the audio tape. Did they not make any headway with that part of the defense. I know it's a very politically charged case, and especially when you're dealing with torture, but did they make any headway at all as a trial by making those points?
Absolutely none. I think that the New Hampshire jury sat there with their arms crossed and scowled at her, you know, waiting for an opportunity to give her the thumbs down, you know, And I agree with you. I think there
is there is. There's strong evidence that Sheila is insanity is real, that she was abused into psychosis as a child, And the strongest evidence comes from her older sister, who you know, cat the picture of that there's one there's one description she Lynn Nuge and her older sister testified at the trial and said that there was She remembered one time when Sheila and herself were chased into a
cornfield by her drunken father. And oddly, I was typing this one day and my daughter was standing behind me, reading over my shoulder, and she says, that's from Chrest Gump, And it was true. It was a scene that Lynn NuGen was describing seemed almost exactly the same as the scene in Forrest Gump when Jenny is chased by her father into an Alabama cornfield, which of course doesn't mean
that it wasn't just a coincidence or that. And I like this idea better that the sisters placed a memory from the movie over their real horrifying memory as sort of a bandage and had come to believe that the replacement Forrest Gump version was true.
Right.
What I found interesting was, unlike the Aleen Werno's case where the other infamous woman serial killer, that there really seemed to be at least a lot more validity to an insanity defense with the actions and behavior.
You know, Dan, I you can hear me better than I can hear you.
Okay, you are a little voice coming out of a lot of static.
Okay, great. Anyway, when I wanted to their second.
LTR one phone call, okay, okay, I'll do that. Well.
I apologize for all the noise. I know it's quite hard to plow through this interview with that much noise. I don't hear any noise on my end here with my phone call, so I don't know what that is.
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Eating from. He may be using a cell phone, which ends up being very bad. But I have had guess that did use cell phones and the reception was much much better. So well, we'll just hope. He says that there is a thunderstorm and snowstorm in New York right now where he's calling from, so I know that could rehavoc on the reception, no doubt. Anyway, you're listening to Michael Benson, journalist and author of about fifty books he's either authored or co authored, and we were talking about
burn Farm and this is Michael Benson. Were given into one more shot.
I followed my wife's cell phone, and I could hear you perfectly.
Oh there we go. Yes, that's much better.
Oh, Y's such a strong voice.
There we go.
Okay, where we.
Were talking about. My question I posed to you, was that, unlike the alien warners case that I had dealt with here on with Sue Russell on the program, that there was the defense really trying to say that this person because of her background, was not criminally responsible for her crimes, and that's why she murdered the men that she did. In this particular case, there is a lot of evidence, historical evidence to at least consider the not criminally responsible
and the insanity defense in this case. So I found that very interesting in this case. If there ever was a story that a woman could talk about having some effect later on in her life, this is one of those. Anyway, So I thought there was a fair amount of validity.
Absolutely, I agree with you one hundred percent. I think that it's the same thing. It happened in California, or maybe even in New York State, it might have been different. But in New Hampshire, if you admit you did it, and you have to admit you did it to complete insanity, they don't want to see you do anything else other than go to prison.
Now, in those tapes that you didn't talk too much, but this audience, it's because it's true murder and the most shocking killers in true crime history. You could talk about some of the details of those tapes, what the content of those tapes were. I'm sure that didn't help with the jury having any sympathy for Sheila Lebar when it came to the trial itself, tell us a little bit more about the details. What she got these people to say, what she got these men to say on those tapes.
Well, you know, it's hard for me to talk about. She is the most sadistic person I've ever encountered in I can't think of I can't think of a meaner person. She was mean every opportunity she had to be mean. You know, I've written the future of crime books and She'll was by far the easiest murderer for me to write about in a certain sense, because she was an
open book. I mean, she did record things. She had videotapes of Michael Delowe's saying that, you know, mom, how could you make me have sex with you when I was a kid. And those poor mothers had to sit in the courtroom and listen to these tapes. You know, a couple of times they would burst into tears and run out it, which just do is a horrible thing.
I mean, I've dealt with murderers who refused to confess they were stubborn and you had to guess what was going on through their heads, and that's a little bit tougher to write about, but certainly not a problem with Sheila. She spoke most of her thoughts out loud and felt the need to record them. The tapes were of her
torturing her victims. She was beating them until they admitted that they were pedophiles, until they admitted that they had had incestuous relationships with their mothers, and then aha, then she felt like she was morally justified in killing them. And that's the reason she's making the recording. The recording is her defense. See, he admits he's a pedophile. I
had every right to kill him. Yeah, she let the world hear, you know, and every single moment of it's kind of drenched in her inflamed yet demonized sex drive.
The roughed up what was her demeanor at the trial that there was There was some incidents at the trial as well that was quite unnervous.
Yeah, she did put up a little fuss at one point she had to be hustled out. My favorite shield. A day at the trial, though, was the day they had her ex boyfriend Jimmy Brackett and Wayne Ennis and the other men who had been workers on her farm and either been her lovers or just abused guys who worked around the place, and for that day she had her hair done up a little bit braided. Usually she
had which hair that hung straight down. She was a little bit flirtatious that day, you know, putting on her chapstick very slowly and making a big show of it. But yeah, she she would if somebody said something she didn't like on the on the witness stand, she would talk back.
Well. And you say, both families of the Deluge and and H Kenneth County's family both attended to those the full trials.
They sat together, they held hands for part of it, the two moms for moral support. Yeah. At one point, Michael Delosie's mom had to take the stand and she was asked, you know, did you have do you have sex with Mike when he was a kid? You know, she shakes her head. No, one bursts into tears, you know, at all. The transcript has her not giving a response, but you know, she clearly says no. And then later on she told reporters it was the hardest thing she had ever she ever had to do in her life,
was to get up there and you know face that woman. Yeah, now I don't know that Carolyn Lodge, who's Kenneth County's mom. She sued the police who had come out to Shiela's farm to give the UH to check to see there was a well being check on Kenny.
All right now.
She she sued the Epping Police Department a charging breach of duty causing Kenny harm they contributed to his death. She believed that she had done everything to protect her son, but the cops had not, and she made some strong points. The police knew all about Sheila. They knew she abused men. You know, Jimmy Brackett lost his teeth, Michael Deluge was
seen bleeding walking down the road. I think police had a rule that no copper, They're going to be alone with her, so, you know, Sheila being Sheila was a saying that they had multiple opportunities to save Kenny, both when they went out to the farm the first time and during the second Walmart incident. And I think that the best way to illustrate Carolyn Lodge's point is imagine
if the genders had been reversed. Imagine if Sila Lebar was a forty five year old man who had a twenty one year old woman in a wheelchair all beaten up walking around Walmart acting crazy. I think the cops would have had those two separated immediately because she was a woman and the victim is a man who doesn't even go he had all of his self will beaten on of him, is afraid to say she's hurting me
because we'll just hit them again, and nothing happened. So, you know, she just didn't know how those cops could sleep at night, how they could look at themselves in the mirror. The civil suit lingered in the courts for a while and it was eventually thrown out. The cops, the courts said, didn't have probable cause to put Kenny in protective customer, and that.
Was there.
Right now. This is not a capital case. You don't have the death penalty in New Hampshire. So the eventual the eventual sentence was.
What, well, it's life in prison.
So two it's so two consecutive sentences for life imprisonment for the two murders that she did.
Oh yeah, it's at least two right. There's because when they went through the burn pile, they found bones from Michael Deloge, bones from Kenneth County, and a towbone belonged to a third person who was neither of them. And we have no idea who it is somebody nobody who she picked up, took there and killed and never, you know, never was a blip on anybody's radar.
Now was there a if I'm not correct? Was there other evidence of other burn pits as well? Is there other possibilities that other men were burnt in different pits at different times? Uh? And and those bones could have been disposed of and not found in the extensive search that was under that did was undergone on the property as it was that that.
Is absolutely a possibility, although there's no way to tell for sure if if there were more victims, she managed to get rid of the evidence somehow. But yeah, there were there were There were burned spots all over the property. But it's not uncommon. It's just that's the way it is in rural New Hampshire. You take the garbage out in the backfield and you burn it in the in the burnal right?
Was she questioned about other potential murders and what was her response to that line of questioning?
I don't believe she wasn't. In order to do that, they would have to be a missing person. And there was never anyone connected to her that they couldn't find. I see, you know, I mean if there was you know, Johnny, for example, and Johnny was there for six months and then supposedly moved on, but nobody could find Johnny, then they could question her about him. But whoever, whoever that third victim was, or if there were others, they never they were never noticed by anyone.
Now what did Jimmy Brackett and Wayne Innes bring to the testimony? What did they say that was very valuable in the conviction of Sheila lebar.
Well they and this is true of all the prosecution. What witnesses they testified as to her? How functional she was? You know, how could she be criminally saying if she could run a farm by herself? Uh, you know, I think the point was she was just a mean, nasty woman, not crazy at all. And and it's true she had never sought help for a for a mental problem. Nobody had ever tried to commit her. Nobody had ever as
much as suggested that she see a psychiatrist. She was an eccentric woman who lived at the end of a dirt road, and nobody even thought about those things. But dude, Wayne and Jimmy as Sheila flirted with them a little bit from the from the defense table, were very very strong and saying that she's just a mean woman. And I'm pretty glad that I got out of there. And one of them, I forget which one has a vanity license played on his car that says I'm alive.
I'm alive.
Barely.
Yeah. What we haven't talked about is is Sheila to do all of this had to have a fair amount of charisma. She was a dominant, sexually dominant and had that power of these women. These men, now I thought interesting was what did you know the considerable age difference between Sheila and doctor lebar Bill lebar So. But also at the same time, she was as from the photos itself,
she was a good looking woman. I mean in the end when when she went to trial, when she's forty seven forty eight years old, she had gained considerable weight, and you know, maybe makeovers aren't quite so available in jail once you're behind bars, but as a young woman, maybe you can describe what she did look like, and well she eached their own I.
Mean right up until the day she was arrested. She still had no trouble picking up men standing on the side of ther with her thumb out, and guys were stopping and taking her to the motel. So she certainly had Yeah, that's jennas Quah. But she was. She was a loud and voluptuous woman. She had a lot of these and those going for her. And you're right, I mean she did. She put get heavy at the end
of her life. But you know, in the farmhouse she had a picture of herself naked on the wall, quite proud of herself, how she appeared in the all together, she found a great power in her body.
Now, in this trial itself or after this trial? What what was uh Sheila le bar any statements to the media after this the conclusions? What was her what's what was her state after the trial? That it was there a sort of a recession of her odd behavior or was it a continuum of that same theme that she was an avenger? And what was really her cognizant of her realization of what had happened during that trial, and was there a demeanor any different from the beginning to the end.
She went into a kind of denial, and I think a kind of denial maybe the states she was always in but from what I heard, she made the transition almost overnight into the mother hen of the female prison. And she seemed very happy in that role because she was the older, wiser one, and a lot of the other women in the prison were younger and appropriate age to be her daughters, and she would teach them life lessons and things like this, and seems to you know,
redefine herself in that way. And maybe in a world where there aren't that many men, she found a little bit of peace.
Right.
How was she How did she react to the same or infamy from having your book published and another book published, and the story being quite sensational and high profile. What was her reaction to that kind of attention?
No, I can't. I can't give you an answer that I don't know, But I would be shocked if she wasn't outwardly annoyed and inwardly pleased I see, because I think that she would be very very mouthy about all the mistakes I made about her. But at the same time, she liked attention, and she certainly got her share of it there for a while.
What was her reaction when she finally was sentenced to the life sentences itself. What was her demeanor? What did she do or not do well?
You know she.
I think that she showed more. She showed more emotion on the first day the trial when the jury was taken out to look at the farm and the farmhouse and where everything happened, and she knew she was probably getting her last look at the house in the land than she was when the jury, you know, sent her away to prison. She wasn't, you know, her choice was a mental hospital or a prison. She wasn't going to
go free anyway. I think we'll defendants who think they're about to be let free and find out that they're going to spend the rest of their life in prison. They break down. But it's not going to be the mental hospital. It's going to be the lady's prison. I think she alls said, Okay, we'll make it work.
Why did the jury travel to the farm and then the walmart? What was the the judge's idea in having them travel to those two destinations.
I think that in the long run, it saved a lot of time and taxpayer money because they had a three dimensional idea of where everything was in the state with one another, and it cut down on the number of exhibits that need to be introduced and that sort of thing. Witnesses testifying as to how the house was laid out and things.
Like that, and how what was the demeanor of we just spoke about it, but what was how was what was she Little Bar's reaction to going on this one one more visit?
Very wistful. She she could have been her face first day out of drama school. She was putting out her emotions were on her sleeve for the jury to see, and she was she was very sad, looking out over with a little piece of paradise that she once reigned over. At the same time, she's wearing a belt around her waist and she makes one false move, somebody hits a button and she, you know, gets zapped into oblivion and falls.
To the ground right now. What I thought interesting too, is that there was actually a few people that really really wanted to be on the on the jury, and it was people that were very interested in that. I found that quite odd that, you know, a lot of people want to avoid a jury like the plague, but there was actually, if I'm not correct, there was people that actually were very interested in being on that jury.
Yeah, yeah, well it's it was the thing that was happening. You know, I suspect and you know who knows. I'm not I'm not from New Hampshire obviously, but I think there it was the thing that was going on. There was a there was a certain maybe even some esteem that came with being on the jury that put her away.
I know.
Then, out of all the books I've written, this was the one that was most colored by localism. Localism, by my understanding, is is people in small towns that are away from civilization tend to distrust outsiders more than maybe some others of us. It's got sort of a mini form of xenophobia right in this house. Then, you know,
this really takes place in the boondocks. And they say that people who live too far from the beaten path are often served by that seclusion occasionally because they have nasty habits they need to hide, and they're starting like true in Shielda's case, now, even though the dirt road that traveled past her house was technically a public road, she would Greek drivers or hikers with a shotgun. You know, what are you coming down here for?
Right?
And uh, you know, and that might have been extreme, but it wasn't a typical of people in that area. When after Sheil was arrested, Kenneth County's mom wanted to go down to see the house where he died. She gets stopped by a neighbor lady, you know, you know, bonning me. Roth comes out and says, what are you doing? Are you going down my road? And of course they later on became best friends once once Carolyn explained.
Who she was. But it's.
It's a suspicious kind of area, one that I've learned the hard way.
You know.
I ended up going to UH to New Hampshire less often than I had planned because at a little incident at Shield's house with the local police.
Well what happened? Tell us about that?
Well, uh, I went to UH. Well, first of all, I had difficulty. I was going to inform the local police that I was on my way to photograph the house and take a look at it. But I had the wrong address for the Epic Police department. So this is my fault that I go to the old Epic Police department which is locked up. I said, well, I'll just go down there. It'll take five minutes, I'll be in, i'll be out and take my pictures. Nobody will care, so.
They cared.
So yeah, so that a neighbor calls because there's a car going down the road. And what I didn't know was that the night before I got there, someone had stolen doctor Lebar's horse carriage out of his barn. And they said, well that's it. Next person who goes down there, we're going to arrest. So I go down there. I'm poking around taking pictures and cop car pulls up and cop gets out and says.
Come here.
I go over. I read the name and says it's you know, read his name and I said, I know you. You're in my book. You're one of the heroes of my book. And he says, well, your opinion of me is about to change because you're under a And they put the handcuffs down behind the back buscreen into the back of the car, and a mosquito landed right on my nose. But I couldn't get rid of it because that was handcuffed. So I had the blues. I said, look, you know, I'm not a teenager drinking down here by
the Haunted House. They had problems down there with vandalism, you know, and they're having seances, but they were looking for somebody who was stealing carriages, and that was the first guy to come along after that. Uh, charges against me were eventually dropped and I got to keep the photos I took there. In the book, there's the pictures of the even the little out buildings behind the big house where Sheila used to put her heard lovers when they were bad, like little prison cells.
So a little more intimate, intimate, intimate interaction in the story.
Well, but being a pro, even even while I was handcuffed to a bench and being fingerprinted and booked, I managed to get into an interview, so I got some quote. I get some quotes out of the place because it was the same two cops that had been to Shield's house. So these are the two guys that go down that road.
Oh that's incredible.
Yeah yeah, but that's the only time anything like that, even remotely like that, has happened to me. Most most police officers realize I write law and order book. Bad guy always gets his in the end, and the cops are always the good guys.
Who did you go to when normally people are these days are co authoring with police so they can have the incredible behind the scenes access. Who was most cooperative in when you were dealing with people to be able to write this book.
Well, you know what I did because of the extreme localism. I found surrogates, and I found two ladies, one of whom was a former journalist, had been nominated once for a Pulitzer Prize, and I had them do my legwork. They were my eyes and ears for the last part
of the research. And if The Burn Farm is a good book, and I think it is, you know, certainly, yes, Suzanne Danforth deserves a lot of the credit because she could go places I wasn't going to be allowed to go because that was Suzanne and she lived down the street right right.
Yeah. I found that interesting. It's your kind of your CAPODI moment there where you needed or at least had a great advantage by having somebody that could deal with the locals, because again that case was so that's.
An advantage of having my agent being a local.
You know.
I said, look, I'm not gonna be able to go back there. They're going to throw me in jail if I go back. He said, well, here's here's a couple of people to call and I'll be able to help.
You right now in terms of you said you've for our audience that may not know you have authored or co authored fifty books in your career, in your writing career.
Is that true crime is just my most recent career. I was a sports writer for a while. For a while, I was one of the expert in JFK's assassination. I was a baseball historian for a time. This is just my This is the wayst hat I'm wearing is true, and it comes from incident when I was nine. I've been obsessed with psycho killers since I was a kid because my next door neighbor, a fourteen year old girl,
was killed when I was nine years old. Wow and kay yeah k. She disappeared from a swimming hole on one side of my house and was found by rowa tracks on the other side of my house. So I grew up sort of knowing that the boogeyman had crossed my backfield. And I grew the other kid too. No, no, but I think I made some well in a sense. I think they did, because he later became a serial killer that was put away for other crimes I did.
I did some work on it and tried to sell a book about the idea, but they don't like doing open cases. But anyway, with the first, uh, first fallible true crime case came along, which was Betrayal and Blood, I didn't have to reintroduce myself. In fact, I got a call from one of the editors and said, I think I got a case. It's perfect for you.
So how many two crime books have you written so far?
Michael, I think it's eight, uh and less less all. I covered the Pettit trial in new Haven, Connecticut for the New York Post. It's a case where the doctor lost his family to the home invasion. Yeah.
That's a very high profile case too. Yeah, yeah, so eight and uh. Your latest is with Kensington as well.
My latest is with Kensington. It's called Mommy Deadliest and that's the story about Stacey Castor in uh suburbs outside Syracuse, New York, who murdered two husbands and when the cops started to get close to her, she poisoned her daughter and put a suicide note on the bed saying I killed daddy, So she tried to kill her daughter to save her own skin. The daughter, you know, God bless her, did not die. Said I didn't write the suicide note,
and that's how Stacey Caster got hers. Wow, they we're talking about that another time.
Yeah.
The only, the only PAM I ever got for The Burned Farm was one woman who said, it's the most horrible, disgusting book I've ever read because it's so dirty. It's dirty from cover to cover. And I suspected they probably sold more copies than some of the raiders.
Yeah, yeah, I laugh at that, But that's yeah, what's that would feel to a bunch of people.
It's It's true, it is silty from cover to cover, but I don't think it's erotic. I mean, it has a certain sternem appeal for some people, I suppose, but sado maschism depends on the premise that bullies are sexy, and that just doesn't fit at all with my way of thinking. But it does. Yeah, you're dirty laundry in it.
Well, certainly. I mean the torture is never I mean, there's no nice torture. There's no way of describing torture to uh, you know, to to not hurt some people's sensibilities, I guess, or offend some people certain sensibilities. But those are the people that might not pick up this through crime book, you know, and maybe go to a story that's a little bit lighter and it's in it's Uh.
Did you read the other book about Shila Labar? No?
I didn't know.
Oh, yeah, we neither. I understand there's a lot more a lot more in it about Sheila's I'll Bring You in Alabama, but a lot less about the details of what made her tick. Yeah, I left all the words in.
Well, I don't know. Once you've read this book, I don't there's not much desire, I think to go read another book about this. It seems to be the definitive story about that.
You know.
I hate to say that about another author, But at the same time, I think that this was a great read, and you really really get the reader involved in the horror of the whole thing. I mean, it's incredible the we've saved a lot for the audience. We certainly didn't go into your details. But I think people have an imagination about what this woman was capable of, and I think you certainly expressed that in the of You. So I think people will be anxious to go get this book and read for themselves.
It's uh, I help near you Amazon dot Com all of that.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I think it's available electronically too. Now I'm not sure it might be available for Kindle now, well, I hope so.
I hope so because I just read some stats on ebooks taking over hardcover books and mass paperback in the last years. So I went to it's moving faster than I thought.
So, you know, I I remember talking to my agent about five years ago saying, what does this mean electronic versions? He says, you'll know someday, you'll know some at least I get my royalties no matter what. For manager.
Yeah, that's absolutely. I think it's all good for the writer because I think that the the the paperback and the hardcover. Maybe the hardcover will disappear to a great degree except for collectors, but the book, the actual physical book, I don't think will disappear. I think the e book will bring in the young reader who is you know, comfortable with that with the e reader, and a lot of people that are going to get on and you know, get the technology because it is a trend. I don't
think it can hurt the book. The book has been around a long time, and I think that because of great writing and great stories. I think it's just going to expand, and I think these formats may alter the way books are sold, but I still think that the book itself is in great shape still so.
And I love books.
Yeah, me too.
I really wish I had switched phones earlier in the interview.
Yeah, well, we'll have to have you back on, Michael, because you're a great guest, and obviously you've got a truckload of books that we could talk about. Sometimes I veer off a little bit of the talk about serial killers and talk about other true crime stories are very, very fascinating stories. So I was very interested in some of the books that you've written, your background about JFK
and the CIA and on all that is. So we'll have to have you back on for a show that's a little slightly different but still will interest an audience for sure. I'm certain.
Thanks Dan, I appreciate that. Well.
I want to thank you very much Michael for coming on and talking about your great book, Burn Farm, the story of Shila Lebar, And thank you very much for appearing on the program, and thank you for a great interview, Michael Benson.
Thank you.
Have a good night, Michael, good night, my bye. You've been listening to the program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history, and the authors that are written about them. Good Night,