Sheila LaBarre - God's Avenging Angel

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Discretion is advised. This is ten
minuted murder. Kenneth County met Sheila Labar

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in two thousand and six through a
personal lad posted in the newspaper. Now,

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if you're younger than a certain age, that one sentence can be pretty

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confusing. Before tender and bumble and
hinge, people met people through newspaper personal

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ads. Apparently their first date was
on Valentine's Day, which is pretty bold,

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and only a few days later,
Sheila asked Kenneth to move in with

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her, which he accepted. At
twenty four years old. Kenneth was more

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than twenty years younger than Sheila.
He was known to have a low eye

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que that made him behave in a
way that his family described as childlike.

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He didn't question why Sheila had asked
him to move in so quickly with her.

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Instead, he was excited to start
a new life with the older woman

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he was smitten with. Kenneth had
always been a trusting guy, someone who

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saw the best in everyone, and
that included Sheila. Sheila did not share

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Kenneth's optimism. She spent her childhood
being abused both physically and sexually by her

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father and his friends, and as
an adult she struggled to have normal relationships

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with others. She had been married
and divorced several times, and when her

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most recent wealthy partner suddenly died suspiciously, Sheila had inherited his farm in New

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Hampshire, the same farm where she'd
invited Kenneth to live with her. The

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last time Kenneth was ever seen alive, he was in a wheelchair being pushed

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through a nearby walmart by Sheila.
The store's employees, who had met the

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couple before, noticed that Kenneth was
very pale and appeared to be ill,

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and that he had a large amount
of bruises and cuts on his arms,

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hands, and face. Shortly afterward, Sheila phoned the local police station and

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played them a strange audio recording in
which Kenneth appeared to admit that he was

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a pedophile. The police weren't convinced
that this call was credible, but because

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they were familiar with Sheila and her
erratic behavior, it did make them concerned

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for Kenneth's safety. Later that week, police arrived at Sheila's home to do

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a welfare check on Kenneth, but
it was too late. Sheila Labar took

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advantage of my son. Kenneth's mother
said he was a kind, caring,

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gentle young man who could not socially
defend himself. She was a master of

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evil who deliberately tortured him. Sheila
Labar stripped my son of all of his

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dignity and self worth, and in
the end she murdered him. When the

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officers arrived at the farm, they
saw Sheila standing over a burn pile of

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garbage. The officers believed that they
saw a large bone and maybe a pair

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of shoes in the pile, making
them even more concerned for Kenneth, But

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when Sheila asked them to leave the
property, they apparently had no choice.

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Without her consent, they couldn't investigate
any further without a search warrant, even

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though they had a reason to believe
that she was currently in the process of

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disposing of human remains. They came
back later with a warrant, but by

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then Sheila had been able to destroy
most of that evidence, and the large

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bone and sneakers were nowhere to be
found. Investigators were faced with the task

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of searching Sheila's farm for evidence,
all one hundred fifteen acres of it.

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They found hundreds of rabbits, running
wild inside the house, which is weird

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but not a crime, I guess. But they also located Kenneth's bone fragments,

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blood spatter in multiple rooms, a
charred mattress covered in bloodstains, burnt

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hedge clippers and pruning shears, and
a knife that had been partially melted in

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the fire. But when they drained
the septic tank, they found a birth

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certificate belonging to a missing man,
Sheila's previous boyfriend, Michael Deloche, who

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had been last seen in two thousand
and five. She had attempted to get

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rid of this evidence by flushing it
down the toilet. Like Kenneth, Michael

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had lived at the farm with Sheila. The last person to see him before

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his disappearance was a farmhand who had
seen Michael being beaten by Sheila. Shortly

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afterwards, that same farmhand saw Sheila
setting fire to a mattress outside of the

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farmhouse, and he never saw Michael
again. Forensic analysis of dried blood in

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Sheila's bedroom was tested against a sample
of Michael's mother's blood, and it was

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a match. Sheila filed for an
insanity defense in resp bons to the murder

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charge against her, but she also
decided to waive indictment and plead not guilty

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to another crime, the two thousand
five murder of Michael Deloge. Possibly this

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was more of a risk than Sheila
realized at the time. If she was

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found to be sane, she faced
life behind bars. Because Sheila had now

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pled not guilty by reason of insanity
to both crimes, she had officially implicated

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herself and Michael's death as well as
Kenneth's, there would be no chance for

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her to argue that she had not
been the one to kill Michael. She

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could do was argued that it had
been because of her mental illness. That

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meant that at trial, the prosecution
didn't need to prove that she had killed

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both men, They only needed to
convince the jury that she had not been

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insane. Sheila's defense attorneys argued that
she had been severely mentally ill and that

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her mental illness had led her to
kill both men. Several recordings that Sheila

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had made were played for the jury, including recordings of her attempting to interrogate

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Michael and Kenneth about their supposed pedophilia. A forensic psychologist testifying for the defense

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stated that the recording showed that Sheila
suffered from delusions or a schizophrenic disorder,

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which had caused her strong belief that
Michael and Kenneth were pedophiles. The psychologists

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also shared that Sheila believed she had
been resurrected by God after she almost died.

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After overdosing on prescription medication and taking
her car out for a drive,

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Sheila passed out and crashed, spending
more than a week comatose in the hospital.

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During that coma, Sheila had a
vision. She believed that she had

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died, and when she woke up, she was sitting at the table surrounded

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by bearded men, one of whom
she believed was God. God told Sheila

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that he was going to send her
back to Earth as an avenging angel because

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she hadn't completed her life's purpose.
He ordered her to get revenge on the

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kind of men that had abused her
throughout her childhood by hunting down, torturing,

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and killing pedophiles. Throughout the investigation, police found no evidence that either

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Michael or Kenneth were attracted to children
or engaged in any pedophilic activities at all.

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Sheila's defense attorneys used this as a
part of their argument insisting that there

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was no way that Sheila could have
become convinced that both men were pedophiles if

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she were sane. The forensic psychologist
for the state testified about his assessment of

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Sheila. He told the court that
he had interviewed Sheila for several hours at

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a time on three separate occasions,
and that he had also done an in

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depth review of Sheila's case file more
than eight thousand pages. During this assessment,

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he'd found plenty of disturbing information about
Sheila. She suffered from fits of

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rage and had a long standing obsession
with pedophilia and pedophiles, and the forensic

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psychologists admitted that Sheila's obsession may have
led to isolated psychotic episodes, but he

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did not believe that there was sufficient
evidence that Sheila murdered her victims due to

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mental ill The forensic psychologist played the
court snippets from some of his interviews with

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Sheila, and one recording, Sheila
states that Kenneth's death had been an accident

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and that she had decided to burn
his body to prevent his mother from seeing

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it, not because she was trying
to hide evidence. In another recording,

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Sheila states that she was essentially forced
to murder Michael because he was terrorizing her

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by torturing and killing her pet rabbits, a completely different story from Sheila's previous

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insistence that she'd killed Michael because he
was a pedophile. Sheila answered questions well,

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she tried to explain away evidence that
made her look bad. The forensic

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psychologist said, that is not what
someone sees over many hours in a person

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who is psychotic. On the twentieth
of June two thousand and eight, the

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jury reached their verdict after thirteen hours
of deliberation. They found that, despite

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her claims, Sheila Labar had been
sane at the time she killed both Michael

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and Kenneth. In response, the
two victims families began to clap and cheer.

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Kenneth's mother, Carolyn said, this
is for my son. For two

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years, my son cannot rest.
Now he can rest. Many people involved

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in the case believe that Michael and
Kenneth weren't Sheila's only victims. Although Sheila

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has denied any role in the mysterious
death of her previous partner, Bill,

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his death conveniently resulted in Sheila taking
ownership of his farm, and during the

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search of Sheila's property, investigators discovered
another piece of evidence, the skeletal remains

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of three human toes. Forensic testing
revealed that the toes did not belong to

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either of Sheila's confirmed victims, but
the DNA of the toes didn't match any

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profiles that the police had on file. Either someone conveniently died on the farm,

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only leaving three toes behind, or
all of Sheila's crimes have yet to

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be discovered. That is Ten Minute
Murder for today Brief and been Jible True

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Crime. I'm Joe the host,
and thank you for listening today. If

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you're new to Ten Minute Murder,
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your day to check it out.
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When you open the app, it's
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have to go searching for it every
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media see the pictures of what we're
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never gross and graphic stuff though,
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this episode, please leave a rating
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any place that's possible. I really
do appreciate your positive feedback and our

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email. Question today, Joe,
in your opinion, why do you think

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there were so many more known serial
killers in the seventies, eighties, and

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even nineties than there are now?
Macy and Lewisburg And I tell you,

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Macy, I think it's because of
technology and investigation techniques that are used by

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law enforcement. There's so much better
than they were in the past. Killers

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during those years, during those eras
were able to go on longer and find

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more victims before police were able to
figure out who they were and where they

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were. Now, I think that
after one or two murders, technologies become

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so advanced that they get caught themselves. They do stupid things they make them

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get caught. There are obviously exceptions
to that, because you still hear about

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it from time to time, and
many of those cases that you hear about

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are the serial killers that are targeting
sex workers or addicts on the street.

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Those don't seem to get investigated with
the same vigor as a missing white suburban

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housewife. But for the record,
I'm no expert in the area of police

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investigation technology or techniques from then to
now, so this is just me hazarding

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and educated guests based on the hundreds
and hundreds of cases that I've read.

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Okay, that'll do it for this
episode. Thank you so much for listening

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to ten minute Murder