Customer Reviews

Wicked Intentions: The Sheila LaBarre Murders - A True Story

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Beyond the puzzle of atoms lies the puzzle of the soul ... Dust may be witness to crime, but energy is witness to rage ... and that energy haunts a room ... And that energy is sometimes called evil, and it screams in the quiet of that room until someone can exorcise it."

These are author Kevin Flynn's words describing the ghost-like energy left behind in a room where a crime has been committed. Wicked Intentions: The Sheila LaBarre Murders - A True Story is written by a reporter who followed the ghoulish case of Sheila LaBarre in conjunction with the Epping police in a New Hampshire town. Flynn presents his facts and personal observations in such a fascinating order and with such macabre detail that from the earliest pages, a horror/mystery reader gets sucked inside Wicked Intentions.

Police in Epping had grown accustomed to the outlandish ranting and raging of Sheila LaBarre via phone, via fax, by letter, and in person. The sheer volume of LaBarre's complaints about mistreatment in stores, complaints about infringement by neighbors on her 115 acre farm, and complaints that Epping authorities did not address her concerns, in a real sense, caused police to consider Sheila LaBarre as an eccentric kook whom they'd rather not deal with.

"They seemed like tall tales, the kind of stories that rise from the crags of mist at dawn on cold pastureland."

Reporter Flynn learns that Sheila had lived with Dr. LaBarre on his horse farm for several years. Although they'd never married, she assumed the wealthy doctor's name. She loved his horses and was terribly fond of rabbits. She often referred to them as "my babies."

Sheila and the doctor had a tumultuous life together. Gradually, she came to control his life and his chiropractic practice. On nights when she ousted the doctor for reasons unknown, he slept in a small trailer parked nearby in a shed-like area. Incredibly, Dr. LaBarre altered his will so Sheila would inherit his home, his property, and his prized horses.

From an older neighbor, Flynn hears of Michael. "Mikey" was a developmentally disabled young suitor the neighbor had seen, stumbling down the dirt road leading from the LaBarre farm. A severe gash on his head dropped blood so badly that it left a noticeable trail in the snow. According to the neighbor, part of Mikey's ear was ripped. Limping past the stunned neighbor, the bleeding man whispered, "Sheila."

"She was warm as pie to strangers but would turn on you quickly. She was like a fist full of bees."

Flynn explains how Mikey served as a virile young boy-toy for the insatiable sexual appetite of Sheila LaBarre. But in a life/death struggle between the couple, LaBarre had stabbed him in the head with a pair of scissors. Neighbors indicated that although the young man had returned to the farm after Sheila's mood swing reversed, he grew very thin and sickly looking. His skin took on a strange unearthly looking shade. Within a short time, Mikey seemed to "walk off the edge of the earth."

Another muscular young suitor fell under the sensual spell of Sheila LaBarre. Like Mikey, Kenny was semi-retarded but thought he knew enough to manage his own affairs. Meeting Labarre through a telephone chat-line, he, too, moved to the LaBarre farm where another turbulent love affair erupted.

Slowly weakened by nicotine ingested in his food and by physical beatings where he would refuse to hit a woman, Kenny quickly grew extremely weak. Unequipped mentally to deal with LaBarre's chaotic web of deceit, the once muscular and healthy youth allowed himself to be overpowered by whatever Labarre told him.

Wicked Intentions reveals that because of her own horrifying childhood, Sheila LaBarre had a particular hatred for child molesters. She forced innocent Kenny to admit on tape that he was a pedophile. Within a short time, neighbors noticed that Kenny seemed to evaporate.

It was inquiries by Kenny's mother that eventually brought down controlling Sheila Labarre. Concerned about her semi-retarded son's welfare, she asked Epping police to investigate. Arriving at the Labarre home, police found a burning pile of debris atop which sat a barrel. Sticking out from the burn pile was a human bone with barbecued flesh attached. Like Mikey before him, Kenny had been disposed of.

What atrocities befell these two men -- possibly others -- and how they were carried out by sensual Sheila LaBarre, are just a few of the many horrors described in Wicked Intentions. The book tells of the gruesome evidence uncovered inside LaBarre's home. In detail, it explains the proceedings at her trial, and the jury's final verdict.

As a reporter, Kevin Flynn has done an excellent job assembling researched data to keep any reader turning page after page, even knowing the trial's eventual outcome. This gruesome book includes photographs of Sheila Labarre, her victims, her home and the rock strewn road leading to it, along with pictures within the courtroom itself.

Many times in Wicked Intentions, Kevin Flynn displays a clever flair for descriptive words and sentences. When he describes the entrance door to LaBarre's home: "Spider webs caulked the outline of the porch lamp fixture, its bulb bare." It is easy to imagine those tiny white silken webs most people have seen in the narrow cracks of their own homes.

I would recommend Wicked Intentions to any mature reader looking for a suspenseful tale of shocking proportions. Normally when media headlines erupt with news of a serial killer, rarely is a woman suspected. But this book may change your thinking. You may ponder that any perversion is possible depending on the state of the human mind. Like the jury in Sheila Labarre's trial, you will find yourself trying to decide if she was truly insane or an immoral woman guilty of unspeakable crime.

Review written by Regis Schilken
Author of:
You Know When
Demons of Justice
Tears of Deceit
The Island off Stony Point

So we all know there are some stories of true crimes that exceed even those written by the best literary minds out there. Wicked Intentions: The Sheila LaBarre Murders tops the list with it's jaw dropping tale of twisted, evil truths. Each chapter of Sheila's incredulous childhood, young adulthood, and murders are woven together in a way that keeps you glued to the pages. This book has come with me everywhere since I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy! This is a MUST read for any true crime lovers out there, and honestly, even for those who aren't!

I began reading the book "Wicked Intentions" on Saturday afternoon and only put it down for food and bathroom breaks! Kevin Flynn sets the stage for his novel in a dispassionate, factual matter in the beginning but as the book moves on you begin to see how Sheila LaBarre emotionally impacted so many people including Kevin. When you are done reading this book it forces you to analyze how we deal with people as a whole and how we in the human race are generally a trusting bunch. This book will cause you to ponder, fascinate,analyze and recoil in horror all at the same time. It is an excellent crime novel that leaves you wondering how somebody so evil could exist. I highly recommend this book!

After more than 35 years as a criminal defense lawyer, I've been exposed to more than a few truly evil people.
Thankfully, I never encountered Sheila LaBarre.
Kevin Flynn's book is an exhaustively researched book about a truly evil murderess.
I couldn't put it down.

Flynn has a perfect writing style for the true crime genre, presenting the facts accurately and the persons involved in a way that makes you feel as if you've known them all your life.

"Wicked Intentions" is one of the finest true crime books ever published, but be warned, it will keep you disturbed long past the time you've reluctantly read the last page.

Sheila's victims include at least one sweet, innocent young man with special needs who wanted so badly to be just like everyone else--touchingly proud of having been able to enlist in the U.S. Army, even though he couldn't make it through boot camp. And then he struck out on his own, trying to live independently and have a girlfriend--only to end up helpless in the clutches of a sadistic murderer. Just reading the pathetic words in his last coerced (by Sheila) "confession" will break your heart.

So you should have no problems wishing the worst that the earth and all hell could have in store for Sheila, right? Well...actually, I wanted to; I really did. But Flynn's uncompromising journalistic honesty gives a troubling mixed bag of information about Sheila's tragic formative years and all too evident long-term mental illness that makes you wonder what was really going on in her diseased brain and, more disturbingly, why more wasn't done to stop her before she turned homocidal.

I really had to wonder why not even one person amongst those who saw her last victim just hours before his death didn't call Adult Protective Services. So in its way, this book has some indictments of the tendency we all have to look the other way. You won't find that so easy to do after reading this story.

I finished reading my own copy of "Wicked Intentions" weeks ago and can't open the book to look at the heartbreaking last photo of Sheila's last victim now. In fact, I can't see a copy of the book on a bookstore shelf without getting a lump in my throat. I personally know a very sweet young man who could end up as a victim of someone like Sheila. And I have worked with mentally impaired persons and said countless times that they were no more responsible for their behavior than a blind person would be for knocking into furniture in a strange room.

It takes really fine writing to create such a level of discomfort.
Be brave and tackle reading this true crime/horror story. You'll never read a better one.

I was interested in this case and followed the TV reporting as I know the area so well. Mr. Flynn researched the details extensively and wrote a book that I couldn't ignore - gave up trying and read the whole thing in a day. Have passed it on to friends who had the same reaction. Read it! You won't be disappointed.

[Note: I'm truly not sure why I gave this book two stars. If I could, I would change it to only one, but Amazon doesn't seem to be allowing that.]

I honestly can't understand all the 5-star reviews for this book, especially statements like the following:

"a MUST read for any true crime lovers"
"an ideal read for true crime and horror readers alike"
"captivating, and very very well written"
"does a great job with the gripping and wildly intense tale"

Seriously? Did these people REALLY read the same book I've been struggling to plow through? Because--as a long time true crime reader--I'm not finding it to be anywhere near a "MUST read" or an "ideal" read. The story this book is based on does seem to be "gripping and wildly intense" but the book falls far short of truly capturing those qualities, in my opinion.

Another statement I disagree with strongly is this: "Any fan of Ann Rule's true crime writings will find this book as compelling as hers."

No. Just NO. I'm a BIG Ann Rule fan--it was her books that drew me into true crime in the first place--and this is nowhere near as compelling as any of Rule's work.

One major problem is continuity. The book jumps around, both time-wise and among various sets of characters, to a bewildering extent. Using flashbacks is a fine device, as is cutting back and forth between accounts of events that are happening concurrently. When executed skillfully and judiciously, these techniques can give a work a cinematic quality and even heighten the excitement. Overuse, however, can be confusing and disorienting. That is exactly what happens with Wicked Intentions.

The book jumps around so much that there's no real narrative flow, and the sequence of events (always of critical importance in an account of a criminal investigation) gets completely lost in the unremitting shuffle. The lack of an index or even a list of "dramatis personae" would have made it a lot easier to keep things straight, but neither of those things has been provided.

But the most annoying aspect of this book, by far, is the lack of detail regarding the mechanics of the investigation itself, particularly forensics. For example, a little more than halfway through the book, in an account of a preliminary hearing, there is an account of the sole witness, NH State Police Sergeant Robert Estabrook, testifying about the contents of a 15-page affidavit "filled with stunning details from the murder probe." But rather than explicitly telling us, the readers, WHAT these "stunning details" are, the writer gives us only a brief summary of some facts we already know, and we are left to speculate about whether Estabrook's testimony included additional "stunning details" about which we have not been informed.

In the same section, we're told that much of the press covering the hearing were "already in the know about the mechanism" of the victim's death. Oh, really? Well, how about letting the READERS in on this little secret? It's true that we've been told how the remains were discovered and how they had been disposed of after the victim's death, and the "manner" of death (homicide) has been implicit from page 1. But the actual "mechanism" of death has not been revealed prior to this point (p. 174). The last mention of this little detail was on p. 148, where we were told that the authorities were not, at that point in time, ready to comment on that. And now, after waiting all this time on the edge of my seat to learn this key bit of information, the author has the gall to tell me that the press is "in the know" about it, while STILL refusing to let me in on it? Give me a break!

We also haven't been told, at least not up to this point, exactly what kinds of forensic testing was done on the materials found at the site or what those tests revealed. We haven't even been told how they were conclusively identified! An account of a murder case in which the victim's remains were in the state these remains were found to be in should NOT stint on forensic details of this type, but that is exactly what the author has done, at least not up to this point. This seems very odd to me. We were told earlier that there was a delay in issuing an arrest warrant because of the need to identify the remains, among other things. Fair enough. But the arrest implies those things have been accomplished--so why doesn't the author give us any information about this? This is a glaring omission, in my opinion. If it's done later on, I'll be glad to hear, but I will not be around to find out myself. I'm too frustrated to continue.

P.S. For anyone like me, who would like to know more facts about the case, [...]

Kevin Flynn escorts readers into the real world of a sadistic, murderous psychopathology, the nature of which can reliably be branded as evil. Sheila LaBarre's life was both tormented and tormenting, and "Wicked Intentions" captures the depth of these dynamics in great detail and with masterful storytelling. Any fan of Ann Rule's true crime writings will find this book as compelling as hers. The tale evokes intensity of emotion in multiple directions - horror, rage, profound grief, agony, vengeance, and disgust. None of it is gratuitous. The poisonous energy from this saga was so intense that the writer was himself singed by it. A debt of gratitude is due to Flynn for revealing the nature of a diabolical personality, and to the law enforcement personnel that has now effectively sheltered us all from LaBarre's presence in the free world.

The story of Sheila LaBarre is probably one of the more bizarre and unsettling accounts of a woman who was extremely disturbed, sadistically cruel, and somewhat delusional in her patterns of thought and subsequent behavior. As a psychotherapist, I would most certainly diagnose LaBarre with a Personality Disorder. But which one? Even armed with a fairly detailed history of LaBarre, she defies simple diagnosis.

The story itself is certainly interesting and compelling on a number of levels, but the writing - although adequate - lacks polished professionalism and maturity. The author does use the literary technique of moving between past events and present legal proceedings; however, it is not always used successfully. For instance, after reading one section that appeared to be a detailed account of a brief, past event about which the author was able to gain some information, the section ends with:
"'I did not!' Sheila LaBarre shouted across the courtroom at the witness stand, where Cahill had been testifying."
Really? Up until that point, I had no idea I was reading about the trial or specific witness testimony. In short, there were times the continuity of the story was disrupted and the reader left somewhat confused.

I also took note of a great many typographical errors. Most of these consisted not so much of misspelled words, but the absence of short but necessary words in the affected senteces: to, an, he, she, etc. Without having specifically counted, I can state with reasonable certainty that there were in excess of 30 typos. This is unacceptable for a book of roughly 300 pages. How did so many obvious errors avoid detection by a competent editor? This is a question only the editor can answer. In fact, I invite the editor to answer this question.

I found the author's writing somewhat contradictory in style. There were times he used creative prose that evoked compelling images for the reader. At other times, he seemed to prefer the use of immature language and juvelile slang over the experienced words of an award-winning reporter and writer. Also, I would have greatly preferred the author's not "injecting" himself into the story and writing in such hyperbolic fashion about his limited and casual contact with offender and prisoner, Sheila LaBarre.

From a psychological perspective, the story of this extraordinarily disturbed woman is quite intriguing and more than a little sad. Approximately halfway through the book, I remember thinking that Sheila LaBarre behaved, at least on a sexual level, very much like individuals with a history of childhood sexual abuse. The sexual promiscuity, sexual recklessness, and the use of sexuality as a controlling and manipulative device is common among women sexually abused as children. Near the end of the trial, Sheila's sister confirmed that Sheila was sexually abused by her violent, alcoholic father, as well as the men he brought to the house to drink and share in his proclivity to molest little girls.

Dr. Wilfred LaBarre, to whom Sheila was never actually married, is another mystery. LaBarre, well into his sixties, sent Sheila a one-way ticket to New Hampshire after she responded to a personals ad LaBarre placed in a local newspaper. While it is unclear how many (or how few) women responded to this ad, Sheila did... enclosing a nude photograph she took of herself, standing in front of a mirror in pink bikini panties. Apparently, it never occurred to LaBarre that under normal, societal and social circumstances, a man of his age has little to offer a woman who is 29 years old. Unless, perhaps, she is a GOLD-DIGGER! As noted by the author, Sheila made no effort to hide her sexual liasions with other men and eventually married another man, bringing him back to the LaBarre farm to live with her and Dr. LaBarre. She also managed to convince Dr. LaBarre to change his will, effectively cutting his adult children out of any inheritance they might have received upon his passing. And still, he stayed. (Come on, Man... Wake Up!)

If you read strictly for content, you will probably find this story interesting and worth the time required to read it. However, if you read critically and are routinely disappointed when the quality of True Crime writing falls short of minimum standards, then this one is not for you. Be an informed reader and decide for yourself.

Murder can have such a pretty face. "Wicked Intentions: The Sheila LaBarre Murders" tells the true story of a truly twisted individual. Sheila LaBarre was a charming lady, who few thought poorly of. When a charred corpse was found on her farm, it led to the discovery that she was a murderous seductress. A real-life tale looking like it was ripped out of a horror movie, "Wicked Intentions" is an ideal read for true crime and horror readers alike for its chronicle of a truly sadistic woman.