Episode 10: Dear Sheila Air date: September 26, 2014

Episode 10: Dear Sheila

Air date: September 26, 2014

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Rebecca Lavoie: I mean, the thing I think it's important to say about Kevin is that he is a really,

deeply nice guy. He's not the kind of person you would meet and think like, "Oh, he's like a dark,

lost soul." I mean, he's kind of jolly. He does impressions. He's deeply funny. He's very snarky

and just really, really sweet. And so I kind of didn't realize that he had been pulled this far in and

that things were getting kind of bad for him, really for a little while. I just knew that he was

corresponding with a serial killer and, yeah, that was weird, but he's also really nice, so I really

didn't think about it that way for a while.

Phoebe Judge: This is Rebecca Lavoie, and she's talking about a reporter named Kevin Flynn.

Rebecca is now married to Kevin, but when she first met him in 2007, he was working at a TV

station. He was married to someone else and had a kid. He was 37 years old. And like Rebecca

said, he was exchanging letters with a serial killer. Flirtatious letters.

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

Kevin Flynn: We were ... I should say I was waiting in the lobby of the police station, waiting for

someone to give me a comment before the six o'clock news about what was going on.

Phoebe Judge: This is Kevin Flynn.

Kevin Flynn: And the wall was sort of paper thin, and I heard two guys walk by, and I

recognized the voice of one of them as being with the State Police. And he said, "I have seen

more shit in my life that you would not believe." And then he said, "Do you think she chopped up

the body before she burned it, or burned it and then dismembered it?" And that's when I heard

them say, "What is Sheila's date of birth?" And I knew, okay, they're looking for somebody

named Sheila.

Phoebe Judge: That Sheila was Sheila LaBarre, a woman who lived on a horse farm in the

outskirts of a town named Epping in southeast New Hampshire. Kevin was reporting not far

from Epping, where police had found the burned body. It was 2006. LaBarre had come to New

Hampshire from Alabama some 30 years earlier, responding to a personal ad from a widowed

doctor.

Kevin Flynn: She responded to the lonely hearts ad by sending topless photos of herself. And

so she's like in her late 20s, he's in his, I'm thinking like his late 60s. And she comes to town,

and she moves in on the farm, is super affectionate and sexual with him, but also would go

around town dressed very provocatively. And they had a nickname for her around town, which

was Sheila the Peeler, because she would definitely like to flash her cleavage. And she was

known for answering the door for delivery men wearing lingerie or being naked.

Phoebe Judge: [Laughing.] When like the FedEx guy would come, she would answer

completely naked?

Kevin Flynn: Yeah. The plumber. Yeah, anybody. The local police actually had a policy that if

one of them had to respond to any incident with Sheila, a second officer had to go along. This is

for a police force of, I think they had like five or six guys. They literally had to have backup

dealing with Sheila. Not because she was violent, but because there was the risk that she would

do something sexually provocative and then sort of put the patrolman in a compromising

position where he has to, say, defend himself from an accusation — he came onto her or

something.

Phoebe Judge: So they needed a witness.

Kevin Flynn: Yeah, absolutely. They needed a witness to sort of verify that Sheila was the

instigator of any sort of bad behavior.

[Music.]

The guy's name was Kenneth Countie. He was about 21 years old. He was developmentally

delayed. Sheila went on a blind date with Kenny, and Kenny ended up never sort of going back

home to his house and his family. He basically immediately moved into Sheila's farm.

Phoebe Judge: The last time anyone had seen Kenny, he and LaBarre were in a Walmart.

Kenny had bruises all over his face, and LaBarre was pushing him in a wheelchair. Two police

officers showed up and asked Kenny if he was okay. She wouldn't let him answer, wheeled him

out of the store, and that's basically the last time anyone saw him. Kenny's mother was growing

more concerned about her son and called the cops to do a welfare check.

Kevin Flynn: When they went to Sheila's farm, what they discovered was a burned barrel. It

was just like an oil drum that you would throw refuse in and burn leaves or whatever. And they

found it was smoldering, and they started to poke around in the barrel, and they saw what

looked like a human femur with a sort of glob of burnt flesh on the ball joint at the top. And they

realized that the guy that they had been looking for and that they were trying to check on the

welfare on, that it was too late. He was dead and killed in a horrible way.

Phoebe Judge: Of course, LaBarre was not at the farm when the cops arrived. They combed

the hundred acres for any evidence they could find. They even flushed the septic tank. And they

did find the remains of another victim, a man named Michael DeLoge, who'd been missing for

two years. They also found some human toes, but were never able to figure out who they

belonged to.

LaBarre, in the meantime, was on the run. It was another week before the cops caught her in

Massachusetts. She'd dyed her hair and was staying with some guy she had just met. He saw

her face on TV and turned her in. Sheila LaBarre was arrested in a Taco Bell and charged with

murder.

[Music.]

Kevin Flynn: I didn't want to just sort of reach out to Sheila immediately when she was put

behind bars. I knew that it was going to be at least one, maybe two years before she went to

trial. So I waited and didn't write to her until Christmastime. And I figured by that time, all of her

friends who had been by her and a lot of her family will have disowned her, and that would've

been a pretty lonely time. And I guess I thought, "This is the time she's going to really want to

read a letter from somebody who sounds like they're interested in her story."

Phoebe Judge: According to Kevin, the first letter said something like, "I'm sure this is a difficult

time for you. Someday I hope to speak to you. Merry Christmas." And he got a letter back, and

then another. So they went back and forth. It got kind of intense.

Rebecca Lavoie: I remember reading one of the letters that Sheila sent to him.

Phoebe Judge: This is Rebecca Lavoie, who we heard from at the beginning,

Rebecca Lavoie: She drew, on the outside of the envelope, a picture of a rose vine, and they

were sort of crossing each other, the rose vine, and it sort of made like a crucifix shape. There

was a poem that she had written inside the letter, inside this illustrated envelope, and it was

called "Two Roses on the Cross," I think it was called. And I remember reading this and thinking

like, "Whoa, she's really something." And then I remember turning to Kevin and saying, "Is she

kind of coming after you a little bit?"

Phoebe Judge: After enough correspondence, LaBarre agreed to let Kevin visit. At this point,

he was thinking this could be more than just a TV interview. He was thinking about writing a

book.

Kevin Flynn: Sort of early on, she sat down and was very demure and very coquettish and was

oozing of Southern charm. And first of all, I could see why men would fall for her and do what

she wanted them to do, because she was very flattering. At the end of the conversation, she

was trying to get me to find her animals from the farm. Her horses, her rabbits.

Phoebe Judge: What do you mean? She just straight up said, "Can you go check on my

rabbits?"

Kevin Flynn: She said, "Can you find them for me?" Yeah. "Can you find them for me?" And I

think the idea was that I was-

Phoebe Judge: Find them where?

Kevin Flynn: Wherever they went. I know that one of them is dead, passed away. And I think I

shared that with her, and she was devastated. But she thinks that what I'm going to do is find

her animals and hold them for safekeeping, until she is acquitted and can come home. And

that's sort of where I realized, I have been totally sucked in. No, I didn't go looking for the

animals. I mean, if I knew where the horse was, I wasn't going to put it in my backyard.

Phoebe Judge: [Laughs.] I mean, you're kind of in it deep here.

Kevin Flynn: Yeah.

Phoebe Judge: When do you realize this is having some impact on your personal life, your

professional life?

Kevin Flynn: It was when the mailing got to the point where I was getting prison mail from

Sheila at work, and people were opening up the mail and reading the letters out loud as

entertainment.

Phoebe Judge: Did you walk in on them reading the letters out loud?

Kevin Flynn: No. No, I wasn't even there. I came back after a day off, and somebody handed

me a letter that had been opened, and I'm like, "Oh, okay." And then it wasn't till later, till

somebody said, "They opened the letter, and they read it at the morning meeting, out loud." And

I was more than embarrassed. I felt kind of violated.

Phoebe Judge: Why were you embarrassed? I mean, what would've been in it that would've

been embarrassing to you?

Kevin Flynn: I think she was talking sweet to me. I think I might've encouraged it because I

thought it just meant the relationship was going on and that I was still going to be able to land

this big interview when it was all over.

Phoebe Judge: And you were married though.

Kevin Flynn: Yeah. Yeah. By "relationship," it wasn't romantic. I wasn't trying to seduce her in

any way.

Phoebe Judge: I believe that, kind of, of course. But it's kind of like you are in a relationship.

Like your seduction can't feel too false, or flirting and all that stuff, because she might pick up on

that. So you kind of do necessarily enter into this little bit of a ... It's the reason you were

embarrassed, right? There was something there that you were doing that you must've thought,

"I should be a little embarrassed about it."

Kevin Flynn: Yeah. I think you're right. I feel like I kind of lost my way with the story.

[Music.]

I wrote a letter to a prosecutor that I knew. Obviously, they were aware that Sheila was talking

to a reporter. And I tried to explain myself in a friendly way, and saying, "Look, I just want you to

know, I'm not trying to mess up your case. I'm not trying to solve it for you. I'm really just there to

gather information." And I said something along the lines that, "Hey, if she said something to

me, you would know about it." And under the judicial ethics rules of the state, that could be

interpreted as the state soliciting my help. With that phrase, I totally screwed the whole thing up.

Now I could be called as a witness in the case. And so now I have a conflict, and I can't do the

story anymore.

Phoebe Judge: Kevin lost his job at the TV station. His first marriage ended around that same

time. We asked him if his fixation on LaBarre had anything to do with his divorce, and he said

no. He thinks it's the other way around, that his general unhappiness with life made him a bit

reckless and more likely to engage with LaBarre in the first place.

Kevin Flynn: I mean, what I've come to understand was at that time in my life, I was deeply

unhappy in a way that I couldn't articulate or couldn't really feel. I guess advancing the story and

getting closer and closer gave me some sense of accomplishment that temporarily filled the void

that I had. And so when it was over, I had lost my job. I had lost my marriage. I was drinking too

much. I was gaining weight. And I had a hell of a book.

[Music.]

Phoebe Judge: Sheila LaBarre was charged with two murders, Kenneth Countie and Michael

DeLoge. She pled not guilty by reason of insanity.

Kevin Flynn: The jury found that she was criminally responsible for their deaths. They didn't

buy the insanity defense. And then she went to state prison. And she has been moved from one

state prison to another because, with her kind of personality disorder, she gets into trouble, and

she threatens people and she threatens to burn people.

Phoebe Judge: She's currently serving two consecutive life sentences. She has no possibility

of parole. Kevin isn't in touch with LaBarre anymore. He realized it wasn't healthy. Although, he

does stay in contact with her sister. They're pretty good friends on Facebook.

[Music.]

Criminal is produced by Eric Mennel, Lauren Spohrer, and me. Julienne Alexander does our

episode art. Kevin's book about the Sheila LaBarre case is called Wicked Intentions: The Sheila

LaBarre Murders. You can find all of our episodes on iTunes or at our website,

thisiscriminal.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter, @CriminalShow. And we'd love to hear from

you. Like what we're doing? Are you getting sick of it? Let us know, and leave us a review on

iTunes.

I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is Criminal.