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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder The most Shocking
Speaker 5: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker vck. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 7: Good evening, This is your host Dan Zepanski for the
Speaker 7: program True Murder, The most shocking Killers in True crime
Speaker 7: History and the authors that have written about them. Sheila
Speaker 7: Labarre liked to troll the personal ads and homeless shelters,
Speaker 7: looking for men whom society had rejected for one reason
Speaker 7: or another, men she could easily dominate, both verbally and sexually.
Speaker 7: One by one, she invited them to her remote New
Speaker 7: Hampshire farmhouse, where she engaged them in s and m
Speaker 7: But over time sex gave way to brutal acts of torture,
Speaker 7: as she mercilessly flogged and beat her captives until they
Speaker 7: confessed to committing unspeakable acts. Once satisfied that they had
Speaker 7: paid for their sins, Sheila savagely slaughtered them and burned
Speaker 7: their remains on her farm. From the disturbing audio tape
Speaker 7: Sheila made of her victim's confessions to her own bizarre statements,
Speaker 7: which she claimed to have returned from the dead to
Speaker 7: be God's avenger. The Burn Farm takes you behind the
Speaker 7: scenes of the scandal that rocked a quiet New Hampshire town,
Speaker 7: a New England town and in the twisted, depraved mind
Speaker 7: of a manipula bit of cold blooded murderer. Our book
Speaker 7: this evening is Burn Farm with my special guest, journalist
Speaker 7: and author Michael Benson. We don't have him on the
Speaker 7: line as of yet. I'm hoping that I had a
Speaker 7: little bit of mix up with daylight Saving time. I
Speaker 7: had no idea that not everybody was on the same
Speaker 7: page with the daylight saving time, so the confusion. I
Speaker 7: take the responsibility for that not making it very clear
Speaker 7: exactly what time we were on slated for today, and
Speaker 7: Michael was good enough to there was another mix up.
Speaker 7: I had a hard drive fry and a lot of
Speaker 7: information I had to piece back together via email, and
Speaker 7: so I've got a couple of the guests their order
Speaker 7: of the schedule of the to appear on the program.
Speaker 7: Mixed up. So Michael Benson was good enough to who
Speaker 7: was originally scheduled for last week to come on this week,
Speaker 7: and here we have Michael Benson. So all's well, do
Speaker 7: you think, Michael Dan, how are you?
Speaker 8: I'm doing well. I didn't realize I was supposed to
Speaker 8: call you.
Speaker 7: Ah, there we go. There's always something that's well explained
Speaker 7: by me. I apologize, but thank you very much for
Speaker 7: agreeing to come on this program, and welcome to the
Speaker 7: program True Murder. Michael Benson, thank you very much, thanks
Speaker 7: for having me. Thank you very much. I just went
Speaker 7: and gave the description of Sheila Lebar and what this
Speaker 7: story is basically about. But let's get into the Let's
Speaker 7: get into the nitty gritty here with The main character
Speaker 7: in this incredible story is a woman named Sheila Labar
Speaker 7: formerly Sheila Bailey, raised in a place called Fort Payne, Alabama.
Speaker 7: Tell us about her life growing up. What was her
Speaker 7: life like in Fort Payne, Alabama. What kind of community
Speaker 7: was she from?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, it was a brural Alabama town and
Speaker 8: she was the youngest of six. They didn't have a
Speaker 8: lot of money. Dad smoothed out blacktop during the day
Speaker 8: and drank at night. Sometimes mom worked in a hospital,
Speaker 8: but a lot of times she was home. The problem
Speaker 8: was that, according to Sheila and her older sister, Lynn,
Speaker 8: Sheila was sexually abused by her father and his friends,
Speaker 8: and that her mom knew about it but failed to
Speaker 8: protect her. Her sister said that not only had she
Speaker 8: seen Shila be abused, but she herself had been abused
Speaker 8: as well. Are using trouble hearing me? I have a
Speaker 8: lot of static.
Speaker 7: There is a lot of static, but it seems to
Speaker 7: be emanating from your from your US, your location, but
Speaker 7: I'm not sure.
Speaker 8: Okay, could you try giving me a quick call?
Speaker 7: I can't do that as it's set up right now.
Speaker 7: We're live and I can't break from this.
Speaker 8: All right, give me the number again quick and I'll
Speaker 8: call a second time.
Speaker 7: Okay, it's three four seven seven four zero six four.
Speaker 8: Okay, I'll be back in thirty seconds. Sorry about this.
Speaker 7: We're gonna wait for Michael to call back in. He's right.
Speaker 7: That line was extremely noisy. See if we can pick
Speaker 7: a little headway. I know that the blog talk introduction
Speaker 7: or instructions to me were distorted somewhat, but I didn't
Speaker 7: have that background noise as a feature, so we're hoping
Speaker 7: to have Michael back on. This is an incredible book
Speaker 7: by the way, Burn Farm not for the faint of heart.
Speaker 7: A lot of a lot of these books are that
Speaker 7: I have covered. Are some of these subjects which I
Speaker 7: find most interesting. This is one of those, Burn Farm
Speaker 7: on the more extreme ends of true crime. And here
Speaker 7: we are back with Michael Benson.
Speaker 8: It has something to do with the weather here in
Speaker 8: New York. We're having both sleet and thunder, so maybe
Speaker 8: problems with the connection to the satellite or something. Anyway,
Speaker 8: hopefully you can hear me.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's a little bit better for sure.
Speaker 8: Now, her sister backed up her story that she'd been abused,
Speaker 8: and Sheila said that she grew up into a woman
Speaker 8: who liked men, but she had trouble having a fulfilling
Speaker 8: sex life during her early adult years because she still
Speaker 8: had infantile genitalia and couldn't handle the well endowed men
Speaker 8: she attracted. Now it's uncertain exactly how many times she
Speaker 8: was married, but it was a few, and everyone agrees
Speaker 8: that her first marriage was in the early nineteen eighties
Speaker 8: to Alabama local named Ronnie Jennings. Later in life, Shila
Speaker 8: would develop an obsession with being in control at all times,
Speaker 8: but that personality trait wasn't fully developed when she was
Speaker 8: a young woman. I mean, later on, I think she
Speaker 8: had just beaten the crap out of him. But when
Speaker 8: she was a younger woman, she decided to hurt herself instead.
Speaker 8: So when she couldn't have her way with her first husband,
Speaker 8: she swallowed an overdose of pills and then drove her
Speaker 8: car until she passed out at the wheel and cracked up.
Speaker 8: She was taken by a helicopter to a hospital where
Speaker 8: she spent days in a coma, and she woke up
Speaker 8: believing she had died, gone to heaven, and had been
Speaker 8: sent back by God to rid the world of pedophiles. Wow,
Speaker 8: so that's her psychological makeup. Now we next pick her
Speaker 8: up in nineteen eighty seven, and she is in Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 8: She wants to be a country and Western singer, and
Speaker 8: she's putting ads in sex oriented newspapers looking for submissive
Speaker 8: partners men who are willing to endure her discipline. And
Speaker 8: that was how she met doctor William Labam as sixty
Speaker 8: year old mild mannered chiropractor who lived in a farm
Speaker 8: house in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire.
Speaker 7: That is go ahead, go ahead, you Now.
Speaker 8: The nearest town was a small village called Epping, and
Speaker 8: the nearest city was Portsmouth, which is why I was
Speaker 8: early to find out about this case. My agent, Jake
Speaker 8: Elwell of Harold Obern Associates, grew up in Portsmouth, and
Speaker 8: as soon as this all went down, you know, he
Speaker 8: gave me a call and said you should do a book,
Speaker 8: call it the Burn Farm. And it was never called
Speaker 8: anything else. So anyway, she she eventually comes back to
Speaker 8: Epping with doctor Lebar and they are not husband and wife.
Speaker 8: They were never married, and she starts to take control
Speaker 8: of his life. She changes the name of his farm,
Speaker 8: she takes over the business end of his chiropractic practice,
Speaker 8: and with a meanness that went right down to her bones,
Speaker 8: she humiliated him at every turn. She became the town
Speaker 8: tramp as well as the tramp of several surrounding towns
Speaker 8: as well. Now, like I said, she never married doctor
Speaker 8: Lebar son. Certain how she felt she could get away
Speaker 8: with taking his name, but she did, and she referred
Speaker 8: to herself as Shila Lebar from that point on, and
Speaker 8: a judge after doctor Lebar died ruled that she was
Speaker 8: indeed his common law of wife, so everyone called.
Speaker 7: Her sorry it wasn't. There also that he actually modified
Speaker 7: his will to will her everything that he owned in
Speaker 7: a couple a couple of properties. He was well off,
Speaker 7: the business, the properties, the farm.
Speaker 8: Well, yeah, the legitimacy of that particular will is in question,
Speaker 8: so especially since when she was while she was living
Speaker 8: in his house she married another man. She had several
Speaker 8: living lovers. First was a Jamaican man named Dwayne Ennis,
Speaker 8: and she married him and the marriage didn't last long
Speaker 8: and eventually us escape back to Jamaica unharmed. But there
Speaker 8: was a steady string of lovers she had right in
Speaker 8: doctor Lebarr's home. Next came Jimmy Brackett, who was a
Speaker 8: mentally slow individual who did chores around the farm and
Speaker 8: became Shila's increasingly abused sex slave. He too, managed to
Speaker 8: get away with his life, but not until Sheila broke
Speaker 8: his teeth with the handle of a basting brush as
Speaker 8: they bathed together. And it's unknown why they had the
Speaker 8: basting brush, and that's help with them now. In December
Speaker 8: two thousand, doctor Lebar passed away and Sheila assumed control
Speaker 8: of his estate. Pulling out the will. You mentioned that
Speaker 8: Bill's kids do nothing about They had no idea he
Speaker 8: had made out a new will. She immediately had doctor
Speaker 8: lebar cremate it boom. There wasn't going to be any
Speaker 8: autopsies there. And although there were those who said doctor
Speaker 8: Lebarre's complexion had gone green during the last days of
Speaker 8: his life, indicating that something was making him sick. During
Speaker 8: his last days, says his common law wife, Sheila, assumed
Speaker 8: control of the farm. The will said the doctor was
Speaker 8: stiffing his kids and giving everything to the kind and
Speaker 8: wonderful woman known to the world as Shila Labar and
Speaker 8: it was without him as her anchor that her life
Speaker 8: really started to spiral out of control. In two thousand
Speaker 8: and five, she takes in a homeless man named Michael Deloge,
Speaker 8: whose small man mentally slow, and she beats him up
Speaker 8: repeatedly and he would run away. People would see him
Speaker 8: walking down the road heading away from Shila's with his
Speaker 8: face bleeding, and she would just get in the car
Speaker 8: and go to the homeless shelter to pick him up.
Speaker 8: You know, he couldn't get away. He didn't have the
Speaker 8: mental capacity to figure out how to escape from her,
Speaker 8: and she eventually tortured him, hitting him to confess to
Speaker 8: being a pedophile with an incestuous past. Then she tort
Speaker 8: until he was dead, cut up his body and threw
Speaker 8: it into the burn pile for incineration. And then in
Speaker 8: February two thousand and six, she meets Kenneth County, a
Speaker 8: memorley handicapped young man with the sophistication of an eleven
Speaker 8: year old, and he turns out to be her final victim.
Speaker 7: Now, how did you talk about Sheila Lebar and how everyone,
Speaker 7: including the police kind of stayed away from her. You
Speaker 7: talked about the numerous complaints that Sheila made to police
Speaker 7: about everything, her neighbors all kinds of numerous complaints about
Speaker 7: the officials that wouldn't respond to any of her complaints.
Speaker 7: There was a litany of complaints that this woman made.
Speaker 7: City officials and neighbors wanted to stay clear of her.
Speaker 7: Tell us a little bit more about her bizarre behavior.
Speaker 7: You say that it really took a turn when doctor
Speaker 7: Lebar act he passed away. So tell us a little
Speaker 7: bit about her relationship with the neighbors and some of
Speaker 7: her odd behavior.
Speaker 8: Well, I think that she had the police of Epping
Speaker 8: lulled into it. That's just Sila being Sheila attitude. She
Speaker 8: the police went out there tens of times. You know,
Speaker 8: she would she would call saying that her boyfriend was
Speaker 8: beating her up. You know, they would call saying she
Speaker 8: was beating them up. Uh. Sometimes she would be beating
Speaker 8: them up. They would they would call nine one one,
Speaker 8: and then she would punch herself just before police arrived
Speaker 8: and said he hit me. Police had a rule, it
Speaker 8: was the Shila rule that node they had to go
Speaker 8: in Paris to her house because if they went by themselves,
Speaker 8: she would expose themselves and try to and trap them
Speaker 8: into some sort of sexual situation.
Speaker 7: Right now, there was the Kenneth County County was spotted
Speaker 7: in a walm days before he was officially somebody was
Speaker 7: reporting him missing. Tell us about who initiated the search
Speaker 7: for this man that had the capacity of eleven year old,
Speaker 7: and also tell us where the couple was spotted away
Speaker 7: from the farm a couple of times.
Speaker 8: Well, Sheila met Kenneth County on a singles phone chat line.
Speaker 8: He was a nice kid. He wasn't terribly bright. He
Speaker 8: lived with his mom. He had tried to go into
Speaker 8: the army and wasn't able to make it through basic
Speaker 8: training and felt miserably felt like a failure. He really
Speaker 8: wanted to get out and be an adult on his own,
Speaker 8: so he got an apartment not far from where his
Speaker 8: mom lived, had a roommate, and everything was fine until
Speaker 8: he called a sex chat line that he saw a
Speaker 8: commercial for on TV and Sheila was on the other
Speaker 8: end of the line. Next thing you know, they're having
Speaker 8: their first date on Valentine's Day in two thousand and six.
Speaker 8: They meet at a hotel in Hampton. They go out
Speaker 8: in the parking lot and have sex twice, and a
Speaker 8: week later, County leaves his Massachusetts home, telling his roommate
Speaker 8: that he'll be back, but he never comes back. He
Speaker 8: leaves his personal items behind and begins living at the
Speaker 8: farm with Sheila. So it's only six days after their
Speaker 8: first date when Kenny calls his mom and he sounds bad.
Speaker 8: He's complaining about mistreatment, and Sheila grabs the phone away
Speaker 8: from him and says, you know, we want to be
Speaker 8: left alone. Kenny's happy with me and hangs up. So
Speaker 8: Kenny's mom, Carolyn, relives that Sheila hadn't counted on picking
Speaker 8: up a man that somebody cared about. And this turned
Speaker 8: out to be her big mistake because Carolyn Lodge kept
Speaker 8: tracks of her Kenny, and she called the state police
Speaker 8: immediately to express her alarm. You know, my son step.
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Speaker 3: Welcome to the Family vdW group.
Speaker 9: Now perch is necessary. I believe we're premitted by loss.
Speaker 9: He terms and conditions eighteen plus.
Speaker 8: Is mentally handicapped. He's been taken by a strange woman.
Speaker 8: Please go get him. So by the twenty fourth, so
Speaker 8: it's ten days after their first date. Now, County is
Speaker 8: reported missing to the Epping police for the first time
Speaker 8: by his mother and they go out to Shield's farm
Speaker 8: to see if he's okay. You know, she said, oh yeah,
Speaker 8: go ahead.
Speaker 7: So what happens when police go out to the farm.
Speaker 8: What is it? Yeah, and she says he's in the tub.
Speaker 8: He can't come out. He says, sorry, man, we have
Speaker 8: to see him. So Kenny gets out of the tub
Speaker 8: and comes out, comes to the door. He's got a
Speaker 8: towel around him. She says, there he is now leave
Speaker 8: and the cops leave, every indication that they're a little
Speaker 8: bit frightened of her, and when she barks at them
Speaker 8: to go, they go.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 8: The next day, she faxes the Epping police a document that,
Speaker 8: in theory Kenny wrote. Kenny signed it anyway, and it says,
Speaker 8: I trust only Shila Labar and we are happy a
Speaker 8: couple of two adults, and we want to be left
Speaker 8: alone as far as the cops are concerned. That's that
Speaker 8: does it? You know, the mother no longer has any
Speaker 8: rights over me. He's an adult man. Then comes the
Speaker 8: Walmart incident. It's it's March eleventh now, and Sheila walks
Speaker 8: into Walmart with Kenny, who's starting to look a little
Speaker 8: beat up, but he's walking around and she suddenly makes
Speaker 8: a big fuss and complains that another customer has just
Speaker 8: hit her husband. And she looks in and she says,
Speaker 8: look at him, he's all beat up. Look he just
Speaker 8: got beat up by one of your customers. And the
Speaker 8: Walmart employee says, it doesn't look like he just got
Speaker 8: beat up, and she says, all that those come from
Speaker 8: a car accident he was in. Those come from an
Speaker 8: explosion where there was glass, but he just got hit
Speaker 8: by We're going to sue. So he said, what if
Speaker 8: you mentioned the word sue to a Walmart employee, you
Speaker 8: are asked to leave immediately, And she was and it
Speaker 8: was chalked up as just a strange incident until six
Speaker 8: days later when she comes back to the same Walmart,
Speaker 8: and this time she's got Kenny in a wheelchair and
Speaker 8: he is really looking bad. He is green in color,
Speaker 8: the same bad complexion people noticed in doctor Lebar during
Speaker 8: the last days of his life. And she's pushing around
Speaker 8: in a wheelchair and he's got a huge cut across
Speaker 8: his no and these battered they're looked like burn marks
Speaker 8: on him. And she again causes disturbance and police are
Speaker 8: called this time and the officers they come and they
Speaker 8: see they see Kenny in the wheelchair looking beaten, and
Speaker 8: again Chila takes charge and says, you know, just leave
Speaker 8: us alone. We're happy, we're fine, And they said, well,
Speaker 8: we got to make sure that he can walk. So
Speaker 8: Kenny gets out of the wheelchair, walks three steps, gets
Speaker 8: back in the wheelchair, and she takes them out, puts
Speaker 8: them into the car, and gets in and gets him
Speaker 8: out of there. Now, the question here, I think is
Speaker 8: is not as well. I mean, there is a question
Speaker 8: why didn't the police intervene at that point? But why
Speaker 8: did Sheila do it at all? What is it that
Speaker 8: she's trying to establish here? She's making a public record
Speaker 8: of her lover's slow demise for some reason in her head,
Speaker 8: but we don't know what it is. Anyway, that would
Speaker 8: be the last time that anyone would see Kenny alive.
Speaker 8: On March twenty third, Kenny's mom calls Sheila and tells
Speaker 8: her that she wants Kenny to come home right away,
Speaker 8: and Sheila says, well, sorry, can't do that. Kenny has left.
Speaker 8: He's gone back to Massachusetts. Don't know where he is
Speaker 8: by well. Carolyn Lodge finds this very disconcerting news and
Speaker 8: again reports her son missing. So that same day, same
Speaker 8: two cops go back out to Sheila's house and there's
Speaker 8: a mattress that's burning outside. There's a couple of burn
Speaker 8: piles going and one of the cops looks into one
Speaker 8: of the burn piles and sees what he thinks as
Speaker 8: a human bone, and he figures that's enough to get
Speaker 8: probable cause for a surge warrant, and they tell her
Speaker 8: not to touch anything, and they leave to get the warrant,
Speaker 8: come back several hours later her and sheill is covered
Speaker 8: with ashes and she's crying and she's saying that her
Speaker 8: Kenny is gone, and she plays a tape for the
Speaker 8: policeman of a tape recording she made of a conversation
Speaker 8: with Kenny in which he admits to having raped several children,
Speaker 8: and Kenny can be heard in the background agreeing with her,
Speaker 8: and she's constantly yelling at him and abusing him, and
Speaker 8: toward the end he could be heard vomiting, and she
Speaker 8: tells him to stop faking that he's fainted. She knows
Speaker 8: he hasn't really fainted. But the cops say, well, where
Speaker 8: is he now, and she says, well, I left, he left,
Speaker 8: I'm not sure where he is. And again they bring
Speaker 8: attention hills, attention to the bone in the fire, and
Speaker 8: they said well, where did that bone come from? And
Speaker 8: she says it either came from a rabbit or a pedophile.
Speaker 8: She borts that out and then immediately denies saying it.
Speaker 7: So, how does the police proceed from there?
Speaker 8: I'm sorry, I say it again?
Speaker 7: Well, so how did the police proceed from there?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 8: Boy, I can't sure you Dan, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 7: I want to say, how did the police proceed from there?
Speaker 8: Okay? Well, with the search warrant, they go over everything.
Speaker 8: They confiscate, among other things, a wide array of cutting
Speaker 8: tools in the house. They find blood in the house.
Speaker 8: All over the walls of the house are blood. Some
Speaker 8: of it's covered with dust and some of it's fresh,
Speaker 8: which would indicate that this is continuing behavior. She's making
Speaker 8: people bleed over a space of time. Now, the question
Speaker 8: I have is why is she allowed to go free?
Speaker 8: But she is. They're being very careful going to arrest
Speaker 8: her until this year. But while the search of the
Speaker 8: house and the grounds is going on, she takes off.
Speaker 8: She makes arrangements for her animals to be taken care of,
Speaker 8: and she's pitch hiking around New England, being picked up
Speaker 8: by a series of men who all have sex with
Speaker 8: her and take her to where she wants to go,
Speaker 8: which is almost always further away from having New Hampshire.
Speaker 8: It isn't until March thirty first that it warrant is
Speaker 8: issued for her arrest and the manhunt begins. And finally,
Speaker 8: her last boyfriend, the last one who picked her up,
Speaker 8: sees her picture on the TV set and calls the
Speaker 8: cops and says, I know where she is. She's at
Speaker 8: the shopping mall and she is arrested in Revere, Massachusetts.
Speaker 8: And when she stouted you, yeah, what.
Speaker 7: Did she tell that last person about her coming back
Speaker 7: and being an avenger?
Speaker 8: Well, she if she is pretending to be crazy, She
Speaker 8: never ever stops pretending, because she tells her or her
Speaker 8: lovers that she has come back to life after dying
Speaker 8: and that she is an avenging angel. You just slept
Speaker 8: with an angel, she says to them. And then I'm
Speaker 8: here to take care of all the sex offenders of
Speaker 8: the world. So if you're a sex offender, watch out,
Speaker 8: and if you know any sex offenders, let me know
Speaker 8: and I'll take care of them for you.
Speaker 4: Well then when they finally go ahead, well when they
Speaker 4: find her, she's got a small quantity of marijuana with
Speaker 4: her because she likes to smoke before sex.
Speaker 8: She's got eighty five thousand dollars in cash and checks
Speaker 8: in her possession, and she has cut and dyed her hair.
Speaker 8: It looks a lot like flight.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 8: She's arraigned in Massachusetts on April third and brought back
Speaker 8: to New Hampshire, which.
Speaker 7: And how yeah, so she she is escorted back to
Speaker 7: New Hampshire, And how does the what happens in terms
Speaker 7: of her representation by lawyers or her questioning by police?
Speaker 7: What happens in that in that case with the questioning
Speaker 7: from police.
Speaker 8: What happens in the case with the questions of the police.
Speaker 7: Yes, what's what happens in terms of the questioning from police?
Speaker 7: And does she immediately request the lawyer at that time?
Speaker 8: Well? She, you know, she she chats with them for
Speaker 8: a long time. She she has to bring a bunny
Speaker 8: with her from the farm and she sits in an
Speaker 8: interrogation room with a rabbit on her lap. You know.
Speaker 8: The rabbit urinates on her and she wipes it up
Speaker 8: with a paper towel and then wipes her mouth with
Speaker 8: the same paper towels. Very bizarre behavior as far as
Speaker 8: her representation goes. Because of all the publicity. She gets
Speaker 8: a good lawyer, she gets Brad Bailey out of Boston,
Speaker 8: who is going to do his best to convince a
Speaker 8: New Hampshire jury that she is insane. And I think
Speaker 8: that the main question of the book is is Sheila
Speaker 8: crazy or is she just pathologically statistic? You know, insanity
Speaker 8: defenses rarely worked and in insanity defense and defense has
Speaker 8: never worked in New Hampshire, not once. But one of
Speaker 8: the things that makes this case compelling is that the
Speaker 8: insanity defense here has a couple of points going for it.
Speaker 8: Shilabaum may have known that her murders were construed as
Speaker 8: wrong in the eyes of society and in the eyes
Speaker 8: of the law, but there's a serious question if she
Speaker 8: herself appreciated that her actions were wrong. She those behavior
Speaker 8: before and after the murders, before and after her arrest
Speaker 8: indicate that she had delusions she believed, and those delusions
Speaker 8: were determining her violence. Where reality starts and where her
Speaker 8: delusions begin, of course, is a question. But she claims
Speaker 8: to have been a victim of incest and of pedophiles
Speaker 8: as a little girl, and her sister backs that up.
Speaker 8: Now we know that that as an adult you know
Speaker 8: she wasn't a coma, and so it's her claims that
Speaker 8: she she was brought back, returning to mortality with a
Speaker 8: mission is feasible in her own mind. She has every
Speaker 8: reason to hate pedophiles, she has every reason to hate
Speaker 8: people who commit incests. And she actually had biblical quotes that,
Speaker 8: on the surface anyways, seemed to back up her plans,
Speaker 8: including a verse from Daniel that noted God's favorite form
Speaker 8: of capital punishment with in feneration, and that was basically
Speaker 8: her defense that she was on a mission from God
Speaker 8: when she committed the murders. It sounds like criminal insanity.
Speaker 8: The trouble is Sheila blended that delusional mission with her
Speaker 8: other personality disorders. She was a nimphomaniac, She was a sadist.
Speaker 8: She had grand illusions regarding her her delusions regarding her
Speaker 8: own sexual appeal. Her sadism was always there, not just
Speaker 8: during sexual encounters. She was mean every single time she
Speaker 8: had an opportunity to be mean, and in the long run,
Speaker 8: the jury in New Hampshire decided it was means Sheila
Speaker 8: who was in charge. You know, she may have believed
Speaker 8: her mission was a legitimate excuse to commit the crime
Speaker 8: she committed, but it was just an excuse. Nonetheless, Sheila
Speaker 8: got off on hurting people and in the long run
Speaker 8: it might have mattered to her, but it didn't matter
Speaker 8: to the jury how much prurience and religious zeal she
Speaker 8: put into the mix.
Speaker 7: Now, in terms of not criminally response because of insanity,
Speaker 7: the lawyer her defense did raise some issues that when
Speaker 7: she had the opportunity to conceal her actions often she didn't.
Speaker 7: The case in point where she offered to play the
Speaker 7: audio tape for police officers. So you know, I'm in
Speaker 7: Canada talking about cases here and we have a lot
Speaker 7: more leeway in terms of insanity and not primarily responsible
Speaker 7: in cases. But part of that is that there was
Speaker 7: some indication at some point, at different times where she
Speaker 7: didn't try to conceal her actions, like the Walmart and
Speaker 7: like the audio tape. Did they not make any headway
Speaker 7: with that part of the defense. I know it's a
Speaker 7: very politically charged case, and especially when you're dealing with torture,
Speaker 7: but did they make any headway at all as a
Speaker 7: trial by making those points?
Speaker 8: Absolutely none. I think that the New Hampshire jury sat
Speaker 8: there with their arms crossed and scowled at her, you know,
Speaker 8: waiting for an opportunity to give her the thumbs down,
Speaker 8: you know, And I agree with you. I think there
Speaker 8: is there is. There's strong evidence that Sheila is insanity
Speaker 8: is real, that she was abused into psychosis as a child,
Speaker 8: And the strongest evidence comes from her older sister, who
Speaker 8: you know, cat the picture of that there's one there's
Speaker 8: one description she Lynn Nuge and her older sister testified
Speaker 8: at the trial and said that there was She remembered
Speaker 8: one time when Sheila and herself were chased into a
Speaker 8: cornfield by her drunken father. And oddly, I was typing
Speaker 8: this one day and my daughter was standing behind me,
Speaker 8: reading over my shoulder, and she says, that's from Chrest Gump,
Speaker 8: And it was true. It was a scene that Lynn
Speaker 8: NuGen was describing seemed almost exactly the same as the
Speaker 8: scene in Forrest Gump when Jenny is chased by her
Speaker 8: father into an Alabama cornfield, which of course doesn't mean
Speaker 8: that it wasn't just a coincidence or that. And I
Speaker 8: like this idea better that the sisters placed a memory
Speaker 8: from the movie over their real horrifying memory as sort
Speaker 8: of a bandage and had come to believe that the
Speaker 8: replacement Forrest Gump version was true.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 7: What I found interesting was, unlike the Aleen Werno's case
Speaker 7: where the other infamous woman serial killer, that there really
Speaker 7: seemed to be at least a lot more validity to
Speaker 7: an insanity defense with the actions and behavior.
Speaker 8: You know, Dan, I you can hear me better than
Speaker 8: I can hear you.
Speaker 4: Okay, you are a little voice coming out of a
Speaker 4: lot of static.
Speaker 7: Okay, great. Anyway, when I wanted to their second.
Speaker 8: LTR one phone call, okay, okay, I'll do that. Well.
Speaker 7: I apologize for all the noise. I know it's quite
Speaker 7: hard to plow through this interview with that much noise.
Speaker 7: I don't hear any noise on my end here with
Speaker 7: my phone call, so I don't know what that is.
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Speaker 7: Eating from. He may be using a cell phone, which
Speaker 7: ends up being very bad. But I have had guess
Speaker 7: that did use cell phones and the reception was much
Speaker 7: much better. So well, we'll just hope. He says that
Speaker 7: there is a thunderstorm and snowstorm in New York right
Speaker 7: now where he's calling from, so I know that could
Speaker 7: rehavoc on the reception, no doubt. Anyway, you're listening to
Speaker 7: Michael Benson, journalist and author of about fifty books he's
Speaker 7: either authored or co authored, and we were talking about
Speaker 7: burn Farm and this is Michael Benson. Were given into
Speaker 7: one more shot.
Speaker 9: I followed my wife's cell phone, and I could hear
Speaker 9: you perfectly.
Speaker 7: Oh there we go. Yes, that's much better.
Speaker 9: Oh, Y's such a strong voice.
Speaker 8: There we go.
Speaker 9: Okay, where we.
Speaker 7: Were talking about. My question I posed to you, was that,
Speaker 7: unlike the alien warners case that I had dealt with
Speaker 7: here on with Sue Russell on the program, that there
Speaker 7: was the defense really trying to say that this person
Speaker 7: because of her background, was not criminally responsible for her crimes,
Speaker 7: and that's why she murdered the men that she did.
Speaker 7: In this particular case, there is a lot of evidence,
Speaker 7: historical evidence to at least consider the not criminally responsible
Speaker 7: and the insanity defense in this case. So I found
Speaker 7: that very interesting in this case. If there ever was
Speaker 7: a story that a woman could talk about having some
Speaker 7: effect later on in her life, this is one of those. Anyway,
Speaker 7: So I thought there was a fair amount of validity.
Speaker 9: Absolutely, I agree with you one hundred percent. I think
Speaker 9: that it's the same thing. It happened in California, or
Speaker 9: maybe even in New York State, it might have been different.
Speaker 9: But in New Hampshire, if you admit you did it,
Speaker 9: and you have to admit you did it to complete insanity,
Speaker 9: they don't want to see you do anything else other
Speaker 9: than go to prison.
Speaker 7: Now, in those tapes that you didn't talk too much,
Speaker 7: but this audience, it's because it's true murder and the
Speaker 7: most shocking killers in true crime history. You could talk
Speaker 7: about some of the details of those tapes, what the
Speaker 7: content of those tapes were. I'm sure that didn't help
Speaker 7: with the jury having any sympathy for Sheila Lebar when
Speaker 7: it came to the trial itself, tell us a little
Speaker 7: bit more about the details. What she got these people
Speaker 7: to say, what she got these men to say on
Speaker 7: those tapes.
Speaker 9: Well, you know, it's hard for me to talk about.
Speaker 9: She is the most sadistic person I've ever encountered in
Speaker 9: I can't think of I can't think of a meaner person.
Speaker 9: She was mean every opportunity she had to be mean.
Speaker 9: You know, I've written the future of crime books and
Speaker 9: She'll was by far the easiest murderer for me to
Speaker 9: write about in a certain sense, because she was an
Speaker 9: open book. I mean, she did record things. She had
Speaker 9: videotapes of Michael Delowe's saying that, you know, mom, how
Speaker 9: could you make me have sex with you when I
Speaker 9: was a kid. And those poor mothers had to sit
Speaker 9: in the courtroom and listen to these tapes. You know,
Speaker 9: a couple of times they would burst into tears and
Speaker 9: run out it, which just do is a horrible thing.
Speaker 9: I mean, I've dealt with murderers who refused to confess
Speaker 9: they were stubborn and you had to guess what was
Speaker 9: going on through their heads, and that's a little bit
Speaker 9: tougher to write about, but certainly not a problem with Sheila.
Speaker 9: She spoke most of her thoughts out loud and felt
Speaker 9: the need to record them. The tapes were of her
Speaker 9: torturing her victims. She was beating them until they admitted
Speaker 9: that they were pedophiles, until they admitted that they had
Speaker 9: had incestuous relationships with their mothers, and then aha, then
Speaker 9: she felt like she was morally justified in killing them.
Speaker 9: And that's the reason she's making the recording. The recording
Speaker 9: is her defense. See, he admits he's a pedophile. I
Speaker 9: had every right to kill him. Yeah, she let the
Speaker 9: world hear, you know, and every single moment of it's
Speaker 9: kind of drenched in her inflamed yet demonized sex drive.
Speaker 7: The roughed up what was her demeanor at the trial
Speaker 7: that there was There was some incidents at the trial
Speaker 7: as well that was quite unnervous.
Speaker 9: Yeah, she did put up a little fuss at one
Speaker 9: point she had to be hustled out. My favorite shield.
Speaker 9: A day at the trial, though, was the day they
Speaker 9: had her ex boyfriend Jimmy Brackett and Wayne Ennis and
Speaker 9: the other men who had been workers on her farm
Speaker 9: and either been her lovers or just abused guys who
Speaker 9: worked around the place, and for that day she had
Speaker 9: her hair done up a little bit braided. Usually she
Speaker 9: had which hair that hung straight down. She was a
Speaker 9: little bit flirtatious that day, you know, putting on her
Speaker 9: chapstick very slowly and making a big show of it.
Speaker 9: But yeah, she she would if somebody said something she
Speaker 9: didn't like on the on the witness stand, she would
Speaker 9: talk back.
Speaker 7: Well. And you say, both families of the Deluge and
Speaker 7: and H Kenneth County's family both attended to those the
Speaker 7: full trials.
Speaker 9: They sat together, they held hands for part of it,
Speaker 9: the two moms for moral support. Yeah. At one point,
Speaker 9: Michael Delosie's mom had to take the stand and she
Speaker 9: was asked, you know, did you have do you have
Speaker 9: sex with Mike when he was a kid? You know,
Speaker 9: she shakes her head. No, one bursts into tears, you know,
Speaker 9: at all. The transcript has her not giving a response,
Speaker 9: but you know, she clearly says no. And then later
Speaker 9: on she told reporters it was the hardest thing she
Speaker 9: had ever she ever had to do in her life,
Speaker 9: was to get up there and you know face that woman. Yeah,
Speaker 9: now I don't know that Carolyn Lodge, who's Kenneth County's mom.
Speaker 9: She sued the police who had come out to Shiela's
Speaker 9: farm to give the UH to check to see there
Speaker 9: was a well being check on Kenny.
Speaker 8: All right now.
Speaker 9: She she sued the Epping Police Department a charging breach
Speaker 9: of duty causing Kenny harm they contributed to his death.
Speaker 9: She believed that she had done everything to protect her son,
Speaker 9: but the cops had not, and she made some strong points.
Speaker 9: The police knew all about Sheila. They knew she abused men.
Speaker 9: You know, Jimmy Brackett lost his teeth, Michael Deluge was
Speaker 9: seen bleeding walking down the road. I think police had
Speaker 9: a rule that no copper, They're going to be alone
Speaker 9: with her, so, you know, Sheila being Sheila was a
Speaker 9: saying that they had multiple opportunities to save Kenny, both
Speaker 9: when they went out to the farm the first time
Speaker 9: and during the second Walmart incident. And I think that
Speaker 9: the best way to illustrate Carolyn Lodge's point is imagine
Speaker 9: if the genders had been reversed. Imagine if Sila Lebar
Speaker 9: was a forty five year old man who had a
Speaker 9: twenty one year old woman in a wheelchair all beaten
Speaker 9: up walking around Walmart acting crazy. I think the cops
Speaker 9: would have had those two separated immediately because she was
Speaker 9: a woman and the victim is a man who doesn't
Speaker 9: even go he had all of his self will beaten
Speaker 9: on of him, is afraid to say she's hurting me
Speaker 9: because we'll just hit them again, and nothing happened. So,
Speaker 9: you know, she just didn't know how those cops could
Speaker 9: sleep at night, how they could look at themselves in
Speaker 9: the mirror. The civil suit lingered in the courts for
Speaker 9: a while and it was eventually thrown out. The cops,
Speaker 9: the courts said, didn't have probable cause to put Kenny
Speaker 9: in protective customer, and that.
Speaker 8: Was there.
Speaker 7: Right now. This is not a capital case. You don't
Speaker 7: have the death penalty in New Hampshire. So the eventual
Speaker 7: the eventual sentence was.
Speaker 9: What, well, it's life in prison.
Speaker 7: So two it's so two consecutive sentences for life imprisonment
Speaker 7: for the two murders that she did.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, it's at least two right. There's because when
Speaker 9: they went through the burn pile, they found bones from
Speaker 9: Michael Deloge, bones from Kenneth County, and a towbone belonged
Speaker 9: to a third person who was neither of them. And
Speaker 9: we have no idea who it is somebody nobody who
Speaker 9: she picked up, took there and killed and never, you know,
Speaker 9: never was a blip on anybody's radar.
Speaker 7: Now was there a if I'm not correct? Was there
Speaker 7: other evidence of other burn pits as well? Is there
Speaker 7: other possibilities that other men were burnt in different pits
Speaker 7: at different times? Uh? And and those bones could have
Speaker 7: been disposed of and not found in the extensive search
Speaker 7: that was under that did was undergone on the property
Speaker 7: as it was that that.
Speaker 9: Is absolutely a possibility, although there's no way to tell
Speaker 9: for sure if if there were more victims, she managed
Speaker 9: to get rid of the evidence somehow. But yeah, there
Speaker 9: were there were There were burned spots all over the property.
Speaker 9: But it's not uncommon. It's just that's the way it
Speaker 9: is in rural New Hampshire. You take the garbage out
Speaker 9: in the backfield and you burn it in the in
Speaker 9: the burnal right?
Speaker 7: Was she questioned about other potential murders and what was
Speaker 7: her response to that line of questioning?
Speaker 9: I don't believe she wasn't. In order to do that,
Speaker 9: they would have to be a missing person. And there
Speaker 9: was never anyone connected to her that they couldn't find.
Speaker 9: I see, you know, I mean if there was you know, Johnny,
Speaker 9: for example, and Johnny was there for six months and
Speaker 9: then supposedly moved on, but nobody could find Johnny, then
Speaker 9: they could question her about him. But whoever, whoever that
Speaker 9: third victim was, or if there were others, they never
Speaker 9: they were never noticed by anyone.
Speaker 7: Now what did Jimmy Brackett and Wayne Innes bring to
Speaker 7: the testimony? What did they say that was very valuable
Speaker 7: in the conviction of Sheila lebar.
Speaker 9: Well they and this is true of all the prosecution.
Speaker 9: What witnesses they testified as to her? How functional she was?
Speaker 9: You know, how could she be criminally saying if she
Speaker 9: could run a farm by herself? Uh, you know, I
Speaker 9: think the point was she was just a mean, nasty woman,
Speaker 9: not crazy at all. And and it's true she had
Speaker 9: never sought help for a for a mental problem. Nobody
Speaker 9: had ever tried to commit her. Nobody had ever as
Speaker 9: much as suggested that she see a psychiatrist. She was
Speaker 9: an eccentric woman who lived at the end of a
Speaker 9: dirt road, and nobody even thought about those things. But dude,
Speaker 9: Wayne and Jimmy as Sheila flirted with them a little
Speaker 9: bit from the from the defense table, were very very
Speaker 9: strong and saying that she's just a mean woman. And
Speaker 9: I'm pretty glad that I got out of there. And
Speaker 9: one of them, I forget which one has a vanity
Speaker 9: license played on his car that says I'm alive.
Speaker 7: I'm alive.
Speaker 9: Barely.
Speaker 7: Yeah. What we haven't talked about is is Sheila to
Speaker 7: do all of this had to have a fair amount
Speaker 7: of charisma. She was a dominant, sexually dominant and had
Speaker 7: that power of these women. These men, now I thought
Speaker 7: interesting was what did you know the considerable age difference
Speaker 7: between Sheila and doctor lebar Bill lebar So. But also
Speaker 7: at the same time, she was as from the photos itself,
Speaker 7: she was a good looking woman. I mean in the
Speaker 7: end when when she went to trial, when she's forty
Speaker 7: seven forty eight years old, she had gained considerable weight,
Speaker 7: and you know, maybe makeovers aren't quite so available in
Speaker 7: jail once you're behind bars, but as a young woman,
Speaker 7: maybe you can describe what she did look like, and
Speaker 7: well she eached their own I.
Speaker 9: Mean right up until the day she was arrested. She
Speaker 9: still had no trouble picking up men standing on the
Speaker 9: side of ther with her thumb out, and guys were
Speaker 9: stopping and taking her to the motel. So she certainly
Speaker 9: had Yeah, that's jennas Quah. But she was. She was
Speaker 9: a loud and voluptuous woman. She had a lot of
Speaker 9: these and those going for her. And you're right, I
Speaker 9: mean she did. She put get heavy at the end
Speaker 9: of her life. But you know, in the farmhouse she
Speaker 9: had a picture of herself naked on the wall, quite
Speaker 9: proud of herself, how she appeared in the all together,
Speaker 9: she found a great power in her body.
Speaker 7: Now, in this trial itself or after this trial? What
Speaker 7: what was uh Sheila le bar any statements to the
Speaker 7: media after this the conclusions? What was her what's what
Speaker 7: was her state after the trial? That it was there
Speaker 7: a sort of a recession of her odd behavior or
Speaker 7: was it a continuum of that same theme that she
Speaker 7: was an avenger? And what was really her cognizant of
Speaker 7: her realization of what had happened during that trial, and
Speaker 7: was there a demeanor any different from the beginning to
Speaker 7: the end.
Speaker 9: She went into a kind of denial, and I think
Speaker 9: a kind of denial maybe the states she was always
Speaker 9: in but from what I heard, she made the transition
Speaker 9: almost overnight into the mother hen of the female prison.
Speaker 9: And she seemed very happy in that role because she
Speaker 9: was the older, wiser one, and a lot of the
Speaker 9: other women in the prison were younger and appropriate age
Speaker 9: to be her daughters, and she would teach them life
Speaker 9: lessons and things like this, and seems to you know,
Speaker 9: redefine herself in that way. And maybe in a world
Speaker 9: where there aren't that many men, she found a little
Speaker 9: bit of peace.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 7: How was she How did she react to the same
Speaker 7: or infamy from having your book published and another book published,
Speaker 7: and the story being quite sensational and high profile. What
Speaker 7: was her reaction to that kind of attention?
Speaker 9: No, I can't. I can't give you an answer that
Speaker 9: I don't know, But I would be shocked if she
Speaker 9: wasn't outwardly annoyed and inwardly pleased I see, because I
Speaker 9: think that she would be very very mouthy about all
Speaker 9: the mistakes I made about her. But at the same time,
Speaker 9: she liked attention, and she certainly got her share of
Speaker 9: it there for a while.
Speaker 7: What was her reaction when she finally was sentenced to
Speaker 7: the life sentences itself. What was her demeanor? What did
Speaker 7: she do or not do well?
Speaker 8: You know she.
Speaker 9: I think that she showed more. She showed more emotion
Speaker 9: on the first day the trial when the jury was
Speaker 9: taken out to look at the farm and the farmhouse
Speaker 9: and where everything happened, and she knew she was probably
Speaker 9: getting her last look at the house in the land
Speaker 9: than she was when the jury, you know, sent her
Speaker 9: away to prison. She wasn't, you know, her choice was
Speaker 9: a mental hospital or a prison. She wasn't going to
Speaker 9: go free anyway. I think we'll defendants who think they're
Speaker 9: about to be let free and find out that they're
Speaker 9: going to spend the rest of their life in prison.
Speaker 9: They break down. But it's not going to be the
Speaker 9: mental hospital. It's going to be the lady's prison. I
Speaker 9: think she alls said, Okay, we'll make it work.
Speaker 7: Why did the jury travel to the farm and then
Speaker 7: the walmart? What was the the judge's idea in having
Speaker 7: them travel to those two destinations.
Speaker 9: I think that in the long run, it saved a
Speaker 9: lot of time and taxpayer money because they had a
Speaker 9: three dimensional idea of where everything was in the state
Speaker 9: with one another, and it cut down on the number
Speaker 9: of exhibits that need to be introduced and that sort
Speaker 9: of thing. Witnesses testifying as to how the house was
Speaker 9: laid out and things.
Speaker 7: Like that, and how what was the demeanor of we
Speaker 7: just spoke about it, but what was how was what
Speaker 7: was she Little Bar's reaction to going on this one
Speaker 7: one more visit?
Speaker 9: Very wistful. She she could have been her face first
Speaker 9: day out of drama school. She was putting out her
Speaker 9: emotions were on her sleeve for the jury to see,
Speaker 9: and she was she was very sad, looking out over
Speaker 9: with a little piece of paradise that she once reigned over.
Speaker 9: At the same time, she's wearing a belt around her
Speaker 9: waist and she makes one false move, somebody hits a
Speaker 9: button and she, you know, gets zapped into oblivion and falls.
Speaker 7: To the ground right now. What I thought interesting too,
Speaker 7: is that there was actually a few people that really
Speaker 7: really wanted to be on the on the jury, and
Speaker 7: it was people that were very interested in that. I
Speaker 7: found that quite odd that, you know, a lot of
Speaker 7: people want to avoid a jury like the plague, but
Speaker 7: there was actually, if I'm not correct, there was people
Speaker 7: that actually were very interested in being on that jury.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, well it's it was the thing that was happening.
Speaker 9: You know, I suspect and you know who knows. I'm
Speaker 9: not I'm not from New Hampshire obviously, but I think
Speaker 9: there it was the thing that was going on. There
Speaker 9: was a there was a certain maybe even some esteem
Speaker 9: that came with being on the jury that put her away.
Speaker 8: I know.
Speaker 9: Then, out of all the books I've written, this was
Speaker 9: the one that was most colored by localism. Localism, by
Speaker 9: my understanding, is is people in small towns that are
Speaker 9: away from civilization tend to distrust outsiders more than maybe
Speaker 9: some others of us. It's got sort of a mini
Speaker 9: form of xenophobia right in this house. Then, you know,
Speaker 9: this really takes place in the boondocks. And they say
Speaker 9: that people who live too far from the beaten path
Speaker 9: are often served by that seclusion occasionally because they have
Speaker 9: nasty habits they need to hide, and they're starting like
Speaker 9: true in Shielda's case, now, even though the dirt road
Speaker 9: that traveled past her house was technically a public road,
Speaker 9: she would Greek drivers or hikers with a shotgun. You know,
Speaker 9: what are you coming down here for?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 9: And uh, you know, and that might have been extreme,
Speaker 9: but it wasn't a typical of people in that area.
Speaker 9: When after Sheil was arrested, Kenneth County's mom wanted to
Speaker 9: go down to see the house where he died. She
Speaker 9: gets stopped by a neighbor lady, you know, you know,
Speaker 9: bonning me. Roth comes out and says, what are you doing?
Speaker 9: Are you going down my road? And of course they
Speaker 9: later on became best friends once once Carolyn explained.
Speaker 8: Who she was. But it's.
Speaker 9: It's a suspicious kind of area, one that I've learned
Speaker 9: the hard way.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 9: I ended up going to UH to New Hampshire less
Speaker 9: often than I had planned because at a little incident
Speaker 9: at Shield's house with the local police.
Speaker 7: Well what happened? Tell us about that?
Speaker 9: Well, uh, I went to UH. Well, first of all,
Speaker 9: I had difficulty. I was going to inform the local
Speaker 9: police that I was on my way to photograph the
Speaker 9: house and take a look at it. But I had
Speaker 9: the wrong address for the Epic Police department. So this
Speaker 9: is my fault that I go to the old Epic
Speaker 9: Police department which is locked up. I said, well, I'll
Speaker 9: just go down there. It'll take five minutes, I'll be in,
Speaker 9: i'll be out and take my pictures. Nobody will care, so.
Speaker 8: They cared.
Speaker 9: So yeah, so that a neighbor calls because there's a
Speaker 9: car going down the road. And what I didn't know
Speaker 9: was that the night before I got there, someone had
Speaker 9: stolen doctor Lebar's horse carriage out of his barn. And
Speaker 9: they said, well that's it. Next person who goes down there,
Speaker 9: we're going to arrest. So I go down there. I'm
Speaker 9: poking around taking pictures and cop car pulls up and
Speaker 9: cop gets out and says.
Speaker 8: Come here.
Speaker 9: I go over. I read the name and says it's
Speaker 9: you know, read his name and I said, I know you.
Speaker 9: You're in my book. You're one of the heroes of
Speaker 9: my book. And he says, well, your opinion of me
Speaker 9: is about to change because you're under a And they
Speaker 9: put the handcuffs down behind the back buscreen into the
Speaker 9: back of the car, and a mosquito landed right on
Speaker 9: my nose. But I couldn't get rid of it because
Speaker 9: that was handcuffed. So I had the blues. I said, look,
Speaker 9: you know, I'm not a teenager drinking down here by
Speaker 9: the Haunted House. They had problems down there with vandalism,
Speaker 9: you know, and they're having seances, but they were looking
Speaker 9: for somebody who was stealing carriages, and that was the
Speaker 9: first guy to come along after that. Uh, charges against
Speaker 9: me were eventually dropped and I got to keep the
Speaker 9: photos I took there. In the book, there's the pictures
Speaker 9: of the even the little out buildings behind the big
Speaker 9: house where Sheila used to put her heard lovers when
Speaker 9: they were bad, like little prison cells.
Speaker 7: So a little more intimate, intimate, intimate interaction in the story.
Speaker 9: Well, but being a pro, even even while I was
Speaker 9: handcuffed to a bench and being fingerprinted and booked, I
Speaker 9: managed to get into an interview, so I got some quote.
Speaker 9: I get some quotes out of the place because it
Speaker 9: was the same two cops that had been to Shield's house.
Speaker 9: So these are the two guys that go down that road.
Speaker 7: Oh that's incredible.
Speaker 9: Yeah yeah, but that's the only time anything like that,
Speaker 9: even remotely like that, has happened to me. Most most
Speaker 9: police officers realize I write law and order book. Bad
Speaker 9: guy always gets his in the end, and the cops
Speaker 9: are always the good guys.
Speaker 7: Who did you go to when normally people are these
Speaker 7: days are co authoring with police so they can have
Speaker 7: the incredible behind the scenes access. Who was most cooperative
Speaker 7: in when you were dealing with people to be able
Speaker 7: to write this book.
Speaker 9: Well, you know what I did because of the extreme localism.
Speaker 9: I found surrogates, and I found two ladies, one of
Speaker 9: whom was a former journalist, had been nominated once for
Speaker 9: a Pulitzer Prize, and I had them do my legwork.
Speaker 9: They were my eyes and ears for the last part
Speaker 9: of the research. And if The Burn Farm is a
Speaker 9: good book, and I think it is, you know, certainly, yes,
Speaker 9: Suzanne Danforth deserves a lot of the credit because she
Speaker 9: could go places I wasn't going to be allowed to
Speaker 9: go because that was Suzanne and she lived down the
Speaker 9: street right right.
Speaker 7: Yeah. I found that interesting. It's your kind of your
Speaker 7: CAPODI moment there where you needed or at least had
Speaker 7: a great advantage by having somebody that could deal with
Speaker 7: the locals, because again that case was so that's.
Speaker 9: An advantage of having my agent being a local.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 9: I said, look, I'm not gonna be able to go
Speaker 9: back there. They're going to throw me in jail if
Speaker 9: I go back. He said, well, here's here's a couple
Speaker 9: of people to call and I'll be able to help.
Speaker 7: You right now in terms of you said you've for
Speaker 7: our audience that may not know you have authored or
Speaker 7: co authored fifty books in your career, in your writing career.
Speaker 9: Is that true crime is just my most recent career.
Speaker 9: I was a sports writer for a while. For a while,
Speaker 9: I was one of the expert in JFK's assassination. I
Speaker 9: was a baseball historian for a time. This is just
Speaker 9: my This is the wayst hat I'm wearing is true,
Speaker 9: and it comes from incident when I was nine. I've
Speaker 9: been obsessed with psycho killers since I was a kid
Speaker 9: because my next door neighbor, a fourteen year old girl,
Speaker 9: was killed when I was nine years old. Wow and
Speaker 9: kay yeah k. She disappeared from a swimming hole on
Speaker 9: one side of my house and was found by rowa
Speaker 9: tracks on the other side of my house. So I
Speaker 9: grew up sort of knowing that the boogeyman had crossed
Speaker 9: my backfield. And I grew the other kid too. No, no,
Speaker 9: but I think I made some well in a sense.
Speaker 9: I think they did, because he later became a serial
Speaker 9: killer that was put away for other crimes I did.
Speaker 9: I did some work on it and tried to sell
Speaker 9: a book about the idea, but they don't like doing
Speaker 9: open cases. But anyway, with the first, uh, first fallible
Speaker 9: true crime case came along, which was Betrayal and Blood,
Speaker 9: I didn't have to reintroduce myself. In fact, I got
Speaker 9: a call from one of the editors and said, I
Speaker 9: think I got a case. It's perfect for you.
Speaker 7: So how many two crime books have you written so far?
Speaker 9: Michael, I think it's eight, uh and less less all.
Speaker 9: I covered the Pettit trial in new Haven, Connecticut for
Speaker 9: the New York Post. It's a case where the doctor
Speaker 9: lost his family to the home invasion. Yeah.
Speaker 7: That's a very high profile case too. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 7: eight and uh. Your latest is with Kensington as well.
Speaker 9: My latest is with Kensington. It's called Mommy Deadliest and
Speaker 9: that's the story about Stacey Castor in uh suburbs outside Syracuse,
Speaker 9: New York, who murdered two husbands and when the cops
Speaker 9: started to get close to her, she poisoned her daughter
Speaker 9: and put a suicide note on the bed saying I
Speaker 9: killed daddy, So she tried to kill her daughter to
Speaker 9: save her own skin. The daughter, you know, God bless her,
Speaker 9: did not die. Said I didn't write the suicide note,
Speaker 9: and that's how Stacey Caster got hers. Wow, they we're
Speaker 9: talking about that another time.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 9: The only, the only PAM I ever got for The
Speaker 9: Burned Farm was one woman who said, it's the most horrible,
Speaker 9: disgusting book I've ever read because it's so dirty. It's
Speaker 9: dirty from cover to cover. And I suspected they probably
Speaker 9: sold more copies than some of the raiders.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I laugh at that, But that's yeah, what's
Speaker 7: that would feel to a bunch of people.
Speaker 9: It's It's true, it is silty from cover to cover,
Speaker 9: but I don't think it's erotic. I mean, it has
Speaker 9: a certain sternem appeal for some people, I suppose, but
Speaker 9: sado maschism depends on the premise that bullies are sexy,
Speaker 9: and that just doesn't fit at all with my way
Speaker 9: of thinking. But it does. Yeah, you're dirty laundry in it.
Speaker 7: Well, certainly. I mean the torture is never I mean,
Speaker 7: there's no nice torture. There's no way of describing torture
Speaker 7: to uh, you know, to to not hurt some people's sensibilities,
Speaker 7: I guess, or offend some people certain sensibilities. But those
Speaker 7: are the people that might not pick up this through
Speaker 7: crime book, you know, and maybe go to a story
Speaker 7: that's a little bit lighter and it's in it's Uh.
Speaker 9: Did you read the other book about Shila Labar? No?
Speaker 7: I didn't know.
Speaker 9: Oh, yeah, we neither. I understand there's a lot more
Speaker 9: a lot more in it about Sheila's I'll Bring You
Speaker 9: in Alabama, but a lot less about the details of
Speaker 9: what made her tick. Yeah, I left all the words in.
Speaker 7: Well, I don't know. Once you've read this book, I
Speaker 7: don't there's not much desire, I think to go read
Speaker 7: another book about this. It seems to be the definitive
Speaker 7: story about that.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 7: I hate to say that about another author, But at
Speaker 7: the same time, I think that this was a great read,
Speaker 7: and you really really get the reader involved in the
Speaker 7: horror of the whole thing. I mean, it's incredible the
Speaker 7: we've saved a lot for the audience. We certainly didn't
Speaker 7: go into your details. But I think people have an
Speaker 7: imagination about what this woman was capable of, and I
Speaker 7: think you certainly expressed that in the of You. So
Speaker 7: I think people will be anxious to go get this
Speaker 7: book and read for themselves.
Speaker 9: It's uh, I help near you Amazon dot Com all
Speaker 9: of that.
Speaker 7: Absolutely.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think it's available electronically too. Now I'm not
Speaker 9: sure it might be available for Kindle now, well, I
Speaker 9: hope so.
Speaker 7: I hope so because I just read some stats on
Speaker 7: ebooks taking over hardcover books and mass paperback in the
Speaker 7: last years. So I went to it's moving faster than
Speaker 7: I thought.
Speaker 9: So, you know, I I remember talking to my agent
Speaker 9: about five years ago saying, what does this mean electronic versions?
Speaker 9: He says, you'll know someday, you'll know some at least
Speaker 9: I get my royalties no matter what. For manager.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's absolutely. I think it's all good for the
Speaker 7: writer because I think that the the the paperback and
Speaker 7: the hardcover. Maybe the hardcover will disappear to a great
Speaker 7: degree except for collectors, but the book, the actual physical book,
Speaker 7: I don't think will disappear. I think the e book
Speaker 7: will bring in the young reader who is you know,
Speaker 7: comfortable with that with the e reader, and a lot
Speaker 7: of people that are going to get on and you know,
Speaker 7: get the technology because it is a trend. I don't
Speaker 7: think it can hurt the book. The book has been
Speaker 7: around a long time, and I think that because of
Speaker 7: great writing and great stories. I think it's just going
Speaker 7: to expand, and I think these formats may alter the
Speaker 7: way books are sold, but I still think that the
Speaker 7: book itself is in great shape still so.
Speaker 9: And I love books.
Speaker 7: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 9: I really wish I had switched phones earlier in the interview.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, we'll have to have you back on, Michael,
Speaker 7: because you're a great guest, and obviously you've got a
Speaker 7: truckload of books that we could talk about. Sometimes I
Speaker 7: veer off a little bit of the talk about serial
Speaker 7: killers and talk about other true crime stories are very,
Speaker 7: very fascinating stories. So I was very interested in some
Speaker 7: of the books that you've written, your background about JFK
Speaker 7: and the CIA and on all that is. So we'll
Speaker 7: have to have you back on for a show that's
Speaker 7: a little slightly different but still will interest an audience
Speaker 7: for sure. I'm certain.
Speaker 9: Thanks Dan, I appreciate that. Well.
Speaker 7: I want to thank you very much Michael for coming
Speaker 7: on and talking about your great book, Burn Farm, the
Speaker 7: story of Shila Lebar, And thank you very much for
Speaker 7: appearing on the program, and thank you for a great interview,
Speaker 7: Michael Benson.
Speaker 8: Thank you.
Speaker 7: Have a good night, Michael, good night, my bye. You've
Speaker 7: been listening to the program True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history, and the authors that are
Speaker 7: written about them. Good Night,