BRENTWOOD — Sheila LaBarre had a "hypersexualized" appetite and targeted mentally impaired men for years before finally killing two of them, prosecutors said.
LaBarre's insanity trial began yesterday in Rockingham County Superior Court, with prosecutors saying jurors will hear disturbing firsthand accounts of her need to control men.
That need eventually drove her to kill Kenneth Countie, 24, of Wilmington, Mass., and Michael Deloge, 37, of Portsmouth, they said.
While prosecutors acknowledge LaBarre may suffer from mental illness, they seek to prove she was not insane when her two former boyfriends were killed.
"She had constant sexual urges and fantasies that are beyond the norm," said Ann Rice, associate attorney general. "It's all wrapped up in the defendant's need to control and dominate. It justified the need to beat them and humiliate them and, at the same time, derive sexual satisfaction out of it."
Conversations about her proclivities are on some of the 300 mini cassettes LaBarre, 49, of Epping used to record 15 years worth of telephone calls, interrogations of her lovers and singing.
Before opening statements, jurors yesterday toured the tree-lined property where LaBarre once lived. The small, white cape has been vandalized, making it too dangerous for jurors to go inside, according to police. The property sits on a dirt road, surrounded by open fields. No other homes are within sight.
Prosecutors wanted jurors to look at a granite hitching post right outside the front door, a large barn and several outbuildings.
As jurors boarded a pair of yellow buses to head back to court, LaBarre closed her tear-filled eyes, lifted her head, and inhaled deeply before being led away by deputies.
Over the next several days, jurors will hear some of the tapes and LaBarre's videotaped interviews with state police.
LaBarre is fighting two counts of first-degree murder in the killing of Deloge sometime between August and November 2005 and Countie in March 2006. LaBarre killed Deloge by beating him in the head with a 4-foot chain. She killed Countie about six months later.
Rice said LaBarre had a history of threatening her lovers, dating back to her so-called common law husband, Dr. Wilfred LaBarre, in 1987. Rice said Sheila LaBarre was able to gain all of the doctor's assets by repeatedly threatening him.
She regularly sought control over her boyfriends — including Countie and Deloge — by making them sign over power of attorney, then distancing them from their families by claiming they were child molesters.
That didn't work with one former boyfriend, Yvon Blais of Derry, who said he tried to break off his relationship with LaBarre after only a couple of months. LaBarre responded by coming after him.
"She went to his mother's house and kicked down the door," Rice said.
Blais is expected to testify about his relationship with LaBarre as is ex-boyfriend James Brackett of Raymond.
Prosecutors said they believe LaBarre burned Countie and Deloge, then pulverized their bones to hide the killings. She told neighbors and friends both victims had left her isolated 115-acre farm.
Defense lawyer Brad Bailey said LaBarre was able to maintain a seemingly ordinary, day-to-day life in between the murders, but showed signs of insanity when it came to her relationship with men. LaBarre claims she died in a car crash several years ago, but was restored to life by God as an "avenging angel," Bailey said.
"As elusive as it may sound to you, you will know insanity when you see it, and you will see it in this case," Bailey said. "This isn't the type of case where there will be evidence where someone is parading around naked or howling at the moon."
Bailey told the jury that LaBarre's statements to friends and family demonstrated she suffered from mental illness for years.
"I want you to think of a woman who beats these men with sticks, a woman who thinks all the men in her life are pedophiles, child molesters and child abusers," Bailey said.
LaBarre believed all the men in her life, including her last two boyfriends, "were having sexual relations with their own mothers and were victims of incest."
Carolyn Lodge and Donna Boston, mothers of the two victims, quietly sat in the front row of the court gallery yesterday, sometimes holding hands.
LaBarre's sister, Lynn Noojin, later testified she believed their father and his friend sexually abused Sheila as a child. She said her sister's odd behavior appeared to intensify in 2000 after Wilfred LaBarre died.
"She was using that telephone (dating) service," said Noojin of Dawson, Ala. "She said that pedophiles were drawn to her. She could talk to them long enough and to know they were a pedophile. She was obsessed with that kind of person. She taped some of them. She played a couple of them (for me.)"
Bailey suggested Noojin's account was just a sample of the kind of crazed behavior jurors would hear about over the next several days.
"I want you to think of a woman who polygraphs her lovers ... forces and compels these men to admit things that they never did or never happened, a woman who believes being a notary of the public gives her special powers," Bailey said. "She believes those powers give her the ability to be the judge, jury and executioner."
