BRENTWOOD - Once police found a piece of a human arm along with a half-melted knife in a burn pile outside Sheila LaBarre's home, Epping police Sgt. Sean Gallagher kicked open her front door in search of Kenneth Countie.

Minutes later, LaBarre walked into the yard and welcomed police to do a room-to-room search with her on March 24, 2006, Gallagher testified yesterday.

"She was very happy, boisterous," Gallagher said in front of a packed courtroom. "The only way I can describe it is that I felt like I was on a tour."

LaBarre's defense lawyers began a two-day bid in Rockingham County Superior Court to toss out evidence against their client, which included a search of her secluded Epping horse farm and her interviews with police.

LaBarre hopes to mount an insanity defense when she goes on trial in March for Countie's first-degree murder.

Prosecutors are revealing new and graphic details of how they found a panicked, ash-laden LaBarre outside her home after she allegedly incinerated Countie's remains. Countie, 24, of Wilmington, Mass., was LaBarre's boyfriend.

It wasn't the first time police had been to LaBarre's home. Gallagher told the courtroom that his department had a standing policy on how to deal with LaBarre, 49. No police officer went to her house alone.

"She had tumultuous, violent domestic relationships in the past," Gallagher said. "She had guns at the residence. And there were sexual overtones to her contact with police."

Long before she became known as the animated, red-haired woman charged with Countie's murder, LaBarre had been known to police for 20 years, regularly complaining about her road not being plowed by the town or people trespassing on her property.

Police began monitoring her relationship with Countie in late February 2006 when his mother, Carolynn Lodge of Tewksbury, Mass., repeatedly called them to express concern about her learning-disabled son.

Epping police arrived at the home and briefly interviewed him in late February.

The first search of LaBarre's property on March 24, 2006, was prompted after she called Gallagher at 1 a.m. LaBarre told him Countie had left, then played a tape recording she made in which she claimed Countie admitted to molesting children.

Gallagher testified he could hear Countie vomiting during the recording and LaBarre chastising him for throwing up and passing out.

LaBarre's lawyer Bradford Bailey suggested police didn't find the matter of Countie's safety as urgent as they do now.

A week before Countie's murder, police were called to the Epping Wal-Mart on March 17 because LaBarre was taking photographs of store aisles and security cameras.

When Gallagher got to the store, he found a sickly looking Countie sitting in a wheelchair with cuts and bruises to his face, looking far worse than the first time he had met him about a month earlier.

Between the Wal-Mart encounter and the search for Countie's remains, police didn't go to the home to check on Countie again, Bailey said.

"You didn't do anything proactive regarding Kenneth Countie," Bailey said. "You didn't go to 70 Oak Hill Road in that six- to seven-day period."

"My concern was growing," Gallagher responded. "But, yes, we didn't check."

One day passed between Gallagher's initial search of LaBarre's property and the police returning with a search warrant for a more extensive investigation.

Bailey suggested police didn't have enough evidence during their initial search to trespass into LaBarre's yard. The yard is sealed off with a large gate that crosses the road, a gate police say blocked a public way.

LaBarre's demeanor went from inviting to panicked once police returned with the search warrant, according to Epping police Chief Gregory Dodge.

Assistant Attorney General James Boffetti quizzed Dodge about how he found LaBarre, her face covered in ashes, burning what police later discovered were Countie's remains. LaBarre told Dodge she had been burning "rabbits" throughout the night but had been saving bones for police, some of which she collected in a white, plastic Wal-Mart bag.

"There's just too many bones to be a rabbit, but I put in here all these bones for you," LaBarre said, according to Dodge.

When the chief followed LaBarre into her home, she began ranting, he said.

"Just shoot me because I can't take any more of the stress," LaBarre said, during a recorded interview. "I don't know what happened. He's been stealing money from me. Look at the disorder here."

LaBarre repeatedly told police she didn't know what happened to Countie and that he had left her property days earlier.

"He was threatening to kill himself. He was threatening to set himself on fire," LaBarre said. "When I played the tape recorder for Gallagher, isn't that tape-recorded live (by police)? He was a horrible person. Horrible! I burned those (expletive) Wal-Mart shoes."

Today, lawyers are expected to review how state police Sgt. Robert Estabrook, the lead investigator in the case, approached his interview with LaBarre at the Epping police station.