Could The Epping Murders Have Been Prevented?
July 3, 2008
Carolyn Lodge said she had concerns about her son’s relationship with Sheila LaBarre from the very beginning. Reached by phone last week, days after LaBarre was sentenced to life in prison without parole for murdering Lodge’s son, Kenneth Countie, Lodge said she had worried for her son’s safety while he was with LaBarre.
Although she was glad to see her son’s murderer brought to justice and held responsible for her crimes, it doesn’t ease the pain of her loss. “I was happy with the outcome, but it should have been done years ago,” Lodge said. “It won’t bring my son back.”
On June 20, a Rockingham County Superior Court jury found that LaBarre was sane when she murdered Countie in 2006 and Michael Deloge in 2005, foiling her defense team’s efforts to show that she was not guilty by reason of insanity. But the defense plans to file an appeal, and the case is likely to drag on for more than a year.
Defense attorney Jeffrey Denner maintains that LaBarre was insane when she murdered the two ex-boyfriends on her Epping farm. “Sheila LaBarre was crazy. Sheila LaBarre was insane,” he said during a phone interview last week. “These are not the acts of a rational person.”
Full story from Matt Kanner in The Wire.
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