LITMIR.BIZ

      By the time NHSP Lieutenant Mark Mudgett returned to the LaBarre farm, he noticed a fresh line of yellow tape strung between two trees at some seemingly random point on the dirt road. He shook his head in amusement, inching his police cruiser underneath the sagging Mylar barrier. Estabrook must have kicked out some reporters, he thought.

      Mudgett parked along the end of the dirt road and walked in the yard. He found Estabrook overseeing the examination of the burn pit.

      “You ready to go in?” the lead investigator asked him.

      “Okay, Bob, let’s do it.”

      They found the front door unlocked and walked in slowly. The interior of the beautiful cape-style house was rustic. A lot of exposed wood, uncarpeted floors. There were boxes thrown haphazardly around the place. Mudgett led a small cadre of technicians, decked out in white disposable jumpsuits and paper booties, deeper into the residence. They needed to search, photograph and catalogue an infinite number of items, all or none of which might be helpful to the investigation. They were prepared to invest several days to this crime scene. The group was stone quiet, except for the regular pop of a flashbulb and click of a camera shutter.

      There’s something both somber and horrifying about walking through a home where a murder has occurred. Even police with court orders can’t help but feel like they’re intruding in someone else’s living room, thumbing through photographs and bank statements. Each step is taken as delicately as a boot camp recruit in a minefield. Every scratch on a floor, every smudge on a window, every bit of lint beneath a sofa holds the potential secret to a crime.

      Beyond the puzzle of atoms lies the puzzle of the soul. What happened here to cause the ultimate in violence? Such things don’t stick to counter surfaces or appear under bi-chromatic latent powder. But they don’t escape through open windows or vanish down drains. Dust may be witness to crime, but energy is witness to rage. And that energy haunts a room or a building that remains quiet and undisturbed while judges ponder their intrusion. That energy is sometimes called “evil,” and it screams in the quiet of that room until someone can exorcise it.

      Mudgett could always feel the energy at a crime scene, and things like blood splatter, bullet holes and dead bodies only amplified the passive energy coursing through walls.

      There was something extra creepy about the home. The deep, dark woods setting, the smell of putridity and death in the air. Peter Odom would later say that walking through the home, especially at night, reminded him of a scene from The Blair Witch Project, the unsettled feeling that something dangerous and undreamt was still lurking in the darkness.

      Other than a mess of boxes and furniture, there didn’t seem to be any obvious signs of trauma in the house. Dismemberment of a body would cause a great amount of blood loss, even if it was done postmortem. The mattress’s previous location was the first place they checked.

      Mudgett already knew there was a first floor bedroom but that Countie had slept in the living room and that the mattress was kept on the floor. They inched their way toward the living room via the kitchen. Mudgett noticed something on the cabinets. Brownish spots, tiny like spray.

      He turned to a technician. “Blood?”

      State Police Forensics Crime Lab Technician Tim Jackson squinted and scanned the cabinet door, which was close to the kitchen sink. He found what he thought was the largest droplet. Jackson then swabbed it with a piece of filter paper and added a drop of phenolphthalein.

      “Presumptive positive for human blood,” he said.

      In the living room, they found more brown droplets. There was an empty space where the mattress had been. Mudgett noted brownish drops along the wall. They were about three feet off the floor and ran in an area about six feet long.

      Lab Technician Kim Rumrill pointed a blue latex finger toward the wall. “Cast-off,” she said. The size, shape and color were all consistent with blood. Then she followed the droplets along the floor in the walkway area of the dining room and back into the kitchen. This time, Rumrill noticed additional cast-off blood on the ceiling by the cabinet. There was a wood stove in the kitchen and more tiny spots of coffee-colored blood were on the floor.

      “Here’s a little something,” she said. A heel print, in blood, on the floor by the stove. So far, it was the largest bit of blood they’d seen.

      With his feet firmly planted in one spot, Mudgett looked around the home. He could smell something odd. Could it be a decomposing body part? It smelled putrid.

      The lieutenant kneeled down at a heating vent on the floor. The vent was right next to where the mattress had lain. It was forced hot air, and the smell was definitely coming from the register. He could see more small drops of blood on the metal plate and in the ductwork, but there was something more pungent than that. It smelled like vomit.

      Jackson looked through the first floor bedroom and found it in shambles. There were cardboard boxes containing letters, greeting cards and other mementoes. He could see what looked like two brown stains on the boxes. More blood? he asked himself.

      Among the papers was a single-spaced typed document labeled “Power of Attorney.” Jackson scanned it quickly. It began:

      I, Kenneth Michael Countie, DOB-JULY 18, 1981 SS# 029-XX-XXXX do hereby grant and give complete and total FULL POWER OF ATTORNEY to SHEILA LaBARRE, ESQUIRE of P.O. BOX XX, RAYMOND NH 03077 to talk to Social Services, any and all police departments, or to anyone regarding any and all business pertaining to me.

      It gave Sheila the power to receive Countie’s mail, sign his checks, speak for him in court and deal with virtually any business or personal matter on his behalf. Then it went on to say:

      Additionally, I only TRUST Sheila LaBarre and do completely feel safe and secure in her presence. She had helped me to relocate to New Hampshire. She had helped me by giving me employment and a nice place in which to reside. She had added my name to her address…

      It finished with something Jackson considered odd, certainly not something one would normally put in a power of attorney:

      Sheila LaBarre has a legally taped recording of me, having informed me throughout the tape that New Hampshire is a two party consent to tape statement and I did grant permission under free will to be tape recorded. This tape is my second sworn statement regarding additional information which Social Services in the State of MA should hear. Please listen to the tape when it is typed and faxed, please take it seriously…

      Although the paper was written in the first person as if Kenneth Countie had composed it, it was obvious Sheila had put the whole thing together. Clearly, the “please take it seriously…” line indicated this was something important to her. At the bottom, both signed (Countie, in tiny letters like a grade-schooler; LaBarre, in sweeping arcs) and dated (“3/10/06,” about two weeks earlier) the document.

      Jackson was ready to make his way up to the second floor when he noticed a chair at the foot of the stairwell. He saw red-brown flecks on the arm, but the seat cushion was missing.

      Rumrill asked Mudgett to come into the kitchen. He took a gaze at the heel print. “First impressions?” he asked her.

      “Not what I thought we’d find,” she confessed. “We still have to hit it with the LCV, but I’m surprised at the lack of concentration of blood. No pools yet. No puddles or big stains. So far, it’s all tiny amounts.”

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