Apr 27, 2006 10:16 am US/Eastern
Police Probe Chance Others Killed On Epping Farm
CONCORD, NH (CBS4) ―
New Hampshire state police are looking at the possibility that more than one person was allegedly murdered on Sheila LaBarre's horse farm in Epping.
LaBarre has been charged with killing Kenneth Countie, formerly of Wilmington, Massachusetts, and burning his remains on the farm last month.
According to a report in the New Hampshire Union Leader, investigators are reviewing missing persons records and examining evidence to see if more than one person was killed at the horse farm.
Capt. Russell Conte, head of the state police Major Crime Unit, told the paper authorities are checking to see if burn piles found on the farm contained remains from people other than Countie. In addition to checking missing persons reports, police want to hear from the public about anyone who had contact with LaBarre who hasn't been seen or heard from afterward.
"If people have a suspicion, we would like to know that," Conte said.
The murder investigation is one of the largest in New Hampshire's history.
"The only one, to my knowledge, that would come close would be the two murders of the Dartmouth College professors" in 2001, Assistant Attorney General Peter Odom said Wednesday.
"That was one house. This was a house, a barn and 115 acres," he said.
The two married professors were murdered in their home in 2001 by two teenage boys seeking money.
Odom said more than 100 people were involved in a physical "line search" of the farm. During the 17-day search, authorities say they found charred human bones and Countie's blood on a knife.
He declined to elaborate on evidence disclosed at a hearing Tuesday in Goffstown. He said forensic work in the case continues at the state crime laboratory in Concord, by a forensic anthropologist in Orono, Maine, and a forensic dentistry expert in San Antonio, Texas.
The amount of material "is not large," Odom said, but forensic examination is painstaking, tedious work.
"We'd love to have it done in an hour the way they do on TV," he said, but finishing the work and preparing the case for a grand jury will take several months.
LaBarre's lawyer, Jeffrey Denner, declined to comment on the possibility there are other victims. He said LaBarre will plead not guilty in Superior Court and her mental state is "very relative to any defense that we make."
"I have no intention at this point to bring an insanity defense, but I'm not ruling out anything," he said.
(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
