Dear Sheila | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

i mean the thing i think it's important to say about kevin is that he is a really like deeply nice guy you know
he's not the kind of person you would meet and think like oh he's like a dark you know
lost soul i mean he is he's he's kind of jolly you know he's he does impressions he's like deeply funny he's
very snarky and just really really sweet and so i kind of didn't realize that he had been pulled this far in and
that you know things were getting kind of bad for him really for a little while i i just knew that he was corresponding
with a serial killer and yeah that was weird but he was also really nice so i really
didn't think i didn't think about it that way for a while this is rebecca levoy and she's talking
about a reporter named kevin flynn rebecca is now married to kevin but when she first met him in 2007 he was working
at a tv station he was married to someone else and had a kid he was 37 years old and like rebecca said he was
exchanging letters with a serial killer flirtatious letters i'm phoebe judge this is criminal
[Music] so we were i should say i was waiting in the lobby of the police station
waiting for someone to give me a comment before the six o'clock news about what was going on this is kevin flynn and the
wall was sort of paper thin and i heard two guys walked by and i recognized the voice um of one of them as being with
the state police and he said i have seen more [ __ ] in my life that you would not believe
and then he said do you think she chopped up the body before she burned it or burned it and then
dismembered it and that's when i heard them say what is what is uh what is sheila's date of
birth and i knew okay they're looking for somebody named sheila that sheila was sheila labar a woman who
lived on a horse farm in the outskirts of a town named epping in southeast new hampshire
kevin was reporting not far from epping where police had found the burn body it was 2006.
labar had come to new hampshire from alabama some 30 years earlier responding to a personal ad from a widow doctor and
he she responded to the lonely hearts ad by sending topless photos of herself and so
she's like in her late 20s he's in his i'm thinking like his late 60s and she comes to town and she
moves in on the farm is super affectionate and sexual with him but also would go around town dressed very
provocatively and they had a nickname for her around town which was sheila the peeler
because she would definitely like to flash her cleavage and she was known for answering
the door for deliverymen wearing um lingerie or being naked when when like the fedex guy would come
she would answer completely naked yeah you know the the plumber uh yeah anybody uh the the the local police actually had
a policy that if uh if one of them had to respond to any incident with sheila a second
officer had to go along this is like for a police force of i think they had like
five or six guys but she they literally had to have backup dealing with sheila not because she was violent because but
because she was there was the risk that she would do something sexually provocative
and then you know sort of you know put the patrolmen in a compromising position where he has to
say defend himself from an accusation he came on to her so they needed yeah they needed absolutely they needed
a witness to sort of verify that you know that sheila wasn't um uh you know that sheila was the
instigator of any sort of bad behavior [Music] the guy's name was kenneth county he was
about 21 years old he was developmentally delayed sheila went on a blind date with kenny
and kenny ended up never sort of going back home to to his his house and his family
he basically immediately moved in to sheila's farm the last time anyone had seen kenny he and labar were in a
walmart kenny had bruises all over his face and labar was pushing him in a wheelchair
two police officers showed up and asked kenny if he was okay she wouldn't let him answer wheeled him out of the store
and that's basically the last time anyone saw him kenny's mother was growing more
concerned about her son and called the cops to do a welfare check when they went to sheila's farm
what they discovered was a burn barrel you know it was like just like a like a oil drum
that you would throw refuse and burn leaves or whatever and they found it was smoldering and they started to poke
around in the barrel and they saw what looked like a human femur with a sort of glob
of burnt flesh on the ball joint at the top and uh you know they realized that the guy that
they had been looking for and was the that they were trying to check on the welfare on that you know
it was too late he was he was dead and killed in a horrible way of course the bar was not at the farm
when the cops arrived they combed the hundred acres for any evidence they could find they even flushed the septic
tank and they did find the remains of another victim a man named michael delos who had been missing for two years
they also found some human toes but were never able to figure out who they belonged to
labar in the meantime was on the run it was another week before the cops caught her in massachusetts
she dyed her hair and was staying with some guy she had just met he saw her face on tv and turned her in sheila
labar was arrested in a taco bell and charged with murder [Music] i didn't want to just sort of you know
reach out to sheila uh immediately when she was put behind bars i think that you know i knew that
it was going to be at least one maybe two years before she um she went to trial so
i was i i waited and and didn't write to her until christmas time and i figured by that time all of
her friends who had been you know by her and a lot of her family would have disowned her and that would
have been a pretty lonely time and i guess i thought this is the time she's going to really want to read a letter
from somebody who sounds like they're interested in in her story according to kevin the first letter said
something like i'm sure this is a difficult time for you someday i hope to speak to you merry christmas
and he got a letter back and then another so they went back and forth it got kind
of intense i remember reading uh one of the letters that sheila sent to him this
is rebecca lavoie who we heard from at the beginning um she drew on the outside of the envelope
a picture of a rose vine and they were sort of crossing each other that the rose vine and it sort of
made like a crucifix shape there was a poem that she had written inside the letter inside this
illustrated envelope and it was called two roses on the cross i think it was called
and i remember reading this and thinking like you know whoa like she's you know she's you know she's really something
and then i remember turning to kevin and saying you know is she like you know kind of going coming after you a little
bit after enough correspondence labar agreed to let kevin visit at this point he was thinking this could
be more than just a tv interview he was thinking about writing a book sort of early on she she sat down and
and was very demure and very coquettish and was oozing of southern charm and first of
all i could see why men would fall for her and do what she wanted them to do because she was
very flattering at the end of of the conversation she was trying to get me to find
her animals from the farm her horses her rabbits what do you mean she's like straight up saying can you go check on
my rabbit she said can you find them for me yeah can you find them for me and oh and i i think the idea was
where wherever they went i know that one of them is dead you know passed away and i can't i think
i shared that with her and she was you know devastated but she thinks that what i'm going to do is find her animals
and hold them for safe keeping and uh until she is acquitted and can come home and that's you know sort of
where i realized like i have been totally sucked in no i didn't go looking for the animals i mean i wasn't gonna if
i knew where the horse was i wasn't gonna put it in my backyard um but but i mean you're kind of in it
deep here like yeah when do you when do you realize this is having some like impact on like your personal life
your professional life it was when it was when the um the mailing got to the point where i was
i was getting mail prison mail from sheila at work and people were opening up the mail and
reading the letters out loud um you know as as entertainment um did you walk in on them
reading the letters out loud no i would no i wasn't even there i came back like then after a day off
and someone's you know i said someone handed me a letter that had been open and i'm like oh okay and then it wasn't
until delayed until somebody said you know they opened the letter and they they they read it at the morning meeting out
loud and uh you know i was i was i was more than embarrassed i was i felt kind of violated why were you
embarrassed what would have been in it that would have been embarrassing to you i i i
think she was she was talking sweet to me um i think i might have encouraged it because i thought it just meant
the relation to the you know the the relationship was going on that i was you know still going to be
uh able to get land this big interview when it was all over and you were you were married though yeah yeah and about
my relationship i i wasn't romantic i wasn't trying to you know seduce her in any way but it's kind of i
i i i believe that kind of of course but like it's kind of like you are in a relationship like your seduction can't
feel too false or flirting and all that stuff because she might pick up on that so you kind of do
like necessarily enter into this little bit of a it's a the reason you were embarrassed
right like there was something there that you were doing that you must have thought
i should be a little embarrassed about yeah i i think you're right i you know i i feel like i kind of lost
my way with the story [Music] so i i wrote a letter to um a prosecutor that i um that i knew and i i obviously
you know they were aware that sheila was talking to a reporter and i i try to explain myself to you know in a friendly
way and saying look i i just want you to know you know i'm not trying to mess up your
case i'm not trying to solve it for you i'm really just you know there to gather
information and i said something along the lines that hey if she said something to me you
know you would know about it and under you know the the judicial ethics rules of the state
that could be interpreted as the state soliciting my help with that phrase i totally screwed the
whole thing up i now i now i could be called as a witness in the case and so now i'm
i have a conflict and i can't do the story anymore kevin lost his job at the tv station his
first marriage ended around that same time we asked him if his fixation on the bar
had anything to do with his divorce and he said no he thinks it's the other way around that
his general unhappiness with life made him a bit reckless and more likely to engage with the bar in the first place i
mean what i've i've come to understand was at that time in my life i was deeply unhappy
you know in a way that i couldn't articulate or couldn't really feel i guess advancing the story and getting
closer and closer gave me some sense of accomplishment that temporarily filled the void that i had
and so when it was when it was over i had lost my job i had lost my marriage i was
drinking too much i was gaining weight and i had a hell of a book sheila barr was charged with two murders
kenneth county and michael delosh she pled not guilty by reason of insanity the jury found that she was
uh criminally uh responsible for their deaths they didn't buy the insanity defense and then
she went to state prison and she has been moved from one state prison to another because with
her kind of personality disorder she she gets into trouble and she threatens people and she threatens to burn people
she's currently serving two consecutive life sentences she has no possibility of
parole kevin isn't in touch with the bar anymore he realized it wasn't healthy although he does stay in contact with
her sister they're pretty good friends on facebook [Music] criminal is produced by eric menno
lauren spore and me julian alexander does our episode art kevin's book about the sheila labar case is called wicked
intentions the sheila labar murders you can find all of our episodes on itunes or at our website
thisiscriminal.com we're on facebook and twitter at criminal show and we'd love to hear from
you like what we're doing are you getting sick of it let us know and leave us a review on
itunes i'm phoebe judge and this is criminal [Music] you

Working as a reporter for a TV station in New Hampshire, Kevin Flynn was covering the capture and arrest of a female serial killer named Sheila LaBarre. As he grew more and more obsessed with LaBarre’s story, Flynn decided to write her a letter. She wrote back. Their correspondence became flirtatious, and eventually he went to visit her in person.

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode 10 originally published September 26, 2014 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-ten-dear-sheila-9-26-2014

Brief Summary

Kevin Flynn's correspondence with serial killer Sheila LaBar leads to personal and professional turmoil in this gripping true crime episode.

Key points

Kevin's Unusual Correspondence. Rebecca reveals that Kevin was corresponding with a serial killer, which she initially found weird.
Sheila's Provocative Reputation. Sheila Labar was notorious in town for her provocative behavior, earning her the nickname 'Sheila the Peeler.'
The Consequences of Obsession. Kevin reflects on how his fixation on Sheila led to personal and professional turmoil.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He's kind of jolly, you know?

Describing Kevin's personality.

WatchSep 2, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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