The snow had just stopped falling when the young man came stumbling forlornly down the dirt road.

Bruce Allen, a dairy farmer, had been approached by other young men in need of help over the years, but this one was in the worst shape he'd ever seen. His name was Michael and his face was gashed and dripping blood into the snow. His ear was ripped and his skin was a mottled olive.

As he passed Allen's place that winter morning two years ago, the slight man whispered a single hoarse word, the farmer recalled. ''Sheila," he said, glancing anxiously back up the road. ''Sheila."

©Unknown

Shiela LaBarre

Allen knew exactly whom he meant: Sheila LaBarre, the strange and tempestuous woman who lived at the end of the road. Over the years LaBarre had become notorious in this rural town (pop. 7,000) for her threatening use of guns, her sleek silver Mercedes, and her incendiary temper. A sturdy woman with a mane of reddish-brown hair, the Alabama native had been the subject of talk ever since she strode onto a local airstrip nearly 20 years ago wearing a leopard print flying outfit and seeking flying lessons. The pilots nicknamed her ''Sheila The Peeler" in hopes that her provocative stride might culminate in her peeling off her clothes.

But what had initially appeared to be flirtatious eccentricity fast developed into something much more menacing. Many had long wondered about the succession of young men they had seen slouched in the passenger's seat of her truck, each of whom seemed to disappear from town within months. When LaBarre was charged in April with first-degree murder in the killing and burning of Kenneth Countie, 24, a mentally impaired man from Wilmington, Mass., many here were horrified, but not surprised. And as police questioned Allen afterward, the laconic farmer asked the question that was on the minds of many.

''What about the others?" Allen asked. ''Where's Jimmy? Where's Wayne? And Mikey?"

It is a question of no little interest to police who are trying to find at least one of LaBarre's former boyfriends, who is missing. In piles of burning material found just outside LaBarre's tired white farmhouse, investigators found three different sets of bone fragments, some of which were later identified as human. Inside the house, they discovered items belonging to Michael Deloge, a New Hampshire man who was known to locals as ''Mikey" during the two years he lived with LaBarre. Last month, investigators took DNA samples from his mother's home in Somersworth, and Deloge, 38, has been declared a missing person.

LaBarre, who will turn 48 in the Strafford County House of Corrections in Dover on the Fourth of July, did not respond to inquiries from the Globe, but, in several letters made public, she has proclaimed her innocence in Countie's death. New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General Peter Odom and Epping police declined to discuss the case, which is expected to be presented to a grand jury this week.

Meanwhile, Allen's question can be answered -- at least in part. Jimmy Brackett, LaBarre's boyfriend for several years, is alive and well in New Hampshire, according to a family member who spoke to the Globe. Wayne Ennis, who was married to LaBarre for two years, was deported to his native Jamaica two years ago. But some still wonder about the death of Wilfred ''Bill" LaBarre, the beloved country chiropractor known as Doc with whom Sheila LaBarre had a stormy relationship for 13 years.

Citing a ''significant history of domestic violence," Epping police requested an autopsy after Bill LaBarre was found dead on his kitchen floor in 2000, according to the medical examiner's records. LaBarre was found to have died of natural causes. But when Sheila LaBarre's name hit the news this spring, Dr. Thomas A. Andrew, New Hampshire's chief medical examiner, who signed off on Bill LaBarre's death certificate, decided to take another look at the case. Neighbors had long wondered if LaBarre's sickly skin color prior to his death was caused by poison. Mikey's face, they noticed, had had the same greenish cast. As did Countie's. ''As soon as this thing hit the fan, I decided to pull the file," said Andrew. ''Just to make sure we hadn't missed something. But I am convinced that LaBarre died of natural causes."

The burnt mattress

Sheila LaBarre's penetrating voice no longer resounds off the undulating hills that surround her 115-acre farm. But it comes through crystal clear in the State Police affidavit in the Countie case. It is a curdling document.

Epping police first approached LaBarre during their search for Countie in the spring. Countie's mother was frantic that her son, whom family members described as having the mental capacity of a 12-year-old, was missing. Countie had met LaBarre through a telephone chat line in February and moved in with her, but in a phone conversation in late March, LaBarre told Countie's mother he had left.

Shortly afterward, LaBarre called the police, crying hysterically. She played into the phone a tape recording of a conversation, apparently with Countie, in which she shouted that he had ''raped several young children." Countie's voice on the tape is muffled, and LaBarre ''is heard yelling at Countie and telling him to 'talk right,' " according to the affidavit. At the end of the tape, police heard what sounded like Countie throwing up. LaBarre then shouted, ''You didn't faint, stop faking that you fainted," according to the affidavit.

The next day, police approached LaBarre's farmhouse and saw a burnt mattress and box spring near a burning pile topped with hay. Protruding from the pile was a bone about 3 1/2 inches long, with a rounded end that ''contained what appeared to be soft tissue that appeared burnt," according to the affidavit.

Asked by Epping Police Sergeant Sean M. Gallagher what the bone was, LaBarre said, ''It's a rabbit or a pedophile," according to the affidavit.

Gallagher asked why she said it was a pedophile; LaBarre allegedly responded, ''I didn't say that."

''Sgt. Gallagher stated to LaBarre that she had said it and that there was a big difference between a rabbit and a pedophile," according to the affidavit. LaBarre refused to allow the police to take the bone and asked them to leave. When they returned the following day with a search warrant, LaBarre came to the door covered in ashes and armed with a .38-caliber handgun, according to the affidavit.

Asked where Countie was, LaBarre said that, ''He was in the bag," pointing to a Wal-Mart bag near one of the burn piles. Inside the bag, police found bone fragments later identified as human remains. Police investigators found blood throughout the house as well, and noted the presence of several yellow diesel fuel containers.

LaBarre told police that she had had a sexual relationship with Countie, whom she referred to as ''Adam Olympian LaBarre," but that she ended it after accusing him of being a pedophile. She said ''there was a possibility that 'Adam' could have fallen into the fire," according to the affidavit.

In a letter she wrote from jail to a probate judge in April, LaBarre declared, ''I am innocent." LaBarre's lawyer, Jeffrey Denner, declined to comment on the case.

Lynn Noojin, LaBarre's sister, said that she does not think her sister is guilty. But Noojin, 51, a court specialist in the DeKalb County Courthouse in Fort Payne, Ala., added that, ''Working in the court, I know anyone is capable of anything. Even my sister. We are just hoping for the best."

As for the accusations LaBarre hurled at Countie, Peter Eleey, the lawyer representing Countie's parents, said the family ''is very upset at the baseless comments made by Sheila LaBarre indicating that Kenneth had molested children."

LaBarre knew Countie for little more than a month. But in that short time she apparently obtained legal power over his affairs, according to a sworn statement signed by Countie, just as she had with at least two previous men in her life. In 1999, LaBarre obtained power of attorney over Brackett, who later told police that LaBarre had twice fired a gun at him and repeatedly threatened to kill him, according to police. And a decade before that, Bill LaBarre surrendered power of attorney to her as well, according to his daughter, Laura Melisi.

LaBarre seemed to take particular pleasure in bossing the men around. Bruce Allen's wife, Linda, remembers walking by LaBarre and Brackett one day on the farm when LaBarre noticed a pile of feces on the ground.

''She said to Jimmy, 'That's yours. 'Pick it up now.' " said Allen. ''There were a lot of control issues."

Michael Deloge's mother, Donna Boston, says LaBarre visited her home in Somersworth several times while her son lived with LaBarre. The two had met several years ago at Cross Roads House, a homeless shelter in Portsmouth, where Deloge lived at the time and Boston said LaBarre sometimes went to find young men to work on the farm. Boston recalled that, ''Sheila would say, 'Get me a glass of water,' or 'Where's my purse?' " said Boston. ''And if he didn't jump, she'd get very annoyed."

Boston believes her son is dead, and holds LaBarre responsible. ''If he was alive, he would have called me by now."

Other young men also ran into trouble at the farm at the end of the road, but, oddly, found it hard to stay away. Both Brackett and Wayne Ennis, according to neighbors, left LaBarre several times, only to return time and again.

''You never knew what hold she had on them," said Louise Harvey, 81, who lives a short distance from LaBarre. ''But these poor guys ended up sitting in her truck, all hunched down. No self-esteem left whatsoever."

Shrieks in the night

They met through a personal advertisement. He was 60, a devoted horseman, married twice before and now grown lonely. She was 29, a voluptuous Alabama belle, who dreamt of becoming a country western singer. In 1987, Sheila Bailey headed north to live with Bill LaBarre on his farm at the end of Red Oak Hill Lane.

''At first he was just smitten with her," recalled Harvey. ''She could sing and dance and she was very, very smart."

But then the fighting began. At night, Allen could hear Sheila shrieking at Doc. Melisi, Bill LaBarre's daughter, says that Sheila threatened to kill the horses, ''and to kill him, too," said Melisi.

''My father was not a fearful person at all," said Melisi. ''But after Sheila came, his whole personality changed."

Nowhere was their deteriorating relationship more visible than in LaBarre's chiropractic office in Hampton. LaBarre had long nurtured a loyal clientele, treating his patients much like family. Often he did not charge a fixed fee, but bartered his services with his patients.

In 1990, Sheila LaBarre assumed control of the office, and Melisi, who had been the office manager, quit. Sheila LaBarre promptly posted a list of fees for services, and never caught on that Bill LaBarre secretly slipped money to some patients so that they could pay.

Patients say that Sheila LaBarre routinely stormed into treatment rooms. ''She'd barge right in and say, 'Why are you taking so long?' " recalled Robert Lawson of Atkinson.

LaBarre also dominated the management of the farm, rechristening what had long been known as the old Harvey farm to The Silver Leopard Farm, to the amusement of locals. But she did not live there long. Beginning in the early 1990s, LaBarre moved into an apartment over the chiropractic office and had a succession of boyfriends, and in 1995 she married Ennis.

Police got to know her well. In Hampton alone, LaBarre has been involved in more than a dozen complaints over the past 15 years. In 1995, she was granted a restraining order against Ennis, saying that he had attacked her and threatened to ''cut off my fingers and shoot me in the face." She got another order against him in 1997. The year after that, LaBarre and Brackett were both charged with second-degree assault in a lovers' quarrel involving a knife and a pair of scissors. The charges were dismissed.

After Bill LaBarre died in 2000, Sheila LaBarre became embroiled in several controversies related to his estate, which included not just the horse farm but several other pieces of property in New Hampshire. Although she was never married to Bill LaBarre, Sheila LaBarre had taken his name and was identified as his wife on his death certificate, apparently at her insistence. When Brewitt Funeral Service asked LaBarre for her marriage license as it prepared the death certificate, LaBarre declared, ''I don't have a license but I have a pistol and I know how to use it," according to John Melisi, Bill LaBarre's son-in-law, who said he heard about the incident from the funeral directors. Asked about it, Tom Brewitt, one of the service's directors, said, ''I'm not talking about Sheila at all."

State tax officials did not accept LaBarre's contention that she was a common-law spouse and did not have to pay taxes. The department found that she had been married several times in her life, but never to LaBarre.

Bill LaBarre left his entire estate to Sheila LaBarre in his will -- his children maintain that he did so under duress -- and the State Department of Revenue Administration insisted that she pay taxes on it. And then on a Saturday morning in 2001, the phone rang in the home of the department's then-assistant revenue counselor, Kathleen J. Sher. It was Sheila LaBarre.

''She said, 'Are you afraid?' " recalled Sher, in an interview. ''Her tone and words were very confrontational and threatening. I reported the call to the police and my employer. It was really pretty creepy."

LaBarre was not done. Two years later, in 2003, she filed a grievance with the state's Professional Conduct Committee saying that Sher had a ''personal vendetta" against her and insisting that Sher be ''exposed for the trouble maker she actually is," according to records of the grievance provided by Sher. The committee ultimately found that Sher had done nothing inappropriate. But Sher remembers the case vividly. ''Ms. LaBarre gives the impression that she can play the system much better than anyone else, but when people stand up to her there is nothing to support her," she said. ''Standing up to her makes a big difference."

Standing up to people was not something that Countie was good at. In fact, Countie, 24, was barely able to care for himself and had just recently moved out of his mother's home before he met LaBarre.

His mother called LaBarre's home repeatedly after he moved in, but LaBarre, according to the affidavit, told her to stop calling. ''We're [expletive] happy," LaBarre said. And then she hung up.

Indeed, Countie was so happy, he addressed a letter to several local police departments declaring, ''I am an adult, safe, sane and very happy." And in a sworn statement in which he gave LaBarre power of attorney in March, he concluded, ''I only TRUST Sheila LaBarre and do completely feel safe and secure in her presence."

Eleven days later he was dead.