LaBarre took possession
of the farm in 2000, upon the death
of Wilfred LaBarre. Wilfred was a
respected Hampton chiropractor who
moved her to New Hampshire from Tennessee
in 1987 after meeting her through
a personals ad, according to his daughter,
Laura Melisi.
Sheila LaBarre moved
to New Hampshire with the name Sheila
Bailey Jennings, said Melisi’s
husband, John Melisi. Bailey was her
maiden name, Jennings the name of
a man she had married and left in
her native state of Alabama, according
to Melisi.
She never married
LaBarre. But Melisi said in a 2002
request for a restraining order against
her that the woman ended up controlling
everything Wilfred LaBarre owned through
extortion and threats on his life
and property.
Melisi has said Sheila
LaBarre became Wilfred’s office
manager and lived in the apartment
above the office in Hampton. Sometime
in the 1980s, Sheila and Wilfred ended
their romantic involvement, according
to papers filed in a court case in
Rockingham County.
In 1995, Sheila LaBarre
married Wayne Ennis, a native of Jamaica.
In complaints filed in Hampton District
Court, she claims Ennis tried to force
her car off the road, punched her
in the head and kicked her.
She divorced Ennis
in 1997.
At the same time,
Sheila LaBarre continued to have contact
with Wilfred LaBarre.
“After chasing
(Wilfred LaBarre) with a gun, she
twice asked her husband, Wayne Ennis,
to murder Dr. LaBarre in an attempt
to take over his business in Hampton
and farm in Epping,” Melisi
wrote in the request for a restraining
order, which was granted for a period
of one year.
Meanwhile, Sheila
LaBarre had met James Brackett.
In 1998, Hampton
police arrested Sheila LaBarre for
stabbing Brackett in the head with
a pair of scissors. Brackett had threatened
her, and both were arrested in the
incident. Police termed the matter
a “lover’s quarrel/argument,”
and eventually the case was dropped,
according to court records.
When Wilfred LaBarre
died, he willed Sheila LaBarre the
Epping farm, the Hampton office, two
Somersworth properties and a Portsmouth
house, John Melisi said. He valued
them at $2 million.
In a court document,
Melisi said LaBarre threatened the
director of Brewitt Funeral Home if
he did not alter Wilfred LaBarre’s
death certificate to say she was the
wife.
Yesterday, Miguel
Brewitt, a director at the home, said
neither he nor his father has a concrete
memory of the incident. He said there
may have been a request to change
the death certificate, but he does
not believe his father was threatened.
Regardless of the
death certificate, the state Department
of Revenue Administration said LaBarre
was not Wilfred’s wife and moved
to collect inheritance tax on the
estate.
In 2001, LaBarre
challenged the DRA in a Rockingham
County Probate Court case and claimed
she and Wilfred were common-law spouses.
But the DRA said LaBarre and Wilfred
lived in separate addresses during
the three-year period needed to claim
common-law status. The agency also
noted LaBarre lived with Brackett
at some point during that time.
LaBarre dropped the
matter after documents surfaced in
which she told a psychologist she
and Wilfred LaBarre had not been romantically
involved since the 1980s.
Sheila LaBarre grew
up in Fort Payne, Ala., where her
mother, Ruby Bailey, yesterday said
she had heard from her daughter not
too long ago. She said she was unaware
that her daughter’s New Hampshire
farm was the focus of a missing person
search.
“I don’t
know nothing about that,” Bailey
said during a brief telephone conversation.
Union Leader Correspondents
Toby Henry, Jerry Miller and Clynton
Namuo also contributed to this report.
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