he said.
“Get the fuck off my property, right now!” Sheila said to the police officers, pointing the way back down the darkened dirt road for them.
7
Inside the House
Sergeant Robert Estabrook of the New Hampshire State Police had been to the LaBarre Farm the day before, along with Lieutenant Conte, and had spent a great deal of time just looking at the charred mattress box spring. Conte had asked him to take over the case and become the lead investigator in the field. It was understood that this was going to be particularly challenging. Now, on Monday morning the twenty-seventh, he found himself again staring into the rotten embers of that fire pit.
Just as the morning sun shone a warm yellow glow on the scene, Estabrook noticed a television camera on a tripod at the main gate. One had been here the night before, as he and Conte and some others had been walking the property. They decided to use the protective cover of the horse barn as a workplace and had set up some lights inside when it had become night. He had seen the piercing light of the camera cut through the darkness, though at first he thought it had been coming from the spotlight on the cruiser standing post at the entrance. Estabrook had seen the pictures on the news and was relieved that all that were usable were shots of the main house and the crime van in the yard.
But now, from that same vantage point, the burn pile was clearly visible. The cover of night had bought them time. There were details to this crime scene (though publicly they would not classify it as such) that Estabrook felt needed to remain confidential. He approached the camera crew.
The officer was in plainclothes, a tan overcoat on. Estabrook looked more bookish than the other state police, with his glasses and blond hair neatly combed. His demeanor was always very serious, very official.
The TV reporter and cameraman exchanged causal “hellos” with Estabrook. They were calm, comfortable, indicating some previous acquaintance with him.
“I need you to leave. You’re too close to the scene.”
The journalists looked at each other, then to the yellow tape across the gate that separated them. “The chief said the public road ends here.”
“My scene extends back a half mile. You have to go.”
The cameraman huffed. “This is bullshit,” he said to himself. The fact that Estabrook didn’t even appear to be nice about the ejection rubbed him the wrong way.
Estabrook turned away from the pair, cutting off further debate, knowing they would now follow his command. It wasn’t bullshit, he thought. We’re going to have to search every inch of these woods before this is all over.
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
