FOLEY, Mo. - The house with the white top was the road to nowhere for Lincoln County Sheriff's Deputy Shawn Bell.
Bell drove by the house every time he patrolled Highway 79. What happened inside the gates, haunted him.
In 2004, a young woman came to the Lincoln County Sheriff's office with her six and seven-year-old foster brothers.
They had deep, dark bruises on their buttocks, Bell believed they'd been inflicted by a stick.
"You are scared for the children and angry, but there are questions that need to be answered before you put this puzzle together," said Deputy Bell.
He said the boy's mother, Laura Sipes, beat the boys, she was a former lawyer. Sipes was convicted of misdemeanor assault in 2005. Deputy Bell said she never showed up to court.
Deputy Bell drove by her house while on patrol, year after year, for ten years. He saw the home become more dilapidated, more unkempt, as time passed. He never saw anybody there, until last Monday.
"By chance I was driving southbound 79, I looked down Y and there was a vehicle. I thought to myself, what are the chances," Bell said.
A man and woman were parked at the gate. He said the woman acted oddly. She stared out the window the entire time Bell talked to the driver. When he asked for her ID, she said she had none and gave Bell a fake social security number. Deputy Bell knew it was Laura Sipes.
"I initiated the first report, I opened the case, and I was the one to arrest her. It was closure. It's not about me it's about the two victims and the community I took an oath to serve," Bell said.
It was the end of the road of a case he carried in his soul for a decade.
Sipes told Deputy Bell she became a recluse in the St. Louis area for many of the ten years she was on the run. Her sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 23.
Bell said she's out on bond.
