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Love And Lies
Murder Exposes The Secret Lives Of A Suburban
Couple
Feb. 3, 2007
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Jennifer and Barton Corbin (CBS) |
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(CBS) In Dec. 2004, Jennifer Corbin's young sons found
their mother dead with a gunshot wound. When a tipster
later told police that Corbin's death might be connected
to an apparent suicide 14 years earlier, investigators
quickly re-opened the cases.
Correspondent Peter Van Sant reports on the
investigation for 48 Hours Mystery.
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Steve and Kelly Comeau met their neighbors, the Corbins,
shortly after the family moved in across the street in
1999.
It turned out their new neighbors, Barton "Bart" Corbin
and his wife Jennifer, were throwing a birthday party
for their son, Dalton, on the same day Steve and Kelly
were planning to celebrate their daughter’s second
birthday.
From then on, Stephanie Comeau and Dalton Corbin
celebrated their birthdays together.
They lived in Buford, Ga., outside Atlanta, where
Jennifer was a pre-school teacher; her husband Bart had
his own dental practice.
The Corbins had a second child, Dillon, and the two
families became inseparable. By 2004, after sharing the
past five years with the Corbin family, the last thing
the Comeaus could have imagined was living a life apart.
It was about 7:30 a.m. on Dec. 4th when Kelly Comeau
heard banging on her front door; outside was Dalton
Corbin in his pajamas.
Through tears, Dalton told Kelly that his mother was
dead. "I just ran across the street," she remembers.
"And I went in and could not believe what I had seen.
The boys found her first. That was heartbreaking."
When Detective Marcus Head arrived at the Corbin's
house, the officers told him it looked like a suicide.
There were no signs of a struggle, papers were found by
Jennifer's head that could be a suicide note, and there
was a gun.
Bart was tracked down at his brother Bob's house, where
he had spent the night. Bob broke the news to his
brother. "And he basically broke down. Went up my stairs
in my house and proceeded to throw up in the bathroom.
Complete shock," he remembers.
Later that day, seven-year-old Dalton Corbin was
interviewed by the police. "Do you have any idea why you
think you're here today?" a detective asked the little
boy.
"Cause my mom got killed this morning," Dalton replied.
Dalton told detectives that his parents had been arguing
a lot that week. When asked if he thought his parents
might divorce or separate, Dalton replied with an
affirmative, "Mm-hmm."
By early evening, Det. Head had shifted his focus to the
couple’s troubled marriage and wanted to learn more
about Bart and Jennifer Corbin.
It turned out Bart had an alibi for the night Jennifer
died. Det. Head learned that Corbin had left the house
around 10 p.m. to meet two of his friends for a late
dinner and drinks at a local pub.
"And then he went from there and got coffee and went to
his brother's house, about 20 minutes away from here,"
Head explains.
Police talked to Jennifer’s family and friends to learn
more about her. Det. Head says, "We're trying to find
out if she made any remarks to co-workers or friends
about recent troubles with Dr. Corbin."
That summer, Jennifer had told her family she wanted to
leave Bart. "She said that she just had no emotion for
him anymore. She said, 'You know, I love him because
he’s the father of my children, but I’m no longer in
love with him," remembers Jennifer's sister Heather.
But by the fall, Jennifer had already fallen in love
with a man she had met on the Internet. And although the
two had yet to meet in person, they were planning a life
together.
Bart didn’t learn of his wife’s relationship until just
before she died, when he stumbled across some of her
e-mails. He then filed for divorce.
| Five days later,
33-year-old Jennifer was dead. As for those
papers found near Jennifer's body, Det. Head
says, "As it turns out those papers were
actually a divorce filling in Gwinnett County
Superior Court. And that was under her
shoulder." |
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What Bart didn’t know was the true identity of
Jennifer's online lover. Jennifer herself had only
learned the truth shortly before she died—and she had
never told anyone.
For Head, Jennifer's Internet affair was certainly
unusual. But it took on new meaning when he learned this
person was one of the last to speak to Jennifer alive.
"We know through phone records and witness accounts that
she was on the phone until about 12:30 a.m.," Head says.
The night she died, while her two sons were sleeping,
Jennifer and her online friend spent almost four hours
talking, first on the phone and then exchanging e-mails.
Records show that they communicated until about 1:40
a.m.; minutes later, a bullet killed Jennifer.
After just one day into his investigation, Head was
pretty sure Jennifer didn’t kill herself. "There was
obviously some tough times goin' on in the marriage and
tough times here at the Corbin home," he says. "And I'm
thinkin' there's definitely more to it at this point."
And a few days later, he received a shocking phone call
that convinced him to follow his hunch: out of the blue,
a woman called him with a tip. The caller thought there
might be a connection between Jennifer's death and the
suicide of another woman, 14 years earlier, named
Dorothy "Dolly" Hearn.
Head immediately phoned the sheriff's department in
Augusta, Ga., 150 miles away, to find out more about
Dolly's death.
In a remarkable coincidence, Scott Peebles, who answered
the phone in Augusta, knew who the lead detective on the
1990 investigation was: his father, Ron, now retired.
"And he remembered it right away. I think that he was
very uneasy about this case being a suicide, but at the
same time was not able to prove otherwise," Peebles
says.
He dusted off the old case files and got to work. He
learned that on June 6th, 1990, his father had responded
to a 911 call after someone had been shot.
"He saw Dolly on a couch as soon as he walked in the
front door. And she was leaned over. And she had a
gunshot wound to the right side of her head," Peebles
explains.
When the autopsy report came back a few days later, the
medical examiner ruled that Dolly, a 27-year-old dental
student, had killed herself.
But for Dolly's family, it all had to be a mistake. They
had seen Dolly just three days before she died at her
brother Gil's graduation. And they remembered? her being
happy and excited to see friends and teachers that she
had known in the past.
The Hearns hired their own pathologist to give them a
second opinion. And he, too, concluded that Dolly had
committed suicide. But her family held on to their
belief that Dolly did not take her own life. They were
certain she was murdered.
After all these years, the Hearns had found an unlikely
ally in Scott Peebles: he was looking for a connection
between Dolly's and Jennifer's deaths. And when he read
through his father’s old case files, one name jumped off
the pages: Bart Corbin.
Bart, also a dental student in 1990, had been Dolly's
on-again, off-again boyfriend. And at the time of her
death, they were off-again, for the very last time.
When Peebles called Det. Head and told him about Bart
Corbin’s link to Dolly Hearn, Head says it was an
"overwhelming" moment. "We knew we were on the right
track by thinking this was not a suicide," he says.
What were the odds of two women committing suicide in
one man’s life? And both women had died shortly after
ending their relationship with Bart.
Investigators now believed there was only one
explanation: Bart had tried to stage his wife’s suicide,
after apparently getting away with the same crime 14
years earlier.
That's all it took for investigators on both cases to
realize they were after the same man.
But Scott Peebles, working Dolly’s case in Augusta, knew
he had his work cut out for him because Bart had been
cleared of her murder once before. Back in 1990,
investigators let Bart Corbin go, even though he
admitted he had been at Dolly’s apartment on the
afternoon she died.
So Peebles knew he had to find something more if he ever
was going to arrest Bart for Dolly's murder. He decided
to take a second look at the death scene photographs.
"I'm not an expert in blood spatter analysis. But I knew
that this field was something that had grown quite
significantly," he explains. So he asked Dewayne Piper,
a blood spatter expert, to take a look.
"There was no blood on her hand, where you would expect
to see it," says Piper. "There was no blood on the
weapon at all."
It was that lack of blood, in areas it should have been,
that convinced Piper that Dolly didn't die from a
self-inflicted gunshot.
And a blood smear on Dolly's thigh convinced Piper
someone had moved Dolly after she had been shot.
"There’s no way she made this stain. There’s no way. So
you know, somebody else had to be there," he says.
Piper told Scott Peebles that he believed Dolly's body
had been repositioned.
It wasn’t much to go on, but since Bart was at Dolly’s
apartment the day she died, Peebles hoped it was enough.
"And the grand jury was quite passionate about seeing
that Barton Corbin be arrested immediately," Peebles
recalls.
Fourteen years after Dolly's death was ruled a suicide,
Barton Corbin was charged with her death; two weeks
later, he was also charged with the murder of his wife,
Jennifer.
Jennifer's trial was scheduled to begin first. But as it
inched closer, investigators still hadn’t found what
they wanted most – a link between Bart Corbin and the
gun that killed Jennifer.
Danny Porter, Gwinnett County’s district attorney, was
building his case against Bart. The first thing he hoped
to prove was that Jennifer did not commit suicide.
Porter said he would show that Bart tried to stage his
wife’s death to look like suicide, just as he had 14
years earlier with Dolly.
"First was the fact that it was a close range gunshot
wound to the head and the weapon was there on the bed
with the body. The other thing was there was no sign of
a struggle or forced entry into the house," Porter says.
But Porter still hadn’t figured out how to link Bart to
that gun, which was last traced to Troy, Ala.
Porter did know that Bart had a good friend, Richard
Wilson, who lived in Troy and he had evidence that Bart
went there just four days before Jennifer died. But when
Porter’s investigators met with him, Wilson said he
didn’t want to get involved.
"We sort of talked about obstruction of justice and
perjury and whether or not he could go to jail. And he
didn't react very well to that. We went down one other
time. And that's when he got mad and wouldn't talk to us
anymore," Porter remembers.
Porter did think he could show jurors Bart had a motive:
both Jennifer and Dolly were leaving him and that was
something, the prosecutor says, Bart Corbin simply
couldn’t accept.
Danny Porter also said he could punch holes in Bart's
alibi for the night of Jennifer’s murder.
He doesn’t dispute that Bart left home around 10 that
night, to meet friends for drinks. "According to the bar
receipt, he probably had six or seven beers in the time
period," Porter says.
But Porter doesn't believe that Bart drove to his
brother's house at 1:35 a.m. to spend the night.
Instead, the prosecutor says, Bart made a deadly detour.
And he had the witness to prove it: friend and neighbor
Steve Comeau.
Comeau had just pulled into his own garage when he
noticed Bart arriving home, across the street. He
guesses it was 1:30 or a quarter to 2:00 a.m. at the
time.
"And I noticed the truck pullin' in the driveway,"
Comeau recalls. "But I didn't pay much attention to it
and I went in the house."
According to phone records, that was right around the
time Jennifer sent her last e-mail to her online friend.
"We know that she was on the phone and using the e-mail
system up until 1:40 that morning. So she was awake,"
Porter says.
Steve Comeau says he heard Bart’s truck again, just
before 2 a.m.
Porter says during that 15 or 20 minute period, Bart
killed his wife, and then left, even though he knew that
one of their two boys would find their mother. Porter
says “that says more about Bart Corbin than almost
anything else in both of these cases.”
But it was all the more chilling the next morning. Not
only did Dalton and Dillon see their mother’s dead body,
they also said they knew who shot her. When Dalton ran
across the street for help, and Kelly answered the door,
the first words out of his mouth were "my dad shot my
mom."
During a police interview, Dalton told police he had not
seen or heard the shooting. But if they hadn’t witnessed
a thing, why would two young boys jump to such a
disturbing conclusion about their own father?
"That just goes to show you what went on when the doors
were closed for two kids to pick up on something like
that," argues Jennifer's sister Heather.
After his arrest, Bart hired two of Georgia’s most
high-profile attorneys to represent him; Bruce Harvey
and David Wolfe claim Corbin is innocent of both
charges.
Harvey says there's no more evidence today than there
was 14 years ago tying his client to Dolly’s death. "The
only thing that has changed in the 14 years is the
unfortunate but independent, unconnected event with
Jennifer Corbin," he tells Van Sant.
And Jennifer, they say, had a compelling motive to end
her own life, and it involved her online lover, who 48
Hours discovered after months of our own investigation.
In the summer of 2004, Jennifer started playing an
online computer game called "EverQuest."
"And you have groups of four people that go out on
different missions and whatever, and you slay dragons.
You know, you have lots of fun," explains Jennifer's
mother Narda. "And it was escape for Jen."
But according to defense attorney David Wolfe, that
escape opened a doorway into a dangerous new world for
Jennifer. "It gives you the opportunity to assume
another station in life. Obviously because she wasn't
happy with who she was," he says.
It wasn’t long before Jennifer, and a man on her
Everquest team named Christopher, started communicating
outside the game, through personal e-mails.
While these e-mails began as a friendship, Bart's other
defense attorney Bruce Harvey says the online
relationship became "incredibly sexual."
Harvey read one of the e-mails, addressed to Chris, for
Van Sant. "Subject, Mmmm," Harvey reads. "I want your
mouth hot, wet and hungry, eating up the soft skin of my
neck, shoulders and mouth."
After a month or two, Jennifer and Chris were apparently
planning a future together, even though they had never
met face to face and had never spoken on the phone.
But after Bart discovered some of his wife’s emails in
late November and filed for divorce, he threatened to
use Jennifer’s online affair against her to gain custody
of their two boys.
Over the next several days, Bart downloaded the
information on Jennifer’s computer, and stole her cell
phone and journal.
In turn, she called police, hoping they could help her
get them back. "He's probably gonna take them and use
them as evidence against me. We're in the process of
going through a divorce," Jennifer told the 911
operator.
And Jennifer knew that Bart might soon discover her
darkest secret, a bombshell so shocking, Bruce Harvey
claims it would destroy her life.
"Here is a clearly strong relationship developed over
the Internet, with somebody you think is going to be
your Prince Charming," he says.
In truth, Chris wasn’t a "Prince Charming" at all.
Shortly before she died, Jennifer learned that Chris
wasn’t even a man.
"And all that dissolves. All it dissolves in an
instant," Harvey says.
"Chris" revealed that he was actually a she, a woman
named Anita. Jennifer was clearly devastated when she
responded in e-mails, "You have absolutely ripped my
heart out. I can’t live this lie, it’s killing me."
Jennifer had never met Anita, not even seen a
photograph, but 48 Hours tracked her down at her home in
Missouri, where she spoke publicly about Jennifer for
the first time.
Anita acknowledged she used the name Chris and presented
herself as a man online. Asked why she did that, Anita
told Van Sant, "Because at first we were just
pretending. We were playing."
Anita kept her secret for the first two months of their
online love affair. When things started getting intense,
she decided to tell Jennifer the truth.
"I told her, 'My name isn't Chris. My name is Anita,'"
she recalls.
Jennifer's response? "She logged off," Anita recalls.
The next day, Jennifer sent Anita some angry e-mails.
And later that day, after the two spoke by phone for the
very first time, Jennifer wrote back that she was still
in love with this person, male or female. "I love you no
matter who you are," she wrote.
Corbin’s defense attorneys claim that Jennifer knew that
her online love affair, and the graphic content of some
of her e-mails to Anita, could cost her everything.
"She stood to lose her marriage," Bruce Harvey argues.
"Her home, her children."
"We'll be able to clearly show that this whole scenario
was a recipe for suicide," Harvey argues.
But Anita says that while Jennifer was maybe stressed,
she was not depressed or suicidal. Anita claims that
Jennifer was planning a future with her, having asked
her to think about moving to Atlanta.
But Jennifer’s family says that Anita lied. They say she
lied about who she was and she manipulated Jennifer at a
time when she was lonely and vulnerable.
Heather says she knows Jennifer better than anyone and
doubts her sister was planning a new life with Anita. "I
don’t think that’s the path, in my heart, that Jen
would’ve taken. But it would have been o.k. if it had,"
she says.
Asked to talk about the night Jennifer died, Anita says,
"We talked about a lot of things. She talked about
getting an attorney to get Bart out of the house."
"She told me she wanted me to know something. Just in
case we never met. And I said, 'What do you mean if we
never meet?' She says, 'If your plane crashes on the way
out here, or if my husband kills me,'" Anita tells Van
Sant.
Anita never heard from Jennifer again. And after two
days of worrying, Anita asked her sister to contact the
family, posing as Jennifer’s friend. That’s when Anita
learned what happened.
Anita says the moment she learned Jennifer was dead was
"heart-stopping."
Anita says her future had been destroyed.
Although Bart didn’t know there was a new woman in
Jennifer’s life, prosecutor Danny Porter believes the
online affair enraged him and led him to murder.
With the trial set to begin, Bart's attorney, Bruce
Harvey, was confident he could show jurors both Dolly
and Jennifer had motives for suicide. The stakes were
high, because if convicted for the murders of both
women, Bart Corbin could face the death penalty.
In Sept. 2006, with jury selection underway, Porter was
hoping to convict Bart, even though he couldn’t tie him
to the murder weapon. Porter was prepared to try Bart,
despite missing a key witness: Richard Wilson, the man
the prosecutor is sure gave Jennifer's husband the gun
that killed her. Wilson still wasn't talking.
"This is a case that a jury's gonna have to put together
out of small pieces and reach conclusions from 'em,"
Porter says.
But all that would change on day two of jury selection,
when an investigator came into the courtroom and handed
Porter a note. Porter says the note read, "'Come out of
the courtroom now.' And now was underlined five or six
times."
"And he said 'Richard Wilson just copped to the gun,"
Porter remembers.
After months of repeated questioning by investigators,
Wilson had finally broken. He confessed to giving his
good friend Bart a gun, just four days before Jennifer
died.
In a statement videotaped by police, Richard Wilson told
investigators that Bart Corbin had contacted him. "He
said that he thought his wife was fooling around on him
and he thought he needed a gun to protect himself, he
knew I had guns and asked me if I had one. So he came
down here and got it."
And the gun Wilson gave him was the same gun used to
shoot and kill Jennifer.
Porter says “I about fainted” when he heard Wilson had
confessed. “We had the murder weapon in Barton Corbin's
hands four days before the killing," he says.
When Porter broke the news to Bart’s attorneys, they
immediately realized their case was mortally wounded.
"We go from 'I'm ready for trial. We're gonna kick your
ass in both jurisdictions. Let's rock and roll,' to,
'Can I save this guy's life?'” Bruce Harvey remembers.
To spare Jennifer and Dolly’s families the agony of two
trials, Porter approached the defense team with a plea
deal. Bart would be spared death in exchange for
confessing to the murders of both women.
The families waited for a response. "I was very uptight.
I was emotionally just wound up. I knew it was the most
important moment in this whole 16 years," recalls
Barbara Hearn.
That moment came on Sept. 15, 2006, when the man who
thought he could get away with two perfectly planned
murders took the deal.
Corbin had to face the two families he had lied to, and
admit to killing Jennifer and Dolly. In court, Corbin
confessed to killing his wife.
"There was no reaction. There was no emotion. It's just
sorta like looking into the eyes of a shark and there's
nothin' there," Porter recalls.
Corbin gave his second confession to Danny Craig, the
district attorney handling Dolly Hearn's case.
The victims’ families finally got their chance to face
Bart Corbin in court. Jennifer’s father, Max Barber, was
first.
"First of all, Bart, what you're doing today is the
right thing to do. Admitting the murder of Jennifer and
Dorothy," Barber said. "God might forgive you. I never
will. I speak for my family when I say I just virtually
hope you burn in hell. That's all I have to say."
Dolly’s older brother, Carlton Hearn, Jr., spoke for the
Hearn family. "Bart Corbin stole from me. He stole from
my family. He stole from the world. He deserves no place
in society. "
Dolly Hearn’s mother, Barbara, says she never got the
answer to the one question on everyone’s mind: why? “Why
did it have to be like this? Why couldn’t you just walk
away?”
Bart's brother Bob didn’t have any answers either. "We
chose to back the guy we believed in. And we turned out
to back the liar," he says. "Had I known he had done it,
they would a got him. It's that simple. He took a mother
from her kids, took somebody's daughter."
Jennifer’s sister Heather, who is raising Dalton and
Dillon with her husband Doug, says it is time to look
ahead.
"We are not going to let this destroy our family," she
says. "We'll move on but we will never forget. And we
will never — I don’t think we’ll ever be able to
forgive.
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