Too Late to Say Goodbye

by Ann Rule

  WITH CHRISTMAS FAST APPROACHING, Dolly made it clear to Bart that their relationship was over. On December 9, she went to a party, and the next morning, as she headed for class she saw that her car had been vandalized during the night. One tire was flat—its sidewall slashed with a sharp object. Two fog lights were broken, and there were broken slivers from a tequila bottle on the ground near the broken lights. Someone had deliberately used a key or some other sharp object to leave ugly scratch marks in the paint on both sides of her car. Dolly reported this to the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office.

  The stalking had begun again, and this time she was sure it was Bart Corbin who was following her.

  The very next day, Dolly discovered that her mailbox had been broken into. She had ordered two hundred business cards and she was expecting a package from the printer, but it hadn’t arrived. She checked with her post office and talked with the letter carrier on her route who recalled delivering that package on December 10.

  She reported each incident to the police. After the mailbox theft, she told the Augusta police officers that she suspected Barton Corbin, her ex-boyfriend, emphasizing that he was a “person of real concern” to her.

  Dolly told her friends not to send her any Christmas mail, warning them that it would probably be stolen from her mailbox.

  DOLLY HEADED HOME to Washington to celebrate Christmas with her family. They were relieved to hear that she was through with Bart Corbin for good. She seemed to mean it. But while her car was parked at her parents’ home, paint—or something like it—was dumped into the gas tank, contaminating the fuel. Her father had it analyzed to be sure.

  Carlton Hearn had recently replaced Dolly’s old Volkswagen Bug with a good used black Pontiac Grand Am with a sunroof, and having someone systematically trying to destroy it was just one more stress for her.

  As the new year began, Dolly started making the dentures that would count for her entire grade in the spring of 1990. She was working with a soft-spoken old lady, who came into Dolly’s tiny office many times as Dolly measured and adjusted the false teeth. They were coming along extremely well, and Dolly was elated. She was fond of her patient, and always walked the woman out of the building to be sure she met her ride or got on her bus without any trouble.

  But troubling things continued to haunt Dolly. In January and February, Dolly made serious allegations to the Medical College of Georgia Police. She had lost dental supplies. First, she lost $1,495 worth of dental tools. Next, she had a more serious loss in terms of her time and artistry. Someone had taken the full set of dentures she had worked on for class credit. The material in the dentures had been worth only about $110, but her time was invaluable and she had fashioned them so meticulously. The single dental instrument that had been stolen this time was worth about $275. That instrument, a prosthodontic articulator, was discovered on the third floor of the dental school a day later, but the dentures had completely vanished.

  Dolly would have to begin again because the false teeth were part of her graduation requirements. A dean in the dental school, Connie Drisko, said that every student had to have a certain number of finished dentures to graduate, stressing that they required a great deal of work, and took weeks—even months—to make.

  Dolly had no way to prove that she had virtually finished this project. All she could do was start over. She knew in her heart that Bart had taken them. Hoping to find proof of what she suspected, she slipped a microcassette recorder into the pocket of her white lab coat one day, and then she asked Bart if he had taken her denture project. In that tape, Bart asked her repeatedly if she was taping him, trying to get evidence against him. Although the voices were garbled, there was enough there to suggest that he didn’t believe she would really record him. At the end, he told her that she would never find the dentures, so she might as well stop looking for them.

  When Dolly spoke to fellow students at school about what she had lost and Bart’s harassment, he hinted again to people that Dolly was getting “a little paranoid” and imagining things.

  When she took him before the Student Honor Board, he was furious. The Honor Board’s investigative process was fairly simple. When an accusation was made, a committee consisting of a faculty member and a dental student investigated the circumstances, and then reported back to a subcommittee of the Student Affairs Committee. The latter considered the evidence that has been gathered and decided whether there was enough there to bring to a hearing. If not, the matter was dropped. Thereafter, all documents pertaining to the probe were destroyed.

  Frustratingly, many of the things that had happened to Dolly were circumstantial and it seemed unlikely that Bart Corbin could be linked absolutely to her complaints, although a final decision would come later.

  Bart had been before the Honor Board before when he was accused of treating a patient without a professor being present. “He talked his way out of that,” another dental student recalled.

  Not ready to accept defeat, Dolly applied for an externship in oral surgery, although, as Travis Hampton would later recall, “Dolly didn’t have a chance in hell of making it. Her grades just weren’t good enough.”

  He wasn’t being mean; he was being realistic. Events over the previous months had sidetracked Dolly from her studies. Anyone would have a hard time concentrating when she was the target of a stalker—even though she knew her stalker.

  Dolly still didn’t believe that Bart was capable of violence, but he had put hair spray in her contact lens solution; kidnapped her cat; stolen her patient files, the almost-finished dentures she had worked on so carefully, and her expensive dental tools; slashed her tires; and snuck into her house. Even someone as steadfastly positive as Dolly Hearn was devastated. And frightened.

  As 1990 began, Dolly dated other students casually, and often went home on weekends. At home in Washington, Georgia, she had long since abandoned her childhood bedroom, and moved downstairs. The bedroom off the parlor was hers. It had a separate door to the outside, a fireplace, and an adjoining bathroom. It was a charming room with a four-poster bed and a rocking chair. Of course, the décor featured cats and roses and bows. She often wore big bows to catch up her hair, and she kept the bows pinned in a vertical display near her front door. Her childhood home was a safe place for Dolly.

  In February 1990, Dolly began to date another student occasionally. It wasn’t serious—at least on her part—although Jon Everett* was very happy to be with her. On February 23, Dolly planned to cook dinner for Everett in her apartment, but at five that evening Everett happened to be driving past Bart Corbin’s house, and spotted Dolly and Bart on the porch. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was obvious they were having a very heated argument. At seven, Dolly called Jon Everett and asked if they could change their plans; she didn’t say why, but she thought it would be better if she came to his place. When she arrived half an hour later, he could see that she was distraught. She told him Bart was so jealous that it might be better if they went out to eat instead. They ate at a local restaurant—Chi-Chi’s—and then rented a movie from Blockbuster: Her Alibi.

  At midnight, they heard a wild pounding on the door. It was Bart. He called through the door that he “just wanted to speak to Dolly.”

  Neither Dolly nor Jon answered, but he could see that she was terrified. She began to tremble and weep while pleading with Jon not to let Bart inside.

  Bart kept knocking, and Dolly dialed 911. But by the time the police arrived, Bart was gone. He came back at 4 A.M., and began pounding on the door again, demanding to talk to Dolly. She was even more upset; she wasn’t having a romantic tryst with Jon Everett—she was just afraid to go home. They called the police once more, and this time the patrol officers arrived and warned Bart that he would be arrested if he didn’t leave the premises, which he did.

  Dolly told Jon that Bart would not leave her alone. Jon tried to protect her, and they spent the next day studying together, but they both realized that dating was impossible for her. Bar
t wouldn’t allow it.

  Dolly’s complaints to the college security office had made little impression; there were even some employees there who thought she was making it up to get attention and wanted her to take a lie-detector test at the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office. Anyone who knew Dolly would have found that ludicrous. But the whispering campaign that Bart had started, stressing her “paranoid tendencies,” was circulating as he had planned.

  Dr. Carlton Hearn had had the contents of Dolly’s gas tank tested at the Wilkes County Sheriff’s Office. Many weeks after the incident had taken place during Dolly’s Christmas 1989 trip, the gas, which had turned the milky pink color of Pepto-Bismol, was found to have been adultered by paint.

  Dolly’s father was a quiet man, but he had had enough. He drove to Augusta and confronted Bart Corbin. He warned him to stay away from Dolly and stop harassing her, but it seemed to make little impression on Bart, although he said later that he was afraid that Dr. Hearn might harm him.

  Dolly borrowed a handgun from Travis Hampton for protection, just until she could get her own. Her father bought her a .38-caliber automatic revolver, a Smith & Wesson. Then he and her brother Carlton Jr. took her to a firing range where they taught her gun safety and how to shoot.

  She kept the revolver in a shoebox under her bed in her upstairs bedroom, although it gave her only a modicum of reassurance. She and Angela were very careful about locking up their apartment, and they watched for strangers lurking outside in the the shadows of the tall pines in their yard.

  In February 1990, the dental school’s Honor Board dropped Dolly’s complaint against Bart.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SPRING 1990

  IN MAY 1990, after all the chaos of the past year, the long bad time seemed to be over. Knowing that Bart would be out of her life soon and headed toward his first dental job, Dolly reasoned that it might be safe to spend a little time with him—on a “friends only” basis.” Despite all she had been through with Bart, something within Dolly was still attracted to him. He seemed to accept the rules she laid out, and she was happy that they didn’t have to part angry. She had loved him once, and she still sometimes longed for the old days when they were together and he behaved like a different person.

  The incidents that had frightened her and Angela had stopped completely. Dolly almost forgot about the gun under her bed. Sometimes Bart dropped by her apartment on Parrish Road in the middle of the day, and occasionally she visited at his house. As always, when Bart was nice to her, he was very nice. They still had their disagreements and she was impatient with him when he wanted her to come to his house one evening even when he knew she had to study for an exam the next day. But he finally convinced her that he would let her study if she just came over. Of course he didn’t, and Dolly stomped out.

  Even so, Dolly’s grades on her final exams were the highest she had ever earned at MCG. She had managed to redo enough of her work to be taken off of academic probation, and she had every chance of being “a rising senior,” the last stage before being a full-fledged dentist the following year. Best of all, despite those who doubted her, she had won an externship in oral surgery! During that late spring of 1990, her world brightened a great deal.

  Dolly looked forward to going home to her brother Gil’s graduation from Wilkes Academy. Gil was the valedictorian of his class, and she was so proud of him.

  Dolly wore a black lace dress with a short skirt and high-heeled black pumps for the occasion, and her hair and makeup were flawless as always. She looked wonderful as she posed for pictures and videotapes with her family.

  She told her grandmother gleefully, “Next year, you can call me Dr. Dolly!”

  The spring semester was over, and Dolly would have two weeks off. In a few days she would join her family on their annual trip to one of the little islands in South Carolina, close by Beaufort and St. Helena Sound. They would enjoy the Atlantic Coast on Hunting or Fripp Island there. Her parents wanted her to stay the whole two weeks, but she told them she loved her apartment in Augusta, and she wanted to spend some time there without the pressures of dental school. She planned to stay with her parents and brother several days, and she promised to bring her usual pumpkin muffins and spaghetti sauce.

  Dolly was happy and serene on her visit to her hometown on the first weekend in June 1990. Although she didn’t mention it to her family, she was going to see Bart during her vacation. She knew her parents wouldn’t approve. Whether she hoped that she and Bart could erase the past and start over, only Dolly knew. More likely, she realized that they were not meant to be together beyond these last sunny days in Augusta, and she was ready to start life fresh without him. Her senior year would be demanding, and so would her externship in oral surgery. None of Dolly’s future plans appear to have involved Bart, but she had always strived for happy endings. She thought she could manage one last week with him—a week that would let them part without any bad memories.

  Dolly hugged her family, and waved cheerfully as she left Washington to return to Augusta.

  Her vacation wasn’t going to be that relaxing. She was going to do the spreadsheets in her landlord Dennis Stanfield’s business ledgers. Stanfield liked her neat but dramatic handwriting, and Dolly welcomed the extra income.

  On Wednesday, June 6, Dolly set out the ingredients for the pumpkin muffins, and removed a package of hamburger from her freezer so it could thaw for her spaghetti sauce.

  While she waited, she watched her soap operas and worked on Stanfield’s ledger. She wore dark shorts and a black-and-white-patterned, short-sleeved blouse. She was barefoot as she sat cross-legged on her plaid couch.

  PART FOUR

  The Investigation

  AUGUSTA

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  JUNE 6, 1990

  AT 5:24 IN THE AFTERNOON of June 6, Richmond County Deputy Sheriff Paul Johnson responded to a radio call directing him to 3077 Parrish Road, Apartment C. An apparent suicide had taken place at that address, and the complainant listed on his “Miscellaneous Incident Report” was a young woman named Angela Garnto.

  “Complainant stated when she returned home, she found her roommate, Hearn, Dorothy Carlisle, W/F, on the couch in the living room with a gunshot wound to the right side of the head. A .38 caliber revolver found in the lap of the victim. Coroner Sims and Investigator Ron Peebles, Car 708, were called to the scene. Subject was pronounced dead by Coroner Le Roy Sims.”

  The short form was written, as all police documents are, in terse, unemotional phrases. What Deputy Johnson wrote could not even begin to describe the shock, horror, and grief that would be felt in the apartment Dolly and Angela had shared for almost two years.

  When Angela had arrived home shortly after five that afternoon, she unlocked the two locks on their front door, and stepped into the living room. The blinds were closed, which was unusual; Dolly rarely lowered the blinds. The room was dim, lit only by the flickering of the small television screen and a single small lamp beside the couch. Angela saw Dolly at the end of the couch, her head tilted to the left so that it extended over the pillows near the sofa’s arm. Except for the fact that her legs were crossed, almost in the lotus position used in yoga, Dolly looked as though she had fallen asleep. Angela laughingly asked her, “What kind of joke is this?”

  Dolly neither answered nor moved, and Angela felt a terrible prickling at the back of her neck. She walked slowly over to Dolly and saw that her roommate’s entire face was stained scarlet. It was long-dried blood. Dolly had lost a great deal of blood. It had cascaded from a wound somewhere around her right ear, down the left side of her light blouse, and then made horizontal striations on her left thigh.

  Dennis Stanfield’s ledger was open on the table in front of her, also spattered with her blood.

  Tentatively, Angela touched Dolly, trying to find a pulse, but there was none.

  There was no doubt in Angela’s mind that Dolly was dead, and that she probably had been dead for several hours, but Angela wa
s in such profound shock that it was difficult for her to make any sense of it. Her fingers trembled so badly that she couldn’t dial their phone, so she ran next door and asked the young women who lived in the apartment there to call the police and the EMTs from the fire department.

  Next, she ran toward a nearby apartment where a young doctor lived; he was serving his internship in the emergency room of a nearby hospital. Angela was afraid to go back into the apartment she shared with Dolly, and she waited outside while he checked to see if Dolly had any signs of life.

  She did not.

  No more than ten minutes had passed since Angela had come home when Deputy Paul Johnson walked into the scene. He saw the loaded revolver in the dead woman’s lap, and, worried about the safety of bystanders and the EMTs, he decided to remove it. Using a pen, he lifted it away from the body and placed it on a rattan stool.

  He had no camera, so he couldn’t photograph the scene before he moved the weapon. Without a photo, there would be no way to absolutely reestablish the position of Dolly Hearn’s hands or the gun itself. That would prove to be a significant loss in this early investigation.

  Investigator Ron Peebles was notified at home and hurried to the scene. He was having a busy week. His son, Scott, was graduating from high school; Scott was the same age as Dolly’s brother, Gil, and he hoped one day to go into law enforcement.

  Peebles took a few dozen photographs of the scene as he found it, and he and Johnson were in agreement about their first impression that Dolly Hearn, twenty-seven, had committed suicide. There were no signs that she had been involved in a struggle—her position was too relaxed for that. Johnson told Ron Peebles that the revolver had been between her hands, with her left hand on top of it.

  Angela told the crime scene investigators that Dolly Hearn was not the kind of person who would commit suicide. “When she had a problem,” she said, “Dolly would just get a little more quiet than usual.”