Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal

by Ann Rule

  “I haven’t seen her,” Narda said faintly. “I have to see her.”

  “But you do understand that the arrangements are up to Dr. Corbin?”

  Narda Barber didn’t understand anything. Bart hadn’t come to them to share their common loss, he hadn’t come to see his sons—how could he be the one to plan what was to be done with Jenn’s body?

  “I want to see her,” Narda insisted, and finally, almost grudgingly, an attendant led her to a room where they wheeled out a gurney with her daughter’s body.

  “She was all wrapped in a plastic bag or something,” Narda recalled. “I kissed her little face and her hands and her toes. It was my only chance to say goodbye to my sweet Jennifer. There was nothing else I could do.”

  The cremation Bart Corbin had ordered was carried out an hour later.

  The Barbers were allowed to plan funeral services at the Sugar Hill Methodist Church, which would be followed by a private service at home, where, they hoped, Dalton and Dillon could participate and say goodbye to their mother. But they were told they could only “borrow” Jenn’s remains for those ceremonies; Jenn’s ashes belonged to Bart Corbin.

  Jenn’s funeral was scheduled for December 10, 2004.

  NOT EVEN FORTY-EIGHT HOURS had passed when Narda answered the phone after midnight early on December 6. The caller was a woman named Lily Ann Holmes.* She explained that she had once worked with Jenn Corbin at the Sugar Hill Methodist Church, where Jenn taught preschoolers, although Lily Ann was now retired.

  “I want you to sit down, Narda,” Lily Ann said. “I have something to tell you that might be upsetting.”

  “I am sitting down,” Narda said, wondering how anything could be more upsetting to her than losing Jenn.

  Lily Ann Holmes explained that she had a relative—a dentist—who had attended the dental school in Augusta at the same time Bart did. And her relative had known Bart. “Everyone kind of knew each other,” she added.

  “Did you know about his girlfriend in Augusta,” she asked Narda now. “And about what happened to her?”

  “What girlfriend?” Narda asked, feeling a chill in her bones. “We don’t know much about Bart before Jenn met him.”

  Lily Ann said she was unsure of the name of the woman Bart had dated, but she thought it might have been “Dorothy” or “Dolly.”

  “She’s dead,” she continued. “She’s been dead for fourteen years, Narda. She was shot in the head. That’s all I know about it, but I thought you should know.”

  It was difficult for Narda and Max to grasp. How could it be that Bart had once had a girlfriend who died of a bullet in her head? Why hadn’t he ever told them—or Jenn—about that?

  When Heather heard about this mysterious woman who had once been a part of Bart’s life, she was just as amazed as her parents had been. If Jenn had known that Bart had a girlfriend who died violently, Heather was sure her sister would have told her. She and Jenn didn’t keep secrets from one another; they had shared almost everything since they were little girls.

  Suddenly, Heather remembered the time when Jenn asked her if she ever wondered what Doug had done before they met. Now, Heather wondered if Jenn had had good reasons to be concerned about Bart’s past.

  At Narda’s suggestion, Lily Ann Holmes called Marcus Head the next morning and told him about Bart’s former girlfriend who had died in June 1990. The manner of death was said to be suicide. She was sure now of both the first and last names of the woman: it was Dolly Hearn.

  For Head, too, this was electrifying news. Very few men lose even one woman in their lives to suicide by gunshot; the number who have lost two had to be infinitesimal. There were two ways to look at this grim coincidence—if it was a coincidence. If Bart had nothing to do with either shooting, losing two women he loved in such a horrible way might explain his refusal to cope with reality. Maybe he could not accept these double tragedies.

  And then again, maybe his behavior had caused one or both of the women’s deaths, and that would explain why he was stonewalling the police. He was in an extremely tenuous position.

  Head made a phone call to the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office in Augusta and spoke to a records clerk there. He asked her to check for any archived cases involving someone named Dolly Hearn. She reported back that she couldn’t find any cases in the sheriff’s files with the name “Hearn.”

  Head kept pushing. He called the Richmond County Vital Records Office. He got more information there. There was a death certificate on file for a Dorothy Carlisle Hearn who died on June 6, 1990.

  The cause of death was listed as “Gunshot wound to the head with destruction of the brainstem, and secondary exsanguination [massive blood loss], apparently self-inflicted.” This suggested suicide, but Dr. Sharon G. Daspit, the medical examiner who signed the autopsy report, had not fully committed to that. She listed the manner of Dolly Hearn’s death as “Undetermined.”

  Marcus Head had the death certificate faxed to him, and the Gwinnett County detective found the name of the funeral home that had handled the arrangements for Dorothy Hearn’s services. When he called the office in Washington, Georgia, he was given the phone number of Dr. Carlton Hearn, a dentist in Washington, who was listed as Dorothy Hearn’s father.

  Without immediate access to police files from 1990, Marcus Head had no way to learn further details of Dorothy Hearn’s death. But her father would know. And, in the meantime, Head would determine which investigators in Augusta might have worked the Hearn case.

  Head made the phone call that Carlton Hearn Sr. and his wife, Barbara, had been waiting for for fourteen and a half years. Dr. Hearn agreed to talk with Marcus Head as soon as possible. The detective headed east toward Augusta, a two-hour drive.

  “I wanted to see,” Head said, “if there were any similarities or likenesses in the two [crime] scenes and the victimology.”

  From his interview with the Hearns in the quaint and charming town of Washington, Head discovered so many common factors in the deaths of two young women that his investigation took on an almost fictional feel. The crime scenes, possible motivation, and the MOs were almost identical, and seemed more suited to a novel than to something that might have occurred in real life.

  That didn’t mean that a solution to either death would soon be forthcoming. Rather, it meant that the investigation would become more complex, and considerably more challenging to solve. If this were, for instance, a knitting project, it would be the difference between a simple square made of basic stitches and an argyle sweater with five different shades of yarn. It would take far more than a single detective to sort it all out.

  There had to be other law enforcement departments involved, and hopefully more witnesses and evidence. Fourteen years! That was a very long time. People retire, die, move away, and tend to forget even the most shocking events.

  Head hoped devoutly that there would be enough witnesses and possible evidence left from Dolly Hearn’s death investigation to re-create everything that happened way back in 1990. Her parents and brothers had tried for all the years in between to discover the truth about what had happened to her. Like the Barbers, the Hearn family suspected Dr. Bart Corbin. For a while, they had managed to keep close track of him—but he had moved often, and by 2004, they heard of him only occasionally. But they had forgotten nothing. And they were anxious to see the probe into Dolly’s death reopened.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DECEMBER 10, 2004

  DOLLY HEARN HAD DIED on June 6, 1990, and Marcus Head and the other investigators from the Gwinnett County Police Department and District Attorney Danny Porter’s office knew very little about the circumstances of her death at the time Jenn Corbin’s funeral took place on December 10, 2004, at the Sugar Hill Methodist Church.

  This was the church where she had taught in the daycare facility. It was a disturbing day in so many ways. Just hours before Jenn’s services began, Danny Porter filed an affidavit where he named her estranged husband as a suspect in her murder.
Moreover, the current Richmond County district attorney, Danny Craig, had announced in Augusta that he and detectives in that jurisdiction were reopening the long-becalmed investigation into the death of Dolly Hearn.

  The two prosecutors—the “two Dannies”—would work together, along with their investigators and county detectives, to unearth long-buried evidence—both circumstantial and physical. It would be necessary to form grand juries in each jurisdiction to see if there was enough cause to issue murder indictments. Very few people in Gwinnett County had any idea who Dolly Hearn was and what her connection to Bart Corbin might be.

  The Hearns and the Barbers knew, and perhaps Bart Corbin’s family knew. It was difficult to tell because they were no more enthusiastic about talking to the investigators or reporters than he was.

  Both Dolly Hearn and Jenn Barber had apparently been in the process of moving out of Bart Corbin’s life when they died. Investigators did not yet know the details of these estrangements. If anyone, other than Bart’s family, remembered Shelly Mansfield—the first woman who had broken up with Bart—they didn’t tell the detectives about it. And neither did Connie or Gene Corbin, nor did Bart’s twin or his younger brother, Bobby.

  Gossip simmered that Bart had also been involved with at least two other women while he was married to Jenn. All three major television networks’ docudrama shows had crews circling Gwinnett County, eager for interviews. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution compared the Hearn-Corbin cases to the much publicized Laci and Scott Peterson case in Modesto, California. It was an expected evaluation: on November 12, three weeks before Jenn’s death, Scott Peterson had been convicted of murdering his pregnant wife at Christmas 2002, and disposing of her body in San Francisco Bay. Even as Jenn died, the penalty phase of Peterson’s trial was taking place in a Stanislaus County, California, courtroom. Like Corbin, Peterson had been involved in extramarital dalliances, and was reluctant to talk with investigators.

  AS 3:30 APPROACHED ON THAT CHILL FRIDAY, no one expected to see Bart at Jenn’s funeral. Surely he must be aware that he was emerging as a suspect in two alleged murders. Surely, he wouldn’t subject himself to the stares and whispers of those attending Jenn’s services. He had already complained indignantly about reporters who were staking out the parking lot of his dental office.

  But there he was in the church, not far from the metallic casket with a huge spray of flowers on top of it. Narda Barber wondered why there was a coffin at all; Jenn wasn’t in it. She had already been cremated. She assumed that Bart and his family must have ordered it from the funeral director.

  Bart, Brad, and Bobby had gone to the Mall of Georgia and hurriedly ordered their “funeral suits,” and now, dressed in his perfectly tailored dark suit, Bart strode past the cameras from Atlanta television stations and newspapers, and took his seat beside his mother in the front pew of the Sugar Hill church. Jenn’s family sat across the aisle from the Corbin family. They were startled to see Bart there, and his presence made them jittery. He seemed not to grieve or weep as he sat quietly through the hour-and-a-half-long ceremony. The expression on his face was unreadable.

  Heather Tierney gave her eulogy for her lost sister, her voice trembling as she spoke. She told those gathered there about the Jenn she knew, the Jenn who wakened with a smile every morning. With tears streaking her cheeks, Heather spoke of Jenn’s all-encompassing love for her little boys, and also for the fourteen children she had taught in this very church—up until only seven days before.

  “I feel robbed that children are not going to be blessed by her every day, especially Dalton and Dillon. And I pray to God that they will remember how much she loved them.”

  Heather’s voice almost broke as she praised Jenn and thanked the many friends and people who had done their best to comfort her family, and for their love. But she could not suppress her rage that Jenn’s life had been taken so viciously.

  “I am angry,” Heather said. “I am so angry. But the one thing I know is that the heart is a million times stronger than anger. And today is about my beautiful sister.”

  Heather looked down upon the man she had accepted and loved as a brother for almost nine years. Bart did not raise his eyes to meet hers.

  As they always are after a homicide, detectives were placed discreetly in the sanctuary during the funeral. It is not unusual for killers to attend the funerals and even the graveside services of their victims, and, now, the Gwinnett County investigators scanned the faces of those in the church. While they watched Bart, they also looked for some stranger, or even an acquaintance of Jenn’s who might be acting in a way that indicated guilt. At this point, it was impossible to know how many suspects there might be.

  If Jack Burnette, the supervisor of Danny Porter’s investigators, Chief Assistant DA Tom Davis, and Investigator Manny Perez had hoped to talk to Bart, they were out of luck. As soon as the funeral was over, he moved rapidly toward a rear entrance, and, shielded by his family, slipped away.

  Jenn’s sons had drawn portraits of their mother and they were tacked up now, next to the guest book as the mourners left the church. There was a seven-year-old’s depiction of a yellow-haired angel with a halo, her arms holding two small stick figures who were clearly Dalton and Dillon. It was almost more than those signing the guest book could bear. Many were tearful as they left the sanctuary, murmuring quietly.

  And then, suddenly, their eyes were drawn upward. There was a magnificent rainbow tracing its colors brilliantly across the sky. A photographer from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution caught the image and it was featured on the front page of the paper the next day.

  For the first time since Jenn’s murder, Heather felt her heart lift. “I had been praying for some kind of a sign that Jenn was okay, and then to walk out of her funeral to see that rainbow spanning the sky from end to end. It was the most vibrant rainbow I have ever seen. I wanted to drop to my knees and say ‘Thank you, God.’ I really felt that rainbow was painted just for Jenn.”

  Still, for every moment like that, there would be thousands that reminded Jenn Barber Corbin’s family that she was gone forever. At the church, both friends and strangers did their best to bond with them, many of them awkwardly slipping into the familiar, empty words everyone murmurs at funerals. “I know how you must be feeling,” or “Jennifer’s gone on to a better place in Heaven. We must try to understand God’s will.”

  That was impossible for Jenn’s family to do as they carried her ashes to their car. They would have their sad little private memorial ceremony at home, something Dalton and Dillon could participate in—even though they were too young to truly understand.

  After the public services, the Barbers gathered at Heather’s house. They placed roses, daisies, and Jenn’s favorite flower—tulips—on a coffee table. There were pictures of Jenn with Dalton and Dillon there, and, in the center, the urn with Jenn’s ashes. A white candle flickered atop it. The boys didn’t understand that this was all that was left of their mother’s earthly body, and that was as it should be. Narda knew they couldn’t comprehend that, and she didn’t want them to. They all joined hands and said a prayer.

  Two days later, the funeral home representative called to say that Bart Corbin wanted Jenn’s ashes back—immediately. That seemed to be a monstrous joke to Max and Narda Barber. This was all they had left of Jenn; shouldn’t the cremains of their lost daughter belong to them?

  Legally, Jenn’s ashes did not. When Jenn died six days before, she was still married to Bart Corbin. Unless she had specifically spelled out her wishes in writing, Bart was heir to everything she left behind. But she had left no instructions; there had been no suicide note, nothing to indicate that Jenn knew she was about to die.

  Actually, Jenn had believed she was about to start a new life. Although Bart hadn’t known how carefully she was planning her future away from him, she had gone about it methodically. As the investigation progressed, it would become more and more evident that Jenn had wanted desperately to be free of him.

/>   Heather recalled something else Jenn had asked her once. Jenn had had a forlorn look on her face when she said, “What if you find your one true love and you’re already bound to someone else?”

  At the time, it had seemed a rhetorical question.

  AS PEOPLE WERE FILING OUT after the funeral service, a middle-aged couple had moved out of the crowd of mourners, and approached Heather. For a moment, she didn’t know who they were, and then it hit her with a jolt. They were Dolly Hearn’s parents—Dr. Carlton and Barbara Hearn—who had driven for hours from their home in Washington, Georgia. Perhaps more than anyone in the world, they understood exactly what the Barbers and their surviving daughters felt. They had come to express their condolences to Max and Narda. Heather led them into a quiet corner where they could talk without being overheard.

  The Hearns had spoken empathetically, yet cautiously; Marcus Head had asked them not to compare notes with the Barbers. “He told us not to have a ‘powwow’ with the Barbers,” Barbara Hearn recalled, “and we honored that.”

  That might have contaminated future witness testimony and statements. Carlton and Barbara Hearn had never believed that Dolly was a suicide, nor had they ever had a satisfactory conclusion to their search for answers, even though they had hired their own private investigators to look for evidence leading to the person who they believed had killed their daughter.

  In all these nearly fifteen years, they had never been able to get law enforcement to focus on Bart Corbin enough so that arrest warrants and charges resulted; he had stalked Dolly when she tried to leave him.

  Jenn Corbin’s death and her funeral services had ripped away layers of healing for the Hearns, and thrust them back into the horrific moment when they first learned of Dolly’s death.

  PART THREE

  Dorothy Carlisle Hearn

  “DOLLY”