by Ann Rule
While Eric had driven Bart around, trying to comfort him, on the night Dolly’s body was discovered, he could not help but notice that Bart didn’t seem as distraught as one would expect. Bart had taken pains to point out that Dolly committed suicide with a gun her father had given her for Christmas.
Of course, Scott Peebles knew that Bart had told Lieutenant John Gray and Scott’s father, Ron, that he didn’t know Dolly had a gun, and that he’d never been upstairs in her apartment. But Peebles figured he had known full well that the .38 revolver was in a box under her bed.
Eric Rader had subsequently told the 1990 team of detectives that Bart had indeed known about the gun. He also said that when Bart found out what Eric had revealed about that gun to the Richmond County sheriff’s investigators, he’d been really angry with him. But Rader’s tip about the gun had apparently gone unheeded by the detectives, who were convinced that Dolly’s death was a suicide.
The Hearns’ PI had phoned Dr. Tony Gacita in Pennsylvania to ask him about Bart’s brag that he knew how to commit the “perfect crime.” Gacita verified that Bart made the remark during a weepy 3 A.M. call on February 24, 1990, during Dolly’s date with Jon Everett—when she was so terrified by Bart’s pounding on the door that she had finally called the police. And Bart had kept Tony Gacita on the phone for two or three hours until just before dawn. He had asked Tony to come over, and when he arrived he had found Bart holding a gun, threatening suicide.
Bart had sobbed that he had “cheated his way through life,” and wanted to die. He said his friends didn’t know him, and he couldn’t live with that. Gacita recalled to Mims that Bart was all over the place emotionally, suddenly switching gears and saying that he knew how to “commit the perfect crime.”
Gacita had managed to get the gun away from Bart and he later hid it—and a second gun—at his own house. He took Bart home with him to spend the rest of that night in February 1990, and Vicky, Gacita’s girlfriend and soon to be his wife, had arranged for Bart to see a psychologist.
Three and a half months later, Bart had come for his guns on the night Dolly died, but the Gacita-Martins hadn’t given them to him. Instead, they had taken them to Bart’s father, who was staying at a nearby motel.
Tony Gacita had told Sarah Mims that Gene Corbin was angry with Bart for admitting to police that he had been at Dolly’s apartment on the day she died, and had admonished his son for being stupid—telling him that people had been convicted of murder with nothing more than “circumstantial evidence.”
Scott Peebles felt that there had been ample circumstantial evidence in 1990 incriminating Dr. Bart Corbin in the murder of Dolly Hearn, and now, in mid-December 2004, with DeWayne Piper’s blood pattern evidence that proved someone had moved Dolly’s body after her death, there was physical evidence, too.
Peebles located Dr. Eric Rader at his dental clinic near Atlanta, and phoned him. He asked the dentist who had once been Bart’s officemate in med school if he remembered making a statement to Sarah Hargett Mims. He did, indeed.
“Was her report accurate—where Bart told you he waited in Dolly’s parking lot, planning to shoot her?”
“Yes,” Rader said. “I remember distinctly that he told me that.”
Next, Peebles faxed a copy of Mims’s report on her interview with Dr. Tony Gacita to Gacita’s dental clinic in Pennsylvania. Gacita, too, agreed that his statements about Bart’s early-morning phone call were accurate. But, after fifteen years, he was a little unsure of every detail that led up to Bart’s claim that he knew how to commit the “perfect murder” or the “perfect crime.”
Tony and Vicky Gacita said they had spoken to Bart only once after he left Augusta. He had called them late one night in September 1990, but they told him they could not talk. Like many of the people who had known him when Dolly Hearn died, they had become a little afraid of him.
DANNY CRAIG WAS the district attorney of Richmond County, an affable, intelligent man who seemed completely comfortable in his own skin. His job sometimes put him at risk, however, and after threats were made on his life, the county provided him with a car that he could unlock and start with a remote key from many yards away. His supporters didn’t want him to have to fiddle with a car door when he encountered sudden danger. He and his counterpart in Gwinnett County, DA Danny Porter, had both been threatened; it was something they shared, just as they shared the same first name. Each had enraged opponents who were either crooked, delusional, or who didn’t care where their income came from. Whether the death threats were real or meant to intimidate them, they didn’t want to hang around and find out.
Craig was an Augusta native, descended from Augusta natives, and he loved his city. With good reason, for Augusta is a beautiful and gracious city with wide boulevards, abundant flowers, historic churches, and rich traditions. He especially enjoyed giving tours of Augusta. From the narrow streets down in the flats with their tiny houses huddled close together to the splendid mansions in the Summerhill neighborhood less than a mile away, to the paper cup factory and on to the manicured golf courses that attract thousand upon thousands of spectators at the Masters’ Tournament each April, Craig knew his way around his native city like the lines on his own hand.
Danny Craig had personal stories to tell about every spot. Crossing over a bridge, he would point to the wide canal that rushed beneath, as he recalled a boating trip when his wife, Crystal, who was very pregnant with one of their three daughters at the time. She fell out of their boat into deep water after some teenaged boys threw stones at them and swamped the boat. Craig rescued her and then chased the culprits down and marched them to the police.
By 2004, Danny Craig had been the district attorney in Richmond County for several terms, and from his optimistic approach toward life, it would have been easy to believe he had no problems beyond the next case he would prosecute. He had a devoted wife, who was a registered nurse, three pretty and smart daughters, and a warm and welcoming two-story house on a wide, treed lot. But the Craigs had suffered a tragedy a few years earlier that only other parents could fully understand.
One evening as the sun was setting, their eighteen-year-old middle daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, had driven only a short distance from home to pick up a friend so they could help each other deal with the sudden death of one of their classmates. She was a little late in calling home when Crystal Craig heard sirens keening less than a block from their house.
She was devastated when she learned that her own daughter had been terribly injured in a car accident. Sarah had come to a stop at the intersection of the street where the Craigs lived. Blinded by the orange setting sun in her eyes, she didn’t see the truck approaching to her left, and she pulled directly into its path.
One of her two passengers, Lydia Guntharp, seventeen, was killed, and Sarah came very close to dying, but prayers and her family’s constant presence called her back to life, but not to full consciousness. It was a stellar day when she was able to leave the hospital. An absolutely brilliant student before her accident, Sarah Elizabeth lay in bed at home for years, all of her plans and hopes for college seemingly gone. Her progress was agonizingly slow, but someone was always with her, and in the evenings it was her dad.
As he plunged into the Corbin investigation, Danny Craig went to work every weekday as the district attorney of Richmond County, but each night he sat next to Sarah’s bed, talking to her, reading, occasionally doing paperwork. By 2006, she was able to respond to questions by wiggling her right foot, and her mother knew what colors and songs Sarah liked.
Devout Catholics, the Craigs refused to weep about what their family had lost, but continued to hold out hope for a happy future for Sarah Elizabeth.
It’s doubtful that the criminals he investigated and later faced in court ever saw the other, tender, side of Danny Craig’s life. People had to know him well before he would speak of his daughter.
SCOTT PEEBLES CONFERRED with Danny Craig, Assistant District Attorneys Jason Troiano, and Parks W
hite, presenting his case and explaining all the reasons he was convinced that Bart Corbin had shot Dolly Hearn.
The men in the District Attorney’s Office agreed that it was time to take the case before a grand jury. Danny Craig jotted down a list of the compelling factors that stamped Bart Corbin as a guilty man:
The breakup
The criminal behavior
Burglary
Theft of cat
Hair spray in contact lens solution
Theft of files
Things he chose to steal, e.g., “Dolly’s favorite tuxedo outfit”
The recorded admission by silence
Knowledge of the gun gained in burglaries of apartment
Approach to neighbor’s apartment
Presence of defendant’s car
License tag removed from car
Stands “frozen” behind bathroom door while Sandra L. is there
Recorded message to stage an alibi
Later admission of his presence
Effect of his (later) admission—he staged an alibi
Innocent people don’t stage alibis
Dolly was preparing food for family vacation
Female shot in the head—unusual for suicide
Specific bullet trajectory—destroyed pons at top of brain stem
Blood spatter evidence
Absence of blood on handle of gun
Negative gunshot residue test (not compelling as isolated fact)
Wound immediately disabling
Dolly’s fear of defendant—Tip-Top incident
Defendant’s midnight visit to Jon Everett’s apartment
Retrieval of his personal gun after “suicide”
It wasn’t a particularly long list of evidence and circumstances that suggested murder rather than suicide, but it was more than enough to remind Danny Craig of the case against Bart Corbin. Each phrase and ramification stamped him as a clever, enraged, premeditated killer. And, thank God, they still had the witnesses who would back up the physical evidence. DeWayne Piper and Scott Peebles had been the ideal investigative team.
Craig felt that the Augusta grand jury would have enough variables to consider, and return with an arrest warrant for Barton Corbin for the shooting death of Dorothy Carlisle Hearn.
CHAPTER THIRTY
DECEMBER 3–22, 2004
DETECTIVE MARCUS HEAD had every reason to feel confident that Bart Corbin wasn’t going to flee. He was at his dental clinic every day and went to lunch each day with Dara Prentice, who appeared to be very supportive of him. Although Dara was married, the investigators had heard a flood of rumors about her personal relationship with Corbin. Teams of deputies and investigators were keeping track of him, much to his apparent annoyance. News crews were also nearby, waiting for something to happen.
The officers tracking Bart were in plainclothes and drove unmarked vehicles. They waited outside his mother’s house in Snellville on Tuesday evening, December 21, and then followed him to the Frontera restaurant on Highway 78, where they observed him meet a short man, who wore a black leather jacket. The men shook hands, and then walked down to Ruby Tuesday’s. One of the undercover investigators was standing just behind Bart when the tall dentist said to the man. “We need to sit somewhere secluded so we can talk serious business.”
Unaware that there was a cop just behind him, Bart glanced over his shoulder four or five times to see if anyone was listening.
At that point, they moved farther away, and the undercover officer couldn’t hear what they said. It was a short meeting; six minutes later, Bart Corbin walked out, got into his tan truck, and drove away.
On December 22, Bart’s forty-first birthday, Scott Peebles notified Marcus Head in Gwinnett County that an arrest warrant charging Bart Corbin with murder had just been issued by Richmond County in Augusta. Head assured Peebles that there were already surveillance teams following Corbin, and that he believed an arrest could be accomplished before the sun set.
While they had waited for the Richmond County grand jury to hand down an indictment, Gwinnett County police officers had always hoped to arrest him at his office. Confronting him in a relatively private venue would give them the opportunity to control the situation. Corbin had made it very clear he didn’t want anything to do with the police, and no one knew how this man, who was given to violent rages, would react.
On that Wednesday morning three days before Christmas, Bart was seeing patients in his clinic on Braselton Highway, apparently conducting his practice as usual. Investigators G. R. Thompson and M. A. Lester were part of a four-man team assigned to surveil Bart Corbin, and, as always, they waited outside his dental office in Hamilton Mill. Suddenly, they were notified that Corbin had just been indicted in Richmond County and were told to stand by.
At about ten minutes to noon, Bart and Dara Prentice left the clinic and walked toward a white Chevy Suburban. Bart looked up at the sky at a low-hovering helicopter with the logo “11 Alive,” and slipped quickly into the passenger seat. Dara drove the SUV, heading slowly toward the parking lot exit, and then turned onto Jim Moore Road.
Although the plan had been for Marcus Head to come to the office to arrest Bart, he instructed Thompson to stop Dara’s car before it could disappear into traffic. “Then move in and make the arrest,” Head said. “I’m headed your way now.”
Fortunately, Dara’s SUV was caught in heavy traffic at the intersection of Braselton (Georgia Highway 124) and Jim Moore Road. The day shift team from the Gwinnett County police decided to move in. Detective C. T. Fish wore a sweatshirt with “POLICE” written across the chest and back as he approached the driver’s door. He asked Dara Prentice who was in the car with her, and she answered, “Dr. Corbin.”
Fish shouted to the surveillance team that Corbin was, in fact, in the car. Thompson and Lester blocked the white vehicle in the front, while G. Linder pulled in close behind. Thompson and J. R. West approached the passenger door where Bart Corbin was sitting, and the other three officers—Lester, Linder, and J. Carter stood by. West shouted to Bart to raise his hands, and he complied. He was clearly surprised, and he put up no struggle as he was removed from the car, put on the ground, and handcuffed, although he insisted it wasn’t necessary to handcuff him.
Bart was even more surprised when he found he was under arrest on a warrant—not out of Gwinnett County—but from Richmond County. The grand jury in Augusta had handed down a sealed warrant charging Corbin with “felony and malice murder” in the death of Dolly Hearn. He had almost expected to be arrested in his home county, but he thought he had left his problems in Augusta in the distant past.
Marcus Head arrived to transport Bart to jail. As Head lifted the prisoner off the ground, Bart asked him to please pull up his collar, which Head did. The hovering Channel 11 helicopter followed Head’s gold undercover car as it headed toward Hi Hope Road in Lawrenceville. The two men made small talk as they drove toward police headquarters, conversation that men fall into easily—sports, the weather, avoiding any discussion of the charges against Bart. He would not talk without his attorneys present, and Head respected that.
The fact that it was Bart Corbin’s birthday was only accidental—the grand jurors in Augusta were unaware that the date meant anything. It wouldn’t be his best, although it might not be his worst, either. Film footage and whatever details the media could gather of his arrest were aired over and over on television stations in the Atlanta area, with announcers breaking into regular programming with news bulletins.
BART DIDN’T STAY LONG in the Gwinnett County police office. An hour later, Richmond County detectives Scott Peebles and Don Bryant arrived in two unmarked cars to transport him east to Augusta. He would ride in one police vehicle, while the second car would follow behind to avert any attempt on his part to escape. He didn’t look like an escape risk, but he was certainly a man capable of desperate acts, and the extra precautions might be needed. In Augusta, photographers caught the image of a tall, very thin man, handcuffed and man
acled as he walked next to Bryant in a shadowed area near the Law Enforcement Center, headed for jail.
Bart fully expected to be released within a short time.
DARA PRENTICE WASN’T ARRESTED, but Detective D. P. Henry interviewed her as Bart was taken away. She said she had known Bart for more than nine years. Asked about Jenn Corbin, she said she didn’t know a “whole lot” about the Corbins’ marriage because she tried not to get involved in any family problems. However, she said she was friendly with Jenn and her family, and they went to each other’s children’s birthday parties and ball games.
“I knew Bart was filing for divorce, and Jenn asked me a couple of things—as far as did I know that he had hit her? One thing I told him when he asked me something was to try to work it out ’cause you’ve got kids involved.”
Dara said Jenn had had an appointment for Monday, November 29, in Bart’s office, the Monday before her death. Dara said she had called Jenn on the previous Tuesday to tell her that her dental crown had come in, but Jenn said she and Bart weren’t on speaking terms, and she wouldn’t be in. Dara said she hadn’t asked any questions about that.
Bart had been more voluble about what was going on, explaining to Dara that he was living at home but sleeping in a separate bedroom. He had also told Dara that Jenn was corresponding with someone on the Internet, and that he’d talked to his wife about that since he “wasn’t happy” about her corresponding with a strange man.
Dara was a difficult interview. Although she said a lot of words, they were evasive and she never quite answered Detective Henry’s questions. She gave herself away as she said “Ummmmm” before every answer, and in between many words. She didn’t know of any woman Bart might have talked to a lot on the phone—besides herself.
“Okay, let me ask you this,” Henry began, “and this is for investigative purposes only. We’ve heard rumors—”
“I’ve heard rumors,” she echoed.