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

by Ann Rule

  Porter didn’t spell anything out; in fact, he told Narda once more that he couldn’t give her any details. But then he asked her, if there should be a request by the defense for a plea bargain, would she still want the trial to go ahead?

  Why on earth would the defense ask for a plea bargain? Narda knew Bart, his bottomless need for control and his damnable pride. He had maintained all along that he had nothing to do with Jenn’s death, and he still carried himself with a certain haughtiness, his body language showing how positive he was that, once more, he was going to walk away a free man.

  Would she want the trial to go ahead? No! The very thought of sitting in the Gwinnett County courtroom for weeks and listening to her beloved Jenn being described falsely as a faithless wife, a bad mother, and a sexually promiscuous woman—all illustrated by the giant blowups of Jenn’s and Anita’s emails—nauseated Narda. She agonized that those who hadn’t known Jenn in life might believe the smarmy picture Bart’s attorneys were sure to paint.

  If Bart could be imprisoned forever without a trial, she would have a sense of peace. And Jenn would be vindicated. That was what she wanted to say, but she couldn’t speak for everyone. She would have to talk to Barbara and Carlton Hearn and to Max and the rest of her family. She wondered what could have happened to make Bart even consider pleading guilty. But she hoped that what Danny Porter was asking her meant that there was a chance he would.

  JUDGE MICHAEL CLARK didn’t have a scheduling conflict. He was meticulous about arranging the hours of his days, and his assistant, Greg Lundy, helped see to that. The Corbin trial had top priority with Clark and he had cleared his decks to be sure it ran smoothly. But Clark and all the attorneys had agreed to this ploy to keep the media at bay until they could follow up on the contents of the note that Jack Burnette had handed to Danny Porter.

  Porter, Chuck Ross, Russ Halcome, Mike Pearson, and Jack Burnette would be heading out for one more trip—hopefully the last—to Troy, Alabama. Bruce Harvey and David Wolfe would travel south, too. Richard Wilson had already arranged for an attorney to represent him. They would all meet at 6 P.M. on Wednesday evening, September 13. At last, the prosecution’s reluctant witness had promised to tell them the truth. If Wilson followed through, Bart Corbin might very well think twice about proceeding with trial.

  Burnette and Pearson would conduct the interview—they probably knew Wilson better than any of the DA’s staff.

  Wilson was a large man with powerful arms, growing somewhat thick around the belly as he approached middle age. He sat nervously in his chair in the interview room as he faced the prosecutors’ team from Georgia. Yes, he said, he had given Bart the .38 revolver. Bart had called him and said that Jenn “was fooling around on him,” and that he was frightened that he might be in danger. “He needed a gun to protect himself,” Wilson said. “He asked me if I had one, and I did, so he came on down here to get it.”

  Bart had once claimed that he feared for his life after Dolly Hearn was killed. After all, Dr. Carlton Hearn had warned him not to hurt Dolly. In November 2004, had he been referring to Max Barber? Was he really afraid of Max, a tall, gentle man? Or was he saying that Jenn’s “Internet lover” would come after him? Or was it all only an excuse to put a gun in his hands once more? The investigators voted for the latter reason.

  When the gun in question was handed to Richard Wilson, he studied it and said, “That certainly looks like it.”

  Wilson explained that he got the revolver originally by bartering. He’d traded it for something—maybe a lawnmower. He didn’t remember any longer. And it didn’t matter.

  “At last,” Danny Porter said, “we had the murder weapon in Bart Corbin’s hand.”

  Wilson was extremely loyal to Bart Corbin, following some unwritten rule that you don’t snitch on an old friend, but finally he could no longer withhold the truth.

  His attorney arranged an agreement that would keep Wilson from being charged with hindering prosecution, and he agreed to testify against his old friend.

  Mike Pearson couldn’t resist one last question. “Richard,” he said. “I gotta know. You could help me out if you’ll tell me. What could I have done differently—to get you to tell me the truth?”

  “Not a thing,” Wilson said. “You’re a nice guy. I just didn’t want to get involved. I still don’t.”

  At last, he had no choice. He was involved, and he had been from the very beginning. He seemed somewhat relieved that he no longer had to feel guilty about turning his back on Jenn Corbin, who had always been so nice to him.

  It was very late on that Wednesday night when the caravan from Lawrenceville arrived back in Gwinnett County. As exhausted as they were, Danny Porter and his staff were happy. There was no way the defense could recover from what was obviously a death blow to their case.

  Bruce Harvey couldn’t disagree. He and David Wolfe had been prepared for all eventualities—except this one. They had witnesses in the wings prepared to refute whatever Porter and Ross threw at them.

  “We go from ‘We’re gonna kick your ass—let’s rock and roll,’” Harvey said, “to ‘How can we save this guy’s life?’”

  And Bart Corbin’s life was now in jeopardy. Danny Porter had no compunction about seeking the death penalty. Porter had sent five killers to death row, and he had, thus far, attended two of the executions. “If I send them there, I have the obligation to see it through to the end,” he remarked.

  If any crimes had warranted a death sentence, Bart Corbin’s had. He had crept up on two young women he purported to love—and destroyed their brains with two single shots. And he had planned his murders carefully, even to the point of annihilating their reputations. All to protect himself and his massive ego in the belief that he deserved to have anything he wanted.

  ON THURSDAY MORNING, Narda and Max Barber, Heather and Doug Tierney, and Rajel Barber sat in Danny Porter’s office. He warned them that they could not say anything to anyone because negotiations were going on between his office and the defense lawyers, and they were extremely delicate. But he indicated that there was about to be a massive denouement in the case. Bart Corbin was on the edge of changing his plea to guilty, and nothing must interfere with that. They couldn’t tell their best friends, or their relatives. No one. The Barbers still didn’t have all the details, but they trusted Porter absolutely.

  Dolly’s family was being told, too, that something huge was about to happen. And both families agreed that they could accept a plea bargain—as long as Bart Corbin admitted his guilt in public.

  Nothing in Judge Michael Clark’s courtroom had changed. During the Thursday morning session, three prospective jurors were chosen. Everyone went to lunch as usual. Another juror was questioned after lunch. As normal as the proceedings were, it seemed as though a certain current ran along the press bench, the families’ section, and the spectators. It sizzled silently in the air.

  And then Judge Clark announced that they would adjourn—to resume at 9:30 Friday morning. Jenn’s family could wait no longer, and they were back in Porter’s office that afternoon. He was grinning.

  “He told us it was a ‘slam dunk,’” Narda recalled.

  “That a plea bargain had been reached and everyone would know about it Friday morning.”

  There would be no trial.

  The Barbers and Tierneys were a little surprised to learn that their estranged son-in-law wasn’t going to receive a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. There was no Georgia statute that would assure that. He would avoid the death penalty, and he would serve a very long time in prison, but someday, he would probably get out.

  As Heather and Doug Tierney drove to the justice center on September 15, Heather gasped. Three white doves flew low over their car, and then lifted their wings and soared skyward.

  When court resumed that morning, no one in the Corbin family was there. The night before, Bart had summoned them to the jail so that he could tell them something they needed to know. After hearing what
he had to say, they elected to stay away from Michael Clark’s courtroom.

  But the gallery was packed. Jenn’s family and Dolly’s family were there, along with most of the investigators from both Gwinnett and Richmond counties. DA Danny Craig and his chief deputy DA, Parks White, were there at the prosecution table. Sergeant Scott Peebles and DeWayne Piper sat just behind them.

  When Dr. Bart Corbin walked in between Bruce Harvey and David Wolfe, it was as if everyone in the courtroom held their breath. He was dressed in a dark suit, light blue shirt, and a blue tie with huge white circles on it. Any weight he had gained was gone now; he was rail-thin and his dark eyes burned holes in his pale face.

  He rose to face Danny Porter, who stared back at him.

  Porter described the morning of December 4, 2004, although there was probably no one in the courtroom who didn’t know every detail of Jenn Corbin’s murder. He spoke of a seven-year-old boy who wakened to find his mother dead, bleeding from a shot in the head.

  “Did you, in fact, commit the offense of malice murder, which is outlined in the indictment?” Porter asked.

  The room hushed, with everyone wondering if at last Bart Corbin would speak of what he had done and why. But his thoughts were still unreadable. His forehead tightened and three parallel, wavy lines appeared just below his left eyebrow and then snaked across the bridge of his nose. If the spectators behind the rail expected any emotion, this was all they were going to get.

  He answered, “Yes.” Simply “Yes.” Somehow it didn’t seem fair that he wasn’t required to say more.

  Only Danny Porter and Judge Clark had a front view of Corbin’s face. “There was no reaction,” Porter recalled. “It was like looking into the eyes of a shark.”

  Danny Craig rose to face Corbin. “Do you further admit that you committed the murder of Dolly Hearn on June 6, 1990?”

  “Yes.”

  Bart Corbin sat down, but there were two other men who had asked to speak. Max Barber was usually a quiet man, a man who had lived for forty years in a house with a talkative wife and three talkative daughters. He had not planned to speak on this morning, but now he knew that he had to. He and Bart had been close, and he had loved his son-in-law, and enjoyed the times they’d gone fishing, talked about cars, and bonded on their side-by-side houseboats. In some ways, Bart had been the son Max never had.

  As he came to the front of the courtroom, Bart looked frightened, diminished, as if the very air was seeping out of him.

  At first, Max looked down at him and told him that he had done the right thing in confessing, and Bart seemed to relax a little. But then Max’s voice took on a powerful, steely edge.

  “God may forgive you,” Max said. “I never will. I speak for my family when I say I just virtually hope that you burn in hell.”

  Bart Corbin crumpled.

  Carlton Hearn Jr. was next. It had usually been his brother, Gil, who spoke for the family, but this time it was his turn.

  “Bart Corbin stole from me,” Carlton said. “He stole from my whole family. He stole from the world. He deserves no place in society. He’s just a shell of a man. He’s hollow.”

  The courtroom was perfectly silent.

  When Judge Clark offered Bart the chance to speak to the Barber and Hearn families, he declined.

  Although none of Bart’s family was there, his younger brother, Bobby, spoke to reporters later, saying that his family had trusted Bart, had done everything they could to support him over the past two years.

  “We chose to back the guy we believed in,” Bobby said. “And we chose to back a liar. Had I known he did it, they would have got him. It’s that simple. He took a mother from her kids. He took somebody’s daughter.”

  There was nobody left for Bart Corbin to call up in the middle of the night.

  AFTERWORD

  JUSTICE ROLLS ON swiftly in the state of Georgia. Shortly after he pleaded guilty on that Friday afternoon in mid-September 2006, Bart Corbin was sentenced to two terms of life in prison. According to the terms of his plea bargain, the sentences will run concurrently, rather than one after the other, with credit given for the nineteen and a half months he spent in jail as he awaited trial. Concurrent sentences never seem quite fair—two murders for the price of one—but it had to be that way.

  Under Georgia parole guidelines, he will be eligible to apply for parole consideration in fourteen years, but it’s hardly likely he will get out so soon. As Danny Porter said, “I don’t think Barton Corbin will ever see the [outside] world again…. He won’t have a realistic chance of parole for twenty-eight years.”

  If he should be paroled at that time, he will be in his seventies.

  Corbin was soon moved out of the Gwinnett County jail. Georgia Department of Corrections records show that the prisoner, whose ID number is 0001226826, entered the system four days after he pleaded guilty and was sentenced. On September 19, Corbin became one of 53,089 prison inmates in Georgia. After orientation, he was sent to the Forest Hays Jr. State Prison in Trion, a correctional facility in the northwestern part of Georgia that is designed for close security. Relatively new, it is a rather bleak penitentiary, dominated by a looming guard tower that resembles an air traffic control vantage point at an airport.

  Hay State Prison’s defined mission is “to house inmates with behavioral problems that cannot be addressed at other prisons.” It is also constructed to keep those who need maximum supervision inside the walls.

  In the general population, there are four-hundred beds—some of them bunk beds in dormitories, others in single cells. The “Seg Unit” and the Isolation Unit share one-hundred seventy beds. Outside the perimeter fence, there is a boot camp for inmates who are expected to return to civilian life one day. These trustees take care of the grounds and other exterior chores.

  The prison where Corbin now lives is very bright, lighted constantly so that there are no shadowy corners, but it is stark. The floors at Hays State Prison are waxed to a mirror-like polish, probably with the aid of one of the Georgia Department of Corrections’ prison industries. Inmates manufacture chemicals for household use (a cottage industry similar to Bart’s father’s business at Gecor). Some corrections facilities in Georgia make beautiful furniture, or prisoners’ clothing and shoes, or have print shops. Inmates who qualify at Hays work in the prison’s mattress factory. There is no job designed for an imprisoned dentist.

  Back when Corbin was in the Gwinnett County jail awaiting trial, a prisoner who had been charged with stealing an airplane had a dental emergency, and he was moved to the cell next to Corbin’s. The dentist didn’t find that amusing; the local media did. Whether Bart Corbin will ever be trusted enough to be assigned to the prison’s medical or dental clinics is questionable.

  For now, Corbin is almost indistinguishable from other men in prison. He, who prided himself on his wavy dark hair and had only hundred-dollar haircuts, now has a shaved head. In his prison mugshot, his head is bald, either by prison policy or because he likes it that way. He looks healthier than he did at his sentencing, and his weight is listed at 218 pounds, his height at six feet three. Inside the walls, an inmate’s physical strength or the illusion of power is a form of self-protection, particularly for a man who sneaked up on helpless women with a revolver.

  Like most murderers who once dominated the news, Bart Corbin has already slipped into relative obscurity. His mother makes the trip to Trion to visit him; his brothers do not.

  But he is alive, while Dolly Hearn and Jennifer Barber Corbin are dead. And yet, memories of the women’s brief lives continue to blossom in the families who will always love them. The Hearns and the Barbers have refused to let their losses destroy the bonds that have carried them through a long ordeal of emotional pain, frustration, and disappointment to final justice.

  After the verdict, Dolly’s brother Gil wrote about her in a poignant statement to the press: “Our beloved Dolly was taken from us over sixteen years ago when she was a senior in dental school, one year shy of
becoming Dr. Dolly Hearn. Since then we have been living two nightmares.

  “We now live without Dolly’s contagious smile, her positive outlook on life, and the joy that she brought to every room she entered. The pain of her loss is awakened each time we tell our children and grandchildren that Aunt Dolly was more than just a photo. We have thoughts of the dental practice that never was, and we think of all of the lives that remain untouched by her inspiring acts of kindness, her free-flowing words of encouragement, and the spontaneous manifestations of her unique sense of humor. This is the nightmare that we will never escape.

  “In our second nightmare, we’ve lived knowing that Dolly was the victim of a pointless, cowardly act of murder, believing that every path for justice was seemingly exhausted. We’ve felt helpless, hopeless, and robbed of any remedy to set the record straight and to see justice served. We have always known the truth. Today we rejoice that this truth has been publicly revealed and that Dolly’s name is now officially cleared. This nightmare is over.”

  Gil Hearn praised the detectives and prosecutors who brought a sense of peace, at last, to his family and “the happiest ending” the cases could have. Dr. Carlton and Barbara Hearn had lived for years with some bitterness because they felt that the first investigation into their daughter’s death had been incomplete. In their hearts, they knew Bart had killed Dolly, but their lawyer, his investigator Sarah Mims, and their own efforts to find the truth hadn’t convinced the 1990 team of Richmond County detectives.

  Now, Barbara Hearn was finally able to say, “They redeemed themselves in our eyes this time. They really and truly did not investigate that case like they should have, and I don’t think they made any bones about it. But when they learned…that Jennifer and Dolly had died in a similar manner, they opened this case again and they went after it with a vengeance.”