Deadly Divorces (6 page)

On the evening of 6 June 1990, Dolly’s roommate – Angela Garnto – walked into the living room of their apartment in Augusta to find the 27-year-old sitting up on the sofa with her legs crossed and the gun her father had given her lying in her lap. She had been shot once in the head. Beautiful, vivacious Dolly Hearn had apparently committed suicide.

No one who knew her believed it. She’d taken food out of the freezer to defrost, she’d planned a trip to the beach with family for a few days’ time. Then she’d taken a gun and shot herself in the head. Who would buy such a story?

Gil Hearn heard the preposterous news when he got back from a trip with his high school graduating class and found his parents waiting at the airport. ‘My Mom said, “We lost our Dolly.” It really was the worst thing she could have told me.’ The Hearn family had no doubt who was
responsible for Dolly’s death. ‘I knew that Bart had killed her,’ Gil Hearn explained later. ‘There was never any doubt in my mind, there was never any doubt in my parents’ mind.’ Plus, there was the witness who’d seen Bart in Dolly’s apartment through a crack in the door on the day she died.

But the authorities at the time couldn’t come up with any explanation apart from suicide. Subsequent investigations dug up enough doubt to have the suicide verdict thrown into question but still there were insufficient grounds for turning the case into a murder inquiry. The cause of Dolly’s death was, in official-speak, inconclusive. Grief-stricken and desperate, the family hired an independent pathologist only to have their hearts ripped apart all over again when no firm evidence of homicide was uncovered and suicide could not be ruled out.

Imagine raising a daughter whose spirit sings, whose laughter touches everybody she meets, who sees every day as a new adventure just waiting to be grasped. Imagine being told this daughter has killed herself even while you know with every breath in your body, that she’d never, ever have contemplated such a thing. Imagine the need you’d have to show the world that your daughter didn’t choose to die, that some dark force had snuffed out her life completely against her will. Imagine how that knowledge and those feelings would eat away at you over the years while the world keeps on turning around you and your
daughter’s friends graduate, get married, have children of their own. Imagine how you’d despair of justice ever being done and dread the thought of going to your grave without the world knowing what really happened to your little girl. That’s what Dolly Hearn’s parents lived with every day for 14 long years.

They’d all but given up on ever being able to publicly reveal to the world what privately they’d known all along – that Dolly had been murdered – when all of a sudden the news broke about Jennifer Corbin’s death in Buford, Georgia just 150 miles away. As the story unfolded live on television, the Hearns could hardly believe what they were seeing. Another woman who’d been trying to end a relationship with Barton Corbin had been found dead from a single gun shot to the head. Another family was starting out on the same nightmare road they’d been travelling for the last 14 years. They were torn between feeling devastated for Jennifer Corbin’s family and excited at what the news could mean to their own. For Max and Narda Barber, who’d never known about Dolly or her relationship with Bart, the existence of the Hearns came as a huge shock. It was, said Narda, ‘beyond belief.’

There are some moments in time that seem ever so slightly to nudge the world off-kilter so that nothing appears quite the same as it did before and, seen from a new angle, what’s passed acquires a whole different meaning. For the Barber family this was one such moment. The
son-in-law
they’d taken into their lives as one of their own had a mysterious history, one that included a dead girlfriend and a trail of harassment and deception. The man they thought they knew – the father, the husband and the
wisecracking
friend – turned out to be an illusion. In his place now was a stranger who dressed in the same clothes and drove the same car but looked out at the world from eyes holding completely different secrets. Who knew what he was capable of?

Police investigating Jennifer Corbin’s death had begun to question the suicide theory and had started to look on it as a possible homicide. On the night of Jennifer’s death Barton had been out with his brother and friends and went back to stay at his brother’s afterwards. But there was a brief window of time when he was unaccounted for and they wanted to ask him about it. So far he had not complied with requests to come and be interviewed. All communication was done through his attorney, who remained adamant his client was a grieving widower whose wife, devastated by her failing marriage and forthcoming divorce, had taken her own life.

On the Wednesday following Jennifer’s death, her family walked into Flanigan Funeral Home on South Lee Street in Buford to make the necessary arrangements. They’d decided to hold a memorial service followed by a cremation that Friday. At this stage no one in the family had spoken to Barton Corbin, who was staying with his
family, so there was disbelief when the funeral director apologetically informed them that Bart, as Jennifer’s husband, had arranged for the cremation to take place later that day. In the end all the family could do was ask to see the body and say their goodbyes.

No parent who has brought a child into the world should ever have to sit in the unnatural hush of a funeral home and cradle the lifeless body of that same child, knowing that in the end all the love in the world wasn’t enough. No parent should have to whisper goodbye to their child who was supposed to outlive them. When the Barbers left the funeral home that day they were more determined than ever to make sure justice was done for their Jennifer. Of primary concern to the family was the welfare of Dalton and Dillon. The thought of those two boys being returned to the father who’d failed to turn up for them, despite knowing what they’d been through, was more than anyone could bear. The boys had endured the most traumatic of ordeals and were in fear of their father. According to Heather’s husband Doug, the first time Corbin had phoned to speak to his oldest son, Dalton started sobbing and refused to stay on the phone. Now, more than ever before, they needed to be surrounded by love. The following day Heather and Doug applied for temporary custody of Dalton and Dillon. To their immeasurable relief, custody was granted.

10 December 2004 – the day of the memorial service –
was dark and stormy. Nevertheless Sugar Hill United Methodist Church in Buford was packed with mourners determined to pay their respects to the woman who’d touched so many lives. No one could believe it when a dark-suited figure with deep-set brown eyes and gaunt cheeks strode into the church and took a seat in the front pew. It was Barton Corbin who, just hours before, had been named as a suspect in Jennifer’s death.

What was going through Bart’s mind as he sat in that crowded church? Was he asking forgiveness for what he’d done? Was he looking around and finally realising just how many people had loved his wife and how many lives would be devastated by her loss? Or was he too busy worrying about his own future? About whether the police would be able to find any evidence linking him to Jennifer’s death, whether he was about to get away with it… again?

Seeing Barton sitting there inscrutably – and, worst of all free – in the front row compounded Jennifer’s family’s grief still further. When Heather got up in front of the mourners to talk about her sister, she could hardly control her emotions. ‘Right now I am so angry,’ she said with her voice raw with grief. ‘But one thing I know is that love is a million times stronger than anger.’

After the service a well-dressed couple made their way into the room where the Barber family were receiving guests. They were strangers to the rest of the mourners from the tightly knit community and they looked slightly
nervous as they introduced themselves to Max and Narda. It was Barbara and Carlton Hearn.

If you’ve never lost someone you’ll never know what grief is, and if you’ve never lost a child, you’ll never understand that most savage strain of grief. The Hearns and the Barbers had this tragic bond in common and more. Each had lost a daughter in the full prime of her life and each believed the same man to be responsible: Barton Corbin.

‘There hasn’t been a day in the last 14 years where Carlton hasn’t talked about Dolly,’ Barbara Hearn told Max Barber, taking his hand in hers. Funny that so sad a statement could bring comfort but facing a lifetime without his Jenny and knowing that she would never be far from his thoughts, Max Barber found strength in the knowledge that someone else knew exactly what he was going through.

Exiting the church at the end of this most emotional of afternoons, the mourners were stunned to find the wind and rain of earlier had given way to a perfect rainbow that arched magnificently across the sky. It was, they all agreed, typical of Jenn not to want to leave without sending a message to let them know she was OK. That was just the type of person she was, thoughtful to the last.

After the service the Barbers took Jennifer’s ashes back to Heather’s house in the candle-shaped urn they’d carefully picked out. The urn was placed on the dining room table surrounded by roses, gerbera daisies and tulips,
Jenn’s favourite flower. Her family stood around the table, joined hands and prayed for the woman they’d loved so much. Reaching out a small hand, young Dalton touched the urn that held the ashes of his former life and told his mother how much he missed her. Nothing would ever be the same again.

And yet still the word ‘suicide’ hung heavy in the air over Gwinnett County. Police may have decided to treat this as a homicide investigation, but Barton Corbin’s supporters were having none of it. It was very sad, they said, but here was a woman teetering on the brink of divorce, distraught at the thought of all she had to lose. People had killed themselves for less. Barton himself stayed out of the way, indirectly proclaiming his innocence, while refusing to come in voluntarily for questioning.

Without further evidence it seemed like a stalemate – except for one thing. Vibrant, positive-thinking women like Dolly and Jenn don’t tend to commit suicide – and certainly not by shooting themselves in the head and not without leaving some sort of note. You didn’t have to be Einstein to work out that the odds against a man being involved with two women who kill themselves in exactly that manner were pretty high.

The police decided to keep a close watch on Barton. They still hadn’t been able to trace the gun back to Corbin’s friend Richard Wilson, but it wasn’t long before investigators decided the blood trail and the angle of the
bullet wound at the scene of Jennifer’s death weren’t consistent with suicide. Plus Jenn didn’t have any gun powder residue on her fingers. Add that to Barton’s strange behaviour regarding the children after Jenn’s death and the good dentist was starting to look ever so slightly suspicious.

Meanwhile, back in Augusta Dolly’s case was reopened following the developments in Gwinnett County. Using newer technology, the authorities again looked at photographs taken at the scene and in particular at the blood spatter patterns. This time the conclusion was very different: the body had been manipulated
after
the wound had been inflicted. The net was closing in on Corbin. The prosecution put a tap on Bart’s phone. In one conversation he referred to Dolly as that ‘bitch in Augusta’. Who hasn’t said things in an unguarded moment that they might later regret? But to describe a dead former girlfriend in such a derogatory way pointed to a sinister side to Bart that most people had never suspected he was capable of.

On Wednesday 22 December – Barton Corbin’s 41st birthday – he was arrested for his part in the death of Dolly Hearn. Three police vehicles surrounded the white Chevrolet Suburban in which the dentist was travelling near his office on Braselton Highway. With him was his secretary. It was a very sudden and very public arrest, which was shown live on TV – the ultimate humiliation for such a control freak. Two weeks later he was charged with murdering his wife.

For the best part of the following two years, Barton maintained he was innocent, the unfortunate victim of a freak coincidence. His family – twin brother Brad, younger brother Robert and mother Constance – stood by him. Bart hired the best defence lawyers available, charging them with proving he was actually a grieving husband being made to suffer horribly for becoming romantically involved with two emotionally unstable women. In the end, said defence lawyer David Wolfe, relationship breakdown was the villain in this tragedy, not Dr Barton Corbin: ‘You ask anybody what does a divorce do to people emotionally? It’s heart-wrenching, it’s gut-wrenching, it’s one of the things that drives people to take their lives or attempt to take their lives.’

For the Hearns and the Barbers it was nearly two years of limbo in which their everyday lives coexisted as though in parallel universe with their new lives as families of the victims. Some days it was almost possible to lose yourself in the routine of school runs, baseball practice, grocery shopping and work, and to believe that life was once again back to normal. Other days even getting up out of bed seemed too monumental a task. Always, over-hanging everything – every birthday celebration, every holiday and every family meal – was the shadow of Barton Corbin and the possibility that he just might get away with it again.

The trial was scheduled for the second week in September 2006. On 12 September, the second day of jury
selection, came the breakthrough. The lead prosecutor was handed a note by his chief investigator: ‘Come out of the courtroom now’. The words were underlined for extra emphasis. ‘This had better be good,’ he thought to himself as he made his excuses to leave the room. And it was. The gun that shot Jennifer Corbin had finally been traced back to Troy, Alabama, and Richard Wilson had confessed to giving it to Corbin. It was the piece of evidence that smashed a hole through Barton’s carefully constructed dam of lies.

Bart now knew there was no hope of getting off, but still there was a chance for damage limitation. His legal team was told that if he confessed to the murders of both women, he’d be spared the death penalty. For an egocentric such as Corbin, who truly believed the world existed only so far as he himself there was really no choice.