Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal (2 page)

Carlton Hearn Jr. and Gil Hearn, her brothers

AUGUSTA INVESTIGATION, 1990 RICHMOND COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE

Captain Gene Johnson

Lieutenant John Gray

Sergeant Ron Peebles

Sergeant Billy Hambrick

Coroner Leroy Sims

Dr. Sharon Daspit, Medical Examiner

Dr. Farivar Yaghmai, Neuropathologist

Bruce Powers, Chief of Security, Medical College of Georgia

AUGUSTA INVESTIGATION, 2004 RICHMOND COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE

Detective Sergeant Scott Peebles

Crime Scene Investigator DeWayne Piper

Detective Don Bryant

RICHMOND COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE

Richmond County District Attorney Danny Craig

Deputy District Attorneys: Parks White and Jason Troiano

Dr. Danny Brown, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Medical Examiner

GWINNETT COUNTY INVESTIGATION, 2004 GWINNETT COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT

Detective Marcus P. Head

Lieutenant Troy C. Hutson

Sergeant Vic Pesaresi

Sergeant E.T. Edkin

Officer Travis Wright

Officer Michelle Johns

Corporals: Eddie Restrepo, Curtis Clemmons, Fred S. Mathewson, Austin M. Godfrey

Investigators: Michael Marchese, Dave P. Henry, S. Milsap, Chris Penn, Jason Carter, (Norcross Police Department) David Cheek, Gary Linder, C.T. Fish, James R. West, R.C. Nelson, L.B. Davis, G.R. Thompson, Mark A. Lester

Crime Scene Technicians: Amber Roessler, J. Abousselman.

GWINNETT COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE

District Attorney Danny Porter

Senior Assistant District Attorneys: Tom Davis and Chuck Ross

Chief of District Attorneys Investigators: Jack Burnette

Investigators for the District Attorney: Bob Slezak, Jeff Lamphier, Mike Pearson, Russ Halcome, Kevin Vincent, Manny Perez

Chief Anthony Everage, Troy Police Department, Alabama

J.D. Shelton, Investigator, Alabama Attorney General’s Office

GWINNETT COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE

Carol A. Terry, Medical Examiner

Ray Rawlins, Forensic Investigator

Zubedah Mutawassim, Forensic Technician

SUPERIOR COURT JUDGES

In Richmond County: Judge Carl C. Brown

In Gwinnett County: Judge Michael C. Clark, Judge Melodie Snell Connor, Judge Debra Turner.

DEFENSE ATTORNEYS

David Wolfe, Bruce Harvey, and Steve Roberts

P
REFACE

APRIL 24, 2007

W
ITH EVERY BOOK
I write—and this is number 27—I realize more just how many lives are affected when one cruel and conscienceless person decides to take another human being’s life. Murder is not only a matter of a single death; there are many “little deaths” as homicide replicates its evil in countless lives left behind, changing them forever. Even if there are no more homicides committed by a particular killer, I know now that violent death never stops reverberating among those who suffer such terrible loss. The pain resonates like an echo in a series of tunnels—parents lose beloved children, spouses are torn from one another, and children too young to fully grasp the finality of death are destined to mature to a bleak point where they will have to understand what forever means. Families will never again have a complete Christmas or Thanksgiving or reunion; there will always be empty chairs. Friends will grow older and no longer resemble their yearbook pictures—but certain youthful images of lost loved ones will remain engraved on their memories. And even police officers, detectives, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges will do what has to be done before moving on to future murders, but all with their lives subtly altered.

Never was this more true than in two complex and drawn-out investigations in the state of Georgia, probes that occurred, technically, in different centuries. Of course, that doesn’t mean they happened many years apart, but simply that the millennium intervened. Even so, one of these tragedies was almost relegated to the past, where it might well have remained were it not for a second shocking event that brought old questions back into the light of day.

And, with the second death, even more sorrow. Could all of this be traced back to one person, a most unlikely suspect, one who may have gone through life totally without conscience, empathy, or remorse?

Perhaps.

O
F THE
159
COUNTIES
in the state of Georgia, Gwinnett County—northwest of Atlanta—stands out for its amazing exponential growth. In the last two decades, sleepy country towns surrounded by acres of raw land have attracted developers who then created whole neighborhoods with picturesque names drawn from history, nature, or their own imaginations. Houses, apartments, and condos soon burst from the red Georgia clay like the kudzu vine, a slithering, green noxious weed that threatens to creep relentlessly over everything in the state.

For the first few years of development, Gwinnett residents either boasted or complained that theirs was the fastest growing county in America. In the twenty-five years leading up to 2006, the population exploded from 200,000 to almost 800,000. In 1981, the Gwinnett County District Attorney’s Office had six attorneys on staff and a handful of investigators, a number quite adequate to carry out the DA’s business. The current Gwinnett County District Attorney, Danny Porter, was once one of those Assistant DAs. By 2006, after four terms as the District Attorney, Porter had a staff of ninety—including thirty-four lawyers and twenty-three investigators.

By 1990, the historic red-brick courthouse in Lawrenceville was bursting at the seams. The new $72 million Gwinnett County Justice and Administration Center on Langley Road opened in 1991. The modern structure with twenty-two courtrooms featured polished steel banisters, etched-glass walls and dividers, polished parquet floors, and skylights where the drum of a hard rain was almost louder than thunder. It was an expansive complex, yet it too soon began to strain against its walls.

In the District Attorney’s office, a law library had to be sacrificed to make more office space; small cubicles were made even smaller and arranged in what became a challenging maze for the uninitiated.

The visitors’ parking lot was the site of a very large monument dedicated “To America’s Sons and Daughters Who Served Honorably in the Armed Forces.” The sixty-one acres around the justice center were landscaped with chinaberry trees, pin oaks, crepe myrtles, lilies and begonias, azaleas and holly. Both the front and rear entrances were welcoming, but just inside those doors were the guards and metal detectors that have become ubiquitous in courthouses and law enforcement structures across America.

For some who came to this building in Lawrenceville, Georgia, there would be justice and triumph, and for others, heartbreak.

T
OO
L
ATE TO
S
AY
G
OODBYE

PART ONE

Jennifer Barber Corbin

“JENN”

C
HAPTER
O
NE

DECEMBER 4, 2004

T
HE SHRIEK OF SIRENS
piercing the chill December morning on Bogan Gates Drive was almost as alien as the thackety-thackety of helicopters overhead would be. This quiet street in Buford is a relatively new part of an upscale neighborhood, home to young and middle-aged professionals and their families. The houses here have mostly red-brick façades with glossy black shutters, not unlike homes in Atlanta’s more affluent districts, but on a smaller scale. In 2004, the average price of a home in Bogan Gates was between $200,000 and $300,000—the homes would cost twice that in Denver or Seattle or Philadelphia. Buford is an ideal suburb for those who commute the thirty-five miles to Atlanta: large enough with over 14,000 residents to merit local shopping centers, but small enough to dissolve the tension that comes with driving the I-285 beltway that encircles Atlanta with bumper-to-bumper traffic. And Bogan Gates Drive itself is an oasis of serenity with its manicured lawns and colorful gardens. Children play under the watchful eyes of all the adults there. If some stranger should insinuate himself into this enclave, he would not go unnoticed.

A negative note, at least for some, is that close neighbors tend to know each other’s secrets. There isn’t the anonymity that exists in apartment buildings in large cities. Neither is there the loneliness that city dwellers sometimes feel. Even so, some families on the street have secrets that none of their neighbors could possibly imagine.

That doesn’t stamp Bogan Gates as different; every community has its mysteries and even its surprising secrets. When reporters for television news and local papers sweep into such places, they are certain to obtain instant interviews with shocked residents who invariably say: “Something like that just doesn’t happen here—not in our neighborhood!”

But, of course, it does.

On this day in early December, Bogan Gates Drive just happened to be the site of one of the most horrific crimes in Georgia.

The town of Buford, its name as Southern as a name can be, sits close to Lake Lanier. This popular vacation spot’s waters meander for mile after mile, cutting channels deep and wide into the shoreline, leaving inlets that resemble the bite marks of a giant alligator. Buford is surrounded by other small townships: Flowery Branch, Sugar Hill, Suwanee, Duluth, Oakville, Alpharetta. It is very close to the border between Gwinnett and Forsyth counties. Forsyth County once had a reputation as one of the most racially prejudiced areas in America. A sign beside the road there could read “Boiled Peanuts,” or it might say, “Nigger, Get Out of Forsyth County, Before Sunset.” But no longer. Oprah Winfrey once broadcast her show from Forsyth County, pulling aside the blinds to reveal raw prejudice. Today, those with set ideas about racial disparities have learned not to voice them aloud.

Buford, in Gwinnett County, is far more in tune with the twenty-first century, a bedroom community tied to a thriving metropolis. Young families who live there can enjoy relatively small-town warmth, or drive to Atlanta for more cosmopolitan pleasures.

The family who lived at 4515 Bogan Gates Drive fit comfortably into Buford’s demographics. Dr. Barton T. Corbin, forty, had recently moved his dental practice to Hamilton Mill—less than ten miles away. His wife, Jennifer “Jenn” Corbin, taught at a preschool in the Sugar Hill Methodist Church. Although Dr. Corbin’s efforts to build a new practice often kept him away from home, and Jenn was the parent who spent more time with their children, they both seemed to dote on their sons, Dalton, seven, and Dillon, five. They went to the boys’ ballgames and participated in school events at Harmony Elementary School, where Dalton was in second grade and Dillon in kindergarten.

Married almost nine years, the Corbins appeared to have all those things that most young couples long for: healthy children, a lovely home, admired professions, close family ties, and myriad friends.

Jenn Corbin, thirty-three, was tall and pretty, a big-boned blond who usually had a smile on her face, no matter what worries might lie behind it. Bart was also tall, taller than Jenn by two or three inches, but beyond that he was her opposite. His hair was almost black, his eyes even darker, his pale skin surprisingly dotted with freckles. He was a “gym rat” whose muscular physique showed the results of his predawn workouts. When Bart was dealing with a problem, however, or worrying over his finances, he lost weight rapidly and became angular and bony. Then his cheekbones protruded and his profile turned sharp as an ax, almost Lincolnesque.

Many of his female patients found Bart strikingly handsome; some others were a little put off by his intensity. But most of Bart Corbin’s patients seemed to like him. He often traded dental care with his personal friends for some service he needed, using an old-fashioned barter system.

To an outsider, the Corbins’ marriage appeared solid—her sunniness balancing his sometimes dark moods. In truth, tiny threadlike fissures had crept silently through the perceived foundation of their marriage, weakening its structure from the inside out until a single blow could send it crumbling.

Most people who knew the Corbins weren’t aware that Jenn had fled their home shortly after Thanksgiving of 2004, and that a divorce might be forthcoming. Those who did know were shaken that “Bart” and “Jenn” might be splitting up. To the world, they were a team, their very names strung together like one word when their friends talked about them.
Bart-n-Jenn.

Jenn Corbin was responsible for that. She had struggled to maintain the façade that kept the foundering state of her marriage virtually invisible to the outside world. For at least eight years she continued to hope that she and Bart could somehow work out their problems and build a happy relationship. If they did accomplish that, there was no reason for anyone to know. If their union was irretrievably broken, people would know soon enough.

And know they would because, by the fall of 2004, Jenn had given up. Her parents, Narda and Max Barber, and her sisters, Heather and Rajel, knew that, although even they were reluctant to accept it. Jenn had tried to understand her husband and to make allowances for behavior she didn’t understand. She had forgiven Bart for betrayals most other women would not put up with. It was he who had laid down the ground rules in their marriage, and she had accepted them. She hadn’t gotten married with the idea that if it didn’t work out, they could always get divorced. She and her sisters were born to parents who had married only once—and who had just happily celebrated their fortieth anniversary.