Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal (27 page)

On Tuesday, November 30, Bart took the hard drive from his Hewlett-Packard computer into ACR Data Recovery Inc. in Norcross, and asked the technician there to pull out all of the information possible on emails that had been sent to and from his wife.

He was determined to unearth everything he could about Jenn’s secrets, and it seemed he was only a few steps behind her.

Jenn was living day to day, fearful enough that she was prepared to run if she had to, but still ambivalent. Would Bart really hurt her? Before he hit her on Thanksgiving, she would have said absolutely not. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

She had never found her cell phone, so she arranged to get a replacement for the one Bart had stolen from her purse. Jenn needed the security of having a phone of her own at all times. She replaced the journal that was missing, too, but kept it with her always.

Judy King, the divorce attorney Doug had recommended, explained to Jenn that, if at all possible, she should not move out of the house. If she left, that could be construed as “abandonment,” and it would give Bart a stronger case. He could claim that Jenn had deserted him. Bart had told Jenn that he didn’t want a divorce, but if she went ahead with her threat to file, he intended to go for full custody of Dalton and Dillon, and he would keep the Bogan Gates Drive house, too.

Jenn’s teaching job at the preschool would barely support them, and she was already looking for a full-time job. She had applied at the Harmony School where the boys attended. Jenn didn’t want to argue over money, but she suspected Bart would fight her all the way.

Jenn felt suspended between the life she no longer trusted and the life she had longed for with Chris. All of her hopes had vanished like smoke in a sudden gust of wind. She would stay with Bart at least over Christmas, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.

Surely she could make it through until 2005.

J
ENN WAS TORN
by aching indecision. Although she knew intellectually that there was no Christopher and never had been, she was unable to let go emotionally of the mind-picture she still had of him. He wasn’t real, but he still existed for her.

Chris—Anita—Hearn had fashioned her emails so that Jenn would believe they were on the same wavelength as far as their interests and concerns. Anita sounded as if she was as devoted to “her sister’s children” as Jenn was to Dalton and Dillon. She had written about taking care of her ill mother, and she was seeking to live a life with someone who was kind and gentle. Although Anita had carried out what many people would consider a cruel hoax, Jenn found it in her heart to forgive her.

She told her mother and sister only that she hoped to meet “the person” she had met online in person. She would deal with the dicier truth about who Anita really was later.

Part of Jenn Corbin still loved someone who was, in truth, neither Chris nor Anita but rather a figment of a desperate imagination. As she was going through the chaos of living with an enraged Bart, Jenn started answering the messages that Anita still sent her. She still had a friend. She even considered Anita’s suggestion that they might share a home together as they struggled to raise their children.

Cautiously, they started exchanging emails again, sometimes as often as before. The New Year would come in a few weeks, and Jenn didn’t know what she was going to do or where she would be living. And so she continued to stockpile household items in her mother’s warehouse and to write to Anita in Missouri when Bart wasn’t around.

And Bart continued his fanatical exploration into every corner of Jenn’s private world. He would not allow another woman to leave him. It did not matter that he had emotionally abandoned her years earlier. He was a man on fire.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
T
WO

DECEMBER 2004

J
ENN HAD ONCE MUSED
to her sister that there might be things about Bart she didn’t know. And, of course, there were many. Jenn might have known that Bart once dated another dental student, but she certainly didn’t know that woman had “committed suicide,” and she had never heard her name. So she could not have imagined his shock when he received the report that the hard drive he took in to be examined had emails from someone named Hearn. He had also gleaned a phone number for that person in Missouri, but his calls to that number were never answered. He had relegated Dolly to the past—but now her family name was surfacing in his life again.

F
IVE DAYS AFTER
T
HANKSGIVING,
on the Wednesday morning of December 1, just before 6
A.M.
, the war of the Corbins escalated once more. Jenn was in their recreation room running her usual mile on her treadmill, and she assumed Bart was upstairs taking his shower. But when she walked into the master bedroom, she saw her purse lying on the floor, its contents once again strewn all over. When she checked to see if anything was missing, she saw that her new cell phone, new journal, and her only credit card were gone.

Now, she was angry. She confronted Bart as he walked from the bathroom wrapping a towel around his waist.

“You were in my purse again!” Jenn said accusingly.

“You took my phone and I want it back.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said dismissively, and brushed by her.

“I want what you took out of my purse,” Jenn demanded.

Bart walked out of the room, ran down the stairs, and jumped into his yellow convertible. He was virtually naked—wearing nothing but the bath towel.

Jenn could see that he was out of control.

“Bart,” she warned, grabbing a cordless phone, “stop! I’m calling the police. Please don’t make me do this!”

He ignored her. Jenn punched 911. Bart had no business being out on the road nearly nude. As angry as he was, he might kill somebody. With the phone in hand, she followed him out to the driveway, and stood behind his Mustang to stop him from leaving. Although Bart’s behavior had become increasingly bizarre, she had never seen him quite like this.

Jenn didn’t want a public fight—a “scene.” She had tried throughout her marriage to avoid that. There had to be a way for them to split up with the least damage possible, but this certainly wasn’t it. By now Dalton and Dillon were awake and crouched inside the door, watching with horrified looks on their faces.

Jenn planted her bare feet firmly on the driveway as Bart steadily backed the car toward her. She was talking to the 911 operator, asking for a patrol car to come by. Jenn fully expected Bart to stop, but he kept coming. At the last moment, she tried to jump clear, but it was too late. She was still on the phone when Bart deliberately backed over her foot and drove off.

“Husband taking off with her personal belongings,” the 911 dispatcher radioed. “Vehicle is ’78 yellow Mustang…Hear female screaming—think I hear child crying in the background. He took shotgun out of the house—she doesn’t know where gun is now…”

Jenn gasped that she had been run over.

“Officers are on their way, Ma’am,” the dispatcher said. “Are you hurt badly?”

“I don’t know,” Jenn said. “I’m not sure.”

While she waited for the police, Jenn called Narda. Then she called Heather. Jenn was crying hysterically, something that was completely out of character for her. Heather couldn’t believe it—Jenn was always the one who took charge, calmed people down, and made everyone feel better. Finally, Jenn calmed down enough to tell her sister that Bart had just deliberately run over her. No wonder that Jenn herself was in shock, injured, and stunned by Bart’s behavior. Heather could hear Dalton and Dillon in the background, and they were crying loudly, too.

When the Gwinnett County patrolmen pulled up a few minutes later, they saw the bruise blooming on Jennifer Corbin’s foot, and took her to the emergency room. Although the injury to the soft tissues was painful, the X-rays revealed no broken bones in her foot.

Although Jenn was the one who had asked for a divorce four days earlier, Bart had already sought out an attorney and filed for divorce on November 29. Bart had instructed his attorney to file a petition seeking the divorce, preempting Jenn.

He wanted everything: the house, the furniture, full custody of Dalton and Dillon, his attorney’s fees, and a restraining order against Jenn. The only thing he was willing to split was responsibility for any marital debts. In his view, she should pay half of those.

Bart had also set about liquidating their bank accounts, and doing whatever he could to block Jenn from getting any more of what he considered his money. He took the largest cash advance he could on his main credit card—almost $40,000. Not only was he protecting his assets, he wanted to make if financially impossible for her to leave him. He remained unaware of the preparations she had made for her new life. Jenn had moved a few more things to her mother’s warehouse: lamps, flatware, a new medicine chest. None of it was expensive. Actually, it was quite utilitarian.

When Bart returned home after he’d run over Jenn’s foot, he found the house empty. Jenn and their sons were gone. She had taken enough clothes for herself and the boys to be away for a while. They had gone back to Heather and Doug’s house.

Bart was not arrested for assault; Jenn had declined to press charges, feeling it would just lead to more trouble.

Jenn told her sister that Bart had been harassing her constantly about the “person” she had written to online.

“Heather,” Jenn said with a sigh, “all this person has done is show me that I don’t have to be unhappy—that there could be a better life out there.”

Bart was on the phone constantly now—to Doug, and to Heather. He alternately begged for help to get his wife to come back to him, and expressed scorn that she would even try to leave him. “I’m going to make sure that she gets absolutely nothing,” he said. “I don’t know where she thinks she’s going to get the money to divorce me.”

“Well, Bart,” Heather finally said. “I guess she’s going to get it from us.”

Annoyed, Bart didn’t try to talk further to his sister-in-law; she was clearly on “Jenn’s side.” But he continued to call Doug for advice. Finally, Doug explained to Bart that he didn’t feel comfortable talking to him any longer since Bart’s conversation had changed from asking how he could mend his broken marriage to questions that were obviously phrased to gain private information about Jenn.

“Heather doesn’t think it’s a good idea for me to talk with you about Jenn anymore,” Doug said. “And I have to agree with her.”

After Jenn went to work, Heather phoned Bart’s brother Bobby. She was worried now about what Bart might be capable of, and she asked Bobby how he thought Bart was doing.

“Well, I’ve seen him a whole lot happier.” Bobby said.

“Do you know that Dalton told us that he is afraid his daddy is going to kill his mom?”

Bobby Corbin drew his breath in sharply, and Heather could tell he was shocked. She explained how Dalton would not leave Jenn’s side, and that he continually voiced his fear of what his father might do. Running over Jenn and racing off in nothing but a bath towel weren’t exactly the actions of a rational man. The boys had witnessed all of that.

Heather recognized that Bart needed someone to talk to, and she and Doug just couldn’t do that anymore, not after what Bart had done to her sister. Even so, there was something pathetic about her estranged brother-in-law, and she urged Bobby to get in touch with Bart.

Bobby said he was already trying to spend time with Bart. He thought Bart was also talking with some of his male friends, including Kevin Lyttle, who was the man they called “Iron”—both because he worked at an iron works, and because he was one of the more muscular men at BodyPlex, the gym where Bart worked out each morning. Brian Fox was another friend of Bart’s. Like most of the men Bart knew, Kevin and Brian weren’t his close pals but they could see he was having a rough time and were attempting to bond the way males do—drinking beer and watching football, usually at the Wild Wing Cafe in Suwanee.

While Heather had voiced her fears to Bobby, Narda called Bart’s mother, Connie, to tell her about what Dalton had been saying. Narda was so frightened for Jenn that she found herself in tears as she spoke to Connie Corbin, but she met with a blank wall. Connie said she wasn’t going to interfere. “I tried that before,” she said succinctly, “and I was told to mind my own business.”

Narda didn’t know what “before” meant. Bart hadn’t been married before; perhaps she was speaking of his twin, Brad, who had divorced. At any rate Connie gave no credence to Dalton’s warning that his father was going to kill his mother.

Narda and Heather tried to convince themselves that Dalton’s fears were groundless. He was a very worried little boy, but he was only seven, after all, and he’d seen too much arguing and violence in the last week.

Dalton refused to play with Dillon or his younger cousins, Max and Sylvia; he wanted to be right next to Jenn constantly, as if he could protect her from anyone who might try to hurt her. Jenn wasn’t that worried. She explained to Heather that no matter how angry Bart might be with her, he would never seriously harm her. “He wouldn’t do something so devastating to his own children,” she told Heather. “Even for Bart, that’s unthinkable.”

“I wish you were still in my neighborhood,” Jenn added. If only Heather hadn’t moved to Dawsonville, she and Doug would still be in the same school district as the Corbins and she could take Dalton and Dillon to school. Then it would have been easier for Jenn to get a full-time job.

Almost certainly, Jenn’s boys would adjust to a different school if they had to; Max and Narda had moved many times and their girls had been fine. But Jenn had always been the kind of mother who wanted her sons to have as perfect a childhood as she could provide.

A
DVENT CALENDARS HUNG
in homes and churches, their little doors opening as the days wound down toward Christmas. Jenn carried out the holiday activities she had planned for the youngsters at the Sugar Hill church preschool, helping them make presents for their parents.