Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal (39 page)

The computer technician told Halcome that Bart Corbin returned on December 8, nine days after he left the hard drive. He had come back “in a rush and a huff,” demanding to have it back at once. The computer expert said he had handed it over, but he still had the copy he’d made of the contents on that hard drive. He hadn’t gotten around to destroying it yet.

Halcome could no longer hide his enthusiasm, “Where are you? I’ll be right over.”

The technician wasn’t sure what he should do, and asked if he could talk to an attorney first. Although he hated to wait, Russ Halcome said, “Sure.”

On his attorney’s advice, the computer whiz asked that the DA’s office send him something official, asking for the evidence. Assistant DA Tom Davis wrote up a subpoena, and Halcome presented it, and then took the hard drive into evidence.

Russ Halcome knew that once the hard drive was out of the Corbins’ computer, Jenn would have lost a key way to communicate with Anita Hearn, because she had lost her basic Internet connection. However, her PlayStation II had a keyboard and was online so Jenn had been able to instant-message on that, though IMs, by their very design, have to be short.

In Jenn’s last days, she had written scores of brief messages to Anita, and from eight hundred miles away, Anita had been virtually an “eyewitness” to Jenn’s murder. They had instant-messaged and phoned each other throughout the evening of December 3.

And then, suddenly, Jenn was no longer there. Not on her PlayStation. Not on her cell phone.

C
ELL PHONES ARE
one of the richest sources of information for forensic technology experts to mine. The normal investigation procedure is to determine if a suspect has a cell phone. If he does, detectives want to see phone records. Halcome had numerous contacts with phone companies, and he filled out phone requests for “call detail” reports.

“We were looking for calls in and calls out,” he explained. “In this case, the original investigators had already identified certain cell phone numbers.”

Russ Halcome turned next to checking on Bart Corbin’s cell phone usage, and was pleased to find that Corbin was a cell phone addict. Between December 1 and December 22, when he was arrested on the Richmond County warrant, Bart had initiated 851 calls on his cell phone. Sixty-five of them were on December 4 and 5. Corbin had apparently felt naked without his cell phone, and his obsession with it had increased over the previous few months. He had used it to try to trace and trap Jenn Corbin, but also to create alibis for himself.

Now it occurred to Halcome that that sword could cut both ways. Bart’s cell phone could be used to trace
his
activities as well. Following his footsteps would require a lot of research and cross-connections, but Halcome was a man who loved the challenges in each new case.

“I haven’t had to work a day in my life,” he said cheerfully. “This is all great fun.”

Halcome focused now on Bart Corbin’s cell phone calls, charting the “towers” and “sectors” where Corbin’s calls had leap-frogged from their origins to their final destinations. Most people don’t notice the cell phone towers that rise from the landscapes of America like skeleton trees whose bones are made of metal. And yet the towers are virtually everywhere, bouncing signals that connect our wireless networks. These networks can be searched for phone records, but they also can be used to chart the comings and goings of the humans who make those cell phone calls. Cell phones are actually far more accurate for this purpose than calls made from an ordinary phone wired to one location.

Armed with a list of Bart’s telephone calls, Halcome set to work, believing he could make a map of exactly where Bart Corbin had been at particular times. It was all dependent upon how often he had used his cell phone, and with those sixty-five calls he’d made shortly before and after Jenn Corbin’s murder, Halcome had more than enough information. He shared his findings with Jack Burnette and DA Danny Porter.

“When we found out where he was—at the Wild Wing Cafe, and then at Kevin Lyttle’s house—we charted out the tower locations, and drew up maps to follow his route and times on the night of December 3rd and 4th,” Halcome explained. “The guys at Nextel gave me a key—or a code—to figure out physical addresses, sectors, latitudes, and longitudes. Then I put that information into Microsoft’s ‘Streets and Trips’ software. And there was Bart Corbin driving through small towns in Gwinnett County.

“We could see Hamilton Mill Road where they hooked up.

“I am on my own cell phone a lot, working out my ‘to do’ list as I’m driving. Bart apparently did the same thing.”

Russ Halcome put his spreadsheets on a computer disk, and he read all the police reports from his fellow investigators, and from the Gwinnett County Police file that Marcus Head had prepared. He read all the witness statements. Everything tracked for the first part of the evening. Bart’s calls were hitting on the towers that matched the addresses where he claimed to have been.

Halcome was prepared to testify in Corbin’s trial that the defendant had, indeed, been at the Wild Wing Cafe, and buying coffee at a Wal-Mart on the way to Lyttle’s house, and, finally, after 3
A.M.
, at a tower close to his brother Bobby’s house.

“But there was no way he could have been at Bobby’s as early as he said he was,” Russ Halcome pointed out.

“His cell phone hit on a tower close to his own house in Buford—just about the time we figured that Jenn was shot—right after Steve Comeau heard what he thought was Bart’s truck coming up the street. He made a couple of phone calls that bounced off the tower closest to Bogan Gates Drive.”

Believing he was smarter than any detective, Bart Corbin was unaware that he’d left a trail of cell phone tower hits behind him, hits that showed he had been in his own neighborhood for just long enough to kill the wife who wanted only to be free of him. In fact, one of those outgoing cell phone calls was at 1:58
A.M.

Could Russ Halcome explain the very technical and detailed aspects of how he had tracked Bart Corbin to a jury? He thought of how confused the O. J. Simpson jury had been as the prosecutors tried to explain DNA to them. What made perfect sense to Halcome might be difficult for a jury of laypersons to understand.

But it was enough to take to the grand jurors in Gwinnett County and get the indictment that Danny Porter and Marcus Head and their backup teams wanted so badly.

On January 5, 2005, a month after Jenn Corbin’s death, the grand jury indictment came down in Gwinnett County. Barton Thomas Corbin was officially charged with one count of malice murder, one count of felony murder, and one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. The felony was Jenn’s murder.

Superior Court Judge Melodie Snell Conner had issued a bench warrant to be sure there was a hold on Corbin in the unlikely chance he was able to post bond in Augusta. He would now face trials in two counties, but no one could say which jurisdiction would be the first to proceed. Judge Conner recused herself, asking to be replaced. Her reason was not—as some people thought—that she had attended high school in Snellville with Bart, but rather that she had taken evidence in Corbin’s case and granted one of the early search warrants of the Bogan Gates house.

Judge Debra Turner would be the next judge to oversee matters involving Bart Corbin.

Shortly before the Gwinnett County indictment in Lawrenceville, Bart Corbin hired two of Georgia’s top criminal defense attorneys, Bruce Harvey and David Wolfe of Atlanta. The two had worked as a team before, and very successfully. They had gone on the offensive immediately, asking for a most unusual order from the judge. They asked to have the grand jury hearings moved out of Gwinnett County, suggesting that the already massive media saturation might have prejudiced or otherwise tainted the grand jurors. Although the motion was not granted, Judge Turner granted a sweeping gag order. There was little question that it was necessary. Greta Van Susteren,
48 Hours, Dateline, People,
the weekly tabloids, and untold reporters were anxious to focus on each new detail of the crimes that Bart Corbin stood accused of. Turner’s gag order shut down the flow of information, and the media soon found doors at least partially closed. It was frustrating, of course, to those who were seeking quotes and scoops on information that no one else had.

Bruce Harvey and David Wolfe were showmen. Wolfe was a former standup comedian whose thick gray hair grew over his collar. Harvey wore a ponytail and had tattoos peeking out below his shirt cuffs and above his collar. He was famous for his theatrics in trials, and savvy court-watchers were anxious to see what Harvey would do next as he fought for his clients. On one occasion where he represented a former table dancer in a racketeering trial in federal court, Harvey doffed his jacket and swirled it around as he performed a mock table dance for the jury. In another trial, he ripped off his tie and took a pugilistic pose aimed at the prosecutor. A peeved judge found little humor in that. Harvey blamed his behavior on nicotine deprivation because he was trying to quit smoking. That demonstration landed him in jail with a short stay for contempt.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
T
WO

2005

O
N
J
ANUARY
17, 2005,
after less than a month in jail in Augusta, Bart Corbin was moved back to the Gwinnett County Jail in Lawrenceville, where he was housed in “administrative segregation.” For his own protection, he would be kept away from other prisoners. Most men in jail and prison don’t hurt women, and they take a harsh view of prisoners accused of killing them. Inmates charged with crimes against women or children who are housed in the general population are prone to “accidents” for which no witnesses come forward.

Initially, Danny Craig and Danny Porter decided that the first trial would be in Augusta, for the murder of Dolly Hearn, followed immediately by a trial in Jenn Corbin’s case in Gwinnett County. Bart Corbin was arraigned in Lawrenceville on January 21, 2005, before Judge Turner.

The third Superior Court judge in Gwinnett Court, who became the permanent judge in the prosecution for Jenn Corbin’s death, was Michael C. Clark. Back in 1981 when Gwinnett County was far more rural, Clark and Danny Porter were assistant DAs together. With the other four ADAs they had time then to drink beer, eat oysters, and tell war stories. Clark also went to the University of Georgia, but really mastered the law when he was a law clerk. A lifelong scholar, his chambers overflowed with books—all kinds of books. He had read them all, and was working toward his Ph.D. attending classes and seminars all over the world.

Before being elected to the bench in 1992, Michael Clark was a defense attorney for a decade. “Then, I was going through a big bottle of Rolaids every week,” he recalled. “As a judge, I didn’t have to take any.”

Serious in trial, Clark’s chambers were more whimsical. The placard on his desk read, “When in doubt, mumble.” Next to that, two bronze dolphins represented another avocation: scuba diving in the Caribbean. His deepest dive was 217 feet.

I
T SEEMED THAT A TRIAL
would surely begin soon—either in Augusta or in Gwinnett County.

Newspapers in Georgia filed suit to have all gag orders in the Corbin cases dropped. On March 28, 2005, Judge Clark lifted the gag order, although he warned family, witnesses, police officers, and others to be careful of what they might say to the media. Max Barber appeared on the Nancy Grace show on Court TV, but he was cautious in what he said.

On March 29, both Jenn Corbin’s family and Dolly Hearn’s were in the courtroom for another hearing, wearing buttons with the dead women’s pictures on them. Bart studiously avoided making eye contact with them.

Asked to speculate on trial dates, Danny Porter would say only that he expected the Richmond County case to go to trial in Augusta in the summer of 2005, and the trial on Jenn’s murder in the fall.

In March, Max Barber filed a civil complaint asking that Bart be stopped from selling the house, along with other possessions that had once belonged to Jenn. In the years they had lived on Bogan Gates Drive, Bart had, of course, transferred title to their house three times to Jenn “with love and affection,” meaning no money changed hands. It was a way to protect himself. Two months before her death, he had taken it back again. As it turned out, after Bart’s refinancing there was no equity left in the house, nothing for Dalton and Dillon. It would eventually sell well below market value.

When Max had crawled in a window before Christmas to get the presents Jenn had bought for her sons, Bart had wanted the District Attorney’s Office to file breaking and entering charges against him. No charges had ensued. Because they’d been barred from taking Dalton’s and Dillon’s beds from the house, Max and Narda had bought two sets of rough-hewn bunk beds so that Jenn’s boys and Max and Sylvia would have somewhere to sleep—both at Doug and Heather’s house and when they stayed at their grandparents’ home.

A
S THE FIRST SIGNS
of spring 2005 appeared, Heather went to Jenn’s dormant garden and dug up several of the plants Jenn had loved, moving them to her own yard. The family planted a weeping willow tree in Jenn’s memory, and Heather surrounded it with scores of tulip bulbs, Jenn’s favorites. Within weeks, someone dug up Jenn’s flowers. No one could say who had done that.

Heather searched constantly for signs that Jenn was somehow nearby, that she approved of the way Heather was managing all four of their children. It made her feel less lonely for her sister. She often saw a white dove whirling out of the sky to alight nearby, and ladybugs suddenly appeared where there had been none. Like Dalton, she had myriad dreams of Jenn. One morning when she had just wakened, Heather felt a sharp poke in her shoulder. She rolled over to see who had done it.