Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal (44 page)

Jack Burnette and Mike Pearson tried the other—more remote—possibility: contacting the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office about the 1996 inquiry in their jurisdiction. The request to have the .38 checked out had been a full decade earlier. At 2
A.M.
, it had to be a traffic stop.

They were a year too late. Montgomery had had gone computerized in 1997—not 1996. The operator told Pearson he would have to go through files stored in the attic.

For Mike Pearson, it was a replay of an old, bad dream. He wasn’t surprised when no records were found in Montgomery. That was the way his luck had been running in this case.

A
FTER THE MATERIAL WITNESS ORDER
naming Richard Wilson was issued, he had no choice but to appear in court in Troy. And the news appeared in the local newspaper that he had been ordered to testify in Bart Corbin’s trial.

After reading that, the chief of police in Troy, Anthony Everage, called his detectives in and asked them, “Are we helping these guys in Georgia as much as we can?”

Everage was a tall, good-looking man, and, incidentally, another squirrel hunter. “But we’d tried that avenue already,” Pearson said with a grin, “and it didn’t work.”

But now, Anthony Everage believed more could be done by his department, and decided to step in to help nudge Richard Wilson toward a witness chair in Gwinnett County, Georgia. He called Jack Burnette, and said, “I know Wilson. I’ve known him for ten years. I’ll help if I can.”

Everage’s most important offer came next. He said that his department’s 911 system had gone digital—and that he would have it searched for a call-in from the now-retired captain.

And, finally, something solid popped up in the Troy Police Department’s 911 system. Almost as if he still couldn’t believe their luck, Mike Pearson said, “The chief pulled out a twenty-second conversation where the Troy captain was asking for information on a gun with the same serial number that we’d all memorized: 397676. Best of all, they had it on tape!”

It was a twenty-second blip on a long-ago tape that could very well change the whole outcome of the Corbin trials.

Everage called Burnette and let him know what he had found. He said, “I’ve got the tape. Do you mind if I go talk to Wilson?”

After so long and so much disappointment, it seemed almost miraculous that things were suddenly moving so fast. Burnette looked at Pearson and asked, “What can it hurt if the chief goes to see Wilson?”

The two Gwinnett County investigators waited tensely to hear back from Anthony Everage. When the phone rang, they both jumped.

The Troy chief of police filled them in on what had happened, quoting the conversation he’d had with Richard Wilson.

Everage said he’d driven up to Wilson’s small motor repair shop, and Wilson had been perfectly willing to walk out to sit in his police car, something he had always refused to do with the Georgia investigators. But he knew Everage, and he felt comfortable with him.

“He said to me,” Everage told Burnette, “‘I have a feeling you’re not here about lawnmowers.’

“‘You’re right,’” I said. “‘I’m here to talk about you doing the right thing.’”

At that point, Everage said he’d popped the tape of the 911 call made four years earlier into his dashboard, and Wilson listened intently to the crackling voices, as the captain asked for information on the gun.

“Who do you think he was running that gun for?” Everage had asked.

“Probably me.” Richard Wilson’s shoulders had slumped at that point.

“Richard,” Everage had said firmly, “you’re gonna go to court, and those people over there in Georgia are really good. You’re gonna end up telling a lie on the stand, and you won’t be coming back to Alabama, and I’m gonna have to find someone else to fix my lawnmower.”

After almost two years of protecting Bart Corbin, Richard Wilson had run out of ways to avoid the truth. He told the Troy Chief that he had, indeed, given Bart the gun. And, yes, he had done it on November 29, four days before Jenn was shot.

“How do you want me to handle it?” Everage asked Burnette. “Do you want to come on down and ask him more details? No matter what he says, I just heard it, so I guess I’m on your witness list now.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
S
IX

SEPTEMBER 2006

I
T WAS
T
UESDAY MORNING,
September 12, and in Lawrenceville, Georgia, jury selection had moved into a kind of rhythm. They were beginning to make progress. Narda Barber was sitting in the back row beside Jennifer Rupured, Jenn’s fellow teacher at Sugar Hill Methodist, when she became aware of someone walking toward the prosecution table as Danny Porter and Chuck Ross interviewed prospective jurors. Porter turned slightly and saw Jack Burnette approaching. These two old friends had worked so many cases together that they knew how each other’s minds worked. There was no way that Burnette would interrupt a court session if he didn’t have something really important to impart.

Burnette handed Porter a folded slip of paper, and the DA glanced at it. Narda and Jennifer saw his shoulders straighten. It wasn’t a broad gesture, but it indicated a bit of surprise.

“The note from Burnette read, ‘Come out of the courtroom, NOW! Wilson copped to the gun!” There were five lines slashed under the “NOW.”

It took a lot of acting skill for Porter to maintain a casual attitude, but he managed it as he asked Judge Clark’s permission to step out of the courtroom for a moment. Burnette and Mike Pearson were practically bouncing off the ceiling with their amazing news. They told Porter and Ross that Richard Wilson had finally admitted to giving the old .38 to Bart Corbin. Someone had to get down to Troy and talk to him further, and arrange to bring him up to Georgia as a prosecution witness.

Back in the courtroom, Porter asked Judge Clark for a sidebar session and the four attorneys—prosecution and defense—moved up to the bench where they held a whispered conversation.

Court-watchers fidgeted, straining to hear what was being said. Everyone tried to guess what was in the note that might have made Porter ask to approach the bench, but neither the judge’s nor the attorneys’ faces betrayed what they were thinking.

The sidebar seemed normal enough; there had been others. And Narda didn’t sense that anything had changed. Judge Clark remarked that it was almost time for lunch, and dismissed the jury pool and gallery a few minutes early. Narda and Jennifer Rupured headed downstairs to the cafeteria for lunch.

But there had been rumblings in the courtroom, and those who knew the prosecutors and defense attorneys felt an almost palpable electricity, despite the effort they and Judge Clark made to appear blasé.

When Narda rode up the escalator after lunch, she encountered Danny Porter in the hallway. They locked eyes, and she questioned him silently. Now, she was sure that something had happened. The DA and his staff had been unfailingly responsive and considerate of her family—of all victims’ families. But she sensed that at the moment Danny Porter didn’t want to talk to her.

“I can’t tell you,” Porter finally said, reading her mind. “I just can’t tell you anything.”

“Is it good or is it bad?” Narda asked quietly.

“It’s good,” he said. And with that he walked away, leaving her with a slight surge of optimism. She wondered if he had come up with some piece of evidence or a witness for the prosecution. He seemed both uncommonly cheerful and tense.

Surprisingly, the Tuesday afternoon session began routinely, as if nothing had changed. The attorneys questioned more potential jurors. But not for long. Judge Clark announced crisply that he had a sudden scheduling conflict, and that he needed to accommodate that. He dismissed the jury pool until Thursday morning.

A little bemused, Narda headed home. She had come to know Danny Porter well enough over the past twenty-two months to suspect that something was up, something of earthshaking proportions for the trial of her son-in-law. When Porter called her on Wednesday, there was no question about it. There was obviously some kind of detour along the path toward trial.

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.

J
UDGE
M
ICHAEL
C
LARK
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.