Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal (47 page)

“At first, we were just pretending,” she said, as she attempted to explain away her false seduction of Jenn on the Internet. “We were playing. Things were getting intense. I said [wrote], ‘My name isn’t Chris—My name is Anita.’ Jenn logged off.”

But, later, Jenn had come back on, trying to understand what had happened. Anita insisted that she had grown to love Jenn, and made no apologies for her own actions. She said she was sure that Jenn would not have killed herself, and, speaking as if she were an expert about a woman she had never really known at all, Anita said, “She was stressed out—but not suicidal. I don’t think that’s a path Jennifer would have taken.”

And, of course, Jenn had not committed suicide. On the night she died, she was looking forward to a happier life, one that was free of Bart’s influence. Perhaps the part of Jenn’s story that many people find the most puzzling is that she forgave Anita Hearn for her cruel subterfuge, and even continued to correspond with her.

I believe that Jenn Barber Corbin was brainwashed, and that, had she ever met Anita Hearn in person, she would have quickly moved on.

But images deeply embedded in the human brain are not easily erased. And what Jenn was feeling was a phenomenon peculiar to the age of the Internet. A year after Jenn was murdered, television documentaries and talk shows began to feature segments about women who had fallen in love with men they met online.

All of them were intelligent and successful women, albeit lonely, and they had thought it safer and more discreet to exchange emails with perfect strangers when they would never have considered going alone to a bar or a singles dance.

They were prime prey for con artists. They were not the “Nigerian scammers” that Heather once warned Jenn about, but men who wrote increasingly seductive emails that promised everything from romantic meetings to marriage. Many of these men sent photographs purported to be of themselves. But they seldom were.

In the fall of 2006, three attractive women appeared on a well-known talk show, and were shocked to find that, although each of them had been writing to a different man, their correspondents had all included the same photograph—that of a handsome, well-dressed businessman. The real man existed, but he had no part in this scam. Nor did he know how the con-men had obtained his picture.

These duped women admitted that they had sent money, plane tickets, and personal information to their potential lovers. Yet none of them had ever met their correspondents in person. And still, these perfectly sane and bright women had agreed to a meeting. Instead, they all waited in vain at airports as passengers deplaned, watching for the man in the pictures, who had promised to bring roses.

Of course, the men weren’t on those flights, but later they all came up with seemingly plausible reasons about why they had missed the magical moment of first meeting. Several even had the nerve to ask for more money to take care of last-minute complications. One man explained that he had become suddenly ill and been rushed to a hospital. And the woman who waited for
him
actually sent him more money to pay his hospital bill!

The most astounding revelation on the talk show was not that the women had been duped; it was that they all said they were still in love with the men they had trusted. Even faced with solid evidence that they had been fooled, they stubbornly refused to accept that the romance they hoped for didn’t exist. Two of them said they intended to stay in their Internet relationships. Their disillusionment was so great that they had to cling to what they hoped for. They still believed in a future meeting with their “fiancés.” Jenn Corbin died only two weeks after she learned that there was no Christopher; she hadn’t had time to process the truth about Anita Hearn. For her, Christopher lived on—at least in her mind, caught somewhere in the tunnels of EverQuest. Jenn, sadly, never got the chance to emerge from the deception, and go on with her life.

Some of the mysteries that were connected, however tangentially, to Bart Corbin remain in shadow. Harriet Gray’s murder in September 1995 has never been solved. Like Jenn, Harriet Gray left a journal behind—although its contents remains secret because her case is still open. One jarring note, however, is the whispered information that the entries in those journals are not in Harriet’s handwriting.

There is little question that Bart Corbin and Harriet Gray worked in the same dental clinic; but there is some debate about whether they ever worked there at the same time. Her relatives believe that they knew one another other.

As this is written, Mary Denise Lands has been missing for almost three years. It is unlikely that Bart Corbin had anything to do with the disappearance of this fourth woman he knew who apparently met with violence. There is no new information on where she might be. Cold case detectives from the Michigan State Police are still investigating her disappearance.

—Ann Rule

JENN CORBIN’S SQUASH SOUP

3 large cans chicken broth (12 cups)

1 butternut squash (3 or 4 pounds)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 package of kielbasa sausage (1 pound)

2 cans of corn or 2 cups fresh corn

1 box of wild rice (approx. 1 cup)

1 medium carton of half-and-half or heavy cream (1½ cups)

2 large sweet onions (chopped)

Fresh ground pepper

Salt to taste

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Poke holes in squash and bake for at least one hour until it is soft. While squash is baking, in a saucepan, bring four cups of stock and ½ cup of onions to a simmer. Stir in the rice and cook until rice is tender, stirring occasionally with a fork. Put in bowl to cool. In a large saucepan or pot, heat olive oil, and brown cut-up sausage, remaining chopped onions, and corn. Sauté for 3 minutes. Cut baked squash in half and remove seeds. Scoop out squash and puree in blender, adding a little chicken broth. Add to the sausage-corn mixture, and then add remaining chicken stock.

Season with salt and pepper. Bring pot to a boil, then turn down to simmer for 20 minutes. Skim off any excess fat. Stir in the rice and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in heavy cream and top with parsley.

Note: Add leftover chicken, turkey, vegetables, if you like.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

A
NN
R
ULE
came to her writing career with a solid background in law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Both her grandfather and her uncle were Michigan sheriffs, and she was once a Seattle police officer herself. She has five children and five grandchildren, two dogs, and five cats. Ann has been a full-time true-crime author since 1969, publishing 28 books, and 1,400 articles in such publications as
Cosmopolitan, Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Readers’ Digest, Chicago Tribune,
and
True Detective.
She serves as executive producer of the miniseries of her books. She is a certified instructor for police training seminars in the thirteen Western states, lecturing on serial murder, women who kill, and high-profile offenders. She has presented papers four times for the National Academy of Forensic Science, and has lectured at the FBI Academy and to the National Association of District Attorneys. She has testified twice before the Senate judicial subcommittees on victims’ rights and serial murder. She worked on the U.S. Justice Department Task Force to set up VI-CAP, the Violent Criminals Apprehension Program. Ann supports crime victims/survivors’ groups, domestic violence support organizations, pet rescue organizations, and organizations like Childhaven and Child Help that try to save abused children and work with their families on better parenting. Ann, who is almost always working on a new book, now lives near Seattle, Washington, on the shores of Puget Sound. Information on Ann’s books, and discussion groups on her guestbook, can be found on her website at www.annrules.com. Write to her at [email protected].

P
HOTOGRAPHIC
I
NSERT

1
Jennifer Barber, four, with the whole world ahead of her.

2
The Barber sisters, Christmas 1975: Rajel, Heather, and Jennifer. They grew up in a safe and friendly neighborhood in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

3
Heather (left) and Jennifer Barber, ages five and nine. Close as kids, they would grow even closer as adults, with a solemn pledge that if either should die prematurely, the survivor would raise her sister’s children.

4
The Barber family in the early 1980s. Thanksgiving was a favorite holiday—but their last Thanksgiving in 2004 was the precursor of tragedy. Left to right: Rajel, Heather, Max, Narda, and Jennifer.