Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal (5 page)

As the Barber family drove away with the boys, they were unaware—everyone was unaware—how long it would take to find the answers to what had happened here…and why.

T
HERE WAS STILL NO SIGN
of Barton Corbin.

Marcus Head glanced at his watch—and he placed another call to Corbin’s brother to see if they were on their way to meet with him. He hadn’t talked to Bobby Corbin for half an hour.

Bobby Corbin wasn’t as cooperative this time. He was reluctant now to bring Bart to Bogan Gates Drive, saying that Jenn’s relatives had been calling him, claiming that Bart had killed her. Perhaps they had, Head thought; emotions were running high. The victim’s parents and sister had certainly been angry and ravaged enough with grief to make accusations—particularly since it appeared that the dentist and his wife had been having violent arguments.

“I haven’t drawn any conclusions,” Head said quietly,

“or formed any opinions. But I do need information from Dr. Corbin so I can conduct my investigation.”

“Well, I’m concerned about my brother,” Bobby said.

“I’ll call you back soon.”

Marcus Head talked further with Steve Comeau, asking him what he had observed in the early morning hours of this bleak day. Comeau said he had arrived home about a quarter to two, and spent a short time in his garage, unloading tools from his truck. It was then that he had heard a vehicle coming down the street.

“This would have been about what time?” Head asked.

“Maybe about two
A.M
—I’d been home about fifteen minutes when I heard it. I recognized it as the sound of Bart’s truck.”

Comeau said that he hadn’t really paid much attention, since he was so used to hearing Bart come down Bogan Gates Drive and turn into his driveway.

“Did you actually see it—look over there to see if it was Dr. Corbin?”

Comeau shook his head. “I didn’t look.”

And he couldn’t recall if he’d heard one of the truck’s doors open and close—or two. As close as he could remember, the truck he believed was Corbin’s had stayed only “ten or fifteen minutes” before he heard it leave again, roaring up the street.

“The truck’s engine noises made it sound like the driver was in a hurry.”

As far as his neighbors knew, sometime in the past few weeks, Bart had moved out of the master bedroom he had shared with Jenn. Jenn had come and gone, sometimes staying at Heather’s house. Things were up in the air in her marriage, but the Comeaus said they had still felt that the couple might simply need some time apart to sort out their feelings. And they probably needed to see a marriage counselor. Jenn would have had them go sooner, but Bart had told Kelly Comeau that he didn’t want to talk about his private life with any counselor.

Slowly now, the awful, immutable truth had begun to sink in with the Comeaus. There was no longer any reason to sort out feelings or to see a marriage counselor. There was nothing left of the marriage that had begun with so much hope and happiness. And there was nothing left of Jenn; her essence, her soul, no longer warmed their lives. Ironically, it was always Jenn who brought order out of chaos, who solved problems and promised that “everything will be OK”

Now Jenn Corbin lay dead across the street; her sons Dalton and Dillon had left, looking lost and confused, occasionally crying inconsolably: and no one knew where their father was.

None of Jenn’s family and close friends would budge on their insistence that she would not have chosen to end her life. Those who loved her kept repeating it like a mantra: “Jenn would never, ever, kill herself,” Heather said. “She wouldn’t have done that to the boys, knowing how much they needed her. She would never leave her sons. Never. Even if she was depressed and we didn’t know it, she wouldn’t shoot herself, knowing that Dalton or Dillon would be the ones to discover her body.

“She loved them too much.”

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

DECEMBER 4, 2004

O
NCE THE SEARCH WARRANT
arrived, the CSI team who waited on Bogan Gates Drive moved through the silent brick home, gathering anything that looked as if it might be evidence. Crime Scene Technician Amber Roessler and Forensic Investigator Ray Rawlins photographed the bedroom and Jenn Corbin’s body, while other technicians took more photos of the house, videotaped the scene, and took measurements that would allow them to triangulate the position of vital elements later. Whatever was there now would never be exactly the same again. It was absolutely essential that they photograph the master bedroom and the entire interior and exterior of the Corbin home. They would bag even the most unlikely items into a chain of evidence, labeling and sealing everything separately so it would all be sacrosanct, no matter how many hands the possible clues passed through. And each person who touched them would initial them.

At 3
P.M.
, almost eight hours after Dalton Corbin ran across the street to get help for his mother, the CSI crew secured the scene. Jennifer Corbin’s body still lay where it had been found many hours earlier. It seemed somehow callous to leave her there, but the investigators had no choice; all they could do for her now was find out how she had died, and every detail about her death, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, was important to them. If she had taken her own life, they would be able to verify that. But if someone had killed her, they would know that, too, and if that was the case, they were determined to find that person. In a homicide investigation, nothing can be taken for granted, and things are seldom what they seem.

Reporters monitoring police calls in Gwinnett County notified their editors about a death on Bogan Gates Drive, noting that it seemed to be a suicide, and that was the way it appeared in local papers and television news. Although those who really knew Jenn shook their heads in denial, strangers in the greater Atlanta area heard “suicide” and accepted it.

Marcus Head and Ray Rawlins hadn’t known Jenn Corbin when she was alive. Now, they would meet her in death. Head would work backward to trace what events, if any, could have made her desperate enough to take her own life. Or what secrets lay hidden in her life—or in a killer’s life—that might have marked her as a murder victim.

But all of the Gwinnett County investigators’ minds were open; they would consider every eventuality. And hopefully they would come to know Jennifer Barber Corbin almost as well as those who had known her in life. Maybe even better.

Once the crime scene technicians had finished their work, Rawlins and Head entered the house again. The front door opened into a foyer, with a formal dining room to their left and an office on their right. They noted that the Corbins’ house was very clean, and decorated by someone who had been proud of it, someone who had the creativity and ability to blend furnishings that were both expensive and practical into a warm and welcoming home. The two men tried to ignore the Christmas decorations. It was bad enough that two little boys had lost their mother, but to lose her at Christmastime made it even worse. Those kids would undoubtedly think of this day and feel their loss every Christmas for the rest of their lives.

Rawlins and Head crossed the foyer and headed toward the back of the house. A hallway led off to the right, and they followed it to the master bedroom. It was a rather grand suite with dark wood furniture, bedside tables with marble tops, and a king-sized canopy bed with massive carved posts and an ornate design in the headboard. The drapes and bedding were a Tommy Hilfiger design, with a pattern of cabbage roses and paisley shapes.

Next to the bed, somewhat incongruously, there was a jeroboam-sized Absolut vodka bottle, now serving as a bank for coins. The lights were on, and so was the television set.

Jennifer Corbin lay diagonally across the bed, her tall form graceful, her face calm. She rested mostly on her left side. There seemed to be no sign at all of a struggle, although her position wasn’t that of someone prepared to sleep. Her upper back was parallel to the headboard and her feet angled off to the far side of the bed. There were three pillows on the bed; the comforter covered her only from her waist to her ankles. One of the pillows was fluffed up, but there was a deep oval indentation in the middle.

Jennifer’s left arm was underneath her body, except for her hand, which was near her left breast. Her right arm was bent at the elbow so that her forearm rested across her waist. The grips of what looked to be a .38-caliber revolver were beneath—and a few inches away from—her right hand. It rested on the comforter. However, the barrel was almost hidden beneath the comforter.

The two investigators frowned, wondering again how the gun could have ended up in that position. It didn’t seem probable—or even possible—that it had dropped from her hand at the moment of firing and ended up underneath the covers. Certainly, she would not have been able to slip it there. It would take the autopsy to say definitely, but, with her head wound, they believed she had died instantly.

Because they did not know the actual manner of Jennifer Corbin’s death, it was essential that her position and the position of the gun and the path of blood flow be noted. Her head was tilted a little to the left. Blood had drained from her nostrils and traveled in an uninterrupted line slightly upward to cross her left lower eyelid and then drip down onto the mattress. There was no other blood on her face or mouth. This would indicate that she had not moved or, more accurately, had not been moved after she was shot, unless she had lain in one position until the blood had dried, and that was unlikely. The blond hair on the right side of her head and across the rear of her head was stained scarlet.

It would now take experts in blood patterns and ballistics to determine the angle of fire, how far the gun had been from her head, and whether Jenn or someone else had fired the gun.

Inexorable postmortem indicators would help them narrow down the time of her death. Those portions of her body that were uncovered were cold to the touch now, and rigor mortis—that stiffening that comes soon after death—had already begun. It would render her body completely rigid for forty-eight hours or so, and then slowly dissipate.

Ray Rawlins saw that livor mortis, or “lividity,” had begun. This phenomenon of death is a reddish-purple, mottled stain that occurs when blood settles in the lowest part of a body after the heart stops pumping. There was no secondary shading, no lighter pink blushing. (If a body is moved after lividity begins, the darker marking will remain fixed, but a lighter mottling will show that someone changed the victim’s position some time after death.)

The entry wound of the single bullet was on the right side of Jenn Corbin’s head—toward the back—and there was a “near-exit” wound on the left side with a small piece of bone protruding from the skin there. The bullet itself was apparently still lodged in her brain, just short of exiting. Jenn’s eyes and the tissue around them were bruised and swollen, the “raccoon eyes” that are expected after a bullet wound in the head. This was not a sign that Jenn had been beaten, although it might appear that way to a layperson.

Her hands showed no evidence of defense wounds; her nails were well kept and unbroken, the skin smooth, and without scratches.

Either Jenn had committed suicide, or, if she had been murdered, she never saw it coming. This might offer some faint comfort to her family. She had not died afraid.

Ray Rawlins carefully removed the revolver from where it lay partially under the comforter. He marked the cylinder on both sides of the frame, and then released it. There was a spent shell casing beneath the hammer; it would prove to be just like the three unfired cartridges—all round-nosed projectiles. One chamber held neither a spent cartridge nor a jacketed slug. This method of loading a weapon is sometimes used as a safety measure. If the trigger should be accidentally pulled, there would be no bullet in the chamber.

The gun was a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber blue steel revolver. The serial number was 397676. With any luck at all, this number would let them trace ownership of this weapon back to the day it first left the Smith & Wesson factory. There were no visible fingerprints on the rough-textured grips, or the barrel.

At 3:15
P.M.
, Ray Rawlins officially pronounced Jennifer Corbin dead. It was a mere formality. The paramedics from Fire District #14 had already examined her body and told him that she was deceased.

Marcus Head helped Rawlins slip paper bags over both of Jennifer Corbin’s hands, which they then secured with evidence tape. If there was GSR (gunshot residue) there, or any skin from a killer under her fingernails, the bags would ensure that no evidence would be lost between her home and the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Carefully, they wrapped Jennifer’s body in a new linen sheet and then slipped it into a brand-new “disaster bag.” This was a preventive measure so that there would be no loss of fibers or residue before she reached the Gwinnett County Morgue.

Quietly, Jennifer’s neighbors watched as she left her home for the last time. The home she had loved was surrounded now by yellow police tape.

E
VEN AS
their mother’s death investigation was in its first hours, Dalton and Dillon Corbin waited nervously beside their grandfather Max at the Gwinnett County police headquarters at 770 Hi Hope Road in Lawrenceville. It was an ironically cheerful address for an agency that dealt with so many tragedies.

It was still only early afternoon on December 4, but the day seemed to stretch on endlessly for Jenn’s family, especially for her sons.

Investigator Curtis Clemmons led Dalton into an interview room that was designed for children. There was a small round table there, a wooden chair scaled just right for an almost-seven-year-old boy.

A hidden camera caught every nuance of this interview. Dalton looked so young and vulnerable, but he was clearly trying to answer Clemmons’ questions the best he could. He gave his name: Dalton Fox Corbin. And his address: 4515 Bogan Gates Drive in Buford, Georgia. He knew his birthday, March 12, 1997, and his phone number.