Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal (6 page)

Clemmons wasn’t nearly ready to ask Dalton the hard questions that must come later. First, he had to create an ambiance of trust and approval. He kept his voice soft and encouraging, complimenting Dalton on his intelligence. He meant it sincerely: Dalton was obviously very smart. Dalton seemed to be enjoying this part of their conversation, and yet he sat perched like a little bird on his chair, alert and ready for flight.

“Do you wear glasses or contacts?” Clemmons asked. It wasn’t a necessary question, but each query that didn’t remind Dalton about what had happened seven or eight hours earlier seemed to make him feel more secure with Clemmons.

Now the investigator held out a series of colored slips of paper. Dalton easily identified them all, as he did with the drawings of animals that came next.

“Good…good,” Clemmons said.

“What class did you like best at Harmony School?” Clemmons asked.

“Kindergarten!”

“What’s your favorite food?” Clemmons asked, knowing the answer already from having talked to scores of children.

“Pizza!”

He asked Dalton if he knew the difference between a “good touch” and a “bad touch,” giving examples of being punched in the nose, or being hugged by his grandfather.

Dalton knew. His mother had taught him carefully how to protect himself. And he knew the difference between the truth and a lie.

He also realized what questions were coming next. Suddenly Dalton dropped his head and rested it on his folded arms. Neither Clemmons nor the little boy in front of him wanted to broach the subject of Jenn Corbin.

“Do you know why you’re here today?” Clemmons finally asked.

“’Cause my mom got killed this morning,” Dalton said. “When I woke up, I went to go see my mom, and I was right by her and there was blood right here.” He pointed beneath his nose. “I couldn’t wake her up so I wanted to call 911.”

There, it was out, and like Pandora’s box, the bad things could not be put back. And even with that, it was heart-wrenching to watch. A child cannot grasp the permanency of death. Dalton came as close as any seven-year-old could, but he could not imagine all the years ahead without his mother. He spoke calmly, as he answered Clemmons’s questions. He knew it was 7
A.M
. when he went to wake his mother, and that his brother Dillon was asleep. “He woke up,” Dalton said, “when he heard me saying ‘Mommmmm!’”

He knew the TV in his mother’s room was on, and that Dillon had come into her room, too.

“Anyone else there?”

“My dog. Zippo.”

“Did you hear any noises last night?”

“Uh-uh. [No.] I went to sleep about ten o’clock. And my dad killed her.”

Clemmons was careful not to betray any shock at this answer; he didn’t so much as move his hands or shift his body. He asked Dalton why he thought his father had killed his mother if he hadn’t seen it happen. Dalton explained that it was because his father’s car was usually at their house every morning, but on this morning it was gone.

“Who told you that?”

“I figured it out myself.”

“Did you see your dad?”

“No.”

Dalton said that his parents had been fighting a lot, and he repeated that his father had killed “my mom” and then left, and went to his Uncle Bob’s house.

But was Dalton describing what he had seen and heard, or was he confabulating? Could he really separate one day from the next as he tried to recall the interactions in his family over the past nine or ten days?

“All I heard was my mom, dad, and my brother eating supper at six o’clock,” he told Clemmons. “We ate steak and ice cream, and my mom went to bed and my dad went to work. He’s a dentist.”

“He works at night?” Clemmons asked, with just a touch of surprise in his voice.

“He’s been stealing things from my mom—like her new cell phone and records.”

“After dinner, you went to bed at ten? Did you hear your mom or dad fussing?”

“No. The last time they argued was last Wednesday.”

“When you went to bed, was your dad still home?”

“Yeah, he was sleeping right next door to me. My mom and dad sleep in different rooms.”

“For how long?”

“Mmmm—since last weekend.”

C
AREFULLY
, C
LEMMONS REVIEWED
what Dalton had told him. The investigator knew what Marcus Head had learned so far because Head had briefed him, but he was scrupulously careful not to suggest anything at all to Dalton.

“You, Dillon, your mom, dad, and Zippo, your dog, were home? You ate dinner at six, and you went to bed at ten. You watched TV for four hours and went to bed?”

“Umm-hmm. [Yes.] Sometimes I sleep in my bedroom, and sometimes in the toy room with Dillon.”

Dalton was sure that his father was home when he went to sleep. But when he woke up, he was gone. He said he had seen the gun in his mother’s bed, but he didn’t touch it.

“That’s good,” Clemmons said fervently, knowing that the gun was still loaded at the time.

Dillon had wanted breakfast, too, but their mother couldn’t hear them. Dalton knew that she was dead. And that was when he ran over to the Comeaus across the street. He had tried to call 911, but the phone wouldn’t work.

“Did you wonder why the phone wasn’t working?”

“Maybe my dad cut it off.”

“Has your dad been mad at your mom?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He thinks my mom is a liar. They argued all the time from last Wednesday until today. They talked about living in separate houses and getting an attorney. Yelling at each other.”

“How did that make you feel?” Clemmons asked quietly.

“I felt sad.”

Dalton said his dad had talked to him about the possibility of a divorce. “He said ‘I love you, and I always will love you.’”

This was a tough interview for a man who was a father himself. Clemmons asked Dalton again if he had heard anything strange during the night just past. The little boy thought his parents were talking about his father taking Dalton’s computer away, and there was something about his mother’s taking his father’s bank account away.

“There was an argument last night?”

“Yeah.”

“How did you feel?”

“Scared. My mom was holding my hand. She always holds my hand when I’m scared, and it makes me feel better.” He said he’d asked his mother to eat dinner right next to him. “I do that when I’m scared. And she does.”

Dalton Corbin had tried to figure out exactly how his mother got killed, but he wasn’t really sure. He hadn’t actually seen anything happen, but he had been an observer of a marriage that was clearly disintegrating. He studied his hands now and crossed one finger over another until they were all crossed. Did this make him feel safer, or was it only a nervous habit? Probably a little of both.

His memory was uncertain. He hadn’t heard anything during the night. No, his father never
said
he would kill his mother. Nor had Dalton ever seen his mother with a gun. He didn’t see the murder, or hear the murder, but he knew…this small boy believed his father came home to sleep and then he got a gun and killed his mother in the morning.

“How do you feel about your mom?” Clemmons asked gently.

“I’m really sad.”

D
ILLON WAS ONLY FIVE
,
but his turn was next. The camera caught him as he sat at the little chair in front of the round table. He swayed back and forth, muttering to himself: “Ummm. Ummm. Some. Some.”

While he waited for Curtis Clemmons to come back into the room, Dillon laid his head down on the table, and then he dotted the tabletop with each finger in turn, as if he was leaving little circles there. He looked so tired as he rested his head on his arms like Dalton did. He seemed nervous.

When Clemmons came back into the room, Dillon looked up politely. He was just as bright as his older brother. He knew his middle name, “Avery,” his phone number, address, colors, and animals. But he was totally confused about how his life had changed in one horrible watershed moment. He knew his mother was dead, but he was not at all sure about the sequence of events. He parroted a little of what Dalton had said, but Dillon often contradicted himself.

He was sure his kindergarten teacher’s name was “Miss Donna,” and he liked her. Pizza was his favorite, too. But Dillon could not remember if he had eaten breakfast or not. He had seen his mother lying in her bed with blood on her nose, but he also thought she probably fixed breakfast.

Dillon said that he had gone into his mother’s room before Dalton did—which was doubtful—and then he said that he had seen his father kill his mother.

Gently, Clemmons reminded the five-year-old about the difference between the truth and a lie—and Dillon admitted that he hadn’t seen his mother killed. He could not possibly know that he would never see his mother again. Or that his father had still not gone to their house nor asked to see him or Dalton.

Detectives grow accustomed to tragedy and to violent death, and they learn to protect their own emotions. But none of them ever becomes immune to the sadness of children caught in the web of adults’ problems.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

DECEMBER 4, 2004

B
ART HAD NOT CALLED
detectives back for eight hours on this long December 4. Neither Bobby nor Bart Corbin responded to messages from the family or from the detectives. Bart knew that Jenn was dead. Bobby had said Bart was very upset when he heard she had been shot, so upset he was in the bathroom vomiting.

Was he watching television now or listening to the radio? If his filing for divorce was meant to scare Jenn into coming back to him, and if he still loved her, he wasn’t acting like a grieving widower.

Whatever Bart’s true feelings, Marcus Head learned from Bobby Corbin that Bart would not be coming to his home on Bogan Gates Drive. And Bart Corbin had “lawyered up.” Gwinnett County Police Investigator Fred Mathewson had obtained a search warrant to swab Corbin’s hands for the presence of gun residue. If he wasn’t coming to talk with them and to submit to the tests willingly, they would have to do it the hard way.

Head received a phone call from Steve Roberts, an attorney who said he had been retained to represent Barton Corbin. “I informed Mr. Roberts,” Head wrote in the growing case file, “that I had a search warrant to seize Barton Corbin for the purpose of swabbing and wiping his hands to conduct a gunshot residue test.”

Senior Assistant DA Tom Davis was with Head at the Corbins’ house and he took the phone to speak with Roberts. The two attorneys agreed that Roberts would bring Corbin to police headquarters at 4
P.M
. that day.

Bart Corbin, accompanied by his brothers, did arrive at police headquarters as agreed. As Bart, Brad, and Bobby walked toward the room where Bart’s hands would be tested for gunshot residue, Marcus Head told him that detectives and CSI personnel were just about to finish processing the death scene at his home.

“Are there any special instructions or details that I should know?” he asked Bart. “About how to secure your house before we all leave?”

Bart informed him that he would answer
no
questions—not even that one.

CSI Investigator M. Briscoe swabbed Corbin’s hands, using the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s gunshot residue kit while Head and Davis watched.

The test was negative for gunpowder or barrel debris. That wasn’t necessarily proof either way about whether he had fired a gun. Simple handwashing would wash gunshot residue away, just as touching such varied things as toilet paper or paper towels could create a false positive result. But the GSR test was an important step nonetheless. And the mere administration of a residue test often made guilty suspects nervous. Corbin seemed calm. Annoyed—but calm.

Next they inspected his clothing, but they found no bloodstains or other signs that would indicate he had fired a gun.

Except for his initial exchange with Marcus Head, Bart Corbin remained silent, refusing to speak at all during the entire time he was in the room with the law enforcement personnel.

Head asked Bobby Corbin how his brother had learned of his wife’s death, but Bobby didn’t want to answer any questions, either.

Were all the Corbin brothers gripped by shock, or were they only closing ranks to frustrate the detectives who were trying to determine how Jenn had died? In the end, Head could do nothing more than give Bobby a copy of the search warrant for the procedure.

And then he escorted Bart, Brad, and Bobby out of the building and watched them drive off.

Finally, the sun was setting on an endless day. Now the Gwinnett County team would try to follow the tangled skein of an unraveling marriage back to the point where Jenn and Bart began to veer from their design for happiness. If the detectives could isolate the catalysts for the apparently sudden decision to divorce, they could probably identify Jenn’s killer.

Yet they were about to plunge into an investigation that was far more intricate than any of them could imagine. They would walk into a virtual hall of mirrors. And even when a way through was found, they would discover passageways into further mysteries. It was a maze of relationships and events that had brought two loving extended families to their knees in a morass of tragedy.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

DECEMBER 5, 2004

D
R
.
C
AROL
A. T
ERRY
rose early the next morning, even though it was Sunday. She was scheduled to perform a postmortem examination of the body of Jennifer Corbin. As far as the public knew, this young woman had taken her own life. But neither the Gwinnett County police investigators nor District Attorney Danny Porter and members of his staff were satisfied with that assumption. Before anyone could be officially declared a suicide, there were always tests and an extremely thorough autopsy to be done. There were also “psychological autopsies” of the deceased to be explored. From what little was known of Jennifer Corbin’s life, she seemed a most unlikely candidate for suicide.