plea meant much more than a guilty verdict would have. i didn t want to hear a jury telling me he s guilty. i wanted to hear him say that he killed jenny. why is that so important? i didn t want somebody else telling me that bart corbin killed my daughter. it had to come from him. and it did when he said, yes, that i did kill jenny corbin. i actually breathed a sigh of relief. then jennifer s father delivered a message to his son-in-law. he stood up and made a statement in court. the broken hearts of the barber family, the hearn family, and the corbin family, you can t measure it. the hearts are going to mend. i can t speak about your heart, what s going to happen to you. god might forgive you. i never will.
he washes his hands and puts on latex gloves 30 times a day. was there any gunpowder residue on jennifer s hands? no. would it be possible for jennifer to kill herself and not have gun powder on her hands? with that particular gun, it would be very difficult. according to authorities, the medical examiner found even more evidence that jennifer could not have killed herself. probably the most key fact the medical examiner found was that the nature of the wound immediately cut off any electrical or muscular activity in the body. the hand would have immediately dropped from the position had she committed suicide. it is absolutely unlikely or impossible that her hands could have come back to a resting point, tucked under the sheets with the weapon as she was found. and there was one more thing that didn t look good for barton corbin. we determined that barton corbin was involved in a long-term sexual relationship that started before his marriage began, continued throughout
in fact, the defense says the temperature of jennifer s body when the medical examiner arrived indicated she may have died later than 2:00 a.m., perhaps as late as 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning, when both sides agree bart clearly was not near his home. and as a result of that, it couldn t have been him. and the defense argued the strongest indicator of suicide was the turmoil in jennifer s life at the time she died. you ask anybody, what does a divorce do to people emotionally? it s heart-wrenching, it s gut-wrenching. it s one of the things that drives people to take their lives or attempt to take their lives. under the defense theory, jennifer feared losing her boys in a custody battle, and with good reason. her divorce proceedings would have exposed a secret online relationship revealed by a trail of hundreds of e-mails, some of them explicit. the relationship turned graphic and romantically
they re making them out to be. there s been much made about the fact that barton and dolly were having difficulties at the time of her death, and that s not true. according to bart s attorney, the harassment dolly blamed on bart occurred months before she died and they had actually reconciled their relationship. after that, they had, in fact, gotten back together, and dolly hearn had asked several people not to let her family know that she was dating him again. but what about bart s relationship with his wife, jennifer? the defense says it was never violent and the alleged punch during an argument on thanksgiving day was really just an unintentional slap. and she was trying to push his hand away, and her hand slipped off and it hit her in the face. and bart s lawyer also had an explanation for the fact that
his defense team had a reputation for finding inconsistencies and attacking weak evidence. they are meticulous. they are always well prepared. they are lawyers who will fight you at every turn. those are two of the best lawyers i know. gwinnett county district attorney danny porter had the complete confidence of jennifer s family, but he knew he had at least one weakness in his case. he hadn t tied the gun to bart corbin. i knew that the gun was going to be a critical piece of evidence. remember, the gun had been traced to a gun dealer in alabama. the prosecution knew bart had a friend in troy, alabama, named richard wilson and suspected wilson gave bart the gun, but wilson wouldn t talk. so we kept going back. we kept poking at him. and then we reviewed the cell phone records and were able to determine that barton corbin was in troy, alabama, on november the 30th of 2004 and had spoken to richard wilson. november 30th was just one