typical saturday morning, and the phone rang. and i was immediately hysterical. and i asked where she was, was she okay. and he said, no, heather, i m sorry, she s gone. she was 33-year-old jennifer corbin, the wife of dr. barton corbin, a tall, handsome dentist who was 40. they had been married seven years and had two adorable sons, ages 7 and 5. on the surface, they led a storybook life. a big, beautiful home filled with photos of a fun, loving family. he the picture of the adoring dad, she a devoted mom. jennifer had been a free spirit when she was younger, but having children changed all that. she was born to be a mom. and when she became a mom, she did it 110%. she became miss pta, the suv-driving, baseball-toting supermom. her sister, heather, marveled at jennifer s ability to connect
and her dad loaned her a gun. i know that her father had told her you need to get away from him or you re going to wipnd up in a dumpster some day. in fact, from the day dolly died, her family was convinced she was murdered. i knew bart had killed her. there was never any doubt in my mind, there was never any doubt in my parents minds. but dolly s death remained a cold case for 14 years, until jennifer corbin was found dead and investigators began to look at dolly s case in a whole new light. what are the chances that two women who were both involved in volatile relationships with barton corbin would both kill themselves in the exact same way? it certainly seemed very, very unlikely, and as the investigation unfolded, the similarities were just staggering. it couldn t have been a coincidence. the dolly hearn case was re-opened in augusta. the lead investigator there re-examined her death with a new perspective and new crime scene technology.
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 drive 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 graphic. and there was something else.
alabama way back in 1957, years before bart was born. the d.a. did know bart had a friend in troy, alabama, named richard wilson. so i dispatched investigators to alabama for the first time on december the 15th of 2004 to talk to richard wilson in troy, alabama. he initially says that the only thing he knows is that he had talked to bart and learned that jennifer had died. and he tells us he doesn t know anything about a gun. investigators also used bart s cell phone records to map his movements on that fatal night. bart said he was at his brother s house around 2:00 a.m., jennifer s estimated time of death. but cell phone records put him right near the house where jennifer died. that s the first critical piece of information that blows his alibi out of the water. it puts him at the residence at about quarter of 2:00 in the morning until about 5 after 2:00 in the morning, and that s the
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.