Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal (31 page)

“We took the game, the PlayStation, and we looked for the journal—which we can’t find,” he said. “We knew he stole one journal, and Jennifer’s sister told us that Jennifer went and bought a new one and she redrafted some of the contents from the old one into the new one, and that she took extra steps to hide it, so that he wouldn’t find it this time. So then we took extra steps, too, to look for it. But we didn’t find it.”

“Okay,” Anita said. “She never mentioned where she hid it to me.”

Head asked Anita to go over the timeline for Friday night, December 3. “I’ve got phone records coming in, but would you verify for me that y’all were playing the game online that night?”

“Right.”

“Okay—how long were you connected to the game?”

“[Until] 1:15 in the morning—her time—maybe even 1:20, close to 1:30.”

Head said he had a copy of the EverQuest game, and he wondered if it was possible for him to retrieve a message that was on a screen after the players had cleared it.

“We can’t,” Anita said. “Do they [the game administrators] keep records of it? I’m not sure. They may very well. I know that if you delete your character, they keep it for so many months.”

Anita said that Bart had left the house about 9
P.M.
on Friday night while she was talking to Jenn on the phone, and that after that, she and Jenn had been on the phone with one another off and on during the evening.

Jenn had told Anita that Bart left without telling her where he was going. He had just walked out without speaking to her. Jenn had been aware that night that Bart had filed for divorce. But she hadn’t been upset about it at all, just a little surprised that he had filed first. She had told Anita sometime in the past week or so that she had to delete some of her email, because Bart was coming home to talk with her.

“And they talked that night,” Anita continued, “and she called me that night, and she said, ‘That totals it.’”

Jenn had confided in Anita, saying that she knew in her heart that even if she tried and went to marriage counseling, it just wasn’t going to work. She had told Bart that she had a new friend she cared for in another state, but Anita was quite sure that Jenn never told Bart that Anita was a woman. She had wanted to end her marriage amicably, because of her sons.

“And he was gonna be in her life for the rest of her life,” Anita said, “and she wanted things okay for the kids.”

Jenn had hoped that Bart would be moving out that night, but he had decided to stay, or, possibly, he had asked Jenn if he could stay because he didn’t have anywhere to go, and he didn’t want to go to his mom’s.

That was when Jenn had suggested he move to their houseboat, and he had refused, saying it was too cold.

“So she told him: Okay, he could stay until he found somewhere—”

“Tell me about the plans you and she had made—that you agreed to talk again?” Head asked.

Anita said that she and Jenn had agreed to wait to meet until after Christmas to decide what they were going to do. At that point, they would consider moving in together with their children and seeing if they could afford a place if they both pitched in.

Anita Hearn seemed anxious to have Head read all the correspondence between herself and Jenn Corbin, almost as if she wanted to validate her friendship with a dead woman she had never met. Anita’s family were still unaware of any plans she had to move to Georgia. She didn’t know how much Jenn’s family knew, but told him she had spoken with Jenn’s mother and sister. Her conversation was strangely matter-of-fact and tightly controlled, until she asked Head if anyone knew if Jenn had been awake or asleep when she was shot.

“We don’t know,” Head said. “There’s some suggestion, but it’s only a suggestion…about the way she was found that suggests she may have been asleep.”

“Okay, that’s what I’m hoping for. And do you know who has her cell phone?”

“I have it. It’s locked up in evidence.”

Anita offered to email all of the correspondence she had had with Jenn, whatever was left on her computer. At this time, Head had no idea what a landslide of emails that would be. He asked her again if she felt Jenn was really planning to share a house with her in Georgia.

“Yes, I mean in our conversations, yes. I mean at first—when she found out I was a woman and stuff, everything kind of changed a little bit. But, after that, she was okay with it. We were still—she said she wanted to be a mom to my kids, and things like that.”

It was difficult to tell if Anita Hearn was convincing herself that she had not pulled off a hugely dark deception on a woman who was now dead—perhaps even dead because of Anita’s lie. Maybe she truly believed that the man she had pretended to be—the masquerade she had carried out for month after month—was no part of Jenn’s death. Everything she said, however, had a tinge of guilt to it.

“It is kind of weird,” she continued. “My last name—Hearn—the woman he may have killed before—had the same name. Did you guys get the letters he had?”

“No. We can’t find them. He cleaned the house out. We also think that he may have taken a lot of things that belonged to Jennifer, that Jennifer had documented.”

There was so much missing beyond the journals that Jenn’s family knew she always had with her. Head suspected that Bart had taken them, and hidden them or destroyed them to save himself embarrassment or to hide things that might incriminate him.

“I know he had my name,” Anita said. “Because he called me twice on my cell phone. I never answered.”

“Do you know what number he called from?”

“His home phone as far as I know. I can tell when I get my phone bill.”

Anita said that Jenn had told her, too, about Bart’s mysterious trip to Alabama. “All she said was she found a receipt that basically showed he had been in Alabama that day—a few days before she died. She goes ‘Well, I thought maybe somebody just told him there was a good lawyer in Alabama.’”

Anita Hearn told Head that Jenn had been particularly worried about something that occurred on Thursday, December 2. “She had gone to work that day and she forgot her Christmas gift, so she went back home to get it. When she got there, it was weird because Bart’s brother was there sitting in his truck, and then Bart was sitting in his truck, warming it up. And then the Mustang was gone. She asked where the Mustang went, and he said he’d loaned it to a friend named Iron. She said it was weird because Bart would have kept the Mustang and loaned the truck.”

Head realized that Jenn must have been frightened that morning. She would have just come from Heather’s house after being there overnight after her foot was injured. She may have felt that Bart or his friends were going to do her harm.

Anita didn’t know which of the Corbin brothers was at the Bogan Gates Drive house that morning, but Jenn was afraid. And that wasn’t like her.

Head thanked Anita for her help.

“Not a problem,” she said. “I hope we can do something about him.”

Was she grieving? It was hard for Head to be sure. When he found hundreds upon hundreds of emails on his computer, sent by Anita, he read them all. For months, they had been from Christopher, until two weeks before Jenn was murdered. And suddenly, they were from Anita. It was a good thing that he had verified where Anita Hearn was on the night Jenn was killed because one of the later emails was truly bizarre.

Anita had asked Jenn if she had ever thought about putting a bullet in the cylinder of a gun and then holding the barrel against Anita’s head and pulling the trigger at the very instant Anita had an orgasm.

“No, no,” Jenn had written back. “I would never do that.”

Evidently, Jenn’s online seducer had been into masochism, and found a version of Russian roulette and sex fascinating. But Anita went too far, and it had troubled Jenn Corbin. Still, this was the kind of thing that a defense attorney would grab and run with, planting the suggestion in jurors’ minds that Anita was asking Jenn to shoot herself. A clever defense lawyer could argue that Jenn was suicidal.

Jenn had clearly been involved in something that was out of her league, and she was trapped between a jealous, punitive husband and, possibly, a masochistic game-player.

Jenn died without ever having seen even a picture of Anita. However Jenn had pictured this stranger in Missouri, she might have been surprised had they ever met. The woman who had written to her had long, straight, black hair, and very dark eyes, rimmed with black eyeliner. She had a rather sharp, pointed nose and Slavic flat cheekbones, slightly pitted with acne scars. She was short and thin, and neither particularly pretty nor homely. Whatever “magic” she possessed for Jenn had to have been in her false persona, in that image she painted of a tall, handsome man. There was a certain darkness about Anita—so different from the warmth that characterized Jenn.

Anita had been very accomplished in portraying Sir Tank. Now she seemed sincere in wanting to make sure that Bart would not walk away without being punished for Jenn’s death.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
F
IVE

DECEMBER 15–16, 2004

I
T WAS EASY ENOUGH
to check on the whereabouts of Anita Hearn on the night of December 3–4. She had been in Missouri, talking on the phone with Jenn. And Bart had been in his home until about 9
P.M
.

The big question was, Where did he go after that?

That was answered when the Gwinnett County grand jury met on December 15. District Attorney Danny Porter had subpoenaed four men to testify at that legal proceeding: Brad Corbin, Bart’s twin; Bobby Corbin, his younger brother; Kevin Lyttle, his friend, the man they called “Iron” or “Iron Head”; and another acquaintance, Brian Fox. Although they were clearly uncomfortable at having any role at all in the investigation into Jenn Corbin’s murder, Bart’s brothers and friends had no choice but to appear before the grand jury.

The investigation thus far had brought forth the information that Bart Corbin had spent at least some of the missing hours between the time he walked out of his home—until he was notified of his wife’s death the following morning—with these men in the Wild Wing Cafe in Suwanee. None of them were particularly forthcoming when they were served with subpoenas or at the grand jury hearing. According to Bart, who spoke occasionally now through his attorneys, he had been some distance away from his house on Bogan Gates Drive after he left late in the evening of December 3. He said he hadn’t gone home at all that night, and that he slept at his brother Bobby’s house.

Kevin “Iron” Lyttle told DA Porter that he had known both Bobby and Bart Corbin for about thirteen years. He said he had “in-depth” conversations with Bart, but asked to describe them, the only specific topics he mentioned were football games and the time his car was stolen. Lyttle said he knew Jenn Corbin only as his friend’s wife. In the recent past, however, Bart had begun to discuss his failing marriage with him.

“We were at Bob’s house watching the game, and he just blurted out during the halftime show that he’d found she had a second cell phone.”

“Did he tell you that he had called numbers on that second cell phone?” Porter asked.

“Right…I really don’t get involved in other people’s relationships. I don’t ask, you know. If they talk about it, you know, I listen, but I don’t dig into anybody’s personal business.”

“And I understand that,” Porter said. “But what I’m trying to get you to tell me is what has Bart Corbin told you specifically about his relationship with his wife, and how that relationship began to end, and what did he find that led him to believe she was having an affair?”

“I guess he found some notes, and I guess he found the cell phones and then he called the numbers on the cell phone.”

“Now when he was describing this, what was his demeanor? What did he act like?”

“I guess he kinda suspected she was having an affair because she was on the computer all the time. And I guess [his] finding the notes—would probably confirm it.”

“Was he angry?”

“I wouldn’t say he was angry, no.”

Lyttle said he had learned that Jennifer was dead in a phone call from Bobby Corbin about 9:15 on Saturday morning, December 4. But Bobby hadn’t said how she died, nor had Lyttle asked.

“That was sort of back to your ‘Don’t get involved in other people’s business’ [approach]?” Danny Porter asked.

“No. I was kinda in shock and he asked me, ‘What time did he leave?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know.’”

Kevin Lyttle was one of the last people to see Bart Corbin late on Friday night.

“Since that conversation with Bob, have you had a conversation with Bart about the death of his wife?”

“No.”

It seemed that Lyttle had been either the soul of tact or just wasn’t very curious. He assured Porter and the grand jurors that he had never seen Bart Corbin angry during their thirteen-year friendship.

“Were you aware in the days after Jennifer Corbin’s death that there was some question about Dr. Corbin’s involvement?” Porter asked next.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you come forward this week?”

“I was working at that job and if I missed a day, or any time at all, I would have been fired.”

“So you couldn’t come forward, you couldn’t even call the police, and say, ‘Corbin was with me that night’?”

“I figured they’d be at my house sooner or later.”

According to Lyttle’s testimony, he, Bart, and another friend, Brian Fox, were to have had dinner at the Mexican restaurant and bar Dos Copas, in Hamilton Mill, on the Friday night Jenn was shot. But Bart hadn’t shown up. At about ten, Brian had called Bart, who assured him he was on his way. Bart did arrive shortly thereafter, and Lyttle hopped into his truck. The three men then drove to the Wild Wing Cafe.

Both Fox and Lyttle noticed that Bart was quiet and that he seemed “a little stressed.” That didn’t surprise them since they both knew he had filed for divorce from his wife that week. The three men drank beer and watched a football game.