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.
CHAPTER FOUR
DECEMBER 4, 2004
BART 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.
CHAPTER FIVE
DECEMBER 5, 2004
DR. CAROL A. TERRY 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.
The manner of her death was odd. Even if fatally depressed, few females kill themselves with a gunshot to the head. They want to look attractive when their bodies are discovered, whereas males don’t seem to care. Women tend to take their own lives with sleeping pills or by cutting their wrists. Many even put on makeup and wear their prettiest outfit or nightgown.
But Jennifer had worn an old sleeveless green satin shortie nightgown. Both its straps were torn off in the back, and she had them secured with safety pins. It was the sort of quick patching job that women do on clothes that no one is going to see. Underneath, she wore pink panties. Dr. Terry noted that they were in place with no sign that anyone had tried to remove them.
The clothing and possessions worn by the dead are somehow more “alive” than the body shell left behind, and tell their own small stories. The jewelry on Jenn Corbin’s body seemed intact: clear, square diamond earrings; a “brownish-red” teardrop-shaped pendant on a thin gold chain encircling her neck, with a ring that matched it on her right hand; a gold nugget bracelet on her right wrist; a gold wedding ring and an engagement ring with a rectangular diamond; an Aquatech watch with a digital display reading 6:42:21. The watch display did not change as real time passed—the battery had apparently failed a few hours after she died. On her right wrist, Jenn wore a white and pink beaded bracelet with the beads spelling out “Kylie.” The childish bracelet was in support of a friend’s child who was fighting cancer. The “brownish-red” stones in Jenn’s necklace and in one of her rings were garnets, her favorite semiprecious stone, which she had worn constantly for many years after her late grandmother, “Nana,” gave them to her.
Jennifer Corbin had a small tattoo on her right ankle—the familiar mask of tragedy and comedy. She had been a true fan of the group Mötley Crüe, and the masks were from the cover of one of their top albums.
Forensic Technician Zubedah Mutawassim, Assistant DA Tom Davis, and DA’s Investigator Kevin Vincent joined Ray Rawlins and Marcus Head to observe the postmortem exam. Perhaps Dr. Terry would find something that would end this death investigation once and for all. More likely, there would be small things that didn’t mesh with suicide.
Jenn Corbin was a good-sized woman, but not at all overweight. She lacked perhaps a half-inch of being six feet tall, and she weighed just over 170. Jenn would hav
e been capable of putting up a good fight had she had any warning at all of danger. But the investigators at the death site hadn’t noted anything that suggested a struggle—no overturned lamps or chairs, nothing broken. When the brown paper bags that covered her hands were removed, Dr. Terry found not even a minuscule cut or scratch. If Jenn had been murdered, she would have to have been taken by surprise or she might even have been asleep.
If she was murdered. That was the biggest if. All the suspicions in the world wouldn’t help in a courtroom unless the Gwinnett County detectives and prosecutors could prove their theories to a jury.
The woman before them was wearing a little makeup: pale pink lipstick. She had three piercings in each ear, although she wore only the two small square diamond earrings now. They were removed along with her other jewelry, her greenish-blue satin nightgown with the black “frog” fastenings, and her pink panties, and bagged into evidence. Someday, they might be used as evidence in a trial, or if not, they would be given to her family.
The single, fatal bullet wound was to the right side of her head—behind her right ear. The wound path was from the right side of her head to the left, and upward. The bullet had effectively cut her brain stem in half and fractured her skull in several places.
Death would have been instantaneous.
The entrance wound was round and only three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter. There was soot from the gun barrel near the wound, but no stippling—the tiny burned specks that “tattoo” the skin around the hole where a bullet fired from a short distance goes in. The edges of this entrance wound were not seared or torn by the force of the heated gas in a gun barrel. A contact gunshot wound usually leaves a “stellate,” or star-shaped, wound. This was not a close-contact wound.
After establishing the path and angle of the deadly wound, Dr. Terry carefully examined the other organs in Jenn Corbin’s body. Was it possible that she was suffering from some fatal disease—something that no one who loved her knew about? That could have been a motive for suicide. But the forensic pathologist found every indication that Jennifer Corbin had been in excellent health.
Somehow, normal findings in an autopsy make the subject’s death more tragic. That was true in this case. All things being equal, Jennifer Corbin would have lived to be a very old lady. Her lungs, heart, arteries, liver, kidneys, and reproductive organs were all completely normal. Sometime in the past, she had had her gallbladder removed, and surgical clips remained—which was a normal procedure. She had a small bruise on the right side of her lower abdomen, but it had faded into the yellow-greenish hue of a healing contusion. It was probably not significant; mothers of small boys often have bruises from riding herd on them and usually can’t even remember when they got them.
Jenn Corbin’s last meal had included green beans. When that information was added to her body temperature when she was found, and the degree of rigor and livor mortis now, it would help to mark the time of her death. In some instances, pinpointing the exact time a victim died isn’t important, but in others it can be vital. This would be one of those cases. Jenn’s death had probably occurred between four and five hours before her body was discovered: somewhere around 2 to 3 A.M.
The official cause of her death was listed at the beginning of the “Summary of Findings” derived from her autopsy. It read: “Penetrating gunshot wound of head. Loose-contact range entrance wound on right side of head (posterior to right ear, in right posterior temporal/anterior occipital region).”
The observers at the autopsy looked grim. This was definitely not a contact wound where the gun’s barrel had been placed against her head. There was no muzzle impression, no tears around the edges of the wound itself, and no stippling. The gun would have to have been fired from several inches away. While it was remotely possible that Jenn Corbin could have twisted her right hand into an awkward position that would have allowed her to place the gun barrel against the skin behind her ear, it wasn’t likely. And it was clearly impossible for her to have held the weapon inches away from the entry point behind her right ear. Her arm was simply not that long.
Nevertheless, the first media reports in the Atlanta/ Gwinnett County area would report that autopsy results were “inconclusive,” reinforcing the impression for many viewers and readers that Jennifer Corbin had committed suicide.
The news that Jenn Corbin’s husband had filed for divorce would have been a great shock, except, perhaps, to those who were close to her. The information that she had died violently by her own hand was almost impossible for her friends and co-workers to absorb. And for her immediate family, it continued to be unthinkable.
JENNIFER CORBIN’S SECRETS would be opened up for the world to see, but, inevitably Bart Corbin’s own private life would also be held up to the light—all of his secrets, his misdeeds, his past, and his present. That’s what a murder investigation was, is, and has to be—an ongoing invasion of privacy, not just for the victim and the suspect, but for those who worry about friends on both sides of a case, strangers who have some kind of connection, and witnesses. The net spreads out and they are all caught in it, their private thoughts and actions explored relentlessly.
It’s the only way a death investigation can proceed. When a life is stolen prematurely, truth is the one path to justice.
Jenn and Bart Corbin’s scrapbooks and picture frames were full of happy family photographs: the two of them dancing at their wedding, looking totally in love; Jenn and Bart rafting through a deep canyon; Jenn, happily exhausted after Dalton’s birth; Bart holding Dalton minutes after he was born; Bart helping two-year-old Dillon blow out the candles on his birthday cake; a tan Bart, bare-chested and broad-shouldered on their own houseboat on Lake Lanier, and proudly holding two-month-old Dillon; the couple, both a little heavier than at their wedding reception, dancing somewhere at a charity dinner; all four Corbins posing happily at Disney World; Bart and Jenn beaming happily at a Corbin family wedding. And so many photos of Bart and Jenn with her family, usually laughing with Narda and Max, Heather, Doug and Rajel.
It seemed perhaps too perfect, happy moments caught forever on film but somehow evaporating in real life.
CHAPTER SIX
DECEMBER 6, 2004
AT THIRTY-THREE, JENN BARBER CORBIN was the personification of what most young wives and mothers strive to achieve. She wasn’t conventionally or “cookie-cutter” beautiful, but she had lovely and expressive brown eyes, golden-blond streaks in her thick hair, and a voluptuous figure.
Jenn was always smiling, no matter what troubles she might be dealing with. It was that luminous personality that people remembered about her now.
Jenn’s part-time job as a preschool teacher allowed her time to take care of Bart and her little boys. She worked a few hours on weekdays at the school in the Sugar Hill United Methodist Church. On Sunday her family attended services there.
“Before any of this happened,” Jenn’s good friend and fellow preschool teacher Jennifer Rupured observed, “I would have said Jenn would have made a great character in any other type of book [rather than a true crime book].” Rupured listed possible books that were more in Jenn’s genre: “‘Martha Stewart Cannot Outclean Jenn Corbin!’ or ‘Mom of the Year: How to Bake Six Pies and Clean House at the Same Time You Drive Your Kids to Baseball.’ Or even ‘Die-Cutting with a Passion: How to Create Preschool Bulletin Boards Using Only 700 Handprints Individually Cut Out.’
“Jenn had the kind of a personality an author could absorb and understand because it was so large and lovely,” Jennifer Rupured said, remembering how Jenn had dug little pots of shamrocks on St. Patrick’s Day for her students, and kept “lucky” pennies to hand out when someone needed to have a wish come true.
No matter how busy she was, Jenn Corbin would stop and listen to someone who needed an attentive ear, having that rare ability to focus entirely on the person who was speaking. That was undoubtedly because she truly was interested, and she did care about other people—whether it was one of the preschoo
lers she taught or an adult friend. Or even a virtual stranger.
But she was definitely not a sweetie-sweet kind of woman, and she was known to use four-letter words on occasions that called for them. Her sense of humor could be ribald at times. Neither she nor her sisters nor their mother fit into the stereotype of the genteel Southern belle. Still, there remained in Jenn a suspension of disbelief that made her have faith in happy endings, no matter how many times life rose up and smacked her in the face.
If Jenn had flaws—and of course she did because she was, after all, only human—one was that she trusted people too much before she fully knew them. That would include those on the periphery of her life and even a few who were part of her innermost circle. She had forgiven much, overlooked things that most women would not, and always tried to keep her own problems to herself to spare her family worry. At the time Jenn died, she was struggling with seemingly insurmountable decisions. She who had always believed in marriage wanted nothing more than to break the vows she had made eight years earlier.
She had fallen in love with someone else.
But very few people knew about it. In most people’s eyes, Jenn Corbin was a paragon, above reproach, incapable of reaching out for the happiness that might be achieved only by flouting conventional morality.
“She was a wonderful teacher, fabulous mother, and true friend,” one of her students’ mothers wrote about her.
“There was no way she would have committed suicide. She was not the type. And she lived for her boys, whom she completely adored! She had a great support system of family and friends and would never have left them of her own accord. She loved her boys with her whole being and all the kids she taught, too. She would never have let them [her sons] find her with a bullet in her head. She was upbeat, fun, and someone everyone wanted to be around.”