Free Deadly Divorces by Tammy Cohen Page A

on Barton. They still hadn’t been able to trace the gun back to Corbin’s friend Richard Wilson, but it wasn’t long before investigators decided the blood trail and the angle of thebullet wound at the scene of Jennifer’s death weren’t consistent with suicide. Plus Jenn didn’t have any gun powder residue on her fingers. Add that to Barton’s strange behaviour regarding the children after Jenn’s death and the good dentist was starting to look ever so slightly suspicious.
    Meanwhile, back in Augusta Dolly’s case was reopened following the developments in Gwinnett County. Using newer technology, the authorities again looked at photographs taken at the scene and in particular at the blood spatter patterns. This time the conclusion was very different: the body had been manipulated after the wound had been inflicted. The net was closing in on Corbin. The prosecution put a tap on Bart’s phone. In one conversation he referred to Dolly as that ‘bitch in Augusta’. Who hasn’t said things in an unguarded moment that they might later regret? But to describe a dead former girlfriend in such a derogatory way pointed to a sinister side to Bart that most people had never suspected he was capable of.
    On Wednesday 22 December – Barton Corbin’s 41st birthday – he was arrested for his part in the death of Dolly Hearn. Three police vehicles surrounded the white Chevrolet Suburban in which the dentist was travelling near his office on Braselton Highway. With him was his secretary. It was a very sudden and very public arrest, which was shown live on TV – the ultimate humiliation for such a control freak. Two weeks later he was charged with murdering his wife.
    For the best part of the following two years, Barton maintained he was innocent, the unfortunate victim of a freak coincidence. His family – twin brother Brad, younger brother Robert and mother Constance – stood by him. Bart hired the best defence lawyers available, charging them with proving he was actually a grieving husband being made to suffer horribly for becoming romantically involved with two emotionally unstable women. In the end, said defence lawyer David Wolfe, relationship breakdown was the villain in this tragedy, not Dr Barton Corbin: ‘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.’
    For the Hearns and the Barbers it was nearly two years of limbo in which their everyday lives coexisted as though in parallel universe with their new lives as families of the victims. Some days it was almost possible to lose yourself in the routine of school runs, baseball practice, grocery shopping and work, and to believe that life was once again back to normal. Other days even getting up out of bed seemed too monumental a task. Always, over-hanging everything – every birthday celebration, every holiday and every family meal – was the shadow of Barton Corbin and the possibility that he just might get away with it again.
    The trial was scheduled for the second week in September 2006. On 12 September, the second day of juryselection, came the breakthrough. The lead prosecutor was handed a note by his chief investigator: ‘Come out of the courtroom now’. The words were underlined for extra emphasis. ‘This had better be good,’ he thought to himself as he made his excuses to leave the room. And it was. The gun that shot Jennifer Corbin had finally been traced back to Troy, Alabama, and Richard Wilson had confessed to giving it to Corbin. It was the piece of evidence that smashed a hole through Barton’s carefully constructed dam of lies.
    Bart now knew there was no hope of getting off, but still there was a chance for damage limitation. His legal team was told that if he confessed to the murders of both women, he’d be spared the death penalty. For an egocentric such as Corbin, who truly believed