Jennifer Corbin’s Murder Explains Dolly Hearn’s Death
(“Insignificant Others,” Forensic Files)
In 1995, Jennifer Monique Barber had recently finished college and was plotting out her career while bartending at a Barnacle’s seafood restaurant in Georgia. A bouncer named Bob Corbin introduced her to his older brother.
his early 30s
Bart Corbin, D.D.S., must have seemed like a great catch. He was working hard to build up his dental practice, loved kids, and looked almost as sculpted as a Calvin Klein model. He was even three whole inches taller than Jennifer, who stood at around six feet.
Hidden past. After they married, Jennifer got a job teaching preschool at the Sugar Hill Methodist Church. By 2004, Jennifer, 33, and Bart, 40, had two sons, a four-bedroom house, a houseboat, and wonderful friends. Jennifer was outgoing and friendly. Bart was witty.
But there was one medium-sized problem: Jennifer and Bart were having affairs.
And one large problem: Bart was a murderer.
He’d shot girlfriend Dorothy “Dolly” Hearn in 1990 after she broke up with him. He successfully staged the scene as a suicide.
Not this time, buddy. Like a number of Forensic Files villains (Barbara Stager and David Copenhefer), Bart got away with murder once and just couldn’t resist trying it again.
In 2004, Bart killed Jennifer in the same way, except this time, authorities figured out what happened and reopened Dolly Hearn’s case as well.
For this week, I looked around for information on Bart’s early life that might explain why he adopted homicide as a remedy for relationship problems. I also checked on his whereabouts today.
Healthy bromance. So let’s get going on the recap of Forensic Files episode “Insignificant Others” along with extra information from internet research.
Barton Thomas Corbin was born on Dec. 22, 1963, in Jacksonville, Florida, and brought up in Snellville, Georgia, with his fraternal twin, Brad, and younger brother, Bob. Their mother, Connie, worked as a bank teller. Their father, Eugene, was a military police officer who later started a chemical company.
During childhood, Bart and Brad dressed in identical outfits and were best friends, according to the mass-market paperback The Doctor’s Wife by John Glatt.
Gridiron guy. After watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for the first time, Bart decided to become a dentist like Hermey the misfit elf, according to The Doctor’s Wife.
At one point in his youth, Bart was overweight, according to Glatt’s book. He began working out and acquired a chiseled look that women liked.
Bart played football in high school and then got his bachelor’s degree at the University of Georgia. Academically, he was competent but unexceptional.
He reportedly felt inadequate sometimes because Brad was more of a scholar.
Parent pleaser. Friends from dental school who spoke to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for a story dated Jan. 16, 2005, recalled Bart as a good guy who sometimes displayed a bad temper. In fact, all three Corbin brothers were loud and excitable, a condition they facetiously called “pseudo Tourettes,” according to Glatt’s book.
Still, by all accounts, Bart was fun to be around most of the time. He was musical and enjoyed going to dance clubs.
Soon after Bart and Jennifer began dating, he hit it off with her parents, Narda and Max Barber. They respected him for his industriousness.
Dedicated dad. The Barbers had only one reservation about Bart. According to Ann Rule’s book Too Late to Say Goodbye, he used a lot profanity and didn’t bother to clean up his language when he was around the Barbers.
Nonetheless, they were thrilled when the couple announced they were expecting a baby and wanted a big wedding. They married on Sept. 1, 1996, and went on to have sons Dalton and Dillon.
Bart crafted himself into a model citizen. He spent one day a month providing free dental care to patients in need. He visited Dalton’s kindergarten class to talk about dentistry, and coached Dalton’s baseball team.
Sociable duo. Some acquaintances recalled Bart rebuking Dalton harshly when he underperformed in a game, but most described Bart overall as a nice father.
Jennifer acquired a reputation for kindness at her nursery school job. She had a “warm lap and sheltering arms” for her students, according to the Ann Rule book.
She was also a livewire who enjoyed a good mojito.
The couple had many friends in Buford, a town of 14,000 people 35 miles from Atlanta.
Child confronted by scene. Neighbors Kelly and Steve Comeau grew so close to Jennifer and Bart — whose son shared a birthday with their daughter — that they named the Corbins as guardians for Stephanie, their only child, in case of a tragedy.
The Comeaus never imagined that a tragedy would happen so soon or that it would involve Jennifer.
On Dec. 10, 2004, Dalton, 7, entered his parents’ room to ask for breakfast. He found his mother dead and bleeding with a revolver by her side. He ran to the Comeaus’ house for help.
Histrionic Husband. Police discovered Jennifer with a bullet to the head, divorce papers under her body, and a gun tucked into the coverlet of her dark-wood canopy bed.
Upon learning of Jennifer’s death, Bart broke down emotionally and threw up in the bathroom, his brother Bob Corbin told 48 Hours Mystery.
Bart at first seemed to have an alibi. He was with friends at the Wild Wing Cafe bar in Suwanee and had the receipt to prove it. Afterward, Bart said, he drove one of his friends home and spent the night at Bob’s house.
Game girl. Once Jennifer died, it didn’t take long for word to get out about the adultery on both sides of the marriage. The couple had separated at some point; Jennifer wanted a divorce, but Bart filed first and requested custody of the kids.
He was having an affair with a married dental hygienist named Dara Prentice (it’s unclear whether that’s a pseudonym), according to Ann Rule’s book.
Jennifer had fallen in love with someone she met online while playing the fantasy game EverQuest.
Female trouble. She and her internet connection, Chris, emailed each other feverishly and talked about a future together.
Shortly before Jennifer died, however, she found out that Chris, who purported to be a man, was actually a woman named Anita Hearn (no relation to Dolly Hearn).
Here’s where the story gets a little hazy. On 48 Hours Mystery, Anita Hearn said that after some shock upon learning of the deception, Jennifer decided to accept her as a love interest regardless of gender.
Fuzzy facts: “Did you ever meet someone who could finish a sentence for you but that lived 800 miles away?” said Anita, who resided in a modest house in St. Joseph, Missouri.
Anita explained that she portrayed herself as a man at first because EverQuest involved role-playing. She also claimed that her new friend feared her husband would kill her.
Other media accounts suggest Jennifer was having an affair with a genuine man, but it’s unclear whether they were mixing up the facts about her relationship with Anita or the male love interest really existed. Records showed that Jennifer was on the internet and phone with Anita the day she died.
What a heel. Divorces are never fun, but there were some early hints this one would get particularly ugly.
On Dec. 1, 2004, Jennifer called police to complain that Bart stole her diary and flip phone, bolted out of the house wearing only a towel, and ran over her foot with his yellow Mustang, according to the Barbers.
appearance on Forensic
Files
Corporal Dan Huggins, the officer who responded to the call, would later say that, because Jennifer declined medical treatment, the police couldn’t take action against Bart for domestic violence.
Odd pathway. In an earlier incident, on the couple’s way back from Thanksgiving at the Barbers’ house, Bart looked in Jennifer’s purse and found a romantic email from Chris, who he assumed was a guy. (Bart shouldn’t have gone through Jennifer’s bag but, yikes, what was she thinking printing out a love email?)
Jennifer and Bart had a fight in the car, and he allegedly hit her.
On the day that Jennifer died, police discovered a rather fishy crime scene. The entry wound was toward the back of Jennifer’s head, behind the right ear, traveling toward the front — an awkward trajectory for a self-inflicted shooting.
Informers help cops. She had no gunpowder residue on her hands and the weapon was tucked into the bedding, not an easy feat for someone who took a fatal bullet to the brain.
Once the investigation got underway, Bart clammed up and hired a lawyer.
Against the Barbers’ wishes, Bart had Jennifer cremated.
The investigation really started to heat up when tipsters told police about Dolly Hearn’s death back in 1990.
Family tradition. Dolly, 28, may have been saddled with a nickname 200 years out of date, but she looked as though she stepped out of a 1980s Van Halen music video.
Yet Dolly’s ambitions were higher than her hair. She was following in her father’s footsteps to become a dentist.
Dolly met Bart when they were attending dental school at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta.
Refusal to get lost. In his last year of school, Bart was “alternately despondent and furious” when Dolly broke up with him, according to his buddy Eric Rader, who spoke to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Friends would later say that Bart didn’t mind being the one to end a relationship, but he couldn’t handle the reverse.
Dolly took Bart back but soon regretted it and ended the relationship for good.
Bart wouldn’t let it go. The Hearns said that he put hairspray in Dolly’s contact lens case, sabotaged her coursework, let the air out of her tires, and removed the gas cap from her car. He kidnapped Dolly’s cat, Tabitha.
Case abandoned. The Hearns asked Bart to knock off the stalking, and they gave Dolly a .38-caliber gun for protection.
On June 6, 1990, Dolly’s roommate found her shot to death on the couch in their apartment at 3077C Parrish Road in Augusta.
Dolly’s mother, Barbara Hearn, told Forensic Files she always knew that her daughter didn’t commit suicide, but authorities never made a determination, and let the case turn cold. A private coroner the Hearns hired concluded that Dolly killed herself.
Timeline shapes up. When authorities reopened the Dolly Hearn case, they took note that Dolly lacked blood splatter or gunpowder residue on her right hand, even though the bullet hit her on the right side.
Prosecutors theorized that Bart stopped by Dolly’s apartment, then collected her gun on his way to the bathroom, shot her, and positioned her body and the gun.
As for Jennifer Corbin’s death, investigators discovered that Bart canceled a marriage counseling appointment beforehand, suggesting he knew she wouldn’t be around.
Caldwell and Heather Tierney,
listen to court proceedings
Not cut out for the slammer. Prosecutors believe that in between the time Bart dropped off his buddy and went to his brother’s place, he stopped by the house in Buford at around 2 a.m. on December 10, 2004, shot Jennifer, and arranged her body so it looked like a suicide, and wedged the divorce papers under her.
In late December 2004, a grand jury indicted Bart on one count of felony murder and one of malice murder. Police pulled over an SUV Bart was riding in — his secretary was driving — and arrested him.
Richmond County Jail boss Charles Toole put Bart in a “special needs” unit along with 15 other inmates not quite up for mixing with the hardcore population of prisoners, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Witnesses materialize. Bart’s mother and one of his brothers visited him in jail.
Meanwhile, investigators got two great tips about Dolly’s death. A neighbor came forward to report she saw Bart’s silver Monte Carlo parked at Dolly’s apartment complex the day she died. And Bart’s former school buddy Eric Rader said that Bart begged him not to tell investigators that he knew Dolly kept a gun in her apartment.
A neighbor also reported seeing Bart park his Chevrolet pickup at his and Jennifer’s house for about 20 minutes on the night of her murder.
Ready to rumble. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, prosecutor Danny Porter, known for his love of duking it out in the courtroom, was stoked for the main event against defense lawyers David Wolfe and the braid-wearing Bruce Harvey.
The defense hired a jury selection consultant. There were plans to roll out R-rated emails between Jennifer and Anita in court.
Jennifer, the defense alleged, turned to suicide over the failure of her marriage and possibility Bart would win custody of their sons.
Victims’ families unified. “We will take the high road,” Bart’s supporters wrote on the now-abandoned innocence website friendsofbartcorbin.org, “and appeal to you to support Bart and wait for the truth to come out at trial and for the falsehoods to be exposed and swept away as what they are.” They also solicited donations for his legal fund.
At the same time, the Hearn and Barber families supported each other emotionally and sometimes held hands during the early court proceedings.
Dozens of witnesses were lined up to testify. Ann Rule had tickets to fly in to Georgia for the trial.
‘Gotta cancel.’ But the showdown never happened.
Bart and his legal team saw their defense evaporate when Bart’s buddy Richard J. Wilson admitted he gave Bart the gun that killed Jennifer.
The revelation spurred a bombshell: On September 19, 2006, Bart admitted to both murders in a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.
Fry, guy. Defense lawyer David Wolfe said that Bart made the decision in an effort to spare the Hearn and Barber families from the emotional strain of a trial.
Max Barber, Jennifer’s father, told the court that Bart was doing the right thing by admitting his crimes — but that he hoped he burned in hell anyway.
Stonefaced defendant. “To hear him say out loud that he killed the two girls, that’s huge,” said Jennifer’s friend Bridge Kamarad, the Gwinnett Daily Post reported.
Carlton Hearn Jr., one of Dolly Hearn’s brothers, stated that Bart “disgraced his profession and he has stolen from the world. He deserves no place in society.”
Bart, who remained expressionless, declined Superior Court Judge Michael C. Clark’s invitation to speak before the sentencing.
Tributes established. He received two concurrent life prison sentences and started his life of JPay and weekend visitors on September 19, 2006.
“We rejoice that this truth has been publicly revealed and that Dolly’s name is now officially cleared,” a statement from the Hearns said. “This nightmare is over.”
In 2007, the Medical College of Georgia awarded Dolly a posthumous Doctor of Dental Medicine degree. Barbara and Carlton Hearn established the Dr. Dolly Hearn Scholarship for dental students who embody PEP — professionalism, empathy, and perseverance.
‘Stay put.’ The Methodist Church where Jennifer taught dedicated the Jennifer Barber-Corbin Memorial Playground to her.
The world hadn’t quite heard the last of Bart Corbin, however. Although he gave up his right to file appeals in Gwinnett and Richmond counties, he made attempts in Georgia state and federal courts.
US District Judge J. Randal Hall dismissed his 2014 appeal because it was filed too late. His other legal salvos failed as well.
Campaign launched early. Today, Bart is inmate #0001226826 at the Central State Prison in Georgia. He no longer looks like Jon Hamm.
The Department of Corrections lists his sentence as life with no possibility of early release, although the Gwinnett Daily Post reported he can try for parole in 2024.
To preempt any attempts, the Hearn family has encouraged the public to write letters and emails of protest to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.
New tragedy. Meanwhile, Jennifer’s younger sister, Heather Tierney, and her husband, Doug, had taken custody of Dalton and Dillon. They brought them up alongside their own two children. “Taking care of four kids is the easy part,” Heather told 48 Hours Mystery. “Missing Jennifer is the hard part.”
Files killers, he has stayed
slim while behind razor wire
Sadly, the Corbins’ good friends Steve, 47, and Kelly Comeau, 50, both died in 2010. Bart and Jennifer would have ended up adopting their daughter.
Tabitha, the cat Bart stole from Dolly Hearn, was returned in good shape and lived to the age of 21.
Innate evil. As far as what turned a law-abiding suburban medical professional into a killer, a bad temper like Bart’s might explain murdering in a rage (see fellow dentist Glen Wolsieffer) — but not plotting ahead to kill, stage suicides, and turn his sons into half-orphans.
Bart Corbin was most likely born that way, a typical Forensic Files psychopath who couldn’t stand for a significant other to cut ties with him.
That’s all for this post. Until the next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube
As always a well written summation of the case at hand. I live outside Atlanta and every now and then I’ll see a mention of this case in the local news from Danny Porter who is still doing his thing as DA in Gwinnett County. I think the hardest part of this was Dolly Hearn’s family having to wait years for justice knowing she didn’t commit suicide. Thank God truth finally prevailed but my heart goes out to them having to watch Bart have a life while Dolly lost hers. Her mother came across as a very gracious woman in the FF episode. Of course Jennifer’s family didn’t have it any easier and you can see they loved her greatly. All in all a sad case but Bart is right where he belongs.
Thanks, Joe! I was really impressed with Dolly Hearn’s mother — so dignified and reasonable.
Why did Steve and Kelly pass away at such a young age?
I’m curious, too. They both died in 2010 but eight months apart. Their obituaries didn’t cite a cause.
If you read the messages that people left for the family on Kelly’s obituary, one of them mentions cancer. So it sounds like Kelly died of cancer. I could not find a cause in the messages on Steve’s obituary page for his cause of death.
Thanks for the sleuthing…such a sad turn of events.
Yeah, I figured it was head-on car crash with both of them in the car, but Steven died in January 2010 and Kelly in August. Their obituaries don’t mention cause of death.
Steven died of a heart attack and Kelly had cancer.
Thanks for writing in with their epilogues — so tragic!
Kelly died of cancer. I could not find a cause for Steven.
Steve had a heart attack and Kelly had cancer.
So sad!
Another fine piece, thank you. Not many true crime writers take the trouble to find out what subsequently happened to the victim’s cat.
BTW, what is it that induces people to print out damning emails from people they’re romantically involved with? One of the things that put Michael Peterson under suspicion after the death of his wife was a stash of email printouts from his male lover.
Thanks for the kind words, Robert! I always have to restrain myself from saying, “Is the dog OK?” before asking about the person.
Yeah, I don’t get these people who print out stuff, either. “Always assume that the microphone is on and the papers will be rifled through.”
Reminds me of that online cowboy murder (The one where he drove over 100 miles to see his online girlfriend and that her ex-husband was the chaperone to their bar date). And how he got mad that she just wanted to talk at the bar and nothing after. He murdered her and stole her computer, but thankfully she printed their past previous emails! Guessing she printed out of sentimentality.
That cowboy isn’t riding anymore, https://forensicfilesnow.com/index.php/2018/07/19/updates-on-james-kidwell-and-eddie-makdessi/
Much credit is due for chronicling such a whirlwind. Ruling a suicide before due process seems to be a kiss of death regarding the integrity of an investigation. Hopefully, Bart will never be able to appeal, especially with two demised lives under his belt.
Thanks, Gracie! It really is strange that Dolly Hearn’s death wasn’t investigated more deeply at the time. No one mentioned clinical depression or anything that would precipitate a suicide. She had a lot to live for.
Thanks again for another excellent piece. I love this quote from your article, “a typical … psychopath who couldn’t stand for a significant other to cut ties with him.” There’s all kinds of anti-socials, and you know a tree by its fruit. Too bad its already rotten when the 911 call goes out.
Thanks! Too bad they didn’t figure out sooner what kind of crazy tree that guy was.
You just know that murder will be involved if the title of the episode is Insignificant Others.
You say both had an affair. Jenn did not really have an “affair” — Oxford dictionary “a sexual relationship between two people, one or both of whom are married to someone else.” She never even met the person she emailed. At most she had a fantasy about someone who didn’t even exist.
So it’s now January 2023… No matter what he was charged with, he committed two first degree murders. So when is he out for good behavior in our perverse “justice” system?
Rob
Hello,
I’m a producer on a true crime TV series and I’m looking for someone who knew her personally and would like to go on camera to talk about who she was, what she was like, to honor her memory.
Feel free to email me – jbrooks@44blue.com
Thank you!
Bart took her purse and read the e-mails before they got to Jenn’s sister Heather’s house. Jenn’s mom had called while they were on the way there to ask them to stop and get a turkey baster (Heather & her family had just moved into the house and their turkey baster was still in one of the boxes). Bart took her purse, emptied everything out into the car and read the e-mails while Jenn was in the store. He was *very* angry while they were at Heather & her family’s house that Thanksgiving. It was very awkward for everyone due to Bart’s mood. Bart abruptly made Jenn & the boys get in the car; she didn’t even get to say goodbye to them. On the way back home from the fiasco Thanksgiving dinner is when Bart hit Jenn. Dalton saw & heard everything; Dillon had managed to fall asleep.
Those poor kids! I’ll never understand how one parent can deprive children of their other parent.