True Crime Campfire - Possession: The Story of Bart Corbin, Pt 2

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

When we left you at the end of part 1, we had just learned one of Bart Corbin’s best-kept secrets: that, 14 years before the murder of Jennifer Corbin, his ex-girlfriend Dolly Hearn had died from a gunshot wound to the head. A gunshot wound eerily similar to Jenn’s—and a death that had been ruled a suicide, to the disbelief of the people closest to the victim. Now, Dolly’s parents were determined to make contact with the investigators in Jenn Corbin’s case, and finally bring to light a truth they had always been sure of: that Bart Corbin killed their daughter. Join us now for part 2 of this twisting tale.Sources:Ann Rule, Too Late to Say GoodbyeCBS "48 Hours," episode "Love and Lies"https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna15253153https://www.oxygen.com/a-wedding-and-a-murder/crime-news/dentist-bart-corbin-pleads-guilty-murdering-girlfriend-wifehttps://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/archive/dentist-gets-life-for-killing-two-women/article_4b206d69-70ac-5cfc-9555-22cfe9e0c145.htmlFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. When we left you at the end of part one, we had just learned one of Bart Corbin's best-kept secrets, that 14 years before the murder of Jennifer Corbyn, his ex-girlfriend, Dolly Hearn, had died from a gunshot wound to the head, a gunshot wound eerily similar to Jens,

and a death that had been ruled a suicide to the disbelief of the people closest to the victim. Now, Dolly's parents were determined to make contact with the investigators in Jen Corbin's case, and finally bring to light a truth they had always been sure of, that Bart Corbin killed their daughter. Join us now for Part 2 of Possession, the story of Bart Corbyn. Dolly Hearn grew up in the 60s as the oldest of Dr. Carlton and Barbara Hearn's three kids. Her two brothers looked at her almost like a second mom. That was a big part of Dolly's vibe, warm, loving,

a safe person to be around. She was smart and funny, too. One Halloween, she dressed up like a tree that had been toilet papered. Tee-Ping houses, being a local tradition on Halloween, as it is in so many small towns across America, y'all ever teepee somebody's house campers? I must admit, I did participate just once when I was in high school, and all I'm going to say about it on the air is that dude had it coming. Just trust me.

Whitney, I think the statute of limitations is up on toilet papering houses. Yeah, well, I don't want to leave myself open to any kind of revenge or anything like that. Fair, fair. So, much like Jen, Dolly was warm and smart and funny and so beautiful that other girls would have probably been jealous of her if she wasn't such an absolute sweetheart. From childhood on, she had a real passion for helping people, and when she graduated from high school, that desire took shape. She decided she wanted to follow in her dad's footsteps and go to dental school. Her dad, unlike Dr. Bart, was the type of dentist who really came. cared about his patients, the type who'd do free or discounted work for people who couldn't afford

it, and that made a big impression on Dolly. So in 1987, she enrolled in the Medical College of Georgia's dental program in Augusta, and right from the start, her classmates were drawn to her. She had Miss America good looks, dark hair and eyes and porcelain goddess skin, and the kind of warm, friendly vibe that made you want to get to know her. She was the kind to say hi to everybody she passed in the hallway at school, and unsurprisingly, she was very popular with the men in her class. Unfortunately for Dolly, one of those men was Bart Corbyn. When he met Dolly, he was in his second year of dental school, and he fell for her the minute he set eyes on her.

It wasn't Love at first sight for Dolly, but she was attracted to him right away. He had dark hair and eyes like hers. He worked out, and he seemed like a lot of fun. In fact, he had a rep as the class clown and a huge party boy. Most of their classmates thought he and Dolly were a pretty good match, but a few of her friends weren't so sure. Some of the women got weird vibes off Bart, thought he was a bit of an odd duck.

Plus, they thought Dolly was too bubbly and positive for Bart, who since his undergrad days at UGA had developed a bit of a dark bad boy side. Back then, nobody had thought of Bart as an angry guy, but since he'd started dental school, his fuse had gotten a whole lot shorter. He could go from zero to tantrum in two seconds flat and over stuff that most people would just shrug off without a second thought. Some of his lab partners had gotten a firsthand look at that site, of him one day when something pissed him off during class and he threw one of his dental projects

against a wall. It shattered into a million smithereens, of course, and scared the shit out of everybody in the room. Total Kyle move. Now, as if that wasn't bad enough, Bart had this weird aversion to antiperspirant. He was convinced it was bad for you because of the aluminum in it and he refused to wear any. And as a result, he smelled like a monkey in a sauna. Which is basically what Georgia turns into in the summer, so I cannot even imagine. Like, he must have had like cartoon stank lines coming off the sweat stains on his shirts you must have been able to smell him a mile off can you imagine what that must have been like for his patients like i mean a dentist has got to lean over you sometimes to reach for instruments and stuff like your nose would be right up in those skanky ass pits ugh i'm a little disappointed that you queen of the insult Whitney haven't called him fart corbin yet you know because like he's stanky ass Yeah, I mean, okay, I thought about it, but it seemed a little bit, I don't know, and I couldn't quite make the connection between the stinky pits and farting, but I mean, you know, you're right. It's right there. We can't ignore it. It's low-hanging fruit. But it's ripe, though, just like Bart.

Okay, see, there's the joke. Thank you. Sure, I got you. We're a team. When he wasn't turning on the charm to win somebody over, Bart's attitude could be every bit as stinky as his pits. One former classmate later told Anne Rule, The one thing I remember about Bart is that he considered himself superior to others. He seemed devoid of empathy or any capability of significant emotional attachment. Burn

This same person told Rule that sometime after they graduated, she bumped into Bart at a restaurant. She'd become a dental hygienist by then, and she accepted an offer to help Bart out for a day at the practice where he worked. But he hadn't changed a bit. He was cold and aloof with everybody, she said, especially with his patients. And this is just, ugh, chef's kiss delightful.

Before she left at the end of the day, he took her aside. You shouldn't pine after me, he told her. I'm looking for a different calibre. of woman, hopefully another dentist. Oh my God. What? After picking her lower jaw up off the floor, she somehow managed to stop herself from scream laughing in his face and got the

hell out of there. She said, to this day, I'm incredulous that he thought I was interested in him romantically. Yeah, if that ain't a master class in narcissism, I don't know what is. It's just the cringe of that. Oh, it burns, it burns. Anyway, back to Bart and Dolly. Despite the reservations of some of her friends, and despite the visible funk that hung in the air around his armpits,

Dolly started dating him. Like, he had with his first girlfriend, Shelly, Bart poured on the capital R romance at first. Yeah, I probably had to pour on the cologne, too. And this was the late 80s, remember, which was ground zero for the Drek car noir epidemic. which just, who, I mean, I still remember. I can still smell it if I close my eyes. Like the Dracard noir and my, like, ex's leather jacket and, like, just the barest little hint of, like, beer and cigarettes. It's just, it's a funk, like no other.

Kind of makes me nostalgic. And there's a Yankee candle that smells just like it. I swear to God. I forget what it's called, but it's Drek Hard Noir. Yeah. Like, yeah. They still make that shit. My brother uses it, although he uses it, like, in a reasonable.

like a reasonable dab. He doesn't... He doesn't just like bathe in it. Yeah, he doesn't use it as a substitute for showering. Shout out to my brother. Sorry. Didn't mean to embarrass you on the show. Bart gave Dolly the full court press in the early days of their relationship.

But before long, some cracks began to show. For one thing, their values were night and day different. Dolly wanted to be a dentist because her dad had shown her how you could use those skills to make people's lives better. better. She dreamed of joining her dad's dental surgery practice after graduation, and she planned to be the kind of doctor he was, the kind who really cared about the patients. Bart, as you already know from part one, was in it for the money, period, full stop. And he made no apologies for it. That skeved Dolly out a little.

Their relationship began to Yo-Yo between breaking up and making up. Then, about a year and a half in, Bart proposed to Dolly. and she said no. She loved Bart, but she wasn't ready to get married. She was determined to finish school first and get her career started before she made any permanent commitments or started thinking about a family. That was that, and she wasn't going to be pressured into doing this stuff on Bart's timeline. And toward the end of that semester, Dolly finally had enough.

She just didn't see the relationship going anywhere. Bart was pressuring her, she felt smothered, Bart seemed to take it okay, but the whole thing left Dolly with an unsettled feeling. She was under a lot of stress in general. Not only was school presenting plenty of challenges, but also, somebody seemed to be trying to sabotage her. It had been going on for a while now. One morning, she'd gone out to her car to find the tires slashed.

Another time, she found that someone had replaced her contact solution with hairspray. And worst of all, her sweet cat Tabitha had gone missing, and Dolly suspected someone had taken her. On the day she and her roommate came home to find Tabitha gone, the sliding doors to their apartment were standing open. Dolly was devastated. She adored her little Tabitha, and the kitty had always been a pampered inside baby.

She'd never been outside before. Dolly knew she must be so scared. She could hardly stand the thought of it. If y'all have ever lost a pet, you know exactly how this feels. It's one of the worst, just most panicky feelings. And I know a lot of y'all are sensitive about animal stuff, so I'm just going to tell you now, Tabitha has a happy ending, okay?

I refuse to keep reading the Ann Rulebook until Whitney confirmed that for me. Yeah, I get it. It's hard. Animal stuff is really hard. As soon as Bart heard about Tabitha, he rushed over to offer to help find her. He drove Dolly around town for hours, but they didn't have any look. And the more she thought about the situation, the more uneasy Dolly felt about it. Her gut was telling her that Bart might be behind this stuff, the slash tires, the hairspray, now her missing cat. In the strictest confidence, she even asked one of her friends if he thought Bart might be involved. She'd suspected before that he'd been coming into her apartment when she

wasn't there. Things would just feel off. Little things would be in the wrong places, just slightly, so you couldn't be sure if you were imagining it, which is so creepy. For his part, Bart was bombarding Dolly's friends with phone calls, asking for advice on how to win her back. One of these friends had a strong suspicion that Bart had taken Tabitha, either as pure revenge on Dolly for dumping him, or like a some kind of hair-brained way to make her sad and vulnerable so he could kind of swoop in and play the night and shining armor. By now, Tabith had been missing for a month, and Dolly was afraid she was never going to see her again. Dolly's friend told Bart, if you're ever going to have a prayer of getting Dolly back, you better not have had anything

to do with Tabitha. If Dolly doesn't get her back, she's going to hate you forever. And interestingly enough at this, Bart did not hand. really protest his innocence or anything like that. He just said, yeah, I need to call her and quickly got off the phone. It's like, yeah, that's how you'd act if you were innocent, right? Bart does not seem to excel at staying cool under pressure. He just telegraphs guilty as shit, like for a minute one. He is about as subtle as Tom Cruise on a sofa. Yeah, exactly. When Dolly finally confronted him about Tabitha, he burst into tears, Woossey, and finally admitted he was the one who took her and just dumped her somewhere. What the fuck, dude? Fellas, if there is one sure

sure a woman's going to hate the sight of you until the end of time, do something to fuck with her pet. Just try it. See what happens. So Bart offered to take Dolly to where he'd last seen Tabitha. Some of the people in the neighborhood said they had seen a cat who looked like her, but nobody'd seen her for days. And then, just like a scene from homeward bound, Dolly caught sight of a bedraggled dirty little cat who looked exactly like her girl after a real bad month. And when she called out her name, the little cat ran right into her

arms and started purring. It's like so precious like a scene for a movie. She was a little worse for wear, for sure, but it was dolly's cat, and she was alive, which is just a freaking miracle, really. I actually can't believe she found her. But she did, so y'all can stop holding your breath.

Bart also admitted that he'd stolen some of Dolly's clothes, her favorite ones specifically. Boy, this guy sure knows how to woo a lady, don't he? It's like he went to the Greg Onesion Jackson School of Romance. Or like Stanley Kowalski, if you're of an older generation. Or Travis Bickle. One of those guys.

Good old Greg and Bart would get along like a house on fire. I just know it. Oh, no doubt. According to Dolly's classmates, Bart seemed contrite about all the harassment he'd put Dolly through. But as Christmas 1989 approached, it ramped up once again. Dolly came home to find her mailbox broken into and packages missing. She called the Augusta PD and told them she suspected her ex-boyfriend, Bart Corbin. But get your pearls ready for clutching.

Nothing came of the report. And then, while Dolly was home visiting her parents for the holidays, somebody poured paint in her gas tank. Back at school, almost $2,000 worth of her dental tools went missing. Worse than that, a set of denture she'd been working on for months to disappear. appeared too. At the time, it took three or four months to complete a set of dentures, and it was one of the requirements for graduation. Dolly went to her professor in tears, but she couldn't prove the dentures had been stolen, so she had to start all over. She felt sure Bart had taken them, just to harass her, make her life miserable. For his part, when he spoke to their classmates

about what Dolly was going through, Bart implied that she was getting paranoid. Going a little crazy thinking people were out to get her. Priming the pump, the way assholes of this kind love to do. Remember campers, abusers don't just gaslight their victims. They try and groom allies too. Yep. But Dolly wasn't going to be intimidated. She reported Bart to the school and brought him before the honor board, who launched an investigation into Dolly's allegations. Unfortunately for her, the only evidence she had was circumstantial, and even that was pretty thin. And Bart could turn on the charm when he wanted to, so he managed to smooth it all over. And again, nothing was done. And Bart was furious that Dolly had the audacity to report him to the school.

Yes, how dare she try to protect herself from your increasingly terrifying behavior? What a bitch. In desperation, Dolly requested a transfer into an elite internship. It was a good opportunity for sure, but she requested it 100% to try and get away from Bart. Her grades weren't good enough to get in, though, because, you know, she'd had a creepy stalker after her for months now, tormenting her and sabotaging her schoolwork. Her landlord had changed the locks on her apartment door three times. Oh, y'all, I hate this guy.

I just, I hate him so much. You know, it's been a minute since we've trotted out the old true crime campfire woodchipper TM, but I really think Bart Corbin is just begging for a good, hard, mulching. He's a good candidate for the Trebushate, too. Just fling him into the ocean or into an active volcano. Oh, yeah. Or maybe one day we can afford a TCC branded rocket ship and send him into the cold vacuum of space all by himself. Let's all stop and think about that for a second, campers. Nice. Get on that shit, Elon Musk. Make yourself useful. Just a bark Corbin rocket ship.

Yeah, just a pod. Just a Corbin-sized pot. Well, I don't know. Maybe a big enough shipped where we can shoehorn all of our assholes onto it. Rod Farrell. Just fire them into. Oh, my God. Yes.

Let them eat each other in the product. Like when the food starts to, when those little dried ice cream pellets that they give them start to go scarce, just let them eat each other. whew, Whitney's getting violent today. I don't like this guy. Despite all she was going through, Dolly tried to maintain some semblance of a normal life. Once, she was out on a date with somebody she was seeing casually. They went out to dinner and rented a movie to watch at his place,

like the proto-netflix and chill, I guess. And halfway through the movie, there was a violent pounding on the door. Dolly's date went to answer it. And guess who it was? Barf? I mean Bart? Yep. Standing there with a face like a slapped ass,

saying he just wanted to talk to Dolly. Dude, no. God, that is so tacky. And of course, poor Dolly was completely terrified. And she begged her date not to let him in, so the guy just shut the door in Bart's face. And he and Dolly sat there listening to him, pound on the door, and whine for like an hour.

And eventually, bless her heart, Dolly called the cops. By the time they got there, Bart had slithered away. Little fucking weasel. I'm sure he realized that she'd called the police on his dumbass. But then, at 4 in the morning, he came back. And Dolly and her date weren't even in bed or anything. She just had been too scared to go home.

Like, she hadn't intended to spend the night. So she was just there because she was scared. So after this fresh hell, Dolly made yet another complaint to the school, but the little preliminary groundwork that Bart had been laying about her paranoia had done its job, as it so often does. school thought maybe Dolly was just exaggerating or even lying for attention or to get a break on her grades. She's just infuriating.

They wanted her to go to the sheriff's office and take a polygraph test to prove she was telling the truth about Bart's harassment. Just... Ugh. Yeah, university administration. That's the perfect way to treat a scared young woman. Clearly she's lying, despite the fact that she's made multiple reports about her stinky ex who breaks things when he doesn't

at his way. Good job. Wouldn't want to ruin the reputation of a promising young dentist. Go fuck yourselves. Yeah, and it's not like there aren't people to corroborate it too. I mean, they had her roommate, they had this date of hers who he'd like been outside banging on the door for hours. Come on, like, for God's sakes. So meanwhile, Dolly, of course, was starting to be afraid for her life, so afraid in fact that she got a gun. Her brother took her to a firing range and taught her how to use it. She kept the gun in his shoebox under her bed, but she was still petrified. Suddenly, this woman who'd always been such a sunny, happy presence at the dental school seemed diminished, somehow smaller and dimmer and scared. And then, on June 6, 1990, Dolly's roommate Angela came home and found Dolly collapsed on the couch.

Angela could see that she had some kind of head injury, but she wasn't sure what it was. She ran to a neighbor's apartment and called the police. They found Dolly sitting cross-legged on the couch, a gun in her lap. She had a single gunshot wound to her head, just above her right ear. Angela was beside herself. She told her responding officers, look, she was not depressed, okay? You need to look at her ex, Bart Corbin. The guy's been harassing her for months.

But the police seemed to have their minds made up, almost from that first moment on the scene, as evidenced by the fact that the first thing they did was move the gun from Dolly's lap to a nearby stool. Anybody else having a rage stroke right now? What the... Okay, great. Just go right ahead and fuck up your crime scene before the detectives even get there. That's just great. Good job, guys.

Fucking idiot. But, hey, you know, it looked like a suicide. She had a gun in her lap. Case closed, right? Of course, the gun did belong to Dolly. They quickly determined that, but that does not prove suicide. No, it does not. Poking around the apartment, they noticed that Dolly had been in the process of packing a bag. Turned out later, she was planning to go to the beach that weekend. In the kitchen, they found the makings for spaghetti. sauce. Doesn't really sound like what you'd be up to if you were getting ready to take your own life, but I guess you never know. And there was a message on Dolly's answering machine, from Bart Corbin. He said he was sorry, but he couldn't make it to the party they were supposed to go

to that night. Maybe they could hook up tomorrow. Hearing this, Dolly's roommate Angela looked confused. She hadn't heard anything about any plans to go to a party. Certainly not with Bart, who'd been making Dolly's life miserable for months now. When investigators spoke to Dolly's friends and family, the message was pretty much unanimous. Dolly would never kill herself. Now, this is often what family members say, even in cases where it is suicide, because it's a hard thing to accept. But it's telling to me that not one person close to Dolly, either family member or friend

or classmate, thought suicide was remotely possible. Not one person. They were adamant. Dolly had not died by her own hand. This was murder. This seemed even more probable to the people close to Dolly. When they learned that on the day she died, Bart had tried to get back together with her. He told people he was confident they'd be back together by the end of the day.

And then she ended up dead? Suspicious as hell. Bart's friends, on the other hand, were firmly on his side. He'd been working them for months, of course, telling them how neurotic and paranoid she was. Told them she was bitchy, too, and had cheerleader syndrome. All right, what the flippin' fuck is cheerleader syndrome? All right, let me guess. she's a pretty girl who decided she didn't want to give him the time of day anymore, right?

So therefore she's spoiled, stuck up, not as hot as she thinks she is shallow, slutty. I'm sure I'm leaving some stuff out here. Yeah, pretty much. When in reality, what Dolly was was sick of his shit. Yeah, she had I'd rather not date a cat stealing greed goblin syndrome. Right, totally different diagnostic criteria. Mm-hmm. Right. Bart was close to a couple, both dentists named Tony and Vicky,

and they'd been concerned about Bart for a while before Dolly's death. They knew he was distraught over their breakup. Pause to Iroll. One Sunday, not long before Dolly died, he met them for brunch. He said he'd just been to church, just suddenly had the urge to go for some reason. And then, in a voice dripping with ominousness, he said, you know, I have guns at home. Message received.

Tony and Vicky scared to death Bart would hurt himself, convinced him to let them come and take his guns until he was in a better headspace. But then, right after Dolly died, later that same evening, in fact, he showed up at Tony and Vickies and asked for his guns back. He was okay now. There was no need for them to keep the guns away from him anymore.

Ostensibly, Bart didn't know yet that Dolly was dead. While he was at Tony and Vicky's place, the phone rang, a mutual friend calling with awful news. Poor Tony had no idea how he was going to tell Bart. He made up some fake reason why they should all go over to their friend Eric's house. Tony felt like Eric was the best person to handle Bart if he went off the rails with the news of Dolly's death. They convinced Bart to leave the guns behind. When they dropped the bombshell on him, Bart initially seemed to be a grief-stricken wreck.

But it was amazing. After a few minutes of that, he just calmed right down. Huh, yeah, weird, right? Obviously, before they let Bart leave, they told him they were going to keep holding on to the guns for a while. They were so worried for their friend, they actually called his dad, Gene. Gene seemed unconcerned. Bart's fine, he told them. You're overreacting.

You know, if my friends were worried, that I might do something to harm myself, worried enough for them to look my dad up and call him, I'd like to think he'd have more of a reaction than, eh, she's fine. Stop overreacting. I'm kidding. Damn, dude, that's your kid. Right?

Of course, what that also shows, I think, is that Bart's whole I'm distraught thing was totally an act that he was putting on for his friend, and maybe his dad just knew better. Now, of course, the police did question Bart, suicide theory or no. He seemed a little nervous during his interview, but stayed calm regardless. Investigators thought it was weird that he seemed totally fine, considering the love of his life was dead. For someone supposedly grieving a woman he loved, his affect sure was flat. Bart said he'd seen Dolly for the last time around two in the afternoon, two days before she died. He told Detective John Gray he'd stopped by to check on her because she'd been sick.

They chit-chatted a bit, no arguments or anything like that. He said they were planning to go to a party together the night of the six. Oddly, he couldn't remember the name of the person throwing the party, but he made sure to stress to the detective that he left a message about it on Dolly's answering machine between 2 and 2.30 in the afternoon that day. He gave an excruciatingly detailed account of everything he did that day. The detective noticed that some of his times overlapped here and there, and there was a 45-minute stretch in the early afternoon, where he doubted Bart could have done all the things he said he had. When Detective Gray asked him about his relationship with Dolly, he said it had been serious for a while. They talked about getting married, but Bart said he broke it off in the end. I'm graduating, and I can't stay around for just a girlfriend, he said.

I told her that. And just as he had with their classmates at the dental school, Bart described Dolly's reaction. It depended on the day. Sometimes it upset her, sometimes she understood. Her moods would change from day to day. I mean, she always projected the same mood, but in private, she varied. Uh-huh. Moody, moody, moody, Dolly.

funny how he was the only person who seemed to see her that way. As Detective Gray asked Bart to talk about where Dolly's mood had been over the past few weeks, he seemed to warm up to the subject and almost enjoy himself. Dolly'd been depressed about her grades and her future career prospects. He said, she said what she was going to try to accomplish was probably just dreams. For her to be realistic was for her to be down. He seemed smug talking about Dolly's allegedly bad performance at dental school, and here's the thing.

her grades were fine she'd struggled a little bit for the first part of the semester because you know her psycho ex-boyfriend was doing his best Ted Bundy impression slashing her tires and stealing her cat and breaking into her apartment and then telling everybody she was lying about it but she'd made up for those slip-ups in the second half of the semester she was a good student and her career prospects were excellent

during this whole first interview Bart insisted he hadn't seen Dolly on the day she died didn't go anywhere near her place hadn't seen her for two days and after a few hours of conversation, they let Bart go home. They called him back the next day, though, and lo and behold, Bart's story had evolved a bit. This time, he admitted he had gone to see Dolly, around one in the afternoon on the day she died. They sat on the couch together and watched TV, he said, and just kind of shot the shit about nothing in particular. He said, somebody actually dropped by Dolly's place while he was there, but he was in the bathroom when the woman showed up, and she was already leaving by the time he came out. and oh he said i talked to one of our neighbors that day too knocked on his door to ask him if he'd be willing to volunteer to let me do some x-rays on him for a class okay just jesus jones campers this guy so wonder why bart would suddenly change his story could it be because he realized that there were at least two witnesses who knew he'd been at dolly's place the day she died real smooth not to tell him about this at the first interview man and then correct it the next day

Like, it's no big deal. Way to think of everything. Bro, you got this. This is a move I like to call frantic backpedaling, and it is not a great technique if you're interested in getting away with murder. I feel like any technique with the words frantic or backpedaling in it isn't going to be a great technique no matter what you're doing. Probably not.

Like, you never hear about frantic, frantic honesty. Frantic truth-telling. But, But when Detective Gray asked him why he'd kept this info under his hat until the second interview, Bart had an answer already. He said, he lied because Dolly's dad was under the impression that Bart had, quote, done certain things to Dolly earlier that year. And Dr. Hearn had threatened him, he said.

Aw, how scary that must have been for you, Mr. Bundy. Poor puppy. The investigators in Ten Eye were vibrating, but they didn't have any direct evidence to hold Bart on. so once again they let him go. And the next day, a smiling Bart Corbyn graduated from dental school. Dolly's friends were shocked. They'd been expecting an arrest. But it wasn't to be.

Dolly's autopsy revealed that Dolly had died from a gunshot wound to the head. There was blackened skin at the entry point, meaning it was a contact wound, gun right up against the skin. This is pretty common in suicides, but the medical examiner felt a little uneasy about making that call. There was something about the case that bothered her. So when it came time to mark down the manner of death, she chose undetermined. Some of the investigators were deeply suspicious, and from Anne Rule's book, it sounds like there wasn't a perfect consensus among them about what happened. But at the end of the day, they didn't have any hard evidence of foul play.

There were people on Dolly's side who believed Bart killed her, and there were people on Bart's side who backed him up about her alleged moodiness and despondents. over how she was doing in school. And you can't take somebody to trial on suspicion. Ultimately, much to the horror and frustration of the people who loved Dolly, the police determined that she had most likely taken her own life. And they moved on. Man.

But on the medical examiner's report, that undetermined still sat there, leaving the door slightly ajar and giving Dolly's family some hope that someday they might be able to get somebody to listen and find out the real truth. After Dolly's death, Bart moved 150 miles away from Augusta to Gwinnett County and got on with his life. He started his dental career. He had relationships with women, including the ones we told you about in part one, who he'd continue his involvement with even after marrying Jen, the married woman who ended up coming to his and Jen's wedding, and the woman old enough to be his mother. Her name was Harriet Gray, and we should be clear. In Ann Rule's book, she says their

romantic involvement was a rumor among the people she and Bart worked with at the dental practice. Harriet apparently suddenly started changing her looks, working out more, dyeing her hair, etc. And it was a sort of open secret at the practice that she and Bart were having an affair. In a 2005 article in the Associated Press, though, it's a lot more equivocal. The article specifically calls her his former girlfriend. So my guess is, investigators are privy to more info than Anne Rule was. Right, from that article, it sounds like a fact that they were definitely involved in an affair, not just a rumor. So allegedly, they were seeing each other in the mid-90s. And then, in September of 1996, the weekend after Bart and Jen got married, let that sink in,

56-year-old Harriet went missing. Police later said that, the disappearance had the look of an abduction. She was missing for a little over a year, and then in December of 1997, her car was found at the bottom of Lake Tuscaloosa in Alabama. Her hands had been duct taped to the steering wheel. Her murder is unsolved to this day. When Dolly Hearn's parents reached out to Detective Marcus Head, who was in the early days investigating Jen Corbin's murder, he felt like he'd stepped into the plot of a Hollywood thriller. Now he had two women, intimately acquainted with Bart, who both died of gunshot wounds to the head, and both deaths had happened right as the women were poised to end their relationships with Bart.

So Detective Head reached out to the Richmond County Sheriff's Department for information on Dolly's death. And on the other end of the line was a Sergeant Scott Peebles. Interestingly, Scott was the son of Ron Peoples, one of the original investigators on Dolly's case. Ron was retired now, but as soon as he heard from Detective Head, Scott called him and said, What do you remember about the Dolly Hearn case? Ron didn't hesitate. He said, I always thought Bart Corbin killed her. Ron Peebles hadn't wanted to let Bart go, but they just didn't have any physical evidence,

and it had bothered him ever since. But now, based on Jen's case, Scott Peebles decided to reopen Dolly's case. He felt like there was no harm in seeing if they could find something that the original investigation missed. Because crime scene processing was a lot less advanced in the 90s than it was in 2004, the original detectives just hadn't had much to work with. They had a grand total of 20 crime scene photos, whereas nowadays you get hundreds. Also, by 2004, blood spatter analysis was second nature to a lot of crime scene texts. So the first thing Scott Peebles did was send photos of the bloodstains to an expert for review.

And in the meantime, he said about interviewing Dolly's family and friends, all of whom were over the moon about the fact that the case was getting new attention. Bart was a jealous asshole, they told Detective Peebles. He was constantly projecting his insecurities onto Dali. And Dali had been afraid of him in those last months of her life. While the harassment was going on, she was desperately trying to get someone in authority to believe her. Do something about it.

She did go to the police, but the stalking laws in the 90s were straight trash. Basically, unless you had video proof of somebody slashing your tires or threatening your life if we're stealing your cat, there was nothing the police could do to help you. And as we told you earlier, she didn't get any help from the dental school either, which is just ugh, so infuriating. The only people who took her seriously, who saw the danger coming were the people who loved her. And they were powerless to protect her. Her death had haunted them for 14 years. As Peebles and his team went over the old case files with a fine-tooth comb, they came across a witness report that gave him a jolt of adrenaline. The kind of thing that can crack a case

for you. Dolly's next-door neighbor had told the original investigators that on the day Dolly died, Bart Corbin had knocked on his door. Another friend of Dolly's had gone to her apartment to visit. She was only there a couple minutes, but it was long enough for her to spot a man, shirtless, standing in Dolly's bathroom. It was very clear to her that this guy didn't want her to see him and was basically hiding in the bathroom until she left. But she did see him. And the description she gave was Bart Corbin to a tea. Now this matched what Bart's said during his second police interview, the one where he changed his story about not having seen Dolly the day she died. And the part about the guy trying to hide in the bathroom so as not

to be seen had a distinctly sinister feel. The expert crime scene analyst came back with some great breaks too. He said Dolly hadn't been shot in the same position they found her in. The bloodstains and spatter didn't fit. So somebody had to have moved her. She couldn't have moved herself at that point. Not only that, but the guns seemed to have been wiped clean. There was no blood spatter on it, and none on Dolly's hands either. It was lying neatly across our lap as though someone had laid it there. To the trained eyes of the 2004 crime scene investigators, this had the earmarks of a staged scene. It was enough to get the manner of death changed from undetermined to homicide, and a warrant was issued for Bart Corbin's arrest. Meanwhile, the Gwynette County investigators were digging into

to Jen's case. They knew by now that Bart had the motive and means to kill Jen, but they needed to figure out if he had opportunity. One of Bart and Jen's neighbors had said that on the night Jen died, he heard the distinctive rumble of Bart's truck in the Corbyn's driveway. But a sharp-eared neighbor wouldn't be enough to convince a jury. Like we told you in part one, the friends who'd been out with Bart the night Jen died had refused to cooperate with the investigation. So the DA, subpoenaed them. These people suck, by the way. Your friend's a fucking scumbag dentist dudes.

This isn't the mafia. He's not even a good dentist. I know, right. Okay. Do you have someone in your life that you love to testify against? Because I do. Oh, hell. Several.

Just give me a reason. Y'all know he are. Now that they were being forced to talk, the friends helped the investment. investigators put together a timeline for the night Jen died. They got together for dinner and drinks at a wing's place. Bart had a few drinks, maybe one or two too many, and then went over to one of his friend's houses to hang out some more. When it was time for everybody to go their separate ways, his friend insisted Bart stay at his place instead of trying to drive home. But Bart said,

no, no, he was going to stay at his brother Bobby's place instead. And at 1 a.m., the friend said Bart left to drive over to Bobby's. Bobby told police that Bart arrived at 3.30 a.m. Two and a half hours later, wouldn't have taken him nearly that long to get from his friend's place to his brothers. Had Bart made a stop on the way to Bobby's place? That would certainly fit with the time the neighbor said he heard Bart's truck. This was not looking good for our boy.

And when they pulled Bart's cell phone records and found that his phone had pinged off of a tower near the Corbin house at the time Jen was murdered, that was enough for the DA who went ahead and wrote up the charges. Back in Augusta, Scott Peebles and company were ready to go ahead and put the grabus on Corbin for Dolly Hearn's murder. Bart seemed, as Anruel put it, completely shell-shocked. They never expect to get caught. It's just amazing to me. It's always shock Pikachu face when they see those handcuffs come out. I guess it's especially true when you've gotten away with a thing for 14 years. It's just, ah, delightful. I wish I could have seen the look on his face. He has such a punchable face, y'all. He could be like the centerfold and punchable face

weekly. Him and fucking Martin Scraily. Is that how you say that? Shraley? Shrelly. Shrelly? Ratt-faced little dweb. Sorry, I just like to take any chance I can to talk about how much I hate Martin Schrelly. Please continue. The prosecutors and investigators who were prepping for the Jennifer Corbyn trial wanted to make sure. to nail Bart to the wall. This was a capital case, a big deal, and there was one obstacle in the way of a slam-dunk victory, namely that there was still a lingering question

about where the murder weapon came from. Now, they knew from Bart's cell phone records that the week prior to the murder, right after that big Thanksgiving Day fight, in fact, Bart had made a trip to Troy, Alabama. A brief trip, he drove back home the same day. Further investigation revealed that a few, family friend of the Corbans named Richard Wilson lived in Troy where he had a little

motor repair shop. The detectives ran an offline search, meaning some poor bastard had to search through a stack of paper records to see if they could find the serial number of the gun that killed Jen. And guess what? Years before the murder, one Richard Wilson had contacted a sheriff's deputy to find out if the gun he wanted to purchase had been stolen. Once he got the all-clear, he went ahead with the purchase, and lo and behold, the serial number on that gun was the same as the one that killed Jennifer. The murder weapon belonged to Bart's buddy Richard. This is like six degrees

of Kevin Bacon, except it's about a murder weapon. Except like really dark. Yeah, yeah. Like Bart's other friends, old Richard didn't seem to want to cooperate with the investigators when they first reached out to him, but once they found proof that the gun that killed Jen Corbin

was his, he smartened up real quick. Yes, yes, he'd given Bart the gun. He said, Bart called him up around Thanksgiving, asked if he owned any firearms, and if he'd be willing to take a trade in lieu of cash. Not very clever, Bart. Richard said, sure, come on down. Traded the gun for a lawnmower, Bart brought him.

Now, up to this point, the case was built mostly on circumstantial evidence. Strong circumstantial evidence, but still, if you can, you really like to have hard evidence, and now they had it. They were already on the second day of jury selection when this news came down, and one of the investigators had himself a law-in-order moment. He actually burst into the courtroom and went up and, like, whispered it to one of the prosecutors. and it just made everybody's whole damn day. The next day, they got together with Bart and his attorney to talk about a plea,

which is what you do when you have an ace in the hole. The prosecutors agreed to take the death penalty off the table, but only if Bart pled guilty to Jen and Dolly's murders and served two concurrent life sentences. A plea deals can sometimes be frustrating to victims' families, but in this case, Jen's family wanted it. They just couldn't stand the thought of putting Dalton and Dylan through a trial, and I do not blame him one bit.

And part of the plea deal was that Bart had to acknowledge what he'd done, meaning stand his punk ass up in front of God and everybody in that courtroom and admit he committed malice murder. Twice. So now, the mighty Dr. Corbin, who thought so highly of himself that he continually reminded Jen that he was a doctor and therefore the one in charge of everything in their relationship. The one who spent twice as much cash on his own wedding ring as he did on his wives

because people expected it of a successful doctor. The one who was so fond of preening in front of mirrors and stacking up affairs and charging patients thousands for botched dental procedures, that Bart Corbin now stood humiliated in front of the court and answered with a terse little yes to each charge. The courtroom was full to bursting with the friends and loved ones of Dolly and Jen, some of them wearing buttons with justice for Jen on them. Bart's mom and brothers were nowhere to be found,

so the cheese stands alone, I guess. Poor Max Barber, Jen's daddy, gave an impact statement. God might forgive you, he told his former son-in-law, I never will. Carlton, Dolly's brother, spoke for the Hearn family. He said, Bart and Corbin has disgraced his profession and he is stolen from the world. He deserves no place in society. Amen to that. When the judge asked if he wanted to say anything before sentencing, Bart just said,

No, sir, I don't. He kept staring down at his shoes. He didn't seem to be feeling anything. than possibly a touch of resentment. The judge handed down the sentence they'd agreed on, and the prosecutor later reassured the press that although technically Bart might be eligible for parole in as few as 18 years, he felt confident that that wouldn't actually be possible for at least 28 years. And Bart shuffled off to begin his new life among the bejump suited.

Later that year, the Medical College of Georgia awarded Dolly Hearn a posthumous degree. Although she never had the chance to graduate with her dental license, she would now be forever known as Dr. Dali Hearn. Yeah, I think that's the least they can do. And a creepy little PS campers, remember the huge fight Bart and Jen had on Thanksgiving when Bart found a stack of printed out emails between Jen and her online lover, Chris? Well, there's an interesting detail about that. See, Anita slash Chris's last name was Hearn. same as Dolly. Now, there's no relation, but Bart very well may have seen that last name and assumed one of Dolly's family had reached out to Jen or the other way around.

I think he did think that, and I think he panicked, and I suspect that if he hadn't already decided to kill Jen, this may have been what pushed him over the edge. Because he'd never told Jen about Dolly, and I can imagine the last thing he wanted was for anybody to start kicking at that hornet's nest again, especially when she was getting ready to divorce him. As for Harriet Gray, whose creepy abduction slash murder is still unsolved to this day, we don't know. There are a few scattered articles online, but not much. Apparently investigators did look into Bart's possible involvement back in 2005, but in 2006, they said they did not consider him a suspect. So, who knows? What do you think? Let us know. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you. you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together

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