Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal by Ann Rule Page B

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.
     
    J ENNIFER C ORBIN ’ 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.

C HAPTER S IX
    DECEMBER 6, 2004
    A T THIRTY-THREE , J ENN B ARBER C ORBIN 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 preschoolers 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