Episode 481: The Murder of Jennifer Corbin- Part 1

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hey weirdos, I'm Alina.

I'm Ash.

And this is morbid.

Yay, did you almost forget to say who you were? Yep, I've done that before, too. I was looking at you, like, Nope, cool.

Hey, what's up everybody?

Hey, what's up? Hello?

Hi.

I was really hoping you would just continue saying hi.

I got stressed out by it.

The whole episode could just be, Hey, yeah, hi.

I think that would be great. How are you? I think people would definitely not hate that.

No, I think they'd love it.

100 we know you guys.

It's morbid in the morning.

It is morbid in the morning, morbid in the morning.

Put that on a shirt.

I was just going to say, why the fuck would we put that on a shirt? I know, you know, with, like, a little morning show, yeah?

We could do like, I mean, we're just like thinking out loud here, but we could do like a cute little bundle where you got like a shirt and a coffee mug.

Morbid in the morning, Merch idea Yes, hell yeah.

Write it down, Write it down, Mikey. I was like, someone, write it down.

Someone write it down, someone write that down, I'm just kidding.

What the fuck imagine if that's the kind of environment that we created? Imagine, imagine.

Just a festering shithole in here that we just yell at everybody.

Can I say something? no.

It has a nice like, uh, to it.

Cause you're like, you're a festering fuckhead, uncle fester.

Like, festering feels real filthy, filthy, filthy as well.

So close.

I know there's too many FS, you know, but here we are, here we are, and I don't know. I don't know when this is coming out, but it's coming out like way later.

From now?

Yeah, dot com, but I don't know what's happened that we can reference.

I mean, the guy that carved his name or his initials into the Coliseum just got arrested today.

Good man, don't carve your fucking name in the coliseum. Yeah, that's so rude.

That's the rudest, so rude.

Yeah, real ignorant. So glad that was taken care of.

We learned yesterday this is not a fun fact, but I think we all should be aware. Cause I think it's going to, like, it's going to like, change how we live our daily lives.

Oh, the sun thing.

Alayna Yesterday we're just on the phone with my grandma, by the way, as this happened. Just like shooting the shit with calf, and Alayna holds up a TikTok to me. Like, without the sound. And it said the sun could explode and we wouldn't know for eight minutes.

Yeah.

So, like the sun may have just exploded, knock on wood that it didn't, god forbid, and all that jazz.

But, like, we are always eight minutes away from the sun, just ending it all.

Like, So, think about that sometimes, and like, live your life accordingly.

I didn't even have anything to say after don't. I was like, just don't, just don't, don't do it.

Just don't, cause the sun could explode. If somebody invites you for plans and you're not sure about them, you don't have to do.

It fuck you.

I got to stay home tonight. The sun could explode.

Cause, what if the sun explodes? And I'm at these plans that I didn't even want to do, like, waste, don't.

If the sun explodes and I'm, I love you guys. But if the sun explodes and I'm at work and I don't know for eight minutes, I'll be so bummed. Yeah, and like, wherever I go next.

Yeah, it's true.

I think the only place that I would want to be is with Drew Drew, with Drew Drew, yeah, and like and like you guys and the girls.

Absolutely.

Extessential thinking.

It's a it's a concept, that's for sure, but hopefully it makes you just think twice about. Like, being a dick, you know, being an asshole, or doing things that don't bring you joy. And if being an asshole brings you joy, then like, go talk to someone, cause that's a problem.

That's a problem.

That's a bigger problem, yeah.

Or maybe you're just a Capricorn?

I'm sorry, I had to, maybe.

I really saw the opportunity there and I couldn't let it go away.

Couldn't let it go, couldn't let it go. I lobbed you a softball you really did, and you had to hit it.

I love you so much, you know.

But you know, here we are, we're here, we're here. Hopefully we have more than eight minutes.

Hope so.

Wow, that starts us off. What a way to begin.

Yeah, so I did want to. Before we get into today, into today's case. I just wanted to give like a trigger warning. There is one, I mean, the whole. A big theme in this case is domestic violence. But there's one spot in this and I'll give you a trigger warning like before I get into it. When we do start telling the story, but at the top of the show, there is like a section where kids are involved.

Oh, no.

Just quickly, and I brush, I like, brush over it pretty quickly. Because, you know, that's not something we like to get too far into. Yeah, but just know that that's like a quick part of it.

Okay.

No children die.

Okay, so that's good, yeah.

But we're going to get into it. Okay, all right, and so, yeah, trigger warning for domestic violence and, like family violence, okay.

Oh, I love that, I love that a lot, everybody needs someone like that.

Because she's like, honest but gentle, yeah.

She's never going to lie to you, but she's not going to be like, mean about it, exactly.

And friends and family remembered Jennifer as being this, like, really adventurous, friendly kid. She loved to be outside and she was super fearless when it came to risk taking. She was not afraid of anything. Now, by the time she reached high school, she had made, like, a ton of friends.

An Oyster club.

I know Oyster Club.

A club for oysters.

Oh, I used to love oysters so much, but then I found out that-.

In vibrio.

In vibrio thing.

Yeah.

But this will come as no surprise to you at this point. In no time, everybody at Barnacles loved Jennifer.

Look at her.

She just seemed to be that kind of person I can think of so many people that I've worked with over the years. You can always pick out that one person from a job that you're like, Ah, she was awesome, yeah, or like, he was great.

It's so true.

Now so the couple that owned the restaurant, actually, Bob and Suzanne Corbin. They liked her so much that they were discussing between the two of them what a great match she would be for their son, Bart.

Ah.

And Bob, specifically, the father of Bart, was really insistent about introducing the two of them. And he was like, let me tell you, like, a little bit about Bart. He's a little older than you. There was a seven year age difference, okay?

Everybody will have good teeth.

Free braces.

There you go.

Let's go so so. They introduced the two of them, the parents introduced Jennifer and Bart. And apparently when they met, they did hit it off because before long, they were officially an item they were dating.

Damn, which, like, that's a romantic getaway.

To Italy, so that I know it's real.

For real?

Now it must have been wildly romantic, because a couple weeks after they got home, Jennifer found out that she was pregnant. Oh.

Damn.

Now, even though they weren't necessarily prepared to be parents at that point in time, the surprise of the pregnancy wasn't unwelcome per se.

It was like a happy surprise.

It was a happy surprise. And Bart's parents weren't old fashioned in the way. That they were going to put pressure on him to marry Jennifer now that she was pregnant. But they made it clear to him that he needed to support her and the baby. Yeah, like, they weren't going to let him just walk away from this.

I was just going to say, And why is it your business?

Yeah, and she told the author of The Doctor's wife Great reference on this case, the author is John Glatt. And Edwina told him Bart wouldn't have married her if she hadn't been pregnant. She was probably just a bit young or immature to consider wife material.

You know, what if you don't have anything nice to say? Don't say anything at all? So I'm going to zip my lip on that one.

Especially after somebody has been murdered. You say that shit about them and also like, That's cute. The term wife material like, grosses me out.

Honestly, I hate that shit.

I'm not a material, I'm a fucking human, thank you.

And it makes it like a weird job.

Yeah, like, I have to aspire to be wife material like, you're not going to be good at this.

And it's like, No, we're partners.

Yeah, like, if you put a ring on it, I'm wife, yeah, the end, I'm wife.

I am wife, hear me roar.

I mean, pretty much so. Probably not knowing that her sister-in-law was a huge jerk, Jennifer did accept the proposal. There you go, and they got married on September 1st, 1996. Jennifer's dad, Mac, said that Bart quote came into the family very quickly.

Oh, I love that goals.

And I love that her sister was like, she was a fucking fantastic mom.

That means she was an amazing sister, exactly.

But unfortunately, the view that the outside world was getting of Jennifer and Bart and their marriage was mostly a facade. And in reality, there were some serious red flags being waved in the air.

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.

I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad.

I'm like, stop around.

She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling. And it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back.

For one thing, Bart had a very, very explosive temper.

That's always bad.

That could be triggered in an instant. Jennifer's father told NBC he had a temper that could snap in a second and it seemed to be getting worse.

Oh, and then you mix that with kids, that's, that's not.

That's the thing because kids are going to press your buttons and there's going to be situations where you're fucking exhausted.

And you need to have a fucking handle on your fucking emotions, like a grown ass adult. Mm hmm.

And interesting that you say that, like, when you bring kids into, it, changes things. Yep, not long after Dalton was born, their friends and family started to notice that Bart had a tendency to lose it. And start yelling at Jennifer over really trivial, trivial things. Like if he felt that she had done something wrong, he wouldn't let it go. And he'd keep poking, keep poking, keep poking in, like in front of people, like, embarrass her.

Yeah, and if somebody is doing that in front of people, yeah, yeah, not OK.

In the early years of the marriage, Jennifer never complained about it to any of her friends. She just kind of, like, you know, took the treatment and tried to focus on the good, it seems. So they all just kind of thought that he was a dick, but yeah, they. There was not a lot that they could do. But then they were just trying to support their friend and their family member.

I was just going to say, yeah.

The two of them, at four and five, played basketball, took swimming lessons, martial arts lessons, and Dalton added playing basketball first outside of school and then on the school's little league team. Into the mix of all of that.

And it's like, this is why, like you, like you always. You want your kids to try stuff and get to figure out what they like and keep them active. But like, if you're forcing that kind of thing on a five, like five years old, this young, to be doing like that many things, right?

You're supposed to be trying like, like, one or two things at a time, you know?

Yeah, you just kind of like, start trying things, that's the point of it is like figuring out what your areas of passion are.

But you don't throw them into everything, you know. And the kids enjoyed their sports, but Bart always took it to the next level.

Well, I was going to say, and if they do enjoy all these, it's like, then you can't treat it like this hard thing. You know, it has to be fun, it's supposed to be fun.

Exactly that's the thing. And when they're that young, they're like at an age where they're learning how to be a teammate and how to like the rules of each game.

Exactly like a basic stuff.

Yeah, but again, Bart always took it to a place it didn't need to go to. And because they were involved in so many sports, I think he kind of saw this as an opportunity to be more involved in those sports. And in 2002, he decided that he was going to coach Dalton's little League team, OK.

I can't imagine being that kind of adult.

No, me either. And this is kind of where we're going to get into, like a little bit of the yucky stuff. So just so, you know, OK, it's so mean and it makes me, like, really sad.

Can you imagine being a grown ass man and calling a little?

Like, and not only like a child like, I can't imagine that in general, but your baby, yeah. Seek help. Like, I get upset when I have to say no to the girls and I'm their aunt.

I couldn't imagine sitting there being like, you're a loser because you didn't do well in the sport. Fuck off.

And a whiner.

Like, that's gross, in my opinion.

It's my, it's my opinion. A former friend and neighbor said he didn't have any patience for the kids at all. He just gave them hell and it didn't matter who was around.

Then he should never be a coach, and, to be honest, like he had no business being a parent. No, I agree. If you don't have, if you can't learn to have patience or have any control over your emotions as an adult, you have no business being around kids.

No, and the thing that got me about, like that neighbor saying he gave them hell and it didn't matter who was around. If you're comfortable doing what you're doing in front of people.

What are you doing behind doors, exactly?

So if you can imagine if that's what was going on in front of people, that's awful. It was worse behind closed doors. And again, getting into a yuckier part here. I don't want to get super far into it.

What a piece of shit.

Like striking out in a little league.

You're a piece of shit.

There's never, in my opinion, at least, an excuse to hit your child.

Yeah, that's how I feel.

But but over a fucking baseball game, you hit your kid.

Like astonishing behavior, like truly astonishing behavior, I can't imagine being that pathetic of an adult, and I really can't.

Don't ever want my kids to be afraid of me. Some people think like, Oh, you know, like, like, I think we mentioned it in one of the episodes earlier, like, being fearful and respect go hand in hand.

I completely disagree with that. I don't think that's it at all, like, that's just that's just not how I do it.

That's not how I would.

That's not how I do it. You're welcome to parent however you feel is, you know, fine for you, right? I don't get the fear based parenting. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

No, I just I don't want that kind of environment in my house.

No, I think respect breeds respect, and if I respect them as human beings, they respect me as human beings, and we maintain that together.

Like, I grew up hearing like, I don't respect you, you respect me and that's fucked up, and because of that, I had no respect for the person.

I have zero respect for people who do not respect me zero, and I felt that way since I was a little kid. So why would a little kid have to have respect for someone who openly is treating you with no respect and also telling you you have no respect?

And if I'm afraid of you, I don't respect you.

No, I'm scared of you.

Exactly two different feelings.

Like, I don't understand that.

It's really sad to me that, like, he went to his grandpa and was like, like, I'm afraid of dad. And this is what happened.

That's awful. Well, that's my my whole thing with kids and having kids, and again, this is just my thing. You can do whatever the fuck you want.

We need to get that sound right.

I was going to say, that's a housewife's thing, by the way, just in case you wonder where that's coming from.

It is, it's a Tamar judge.

But just in case you wonder why we scream it all the time, but like, that's again just my. My thought process is like, your kids should feel safe with you, they shouldn't feel fearful of you. That you should be the thing that they go to. To feel completely and utterly safe, yes.

I don't really understand.

I never want them to not think this is a safe place and that I am not a safe person because I might lose my shit on them.

Yeah, well, and like. And they're not going to come to you with things that you would want them to come to you with if they don't see you as a safe person.

Yeah, and it's like everybody loses their like, loses their temper, loses their cool once in a while. And kids will absolutely be the thing to push you there. But the whole point is, when you lose control of your emotions a little bit, you should apologize.

In my opinion, because then that only teaches them that when they lose their cool, the right thing to do is to apologize.

Yeah, and then it teaches them that you're a human being and that you can admit when you are wrong and that. Like that, I don't hold myself to a different standard than I hold you to. If you lose your shit, you need to apologize for it, and we need to talk through it, and vice versa. I'm not holding myself to some holier than thou standard just because I'm your mom.

Yeah, I feel like the old kind of school parenting is like, do as I say, not as I do, and the new parenting is like, let me lead by example.

Yeah, like, let's be, let's be, like, you know, partners here through this whole process of raising you. Like, yeah, you need to be a part of it. And you should feel like you are part of the process and that you can talk to me, right?

And sadly, I don't think these kids felt that way.

With their father, that always makes me so sad.

Now Jennifer, on the other hand, she didn't outwardly challenge or oppose Bart's preferred methods of discipline. I guess you could call them. But she did very much try to balance it out by being super, super loving and super supportive of the boys. I'm glad they had that, like championing them, you know, yeah.

Emphasis on different syllables, you know, and by the fall.

I don't know, I was trying to put a different emphasis on the fall.

There you go, the fall of 2003..

Bart was spending more and more time at work, not working, though, as I'm sure you can imagine.

I was just going to say.

He and his office manager legit named Jennifer Garner, whoa actually named Jennifer Garner. Holy shit. Also like, Wow.

There's many reasons why this man needs to seek help, and I think we're seeing layers of it compound on top of layers of it.

Truly and and also girl.

He's married with two kids. She knew, like, don't, both of you are real shitty for that?

Exactly, she said. After the last patient of the day, they would make love in his office and then go their separate ways.

Precious truly.

I'm like, well, that really did it for so romantic. But anyway, with Bart spending more time out of the house and the kids being a bit older and not needing like constant attention. You know? Jennifer found new ways to entertain herself, and in early 2004, she bought a PlayStation and she found herself really quickly absorbed in this game called Everquest. Have you heard of that? No, I haven't either.

I was like, I don't know what that is.

I didn't either. Dave put a little key in there for me. Thank goodness for Dave. I love him. shout out to Dave.

Oh well, like a, or like a call of duty, yeah, exactly where you're all talking to each other and like, from my understanding.

Right, OK, you can, you can talk to people from all over the world. It's like, that's scary, I think it's.

No, I thought I had it, but no.

Yeah, massive multiplayer online game. Shout out to Mikey, Mikey, you rock.

It's like a fantasy, yeah, kind of thing.

Yeah, so so she got really, really quickly immersed in that, and I can see why, because it's a fantasy game. Like, Oh, hell yeah, you know, you're kind of like creating this, this separate world that is so different from the world that you're living in right now.

Like, she wasn't taking care of the house, like, go fuck yourself, sorry, God.

But before long, Jennifer, she started skipping out on family functions and gatherings. And people were starting to notice, and yeah, that becomes, they were getting concerned, yeah. And if that wasn't a strong enough indicator that the things in the marriage weren't going very well, then her own words would make things explicitly clear.

And this is so unfortunate. Because, like, on one hand, I'm like, Yeah, Jennifer, like, good for you. But I'm like, this is scary because it's the scariest time, dangerous time, and I hate that. That is a reality.

And it's like it's one of the biggest realities.

You want to champion people, getting the fuck out of these situations.

And taking their power back.

But it's so scary and so treacherous, treacherous of a road to walk. It really is. It sucks, and it really does.

And it takes a lot to get to that point, too, which is like, really sad.

And then you have to fight through the thicket to get out of it. You know, it's like, you don't get to just walk this clear path out of this awful place you have to. You know, I'm making a lot of weird symbolism here, but I don't know, I'm just seeing it in my head. It's like walking through like these crazy, you know, brambles that are ripping you apart as you go through.

Are you like an author or something?

I don't know why I was doing that. I think it's how your brain works. I've been writing a lot, so maybe I'm like, thinking about a lot of random metaphors and stuff, yeah.

No, I mean, it was beautiful, I welcome it.

I just feel bad, but yeah, for anybody who has to deal with this part of it, yeah.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask. Was it a crime of passion?

If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia.

Or a corrupt police cover up?

If you believe the defense theory, however, this is all a cover up to prevent one of their own from going down.

Everyone had an opinion and after the 10 week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision.

To end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is.

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Now, according to Jennifer's friend and neighbor Kelly, Jennifer had told her husband that she wanted to separate and find a new place for her and her boys. Like I just said now at first again, like I just said, Bart was mad. But eventually he kind of seemed to accept the fact that this marriage was over. OK, but he had no intention of supporting Jennifer financially. If that was the case, fuck you.

Absolutely, you know well, he was cheating on her. Yeah, they were both checked out of this marriage, ready to divorce.

It's sad that they couldn't just divorce and both move on. And truly, you know, I don't know if anything would ever make Bart happy.

But Jennifer could have had a happy life she was obviously looking for, like some kind of emotional.

You know, fulfillment and support, you know, yeah. So throughout most of that fall, Jennifer, you know, pursued the online relationship with this Christopher, and she really, really wanted to meet in real life. But Christopher seemed reluctant to take things into the real world, which we all know as the beginning of a MTV TV show.

Like, sad that these women were in such awful, like home life. You know what I mean? Like that people have to turn to these things. It just makes me sad.

And, like, have to turn to these like virtual worlds where they can't really experience the joy that you do in like, real life.

And where it's like, like that, it's not just this hobby that makes you happy every once in a while. You know what I mean, cause that's like, that's nice, like you want to have that, like, that's, that's awesome.

Because anything that becomes that much of an escape is not necessarily healthy. I don't think, you know. But Anita did say that she really, truly had fallen in love with Jennifer, and she actually hoped to continue their relationship. So over the course of a couple of months. Like of of Jennifer knowing Chris, she had invested a lot into the relationship. And the vision in her head that she had was her escaping this marriage and starting over with her boys and someone she loved, this Chris person. So when she got the news that it was actually Anita and that in real life Anita identified as a woman, Jennifer was confused and, honestly, pretty devastated.

Yeah, and you and you were just you were deceived, you were deceived. Like, no matter what, even with the intent intention behind, it was not malicious.

It does so. She emailed Anita and said, I just can't take this. I even fell in love with the name Chris. I just don't know how you could do this to me. I trusted you with everything in me, which is really sad.

It is very interesting to see they just connected as humans, like even though this is like virtual and all that, like they didn't. She fell in love with this person, yeah, regardless of whether this was a woman or a man, she just fell in love with this person, like.

I think a lot can be said about stripping away a lot of.

It's just interesting, yeah, it's like, and it's like, a, It's like a nice thing to see. It's refreshing that they just were like, you know what?

Like, I know that like people identify like as the L, the G, the B, T, Q, and all of that. I kind of just am like a person that loves people, yeah.

Like, I feel that exactly, you know, yeah.

But and it kind of seems like Jennifer realized that she might have been like a person that just loved people. Exactly. At least in the case of Anita, which I weirdly, I'm like, like, so happy about it, but I'm like.

I know how it started, I know that's the thing. It's like it started pretty, pretty rough and like, it's got a lot of bumps along the way.

Why? Like, there's like these weird loopholes where you're like, yeah.

And you're like, you're happy just to see that they both moved past it and that they decided to continue whatever they were doing before, exactly.

So, yeah, so Jennifer's online relationship, you know, maybe got back on track. But in the meantime, her real world and her relationship with Bart was worse than it had ever been before. As the family, this is a serious warning for the domestic violence right here. Trigger warning. As the family was driving home from Jennifer's parents house after Thanksgiving dinner, Jennifer had to make a stop at a grocery store. And Bart had completely caught onto the fact that Jennifer was having an affair like something in him, probably the fact that he was also carrying out an affair. That'll do it like game, see game, I guess.

This should be one of those things where you just both go see.

Like, we're not meant to be together, yeah. So he started screaming in her face and she started crying and begging him not to be so aggressive. Because the kids were in the backseat and they were cowering. And suddenly, he punched her in the face while she was driving, while she was driving in front of both kids. She almost lost control of the car, but luckily managed to get home without getting in a serious accident. But as soon as they did get home, Bart jumped into his own car and just took off.

I'd be like, good, never come back bye. Unfortunately, he does, yeah.

He left Jennifer just having been beaten, essentially in front of her children. And now she has to calm her traumatized children while trying to calm herself as well. Right? So not sure what to do. She called her dad and was like, I don't know what to do right now.

This guy is just like a true piece of shit if you can hit a woman.

You're fucking disgusting, you're a piece of shit. If you can call your kid a baby cry, baby loser, whiner, you're a piece of shit.

There's no upside to this fucker, no.

So the thing was, he realized that he had fucked up. Obviously, I don't think he cared on an emotional level.

He just didn't want to get in trouble.

He cared in the way that he didn't want to get in trouble, and cared in the way that he had a business that he didn't want to be affected by all of this.

Of course, so don't hit people in the face then, yeah.

That's the answer to that. So now he knew the divorce was completely inevitable, he accepted that the marriage was over, but he was very, very worried about his reputation. And, of course, as a man used to having full control over every fucking aspect of his life. He was determined to do whatever he could to protect himself and prevent Jennifer from going to the police, whatever he could. So, on the morning of December 4th, 2004, uh, that neighbor Kelly that I mentioned earlier, she was at home, you know, just getting ready for her day, and her doorbell started ringing frantically.

Oh God, horrifying. Are you fucking kidding me?

What I will say is, luckily they didn't see it happen. Oh, they knew it happened, but they didn't see it when it happened. Oh, that, like, breaks my soul into a billion tiny, tiny comfort in a very fucked up.

Situation Oh God, that's so awful, it's horrifying.

So Kelly picked up Dalton and started comforting him, but at the same time rushed over to the house to check on her friend. I mean, this was her friend. So she stepped foot in the house. Just as the younger son was walking out of his parents bedroom, crying, and Kelly looked in to see that. Jennifer This is a horrifying scene. She was laying on the bed, dressed only in a nightgown, and there was a very large hole in the back of her head.

And the younger son had just walked out of the room, Oh God.

They had seen everything, they had seen everything, except it happened when it happened. So Kelly carefully approached the bed and she reached out to touch Jennifer, and she said she was ice cold, she was frozen. She'd been there a long time.

What a fucking, that's a neighbor. Oh, she walked into that house not knowing what she was going to be dealing with. Oh, I mean.

She had just heard my daddy shot my mommy for all she knows.

A gun, still, yeah, and to go get that other little boy like, that's heroic. She cared. Yeah, that's a good neighbor.

And actually, her and her husband are a huge part of this case. And like, fantastic.

People, Oh, I love that, you can tell, absolutely.

I'm like, covered in goosebumps right now, it's just awful now. Gwinnett County Police officers arrived at 8.01 a.m. Just a couple minutes after Kelly called. And they made their way inside the corbin house. And, you know, they found Jennifer, just as Kelly had described to them. When she met them at the front door, Jennifer was lying on her side.

So he was trying to make it look like, very clearly, yeah.

The officers in the room, they had never been trained to jump to conclusions, obviously, but the scene in the bedroom told them a pretty simple story at that point, of a wife who had become despondent at the thought of being divorced by her husband.

And took her own life. That's what, that's a No.

That's what a glance told them. But at Kelly's house across the street, Kelly's husband Steve remembered that Bart had planned to go away for that weekend and he had left the night before. But he didn't know the number to wherever Bart had gone, and he couldn't remember, like, exactly where he had said he was going, so he had no way of reaching him. Okay, so he called Bart's parents house, and he spoke to Bart's father, Bob, and he was like, somebody needs to pick up the kids.

Like, what, what a man baby. like a true man baby.

And then, finally, there were reports from Jennifer's family to the police about the domestic violence and the assault that occurred on Thanksgiving. They did report that good, Jennifer's father told NBC. I knew that she was dead, and I knew that somebody did it.

And it's like they, they probably were seeing this play out in real time and they were just dreading. It's like your worst nightmare has come to fruition. It's like you can see it all going in a really bad direction. And it's like, this is the worst possible outcome, exactly.

So while the news of Jennifer's death started making its way around stunned family members, police and crime scene technicians were processing the scene as what it was a crime scene. Luckily now, among those people at the scene was senior Assistant District Attorney Tom Davis. And he immediately was like, this place is suspicious as fuck. And all of this is a little too obvious.

Yeah, the divorce papers strewn out in front of her, like, come on, right?

There were things about the scene also that just didn't make sense. No, Jennifer had been shot in the back of the head.

I was also going to say, like, just the logistics, right?

So she'd been shot in the back of the head, but the gun was laying at her side, tucked under a sheet. Yeah, if she had shot herself, that would have meant that that she would have had to slip the gun under that sheet after after having shot herself in the back of the head. Exactly, yeah.

Not possible. No, didn't know if I had to throw that in there. Yeah, just in case you were wondering.

But then there were the divorce papers themselves. I don't know if you caught what I said earlier. They seemed like they had been served to her. This is fucking wild. As investigators were processing this scene, a Gwinnett Sheriff, Gwinnett Sheriff's deputy, unaware of what was going on at that point, arrived at the house to serve Jennifer divorce papers.

Yup, this fucking idiot.

They hadn't even been served yet. Are you kidding me, like, How did you?

What? That's why I don't under, I mean, I.

There's so many things about this that you won't understand.

Nobody should ever understand, like, why someone kills someone in the first place. But he's worried about his reputation and his career. And the answer to that is, I'm going to murder my wife, that'll help my reputation. Yeah, no, you're just going to go to jail.

It wasn't I'm going to murder my wife, it was I'm going to murder my wife and stage it like a suicide. And I'm so smart.

I'm glad they're so dumb in that sense, because it's like they always get caught and it's like, thank goodness, right, fuck so.

But the so, the investigators are sitting there and they're like, Well, how would she be distraught over divorce papers that she hadn't been served yet?

Yeah, like these are not real. Clearly, that's the universe intervening, right?

There, right? That was when I got to that point, I was like, What? Yeah, but a better question, Where the fuck was Bart Corbin?

Like, why would Bart's family be able to like no?

I don't quite understand that that shouldn't have been allowed. Like that alone must've been shocking to Max.

Like, the whole thing was, the kid came over and said, My daddy shot my mommy, exactly, whether you think that's the case or not, that's what that kid said.

Exactly, well, Jesus. So they told Max that Bart and Bobby would be there in about 15 to 20 minutes. Max waited there for three hours and Bart never showed and never called. Of course not.

Like, fucking his secretary or whatever the fuck she was, and this.

While he was supposedly pulling himself together to go over to the house and pick the kids up. He actually was in fact, consulting with his divorce, divorce lawyer Patricia O'Kelly, asking her for lawyer recommended lawyer recommendations. Excuse me on a criminal matter. So she suggested that he contact Peters, Roberts, Uh and Rubin. And that was a, uh, decounter, sorry. Based law firm specializing in criminal law, and by noon that day, Bart had hugged hired Doug Peters, the firm's leading criminal attorney.

It's really wild to me that not one person is being like, Hey, you should do the right thing and like, go to your kids. Like, not one person was like, I'm going to step out of line here and I'm going to tell you you should probably go take care of your kids.

I'm sure somebody, probably someone, say that, but I, but honestly, who knows? It kind of sounds like Bart was just like he surrounded himself with a lot of yes people, exactly. But so any belief that Jennifer had taken her own life quickly fell away. Once the crime scene technicians got to work in the house that morning, it turned out that Tom Davis's suspicions were pretty accurate.

It doesn't make physical sense.

And the most telling piece of evidence was actually the position of her night gown. It had slid at some point, exposing one of her breasts. And the technicians believed that that couldn't have happened after she had, as she had slumped over after a gunshot. Like it didn't make sense, and instead, it was their belief that it happened. When somebody pulled her body in an upright like, pulled her body upright into like a half sitting position on the bed.

I'm glad he's stupid, yeah.

So they were like, Okay, clearly somebody repositioned her body here. Yeah, this is a homicide now. That was all just what the naked eye could see. But further tests conducted at the scene also quickly disproved the suicide theory.

Which was obviously Jennifer Yeah, totally clearly afterlife, yes.

There was also no gunpowder or residue on either of her hands, which was noted as very difficult with that particular gun. Yeah, and lastly, the angle at which she would have had to handle the gun in order for the bullet to enter. As it had into her head made it physically impossible. She couldn't have gotten into that position to help to hold that gun in that way. So while detect or excuse me, while technicians dealt with all of that, Detective Head and his team started talking to family members and neighbors to find out more about their marriage.

Which, like, think whoever, but the fact that that was his first thought.

But given his father's explosive temper and frightening violent behavior, especially toward his mother lately, Dalton said he immediately thought his father had done it.

The fact that a child like it was that simple on that and was like, Oh, yeah.

He would exactly like a child.

Your child is pinpointing you as the killer of his own mother, mother. Yeah, right off the bat, like, you're a failure.

Dalton's explanation to detect the two detective had excuse me echoed other family members claims that Bart had, you know, been very abusive and very violent in the very recent past. But it was actually Steve Kelly's husband, his statement, that actually confirmed investigators suspicions. Now, Kelly and Steve told detectives that Bart was supposed to have gone away to visit his brother. The afternoon before Jennifer had been found. Okay, and he wasn't supposed to come home until the day after, which gave him an alibi, yeah.

Hmm, what what happened there? I thought you were away.

So, having collected statements from the most important people at the scene, the P. The only person investigators at this point were really fucking eager to talk to was Bart Corbin. But I'm sure this is going to come as a shock to all. He was being very uncooperative. Oh what, yeah. Detectives have been trying to reach him through his brother, Bobby, but every attempt so far was unsuccessful.

Which I will get to in part two. I knew it, I know.

I don't think I actually told you at the beginning of this that it was going to be a two potter, but it is. This one's a this one is a doozy.

You know, and when you said, you said December 4th, 2004 and I was just thinking about it. I was like, Oh, like, what was I doing in 2004? And then I was like, do you ever think about that? Like in these kinds of cases, like on the day, you're like, what was I doing that day when this was happening? And I had no idea that this was happening somewhere in the country.

It's so weird that you said that because Drew and I had a conversation like that recently about, like, something terrible. That happened. While we were at, like, Universal, and I was, like all of us here, like everybody at Universal. Was just walking around super happy, like having probably, like, one of the best times ever, and then this horrible thing, life was just imploding.

It's just like, Really, it's like, oof, to think about, it's creepy. Yeah, oh man, this is a tough one. I hope this guy gets, gets it.

I don't know, that's all I'm saying. He might get away or he might not.

I don't know, those are the two choices, so I hope we get one.

But again, we'll get to it in part two, so we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird.

But not so weird that you don't go listen to part two bye.