Read Online Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal by Ann Rule - Free Book Online

occasions that called for them. Her sense of humor could be ribald at times. Neither she nor her sisters nor their mother fit into the stereotype of the genteel Southern belle. Still, there remained in Jenn a suspension of disbelief that made her have faith in happy endings, no matter how many times life rose up and smacked her in the face.
    If Jenn had flaws—and of course she did because she was, after all, only human—one was that she trusted people too much before she fully knew them. That would include those on the periphery of her life and even a few who were part of her innermost circle. She had forgiven much, overlooked things that most women would not, and always tried to keep her own problems to herself to spare her family worry. At the time Jenn died, she was struggling with seemingly insurmountable decisions. She who had always believed in marriage wanted nothing more than to break the vows she had made eight years earlier.
    She had fallen in love with someone else.
    But very few people knew about it. In most people’s eyes, Jenn Corbin was a paragon, above reproach, incapable of reaching out for the happiness that might be achieved only by flouting conventional morality.
    “She was a wonderful teacher, fabulous mother, and true friend,” one of her students’ mothers wrote about her.
    “There was no way she would have committed suicide. She was not the type. And she lived for her boys, whom she completely adored! She had a great support system of family and friends and would never have left them of her own accord. She loved her boys with her whole being and all the kids she taught, too. She would never have let them [her sons] find her with a bullet in her head. She was upbeat, fun, and someone everyone wanted to be around.”
    This opinion was repeated over and over as reporters and detectives fanned out to learn everything they could about her. And even while Georgia media outlets carried the news that Jennifer Corbin had apparently committed suicide, forensic pathologists knew that ballistics and physical evidence ruled out the possibility that she had shot herself. And those who knew her in life believed in their hearts and guts that someone had deliberately wanted her dead.
    To bring her the justice she deserved, events in her life would have to be peeled away layer by layer, exposing what should have been her secrets, her dreams, and her hopes for the future. There is perhaps no human being without undisclosed desires and even sins—or things they consider sinful—that they would never want others to know about. What things would Jenn Corbin have been hiding?
    Her life was gone in an instant, snuffed out by a single bullet. And now Jenn’s inner world would be put under a microscope and picked over for possible clues. No one was eager to do that, not the Gwinnett County police nor District Attorney Danny Porter, and certainly not her family.
    Now that the Gwinnett County investigators knew Jenn’s marriage had, for all intents and purposes, ended, they understood why Bart Corbin might not have been in their home when she was found. That was to be expected.

C HAPTER S EVEN
    1964–1996
    J ENN C ORBIN GREW UP as Jenni Barber, the second daughter of three, in a family so typical of middle-class America that their losing her to murder could chill the heart of any parent.
    Thomas Maxwell “Max” Barber and his wife Narda both came from strict families. Max was born in Logan, West Virginia, the youngest of four handsome sons. His father was a coal mine engineer, who taught his sons respect toward their elders and gallantry toward women.
    “My mother was a wonderful cook,” Max remembered, “but I always wondered if I would get enough to eat. My dad would serve my mother first, then himself, and then my brothers, starting with the oldest. Being the youngest, I always hoped there would be something left.”
    It was a family joke, and Max Barber did get enough; he grew to be six feet three inches