Hey weirdos, it's Ash here, ready to share a little secret.
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Right now, I am listening to The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, and I just cannot get enough of it.
I never want to pause it.
I'm literally, like, loading the dishwasher listening to it, on the treadmill listening to it constantly.
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I am absolutely obsessed with a sweet treat after dinner and my favorite sweet treat right now is my mochi It's mine.
Not yours. Just kidding.
You can have some too.
This is a cool creamy scoop of ice cream wrapped in a soft chewy dough It's like a sweet little ice cream dumpling or ravioli.
I'm obsessed It's pillowy.
It's satisfying. I feel indulged.
I just love it so much I really am obsessed with the strawberry flavor right now now.
My mochi is only around 70 calories per piece, which like, hello, that's amazing.
My mochi is gluten -free, and each box has six perfectly portioned mochi snacks.
Do I eat two a night?
Yeah, yeah, I do, because they're that good.
And guess what? My mochi is the number one mochi ice cream in the U .S. of A.
The strawberry flavor is bursting with fresh picked fruit flavor that tastes incredibly refreshing.
I love, love, love them after dinner.
This August, look for the purple box of my mochi ice cream at your local grocery store and feel joyfully chill with the coolest treat around my mochi hey weirdos i'm elena i'm ash and this is morbid yay did you almost forget to say who you were uh yep i've done that before too i was looking at you like no keep going hey what's up everybody hey what's up hello hi hey what's going on everybody i was really hoping you would just continue saying hi and i got stressed out the the whole episode could just be hey yeah i think that would be great how are you 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 gonna say why the fuck haven't we put that on a shirt i know you know with like a like a little morning show yeah like a gothy morning show we could do like i mean we're just like thinking out loud here but we 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. well this is gonna be a very quiet episode um fuck i forgot what i was oh i love the word fester it's such a yucky disgusting word but like when you use it properly festering like it feels like a swear word it has a nice like to it because you're like you're a festering fuckhead uncle fester like festering feels feels real filthy filthy filthy as well so close i know there's too many apps you know but here we are here we are and i don't know i don't know when this is coming out but this is 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 because i think it's gonna like we're it's gonna like change how we live our daily lives the sun thing elena yesterday we're just on the phone with my grandma by the way as this happened we're just like shooting the shit with calf and Elena 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 yeah like we are always eight minutes away from the sun just ending it all like so think about so don't that sometimes don't and like live your life fuck it you know 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 because the sun could explode if if somebody invites you for plans and you're not sure about them you don't have to do it fuck
you I gotta stay home tonight the sun could explode because what if the sun explodes and I'm at these plans that I didn't even want to do like oh waste oh 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 I'll be so bummed.
Yeah. I like it 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.
Yeah. And if being an asshole brings you joy, then like go talk to someone because that's a problem.
that's a problem that's a bigger problem or maybe you're just a capricorn i'm sorry i had to i really saw the opportunity there and i couldn't let it go couldn't let it go i lobbed you a softball and you had to hit it i love you so much you know but you know here we are we're here hopefully we have more than eight minutes hope so wow that starts us off what a way to begin yeah um so i did want to uh before we get into today into today's case I just wanted to give like a trigger warning um 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 uh 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 too far into yeah um but just know that that's like a quick part of it okay no children die okay that's good yeah but we're gonna get into it okay all right and uh so yeah trigger warning for domestic violence and like family violence okay so we're gonna start on a happier note and we're gonna be talking about uh
Jennifer Corbin Jennifer Monique Barber before she was Jennifer Corbin her maiden name was Barber she was born on January 25th 1971 in Kentucky to Max and Narda Barber.
Uh, she was the second of their three children.
And not too long after she was born, the family all up and moved to Lawrenceville, Georgia.
Uh, it's like a suburb about 30 miles outside of Atlanta.
Okay. And when asked about her family, Jennifer's sister, Jennifer's sister, Heather said, our family was just so incredibly close.
Oh, like a really tight knit family.
So when she was younger, Jennifer, they always said was like the most grounded of the three Barber girls.
Her sister, Heather said, she was just one of those people that made you feel good.
She always told you what you needed to hear but somehow in a gentle way.
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 remember 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.
she had a really big social circle she was really popular her friend matthew jenkins remembered her from school and said she was one of a kind a very caring person that always had a kind word and a shoulder to lean on oh she just sounded like the kind of person that you would want in your circle of friends now outside of school she had a job at a place called calico jacks which was a local restaurant she worked there for years and everyone there customers and co -workers alike they all loved her.
So after she graduated from Central Gwinnett High School, Jennifer decided that she wanted to move to Savannah.
And her goal was going to be studying photography at Savannah's College of Art.
Okay. Now, at first, it was like really fun.
And she could see herself making a career of photography.
But after two years, her love of it kind of dwindled a bit.
Yeah. And it wasn't necessarily something that she saw as the right path anymore.
Okay. So she was like, you know know what i'm gonna move back home and kind of figure things out so she headed back to lawrenceville at that point she wasn't really sure what she wanted to do so in the meantime she got a job as a server at barnacles an oyster club or an oyster bar in duluth georgia an oyster club i know oyster club a club for oysters i used to love oysters so much but then i found out that and vibrio and 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 like
i can think of so many like people that i've worked with over the years like you can always pick out that one person from a job that you're like ah she was awesome 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 and he's a dentist so he's got this great job he's this handsome guy he's my son so i love him i think you'll love him good teeth good teeth you know you'll have good teeth yeah everybody will have good teeth you free braces there you go let's go 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 now in the summer of 1996 just a few months into their relationship they decided to have a little romantic getaway and uh bart took jennifer
on a trip to italy 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 now damn even though they weren't necessarily prepared to be parents at that point in time the surprise of the pregnancy wasn't unwelcome 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 he they weren't going to let him just walk away good for them and actually on his own bart decided that marrying jennifer and you know kind of uniting as a family would be the right thing to do and that's what he wanted to do okay so he proposed to jennifer now his sister -in -law so like literally not even his sister edwina she didn't necessarily agree with the decision to make the proposal which like not your fucking business i 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.
Like, OK, Edwina. Number one.
You know what? If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
So I'm going to sip my lip on that one.
Especially after somebody has been murdered.
You say that shit about them.
And also. That's cute.
the term wife material like grosses me out honestly i hate that i'm not a material i'm a fucking human thank you and it's it's it makes it like a weird job yeah like i like i have to like aspire like you're not gonna be good at this and it's like no like we're partners yeah like if you put a ring on it i'm wife yeah the end i'm wife i am wife i am wife hear me roar i mean pretty much so probably not knowing that her sister -in -law was a huge jerk uh jennifer did did accept the proposal.
There you go. And they got married on September 1st, 1996.
Jennifer's dad, Mack, said that Bart, quote, came into the family very quickly.
And that kind of was because everybody liked him from the second they met him.
Like he was a very charming person.
They said he was funny.
He was smart. He was really personable, like easy to have a conversation with.
Jennifer's father, Mack, said, Bart's a very funny person.
He's got a very quick wit and people are drawn onto that huh so so far in their marriage so good right yeah now in march of 1997 uh jennifer and bart had their son their first son together named dalton and from the outside it seemed like they were thriving they were putting on the picture of like happy newlyweds they've got this new healthy baby bart's business is doing really well and they were always off doing something together they like to volunteer they rode their mountain bikes together they traveled it was all ideal deal and jennifer was a really really good mom everybody said that her
sister said she was born to be a mom and when she became a mom she did it 110 she became miss pta the suv driving baseball toting super mom oh i love that goals and i love that her sister was like she was a fucking fantastic oh that's that means she was an amazing sister exactly no but unfortunately the view that 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 you know those photos sitting in your phone the ones that make you smile every time you scroll past them well at smallwoodhome
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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 gonna press your buttons and there's gonna be situations where you're fucking exhausted and you need to have a fucking handle on your fucking emotions like a grown -ass adult 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 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's doing that in front of people yeah yeah not okay 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 they were and they were just trying to support their
friend and their family member now just one year after dalton was born jennifer became pregnant again and in january of 1999 she gave birth to their second baby dylan dalton and dylan were so cute and at that point they had really outgrown their house so they started looking for a new one and they ended ended up finding it in Beaufort Atlanta it's like a ritzy suburb okay uh they moved into that new house just days after Jennifer had given birth wow I feel like that tells you a little bit of what you need to know like I don't know why she didn't wasn't allowed time to rest yeah now for the most
part in the years that followed Dylan's birth their second kid Jennifer and Bart they tried to keep up with that role of the happy family they spent weekends and summers on their boat at Lake Lanier oh gasp eek I know right and they were known to host big parties for friends and family at their like their main home in Beaufort and it was all really nice for a while but eventually the excitement of the new home the new baby faded and the cracks and really what we should refer to as Bart's facade started to show again now Dalton was five at this point and he was was going to a private school and at this point
bart started really put like pushing both of his sons to be more physically active dalton is the oldest and he's five i was just gonna say yeah the two of them at four and five played basketball took swimming lessons martial arts lessons and dalton added playing basketball uh baseball first outside of school and then on the school's little league team into the mix of all of that yeah and it's like this is why like you like you always so you want your kids to try stuff and like 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 gonna say and if they do enjoy all these.
It's like you can't treat it like this hard thing.
It has to be fun. It's supposed to be fun.
Exactly, that's the thing.
When they're that young, they're at an age where they're learning how to be a teammate and the rules of each game.
Exactly, like the basic stuff.
Again, Bart always took it to a place it didn't need to go to.
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.
Okay. Now, at that point, Dalton was six or seven and, of course, was on a team with fellow six and seven -year -olds.
Of course. But Bart had ridiculously high standards and would lose it on Dalton and the other kids any time one of them failed to live up to those expectations.
I can't imagine being that kind of adult.
No, me either. And this is kind of where we're going to get into a little bit of the yucky stuff, so just so you know.
Okay. Okay. It's so mean and it makes me like really sad.
But in front of like their teammates, he would call them loser, crybaby, whiner, anytime they like struck out or fumbled a play, you know?
Can you imagine being a grown ass man and calling a little looking at a little seven year old and being like, you're a loser.
You're a crybaby. 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 i have to say no to the girls yeah 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 pay 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 and if you you want to learn like more about this specific instance or the case overall i do recommend the book that i mentioned earlier the doctor's wife by john glatt but bart was worse at home jennifer's sisters witnessed him not only name -calling jennifer but the kids as well and it was a well -known fact that his kids were afraid of him that's awful one of them the older one i think i believe it was told his grandfather uh jennifer's father that after a game where he struck out his father lost on him in public and then hit him after the game what a piece
of shit for stress 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 I really can't.
I 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, uh, 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 want to.
That's not how I do it.
You're welcome to parent however you feel is, you know, fine for you.
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.
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 saying that to me.
I was like, okay, you don't respect me.
You go fuck yourself.
I have zero respect for people who do not respect me.
Same here. Zero. And I felt that way since I was a little kid.
right 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 oh 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 that 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 you can we need to get that sound I was gonna say that's a housewife's
thing by the way just in case you wonder where that's it is it's a tamer judge uh but and just in case you wonder why we scream it all the time but like that's this is 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 that's at least how i see it in my household i don't really understand i never don't ever 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 gonna 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 though 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 like we're on the same playing field here if i fuck up yep i apologize if you fuck up apologize like we gotta be on the same thing here 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 no it must have been very very difficult to have your home life be like that and then
have to put on the facade of like we're this this big happy family in public, you know, like we are prim and proper.
Yeah. And it sounds like despite how things appeared to those on the outsides, on the outside, excuse me, Jennifer and Bart's marriage had been steadily disintegrating for a while.
I don't know why I said disintegrating, but I did.
Emphasis on different syllables.
You know, and by the fall, I don't know.
I was trying to put a different emphasis on that.
There you go. In the fall.
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 gonna say he and his office manager legit named jennifer garner whoa actually named jennifer garner holy shit also like wow they were carrying on what she described as an office affair so he was having an affair on his wife jennifer with his secretary jennifer 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 that really did it for you 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 it's an mmo game um like one of the ones where there's like a ton of other people playing okay 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 uh shout out to dave shout out to dave dave but um it's so So it's like a World of Warcraft kind of, or like a Call of Duty.
Yeah, exactly. Where you're all talking to each other and like.
From my understanding at least. Right, okay.
You can talk to people from all over the world.
It's like. That's scary.
I think it was like a multi, I don't know.
Multi, nope, I thought I had it, but no. Yeah, massive multiplayer online game.
Shout out to Mikey.
Mikey. You rock, never change.
Oh, and it's like a fantasy.
Yeah. Kind of thing.
Yeah. 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.
Yeah. So while the kids were off at school or at one of their various activities or, you know, Bart was at work being a cheating asshole.
Jennifer would spend hours at home playing EverQuest. OK.
And over time, she kind of started getting more and more withdrawn from real life.
life edwina on the scene to read again said there really was a marked difference jen had lost a lot of weight was dressing more sloppily than before and was not looking after the house like she used to it's like you're really just shitting on her over and over and over again i think what you meant to say edwina was there was a marked difference we were concerned about her yeah she wasn't herself yeah like she wasn't taking care of the house like go fuck yourself sorry but before long Jennifer she started skipping out on family functions and gatherings and people were starting to notice yeah that becomes
they were getting concerned 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 early that summer Jennifer confronted Bart for the first time and told him she was considering leaving him and that she wanted to take the boys with her and she said like this is something I've been thinking about for a while now So, of course, completely furious with that and needing to keep control on his side, Bart suggested that they go to counseling together.
Okay. Which I'm like, you're actively cheating on her right now?
And you want to go to counseling?
Maybe you should stop your affair immediately and then do counseling.
That'll be great. But it was too late at that point for Jennifer.
And in the months that followed, she became more and more intentional about distancing herself from Bart.
she started sleeping in a different bedroom in the house and quote began separating her and bart's possessions apparently preparing to move out 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 most scariest time dangerous time and i hate that that is a reality it is like it's one of the biggest realities you want to champion people getting the fuck out of these situations but taking their 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 that and then you have to fight through the the thicket to get out of it you know it's like you don't you get to just walk this clear path out of the 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 yeah you just try to make it to the other side are you like an author or something I don't know why I was doing that I was I think it's how
your brain I've been writing a lot so maybe I'm like thinking about a lot of you're like translating it into prose 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 In 1920, a broke immigrant in Boston became one of America's richest, most infamous men practically overnight.
He swindled the modern equivalent of a quarter billion dollars and etched his name into history as the mastermind behind one of the most notorious scams ever, the Ponzi scheme.
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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 okay but he had no intention of supporting jennifer financially if that was the case fuck you and because of that in the fall of 2004 she ended up getting a job as a preschool teacher at the sugar hill methodist church where both of her boys had also gone to preschool okay now she had something to occupy
her time during the day which was great it was probably better for her at first but then she fell into like this nighttime routine of spending all night playing the everquest game yeah that's not great exactly now eventually while she was doing that she met another player online named christopher and they started off just talking to each other but you know the online flirtation kind of escalated a bit and now they were having a full -blown online affair wow which i i can see how she got pushed to that point absolutely you know well he was cheating on her she was 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 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 exactly now this was confusing for jennifer
because within just a couple months of meeting online they had exchanged almost a thousand emails wow and she was fully convinced that this christopher was the love of her life wow so by november 2004 the online affair with chris completely consumed jennifer's thoughts and on november 12th that would come to a screeching halt because chris confided in jennifer that he felt like their relationship had gotten out of control and he told her that he needed to admit something to her chris was not a tall handsome man like she'd been told and there actually was no chris i'm sure we kind of all saw this coming
the person that jennifer had been messaging was really a woman named anita from missouri anita was super super apologetic and she explained that she was in a really shitty unsatisfying marriage her home life was kind of similar to jennifer's and the sense that she wasn't fulfilled it's really sad in in every way and she was using the chris profile to explore her interest in women okay you know not the right thing to do but just sad sad like sad that these women were in such awful like home life yeah you know 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 you happy every once in a while you know what I mean that's like that's nice like you want to have that like that's that's awesome like you play the sims or something yeah you sit there and make a house for four hours and you're like holy shit but like you know but it's like when it becomes your reality and like when it becomes the only thing that's consuming outside of playing it that's when it's a problem and that's usually
when everything around you is so unsatisfying exactly and that's what's really sad about it because anything that becomes that much of an escape is not necessarily healthy i don't exactly 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 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 of course which you know she wasn't she didn't necessarily identify as a lesbian at that time yeah and you and you were just you were deceived you were deceived no matter what even with the intention behind it was not malicious and when this person is still this person you were deceived and that just sucks 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 but after a few days the feelings of you know shock and betrayal they kind of subsided and jennifer seemed to have forgiven anita she wrote in another email i'm not sure i would have continued to talk to you for very long if you you hadn't come back to me telling me that you had lied and were still Chris.
But who knows? I do know that I've fallen deeper in love with you as each day passed.
I'm glad you didn't wait to tell me until you'd met me.
Wow. Yeah, like a really big person in my opinion.
Yeah. So from there, the relationship actually kind of got back on track.
Wow. Yeah. Emails got, you know, increasingly explicit again.
And now there were real discussions about meeting in person soon.
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 that's just a very interesting like you know it is i think i think we all just fall in love with people 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 it's refreshing that they just were like you know what I just like you as a person because honestly that's
how I feel 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 yeah i weirdly am like like so happy about it but i'm like i don't 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 what 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 you whatever they were doing before exactly so yeah um 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 um 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
on to 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.
Exactly. So he, he had this like sinking feeling and he used the opportunity to search through the car for evidence of this affair.
He knew that she was having, and he did end up finding something.
He found a poem that Anita had written to Jennifer that was, you know, kind of like sexually explicit.
it she'd printed it out and just kept it with her in her purse and he found it there oh wow so when she got back in the car he confronted her with the poem and started screaming in her face like a motherfucking hypocrite yeah i was gonna say like you have nothing like you can't get mad about this you're doing this should be one of those things where you just both go see like we're not 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 back seat oh my god And they were cowering.
And suddenly he punched her in the face while she was driving.
In front of those children?
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.
Leaving. He could never come back by.
Unfortunately, he does.
Yeah. He left Jennifer just having been beaten, essentially.
Yeah, 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.
Like, this is the situation.
And he was like, you need to pack those kids up and bring them to my house right now.
Like, let's go. You got to get out of there.
Yeah. But the only problem with that was that Jennifer was worried Bart would know that she'd gone to her parents house and he would show up there.
And she didn't want that happening.
So instead, she took the boys to her sister's house.
close now just moments after she made the arrangements for her sister with her sister and like explained everything that was happening heather the sister her cell phone started to ring and it was bart calling and she answered the phone and heard the frantic sound of him making excuses he told her whatever she says it's a lie i didn't hit her and she can't prove anything oh like actually she can she has two eyewitnesses exactly and probably a black eye so i don't know know what you mean she can't prove anything piece of shit this guy is just like a true piece of shit if you can hit a woman you're
fucking disgusting yeah you're a piece if you can call your kid a a baby cry baby loser wander 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 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 so she ran to the door and opened it and she found her seven -year -old neighbor dalton crying and telling her my daddy shot my mommy 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 That, like, breaks my soul into a billion pieces.
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 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 there was nothing i could do for her so she scooped up both boys and ran back to her house to call 9 -1 -1 you know wow horror like
i Okay. Also, that neighbor.
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 just heard my daddy shot my mommy.
She walked into that house.
He could have had 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.
I know it's just awful.
Now, Well, 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.
There was that gunshot wound to the back of her head and the revolver was next to her body.
but it was slightly covered by the sheet of the bed and scattered across the bed in front of her were divorce papers that had been served to her on or seemed to have been served to her on behalf of bart corbin 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 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 I I don't know what to do here yeah and he recalled the phone call later and said somebody was on the phone when I was talking to him they were breathing really heavy I thought maybe it was Bart Corbin on the other line so like while he was talking to Bob the father he could tell somebody else was on a different line creepy that's terrifying now despite how the scene appeared at a glance investigators had had more than one reason to be skeptical that jennifer had
taken her own life first there was dalton's statement to kelly that his father had shot his mother yeah then there was also the fact that just a couple days earlier on december 1st jennifer called 9 -1 -1 to report that she and bart had been in another fight and he'd stolen her phone and a few other belongings and left the house like what what a man baby truly like a true man baby truly 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 which he probably i like i can't imagine and it's like They probably were seeing this play out in real time, and they were just dreading this kind of call.
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.
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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 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.
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 she would have had to slip the gun under that sheet.
Before falling over.
After having shot herself.
In the back of the head.
Exactly. Yeah. Not possible.
No. 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's deputy, unaware of what was going on at that point, arrived at the house to serve Jennifer divorce papers.
These were fake 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 nobody should ever 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 gonna murder my wife life that'll help my reputation yeah no you're just gonna go to jail like that doesn't help your reputation either classic narcissist though it wasn't i'm gonna murder my wife it was i'm gonna murder my wife and stage it
like a suicide and i'm so smart so why would anybody ever question me it's like wow 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 then so the investigators are sitting there and 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?
Yeah. Nobody knew where he was at this point.
And it took hours trying to locate him.
But detectives were finally able to get in touch with his brother, Bobby, a little after 11 a .m. Okay.
Now Bobby told Detective Marcus Head, you can understand my brother is pretty upset and anxious right now.
Yeah, I could understand.
I could understand that.
I could understand exactly why he might be anxious.
Now the detective returned to Max Barber, Jennifer's father, who had been at the scene all morning tending to the kids and realizing what had just happened to his daughter.
I can't even imagine.
In. So the detective goes over to him and explains, you know, I talked to Bart's brother and they're on their way to pick up the kids, which I don't know why that was allowed. 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 have 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.
And you should treat it like there's something wrong here.
Like, why would you send those kids?
Give those kids to his family.
Exactly. Well, 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. Three.
He didn't give a shit about his kids.
No, he doesn't care.
No. I mean, any normal parent, I can imagine it's wildly hard to picture this, like a parent not rushing to be with their kids after such a traumatic event under normal circumstances.
but these were not normal circumstances and bart had other priorities yeah like fucking his secretary or whatever the fuck yeah 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 borsig and rubin and that was a decounter sorry based law firm specializing in criminal law and by noon that day bart had 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 gonna step out of line here and i'm gonna 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 given the position of the body and the gun it would have been been impossible that jennifer shot herself it doesn't make physical sense and the most telling piece of evidence was actually the position of her nightgown oh 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 to like
a half sitting position on the bed oh that's when it happened and to add to that which i was like wow bart you're a fucking idiot one of the straps on her nightgown had slid down past her shoulder it couldn't be in that position if she had just lifted her arms to shoot herself yeah like it didn't make any sense nope and finally her body was discovered with her upper body slightly twisted in a way that couldn't have happened no after she had just shot herself 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 there were no fingerprints on the gun wow so whoever had used the gun had wiped it down afterwards which was obviously jennifer yeah 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, and they started by talking to Dalton Corbin, the oldest son.
A seven -year -old. A seven -year -old.
Ugh. Now, in his interview with Dalton, Detective Head asked the boy, or he was a little older than seven at this point, like a couple years had gone by, but still young.
Yeah. In his interview with Dalton, Detective Head asked the boy why he told Kelly that his dad had shot his mom he's like why did you say that like you know he's got to start off kind of yeah you know and dalton explained that he actually hadn't seen bart shoot shoot jennifer which like thank 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 was like oh yeah he would exactly
like 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 a failure fucking failure absolutely oh so his uh dalton's explanation to detect did two detective heads 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 investigator 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 now steve told those same detectives though that steve himself had gotten home much later than he usually did the night before jennifer's body had been found he got home sometime after 1 30 a .m and he was awake and heard a truck pull into the corbin's driveway around 2 a .m that was unusual so he poked his head out the window and he saw the brake lights of bart's truck illuminated in the driveway and he was like oh i guess like he didn't you know he must have come back like that's crazy and about 15
minutes later the truck sped away from the corbin house quote in a great hurry hmm what what happened there i thought you were away so having collected statements from the most important people at the scene the 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.
Bobby just kept telling them that Bart wanted to talk with his lawyer before he made a formal statement to the police.
So after he finished his interview with Steve, detective had tried one last time to reach Bart and did it by calling Bobby Corbin.
And Bobby told the detective that Bart had retained a criminal defense lawyer and the lawyer had advised him against talking to detectives.
So he would not be coming down to talk to them.
Wow. You're all pieces of shit.
So right now there wasn't a ton that they could a do because they didn't have necessarily anything pinning him to the crime but they were going to start looking because between the statements taken from friends and family and his continued refusal to speak to investigators he was starting to look like a very strong suspect and suspicions only grew stronger when they started digging into his background oh 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 it too pada 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 you just grabbed do you ever think about that like in these kind 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 were at like universal yeah and i was like all of us here like everybody at universal was just
walking around walking around super happy like having probably like one of the best times ever and then this horrible thing life was just happening floating it's just like really it's like oof yeah i think about 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 damn 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 If you like Morbid, you can listen
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And at first it seems like a perfect relationship.
But when Lily Rose's behavior starts getting strange, this love story takes a dark and twisted turn that no one saw coming.
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