How did you first learn about the death of Jenn Corbin, and what drew you to the case?I first saw a brief wire story on the Corbin case, and shortly thereafter received an email from one of their neighbors -- followed by three or four dozen letters or emails from others who either knew the Corbin family, or who felt this case might be a book subject. I would guess that my last dozen books were "chosen" by my readers; they understand the kind of complicated investigation that I look for. I write cases where the suspects are the most unlikely people anyone might imagine, where the police work is exceptional, the prosecution is complicated, and the victims are as unlikely as their murderers. It cannot be a "slam-dunk" case where the killer is waiting for the police, eager to confess. When I learned that there was another mysterious death fourteen years before Jenn Corbin died, I sensed that this was a most unusual case. For my purposes, a charming, intelligent, attractive, charismatic, wealthy, talented suspect is the most fascinating -- because we are all baffled, wondering why someone who already had those things most of us wish for would throw it all away. As I researched for
Too Late to Say Goodbye, the story took stranger and stranger twists.
You are perhaps the most widely-read true crime writer publishing today, but it still can't be easy to make the personal connections you need to be able to flesh out a book -- once you'd settled on the Barton Corbin case as something you'd pursue for book-length treatment, how hard was it to connect with the people you would need to interview?Probably the most difficult part of writing true crime is the knowledge that I am writing about other peoples' tragedies. If I can, I hope to make their loss a little easier -- not more painful. I'm lucky in that I'm not a newspaper or TV reporter who has to rush in and ask questions to have a story for the evening edition. I can -- and do -- wait until the first terrible grief has subsided a little. Because I always empathize with the grieving families, I am very hesitant to approach them. I usually write a letter, explaining that I never write anything until a case has been adjudicated and justice is served. I have to wait until after a trial is over. Sometimes, families have read my books and know who I am, but I always send a book or two that I've written on other cases so they can see that I am not looking for sensational information or gory details; I want simply to tell the truth. I explain that my main focus is on the victims -- not the killers. There is always, in my opinion, too much attention paid to the murderers, while the victims tend to get lost amid all the media hype. I want to speak for those who are lost, to give them a voice when they no longer have one. Usually, I get to know the victims' families before a trial, although I am careful not to ask questions that might compromise their testimony in trial.
When the Corbin story broke here in Georgia, it did not at first look like Bart was an abuser, at least not in the classic sense. Without giving too much away, did you find in your research that Bart may have had more of a history of violence than was previously known?Dr. Bart Corbin was the mystery figure in this story. Who was he, really? And why was he refusing to talk to the police? Even Jenn Corbin's family had liked him -- even loved him -- and gladly accepted him into their family, thinking that he was a great son-in-law and brother-in-law. Initially, he seemed to be a man with a short fuse, more given to emotional and verbal abuse than physical attacks. But then the information about recent physical altercations with his wife, Jenn, began to emerge from people who had known them. (I was fortunate that any number of people who had interacted with Bart and Jenn Corbin contacted me to share their memories of the couple. This is one of the benefits the Internet offers authors.) It wasn't too long until the information about Dolly Hearn, who had once dated Bart, surfaced. Two different law enforcement jurisdictions in Georgia were investigating Bart and the women who had once loved him, and I began to get even more emails and letters -- this time from people who had known Bart Corbin and Dolly Hearn in the late eighties and early nineties when they attended dental school. The death near Atlanta and the death in Augusta began to twine around each other like a grapevine, growing more complicated all the time. I was able to find a great deal of information that most of the public was unaware of.
It took some time for the Corbin case to come to trial. Was this frustrating for you, as a writer with publication deadlines?A true-crime writer always has to be prepared for delays as hearings and trials are postponed. Changes of venue are also common. My original delivery date for the
Too Late to Say Goodbye manuscript was way back in 2005. And I had to keep telling my publishers that the trials had been postponed again and again. It was incredibly frustrating because I pride myself on delivering my books when I promise that I will. But the Court is not in the least concerned with my deadlines, which, of course, they shouldn't be, and there's nothing for me to do when this happens but to swallow hard and wait. With another subject, I might have dropped the project and found something else that was more predictable, but Jenn Corbin and Dolly Hearn had become very real to me, and I felt I owed it to these two dead young women to tell their stories. My editor retired -- the editor who had been with me for 16 years and eight books -- and my life was kind of on hold. I wondered if I could work as well with another editor, as I waited to see if Bart Corbin would ever really go to trial. I had at least three sets of plane and hotel reservations in Georgia, only to cancel them. Other cases came and went and I wondered if I should have chosen them instead, but I stuck with the Corbin case. Eventually, in September, 2006, the story was finally ready to write. Luckily, my editor worked with me from his home. We had both waited too long for this book, and he came out of retirement for one last book.
Do you think true crime writers have to be extremely careful when it comes to their own emotional response to what they learn as they work on a book?I think that true-crime writers
should have emotional responses to their subjects. If we don't, the books that result tend to be cold, heedless and dull. I always remind myself that I am writing about real people who have suffered real loss, and a big part of my goal is to let my readers know the humanity involved in each story. If I cry -- and I do -- about some part of a book I'm writing, I feel that I'm doing what I am meant to do, again: speaking for the victims and their families. Without emotion, a true-crime book is really nothing more than spitting back a police file, sometimes including gruesome details, and it's sterile and fails to capture the pathos of the victims, the frustration of homicide detectives, the passionate efforts of prosecutors who try to see that justice is meted out. There are some authors of true-crime whose work makes one feel as if they are totally untouched by the sadness and horror they write about, and their work has no emotion at all. In
Too Late to Say Goodbye, I am writing about young women the age of my own daughters, and I cannot help but identify with the Hearns and the Corbins. I also want readers to take heed so that some of them might be saved in the future by remembering something they learned in one of my books. I am not writing a textbook or a strictly-news work; I am dealing with some of the most profound human emotions that any of us encounter, and I want that to come through, just as I try to let the reader walk with me where all these things happen. I go to almost every location so I can describe the weather, what grows there, the way the air feels, houses and rooms, even the favorite foods of people who live in that city or town.
In crime-blogging, I've sometimes found it difficult to talk to grieving people, family members of victims -- it felt "wrong." I'd imagine this is a feeling a lot of true crime writers have to deal with -- how do you handle it?When I first began writing for
True Detective Magazine and her four 'sister' publications, I felt guilty when I realized I was making a living from other people's tragedies -- so much so that I went to a psychiatrist to discuss my concerns. He half-smiled and told me, "Ann, half the world makes its living from the other half's misfortunes: doctors, police officers, firefighters, insurance agents, nurses, morticians, etc. etc. What matters is how you feel about the people you're writing about." I felt better at that point because I did see the people in my articles as clearly as if they were friends or neighbors of mine, and I was sorry for them. As the years went by, I actually had to write a few times about people I knew well. I needed that job as the Northwest "stringer" for the fact-detective magazines because I was raising four kids and a foster son on my own, and yet I almost quit early on because I felt uneasy about writing about tragedies. Now, I get several letters or emails a year from people who tell me I actually saved their lives because I had warned them in my books or articles about hitchhiking, trusting strangers' manipulative stories, or falling in love too fast without checking out their partner's background. I think the thing that helps me the most about talking to those who have suffered terrible losses is that every family I've written about who has lost someone to murder has been relieved that I wrote about the victim. They tell me that it helps a little to be able to give a book with true story in it to someone who asks "What happened?"
Even so, occasionally I hear myself talking about "a good homicide," when I mean it's an interesting story -- and I catch my breath. There is no such thing as a good homicide.
Events in the Corbin case never followed a predictable course. What, if anything, surprised you as you worked on Too Late to Say Goodbye?I was surprised by many things in the Corbin story, but, Steve, forgive me if I save those surprises for the readers of my book? Let me just say there were bizarre circumstances, strange people, and baffling disappearances that I never expected.
May true crime writers start out as reporters, and for the better part of your career you've been a writer, but you were once a law enforcement officer in Seattle. I've often wondered -- how much does your experience in law enforcement inform what you do, even today?I was never a newspaper reporter -- only in college papers. All I ever wanted to do was be a police officer, and when I graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in Creative Writing, I nevertheless signed up the next day with the Seattle Police Department. (I took all those writing courses because they were "easy A's" not even listening to my subconscious mind telling me something!) My police work helped me years later when I started with True Detective under my male pen-name "Andy Stack." I knew police procedure, but back in the day when I was a cop, the women officers never got to work homicides, just as I had to have a male pen-name at first with the detective magazines! Still, I knew many of the detectives and that helped me get my foot in the door, and they let me interview them about cases. The best part was that I was invited to attend all kinds of training conferences, and the King County Police Department let me attend their Crime Scene Investigation course. I went to courses on Bomb Search and Seizure, Medical Examiners' Conferences, Riot Control, Sexual Crimes, Blood Spatter Evidence etc. etc. I also went back to college and got another degree -- this time in Law and Justice. Eventually, I was invited to teach courses to detectives and prosecutors on serial murder, women who kill, and high profile offenders. Since my grandfather and uncles were sheriffs and my cousin was a prosecutor, another uncle a medical examiner, you might say that law enforcement is part of my genetic heritage. I have always written, but for years I thought the last thing I ever wanted to be was a book writer. It just goes to show that a career can sneak up on you when you least expect it!
Jenn Corbin and Dolly Hearn would have been easy to sympathize with. How hard has it been to tell the whole story in as even-handed a manner as possible?I try not to show prejudice -- or feel prejudice -- in my books, but there always comes a point when circumstantial and physical evidence points too strongly toward a killer. After that, it's pretty difficult for me to present him -- or her -- as a sympathetic character.
That is true of
Too Late to Say Goodbye. A bad guy is a bad guy, and it's very hard to make him look like a rosebud.
Bart Corbin's family was fiercely supportive of Bart until the end. Were they ever willing to speak with you?Bart Corbin's family was not receptive to me. One sister-in-law told me that they had retained their own author, and that they "might" answer my questions, but only if I submitted them first for their approval, so they could decide which questions to answer. I don't work this way, so I passed. I feel sorry for Bart Corbin's mother, who was devastated, I hear, by the end of this case. Bart himself would speak to no one -- not even the police.
You're pretty web-savvy, but Jenn Corbin was into an online game, EverQuest, that is a bit of a mystery to people who don't play it. Did you have to research EverQuest and the game-playing culture for this book?Yes, I had to research EverQuest. I've never played on-line games, so they were a mystery to me. The Internet and the computer world is where I work -- not play. I had a lot of help from Russ Halcome, an investigator with the Gwinnett County District Attorney's Office in this. Russ is their resident computer genius, and he explained the intricate forensic technology he employed to track suspects, and people playing games on the Internet. He was the one who found the contents of the Corbins' computers.
Some true crime books are churned out by authors whose research consists of reading news accounts, blog entries (if any have been made), and court transcripts. A few of them do pretty well, sales-wise. What's the difference between those quickie books and what you do?There are, indeed, writers who write several true-crime paperbacks a year, something that is apparently possible for them because they don't attend trials, or go to the places where homicides have happened, or talk to the people involved in person. They often rely on newspaper articles and occasionally buy court transcripts. It's one way of approaching this genre -- but I would almost say there are TWO genres in true-crime. Some authors want to get the stories out there first and fast in much shorter "overviews" of infamous cases. Others hope to write lasting works in the tradition of Truman Capote, Thomas Thompson, Jerry Bledsoe, and Norman Mailer. I hope I fit into the latter category in my hardcover books. My
True Crime Files are also meticulously researched. They are paperback originals with several cases in one book.
The name of the game in real true-crime writing is research, research, research, and finding out information you never believe you can as you begin each book. And that cannot be done quickly because it is essentially a waiting game, and the true-crime author who excels has to be a detective, too, in a way; we have to figure out ways to find the information we need.
Finally -- what's on your plate for the coming year, book-wise? Do you ever slow down?Right now, I am working on Volume 12 of
Ann Rule's True Crime Files. It's called
Smoke, Mirrors and Murder and will have about seven cases. Some are as new as the Mary Winkler case in Selmer, Tennessee, and some go back to the seventies and eighties, memorable cases from my 15 years with
True Detective Magazine. I am off on a book tour on June 3rd for
Too Late to Say Goodbye -- to New York City, Atlanta, Washington, Georgia, Portland, Oregon, Phoenix, Arizona, and the Northwest. Then I get chained to my computer again so that
Smoke, Mirrors and Murder will be available for Christmas shoppers!
I never have slowed down, but I'm sure thinking about it for a few months this next fall. Maybe I'll even make it to New England to see the leaves change -- my autumn goal for the last ten years! Readers who want to know more can visit me at
www.annrules.com.
