Side Dolly News Today

>> the d.a. thought his case was now a slam dunk, a conviction all but certain. so he approached barton corbins attorneys. >> and i said at that point, now is the time. the best deal youre going to get is a plea to murder and life in prison. you either take it today or we start moving towards it today or were going to continue with the trial. >> then the d.a. conferred with the hearn family and the prosecutor in dollys case. if convicted, bart corbin faced the possibility of the death penalty in...

On after jennifers death. >> as gwinnett county authorities investigated jennifers death, prosecutors down in augusta indicted bart corbin in the murder of dolly hearn. police arrested him in a very dramatic and public fashion. dollys brother heard about it from his wife. >> she said bart corbin is on the ground on tv and hes being arrested. im watching it live. that was one of the best moments of our lives since, you know, the day dolly died. >> two weeks after his arrest in dollys case, he was...

>> to the investigators in augusta, georgia, back in 1990, it looked like suicide. >> there were not crime scene technicians working the case as we do today. all the medical examiner had at the time was simply that it was a female with a gunshot wound to the head and the gun was found in front of her. >> is there any way your sister could have taken her own life? >> theres absolutely no thought in my mind or any of the familys mind that she would have done that. >> like jennifers family, the hea...

>> dr. travis hampton was a friend and classmate of both barts and dollys. he says bart became incredibly possessive of dolly and when she broke up with him, strange things began to happen to her. dolly filed these police reports, complaining that someone had broken into her apartment, vandalized her car, and stolen a package from her mailbox. one day a school project disappeared, and then her cat. >> at first she felt that she was just unlucky. but after a while we realized that luck had nothin...

Theyre making them out to be. theres been much made about the fact that barton and dolly were having difficulties at the time of her death, and thats not true. >> according to barts attorney, the harassment dolly blamed on bart occurred months before she died and they had actually reconciled their relationship. >> after that, they had, in fact, gotten back together, and dolly hearn had asked several people not to let her family know that she was dating him again. >> but what about barts relation...

>> but by the time summer break arrived, the harassment seemed to have stopped. dolly looked happy as she attended her brothers high school graduation. he was valedictorian, and she beamed as he gave his speech. >> i glanced at dolly, and she just had the biggest smile that she was directing right at me. >> then, just a few days later, a terrible shock. >> my mom said, "we lost our dolly." my first response was natural, in that, no, this cant have happened. and that really is the worst thing tha...

Offenses and as a result he should be found not guilty. >> the defense team planned to tell the jury that in dolly hearns case, the familys own independent expert didnt think she was murdered. >> the family hired one of the premier medical examiners, forensic pathologists in the country, and said that there is nothing inconsistent with suicide. he said, if you showed this information to 100 pathologists, theyd tell you the same thing. >> in fact, the defense pointed out that if it were not for j...

Re-opened in augusta. the lead investigator there re-examined her death with a new perspective and new crime scene technology. >> he takes the crime scene photographs and blows them up and turns them over to his expert. the expert begins to look at the blood spatter patterns and finds three significant findings that tell him the body was manipulated after the wound was inflicted. >> as evidence against dr. corbin mounted, prosecutors tapped his phone. >> one of the people calls and says, i heard...

Wasnt fooled. he even told dolly to take precautions. >> i suggested to her she might want to get a gun to protect herself. and her dad loaned her a gun. i know that her father told her you need to get away from him or youre going to wind up in a dumpster some day. >> in fact, from the day dolly died, her family was convinced she was murdered. >> i knew bart had killed her. there was never any doubt in my mind, there was never any doubt in my parents minds. >> but dollys death remained a cold ca...

Having to see my parents make their best efforts to get law enforcement to cooperate, to see it through to the end. >> over the years, the hearn family fought to prove dolly didnt take her life, even hiring a private investigator. but that didnt help them. >> your familys own independent expert is saying, this looks like it probably was a suicide. >> right. so that obviously made things more difficult because it -- it did nothing to convince us that it was suicide. >> gil said his family was wel...