Thus begins a tale of 2, perhaps 3, murders. It is only as the police investigate the death of the young boy's mother, Jennifer Corbin, 33, that they uncover links to one cold case committed 14 years before in Richmond County and perhaps to another cold case in Alabama.

July 6 1990
The body of Dorothy "Dolly" Hearn, 27, a strikingly beautiful dental student is discovered by her roommate on the couch in their living room. She has a gunshot wound to her head and there is a 38-caliber revolver on her lap. A pot of spaghetti sits on the stove.

Richmond County police think she is a suicide. The sheriff's office thinks otherwise and the case remains open but unsolved.

Dolly's family is sure she has been murdered. They suspect her boyfriend of more than a year, fellow dental student Barton Corbin, then 27. Her family hires a forensic pathologist to oversee the autopsy and an investigator. The pathologist, Dr. Joe Burton, says suicide cannot be ruled out.

A good friend of Dolly's, Travis Hampton recalls that Dolly had become fearful of Corbin and was trying to break up the relationship. She was hoping "he'd just graduate and get out of her life," says Travis.

Shortly before the murder, strange things happen. Her apartment and car are vandalized, tires slashed, paint poured into the car's gas tank and her beloved cat disappears. A few days later, Corbin volunteers to help her find the cat. They drive for miles. "Amazingly" he takes her to the exact spot and the cat is found.

Dolly reports these events to the police but says she "doesn't want to prosecute." Her father gives her the 38-caliber revolver.

Eric Rader, also a student at the Medical College of Georgia's School of Dentistry, is a good friend of Corbin's. He is with him when they learn of Dolly's death. Earlier Corbin told Rader that he knew Dolly had a gun. Now he appears "very agitated," Rader recalls. "He asks me not to tell the cops that he knew about the gun."

So when the police call Rader, he does not volunteer any information about the gun and the police don't ask. But Rader does tell the Hearn's private investigator, hoping he will pass it on to the Richmond police. Unfortunately he doesn't. It is only recently that the Richmond police learn from Rader that Corbin knew about the gun.

"I felt bad I didn't tell everything I knew the first time. I figured they'd come back to me, but they didn't. They were treating it as a suicide."

"You can't get it into your brain that a friend may have killed somebody," Rader says. "You so much want to believe that your friend is not a murderer."

November 2004, Thanksgiving Day
Jennifer and Corbin, now 41, and their 2 sons Dalton, 7, and Dillon, 5, are driving to the house of Jennifer's sister for Thanksgiving dinner. On the way, Corbin reveals that he knows that Jennifer is having an Internet relationship. He is very angry and abusive.

(For months Jennifer, a part time preschool teacher, corresponds with a man named Chris on the Internet and writes him passionate letters. She confides that her marriage is unhappy. Then recently she learns that "Chris" is a woman named Anita. She is stunned but decides to maintain the friendship. She tells her sister Heather, "Anita has shown me I don't have to be unhappy the rest of my life." Jennifer tells her family she is ready to leave Corbin.)

They arrive at her sister Heather's house and Corbin does not join in the Thanksgiving festivities. He stays mostly in the basement by himself, according to Jennifer's father, Max Barber. In the car going home Corbin continues to yell at Jennifer and then punches her in the face in front of the kids.

When they get home, Jennifer calls her sister Heather. In the background Heather can hear Corbin shouting, "I didn't hit her. It's her word against mine." Max Barber tells Jennifer to come back to Heather's house with the children. She does but only stays the night.

November 29 2004
Corbin files for divorce asking for their home, furniture and custody of their children.

December 1 2004
At 6 in the morning Jennifer finds the contents of her purse scattered all over the floor. Her cell phone and credit cards are missing. When Jennifer confronts Corbin he refuses to give them back and rushes out of the house in a towel. He backs the car out of the driveway, running over Jennifer's foot.

Jennifer calls 911. She does not complain of any violence, so police do not respond to the call. But she does tell her mother that she is "deeply worried about Corbin's violent behavior towards her and her sons."

December 3 2004
Corbin spends the evening drinking beer with a friend and his brother at the Wild Wing Cafe. He is there until 1 a.m. He charges the drinks to his credit card.

December 4 2004
At 12: 30 a.m. Jennifer talks to Anita on the phone.

At 7:30 a.m. Dalton Corbin discovers his mother's dead body and wakes up their neighbors, the Comeaus. Kelly Comeau goes next store and finds her best friend's body. She carries 5-year-old Dillon home with her.

The police arrive at 8 a.m. and find an old 38-caliber Smith and Wesson lying on the bed. They consider the death a suicide.

December 5 2004
At a news conference, Steve Comeau says that the night of Jennifer's death he was up around 2 a.m. smoking a cigarette in the garage when he saw Corbin pull into the couple's driveway in his Chevy pickup truck and leave 25 minutes later. "I said to myself, I hope he didn't do anything stupid. It just seemed odd that he was there for such a short amount of time," Steve says.

December 6 2004
Corbin calls his sons for the first time since their mother's death. They are staying with Jennifer's parents.

Jennifer's family creates a web site in her memory. Someone identified only as "Hearn-St. Joseph, MO" posts a condolence:

"My prayers and thoughts are with you all. I am so sorry for any part I may have played in this horrible tragedy."

Bizarrely, Anita has the same last name as Dolly Hearn. But it seems to be a coincidence. As Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter says later, "Anita is not related in any way to Dolly's family."

December 7 2004
Jennifer's death is reclassified from suicide to a "suspicious death."

Explaining their decision, DA Porter says, "The bullet wound is behind, in the rear quadrant of her head. I mean, it's just sort of common sense-how do you hold a gun at that angle..and pull the trigger and have that trajectory. It leads you very strongly to the opinion that this was not a self-inflicted gunshot wound."

December 10 2004
Heather is granted custody of the 2 boys. Corbin doesn't show up at the hearing. He declines a police interview and hires attorney Doug Peters.

December 11 2004
There are hundreds of mourners at Jennifer's funeral. Corbin and his mother attend. Surprisingly Dolly's parents are also there. The 2 women's families have never met before.

Later that day Porter announces that Corbin is a suspect in his wife's murder. When a witness comes forward with new information about Dolly's case, Porter contacts Richmond County and they reopen their investigation. Both district attorneys are struck by the similarities between the two murders.

. Both deaths are staged to look like suicides.
. Both women are shot once in the head.
. Both "suicide" guns are 38-caliber.
. Both women call the police to report harassment by Corbin.
. Both women want to extricate themselves from their relationship with Corbin.

December 13 2004
Corbin says on TV, "I've been persecuted in the media for the last ten days. I'm anxious to speak, but have not because of legal advice. The truth will come out in the end."

December 22 2004
At a press conference Richmond County District Attorney Daniel Craig says that the grand jury has indicted Corbin on 2 counts of felony murder and 1 count of malice murder in Hearn's death.

Barton Corbin is arrested and jailed in Richmond County. He hires new counsel, Bruce Harvey and David Wolfe, both of Atlanta.

Dolly Hearn's death is no longer a cold case.

January 4 2005
A month after the murder there's still a sign in the window of Corbin's Dacula dental office, "Now Accepting New Patients." But the office is dark and someone has scrawled on the wall in red, "Murderer."

January 5 2005
The Gwinnett County grand jury indicts Corbin on 11 count of murder for the death of Jennifer Corbin, 1 count of felony murder and 1 count of possessing a firearm in the commission of a felony.

Earlier in the day, Superior Court Judge Debra Turner issues a gag order. She also rejects a motion for a change of venue from defense lawyers.

Then the Gwinnett County police get a call from the family of a dental hygienist, Harriet Gray, 56, who disappeared from her home in DeKalb County in 1996. A bag of spilled groceries were near her front door. Her body was found a year later inside her Toyota Camry at the bottom of a lake near Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her hands were duct-taped to the steering wheel of her car. A roll of tape was found in her lap.

Gray's son-in-law Karl Lust says, "I can't comment on the situation, but I can say they did know each other." Corbin and Gray both worked for the same dentist at different times. Gray worked for Dr. Richard Huey in the early l980s and then again in the mid 1990s. Corbin worked for him in 1991.

In a phone interview, Dr. John McDuffy chief forensic pathologist in Tuscaloosa County says, "Her body was badly decomposed. But there was no other apparent cause of death, aside from drowning."

When this reporter asks Porter if he knows the actual cause of death in Harriet Gray's case, he replies he can't answer because that information may become part of the trial.

Alabama authorities are presently consulting with the Richmond County DA and Sheriff's office.

January 19 2005
Corbin is moved to the jail in Gwinnett County.

September - October 2005
Corbin's attorneys file a series of motions that up to the writing of this article have not been decided:

. They claim police illegally searched the dentist's home and tapped his cell phone.
. They ask that the indictment filed last year be thrown out as the 14-year interval makes it impossible for Corbin to prepare a defense and that authorities have lost "valuable and potentially exculpatory evidence."

November 14 2005
Richmond County Superior Court Judge Carl C Brown, Jr. hears a request from the prosecution that "similar transaction" evidence concerning Jennifer's death be allowed at the Augusta trial.

DA Craig argues that Corbin "used the same script" in both cases. He describes Jennifer's death: "Having shot herself in the head and then having the presence of mind to pull the gun away from her head against the force of gravity, then placing it on the bed, then pulling the bed covers over it. I think we'll show scientifically that this case is a murder and that the 2 deaths are linked."

Craig points out that both women were killed after trying to break off a relationship with Corbin. "The motive is clear," says Craig. "You don't break up with Corbin. If you do, you pay with your life."

Defense council Bruce Harvey contends both women committed suicide and it would be "highly prejudicial" if evidence from the Gwinnett death was included at the Augusta trial.

At the hearing Harvey reads more than a dozen e-mails Jennifer sent to Anita. Some of the e-mails are sexually explicit. One describes a violent fantasy including a loaded revolver.

In another e-mail Jennifer says, "I just can't take this. I even fell in love with the name Chris. I trusted you. I can't believe you did this to me." Harvey says Jennifer committed suicide because she was distraught over her marriage falling apart and she feared losing her 2 children when it came out that her Internet lover was a female.

Craig says that for years Corbin has been having an affair with another woman. He also says there was new evidence for both trials-witnesses who can place Corbin at Hearn's apartment the day her body was found and cell phone records that show Corbin was near his home when his wife died.

Corbin's brother maintains that Barton was at his home in Auburn the night Jennifer died.

Judge Brown does not make a decision on the "similar transaction" motion and sets a date for another hearing.

April 17 2006
Jennifer trial is scheduled to begin April 17. Perhaps then we'll learn the answers to some puzzling questions.

. Why did son Dalton say his father killed his mother?
. Who is Corbin having an affair with?
. Was there gunshot residue on Corbin's hands?
. What happened to Jennifer's hard drive?
. How did Corbin find out about Jennifer's Internet friend?
. What caused Harriet Gray's death?

And of course, most important, is Barton Corbin innocent or is he a serial killer?