Most recent developments in the possible murder of Atlanta-area resident Jennifer Corbin and the possibility her husband, dentist Barton Corbin, was the assailant:

• Gunpowder residue tests may have demonstrated Jennifer Corbin did not fire the shot that took her life.
• Barton Corbin was arrested a week or so ago and charged with the murder of his girlfriend from college, Dolly Hearn. Her death was first ruled a suicide, by gunshot…which is what Jennifer Corbin’s demise appeared to be at first, too. A friend of his from medical school has come forward now to say he fronted for Brother Barton, and lied when police questioned him in connection with Hearn’s death.
  

  “…Eric Rader, an Alpharetta dentist, said he went along with Barton Crobin’s (sic) request that he not tell investigators in Augusta that he knew about a gun Doorthy (sic) Hearn’s father had given her…”
  

• Now, a point your intrepid blogger has made before; of people who commit suicide, 73% are white men. Of that number of men, 80% commit the act with a firearm. My point is that while women have used guns in suicides, the percentages are low compared to men. Statistically, the chances that two women, in the space of 15 years, will commit handgun suicides while in relationships with the same man, are really, stupidly low. Either Barton Corbin has a knack for picking bipolar women who are on the downhill slide to suicide, or…or, I’m just sayin’. And probably preaching to the choir.

(Statistics from the National Institute of Mental Health’s Suicide Facts and Statistics page.)

Leslie Beebe’s disappearance caught my attention early in December – then she was found dead after 7 days in her car. Leslie was a Roswell, GA resident, as am I, and had disappeared on or about the 14th from an Alpharetta bar.

Today I found an article from a newspaper in New York state – her former state of residence according to the article – stating her death is suspicious. Peculiarly, though it said there was evidence of trauma on her neck, this was not the cause of death. That could mean no arterial ruptures or broken hyoid bone. The police and family are keeping very mum about it.

Which means, possibly, that they aren’t looking too much further than Leslie’s sphere of acquaintances and/or relations. That’s just what occurs to me, anyway. Either way, there is something strangely muted about the coverage of this – I feel, personally, the press should pay more attention. Disappearances of women with decent jobs who live in low-crime areas just don’t happen everyday. Leslie would be called, in profiling parlance, a ‘low-risk’ victim.

Either way, as a man who worries about his own sister who works in healthcare, and is possibly a higher-risk sort of person than Leslie was, every day, and as someone who lost a brother to a handgun, I pray for both families.

After reading too many stories like these I find it good to decompress and watch something like Napoleon Dynamite. Not the new movie version of Salem’s Lot, starring Rob Lowe, that I watched last night. Pretty damned scary as made-for-tv movies go – not decompression material. What can I say, our new DVD player rocks.

(This entry can also be found along with a number of other writings on various crimes and criminals at www.planethuff.com/darkside, my true crime blog.)