48 Hours - Love and Lies

In December 2004, Jennifer Corbin was found shot at close range in her bed in an apparent suicide. There were no signs of struggle and investigators found her upcoming divorce documents nearby. But did her estranged husband kill her and then stage the scene?  “48 Hours" Correspondent Peter Van Sant reports. This classic "48 Hours" episode last aired on 6/5/2007. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays, and stream on demand on Paramount+.

Duration: 41m
Broadcast on: 25 Dec 2025
Audio Format: other

[music] This is a story that happened in Georgia, and in many ways it's the story of the South, straight out of a William Faulkner novel, where people are never as they seem, where people have mysteries and secrets to hide.

I'm a prosecutor in Georgia. I've been working murder cases for 25 years and I've never had a case like this. Jennifer Corgan was a tall, blonde, 33-year-old who was the mother of two boys, Dalton and Dylan. Everybody describes her as a happy person, a bubbly person, an optimistic person. She was very outgoing. She was active in her school, she was active in her church. I don't think Jennifer really had any enemies, because everybody liked her so much. Jennifer was married to Barton Corgan. He was 40 years old, he was a dentist. They were a great couple. Jennifer and Barton lived in a suburb of Atlanta. It was an upper scale neighborhood. They lived in a large home. On the night of December the third, Barton Corgan was gone for the night. Jennifer was left at the house by herself with the two boys. Our seven-year-old son Dalton woke up about seven or seven-thirty in the morning and wanted to get some breakfast, so he went in to get his mom. When he approached the bed to wake her up, he saw the blood running from her nose, and as he says it, realized that she was dead. He ran across the street to his neighbors, and began banging on the door to try and get somebody to help him. Kelly Como, the neighbor, came to the door. So I just ran across the street, and it was pretty bad that the boys had to see that. And then she called 911. When the officers got to the scene, it looked to them to be a suicide. From minute one, the family never believed that Jennifer killed herself. Jennifer would never have committed suicide. As the investigation continued, the more we learned the otter it became. There was a lot going on in her life that no one knew about. During the summer of 2004, Jennifer began to play a game online. She met and developed a relationship with a person that very quickly developed into a romantic relationship. A few weeks before she died, Jennifer found out that the whole basis of the relationship was a lie. We learned a lot about the relationship, but it became really important in the investigation as we learned that she was actually on the telephone with this other person right up until minutes before she died. Love and Lies, 48 Hours Mystery. Steve and Kelly Como met their neighbors, the Corbins, shortly after the family moved in across the street in 1999. They were having Stephanie's second birthday party and we noticed they had balloons on their mailbox the same day, so we went over there and said, "Whose birthday is it?" It turned out their new neighbors, Bart and Jennifer Corbin were throwing a birthday party for their son Dalton. On the same day, the Comos were planning to celebrate their daughter's second birthday. And I said, "How old is he?"

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