Ep 29 | Sean Corbett Transcript

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Do I think I deserve to be out of prison? No. I feel like a monster. I feel like the biggest piece of s*** on the planet for real. I started to perceive that I guess mainly that I was the victim in this all, and so my thought was, I could get back at her by just taking our daughter away from her you know. It's very hard for me to hear this.

I-I-I understand that. Yes. The love for your daughter did not overcome the hate for your wife at the time? "And there's some stuff in your story that's come back that you're not being completely honest with us." You know, I was just trying to hide the fact that I was the one responsible for it.

You are now listening to the podcast Voices of a Killer. I'm bringing you the stories from the perspective of the people that have taken the life of another human and their current situation thereafter in prison. You will see that, although these are the folks that we have been programmed to hate, they all have something in common.

They are all humans like us that admit that they made a mistake. Will you forgive them or will you condemn them? They are currently serving time for their murders and they give us an inside glimpse of what took place when they killed and their feelings on the matter now. Here are the voices of those who have killed.

Welcome back to another episode of Voices of a Killer. This time, we're winding back the clock to October 1997, where a 14-month-old girl was found dead in St. Louis, Missouri. Sean Corbett, the subject of our interview today, has spent the last 25 years and most of his life in prison paying for this crime.

In this episode, Sean recounts a marriage on the brink of collapse and the burning jealousy that led to his desire for revenge. We'll hear the grim events that led up to the crime, the investigation that followed, and the pivotal polygraph test that would unravel everything while Sean sat in police custody.

So sit back and listen closely. Join us as we relive a father's unthinkable act on this episode of Voices of a Killer.

Sean, where'd you grow up? I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. Yeah, how was it growing up there? It was nice. I grew up in a lower-class family. My parents... my dad was working his way through school and ultimately became a nurse. But my mom, she was a high school dropout. She worked at low-level jobs, dry cleaners, and stuff like that.

Did you have any kind of violence in your family or drugs or alcohol? Yeah, my mother and my father struggled with alcohol addiction and drug addiction too. And my mother, she was a... smoked a lot of weed. My dad, he was an alcoholic. Did they ever get arrested or deal with the law or anything like that? My father's had minor issues with the law, but nothing major.

And I don't think my mom's had any other than traffic stuff. But neither one of them had any real felony type of history. Did you have any siblings? Yeah, I have one sister. How's y'all's relationship? Our relationship's good. She struggles with addiction in her life now too. She's actually a m*** addict and she's strung out on that right now.

She goes through bouts of sobriety here and there. Are your parents still alive? My father's still alive. My mother passed away in 2015.

Do you have a relationship with your father? A really awkward relationship. He came to visit me a few times when I was at another prison down in the southern part of Missouri. But it was awkward because he left when I was 13 and we didn't have a real good connection after that. He sounds like he wants to be in your life, though. It is, and he's gotten... he's religious now, and you know, he's apologized for not being there in my life and feels responsible for the path I took for not being there. And what's that path that you took? Oh, that's the path of addiction. I got involved in addiction and just doing things, adolescent teen stuff. Sneaking out, partying, stuff like that, drugs and alcohol.

What's your drug of choice? Oh, I did a lot of marijuana, but I dabbled in just about everything. I never used intravenous drugs, but I did snort different things. Coc***e, m***amphetamines, tripped acid, stuff like that but those weren't regular. Mainly it was just marijuana and alcohol. So you had a child, right?

I did, yes. And, do you have a relationship with your child's mother? I don't have a relationship with her now. I had... I have had face-to-face contact with her since the incident happened. Sean, you're in prison for the murder of your own child, Angelyn, is it? Did you plead guilty or not guilty?

I pled guilty. What happened that day? On that day? I was, like I said, I was dealing with a lot of alcohol and drug issues, and me and my wife were going through problems because of my addiction that caused a lot of strain in our marriage. And I had, in my mind, that she, you know... I'd conceived in my mind that she was having an affair and things like that.

You know, I thought that she was being unfaithful and on a few occasions I, you know, I had caught her interacting with guys that I perceived was inappropriate and... So, the night that this all happened was one of those nights I was... I was trying to catch her in the act of doing something. So that's what happened that night that led up to that.

How were you trying to catch...? What were you doing to try to catch her? I worked at a convenience store, and I was working the midnight shift, and my sister also worked at the same store. So I had my... I called my sister and had her come up and cover for me while I went, snuck in on, see what was going on.

Did you ever catch her with anybody? I never caught anything in the act. There was some infidelity previous that I'd never caught, but she admitted to. But this particular time that I caught her, it was like 2 o'clock in the morning and she had some guy in the house that lived in the apartment complex, but I felt she was dressed inappropriate.

But I didn't actually walk in on them actually doing anything. So this night you had your sister cover for you and you went to check to see if she was cheating. Did you see a vehicle outside or did you have to...? Did you know whenever you opened the door? Well, we lived in this apartment complex and it had patio doors.

We were on the ground floor and I just left the patio doors unlocked that night. But that night... that wasn't the night that I caught her in there with anyone. That night, actually, there was no one there. The night of the murder? Yeah. But you did catch her one time you went in, there was a guy in there? There was a gentleman in there, yeah, and I perceived it inappropriate, but

I don't know if they were actually engaged in anything or if it was just a friendly thing. I don't know, it just felt inappropriate to me at the time. It was a little weird. What did you do? Did you freak out on him and fight him or kick him out or what? I basically turned around and left. I just threatened to end the relationship.

She came after me. She begged for you to stay? Yeah, and she begged and said, you know, nothing was going on with them and stuff. Sean paints a picture of a rocky married life. The Corbetts had wed young, and Sean was barely scraping 20, his wife just 16, by the time their daughter was born. To put that in perspective, think about who you were at that age.

These were just kids, ill-prepared for the pressures that marriage and parenthood would bring. Add to that Sean's addiction, a problem he seemed to have inherited from his parents. In the 90s, Sean was a heavy drinker and drug user. This placed yet another strain on the couple, something that didn't escape the notice of those around them.

"Stormy" was the word neighbors later used to describe the fractured marriage. And at the center of all this was Sean's deep jealousy. Sean became convinced that his wife was being unfaithful to him to the point of paranoia. Multiple times he tried to catch her in the act by arriving home early from work, and though nothing ever fully confirmed Sean's suspicion, he couldn't couldn't shake the feeling that his wife was hiding something. That suspicion festered over time and eventually culminated in a wild rage. In the early hours of October 7th, 1997, Shawn's rage would be unleashed, not on his wife, but on his daughter. So the night that this murder took place, you actually were doing the same exact thing to try to catch her, but this time when you went in, she wasn't actually... she didn't have anybody there?

No, she wasn't. She was sleeping. Yeah, she was sleeping on the couch. Did you have a weapon with you? I did not, no. So you go into the house thinking you're gonna catch her, you're supposed to be working, and she's sleeping. What do you do? This is where things went down for me. In my mind, I felt that she's playing a game, and she's getting over on me, and I started to perceive that

I guess mainly that I was the victim in this all, and so my thought was I could get back at her by just taking our daughter away from her. At this point, I wasn't thinking of taking my daughter's life. It was... I was just going to take her and go and just leave the country, and uh... So as I picked up my daughter and was leaving, that's when things... when I started thinking about, "I can hurt her worse than that" and that's how the thoughts started turning into more malevelous or more malicious kind of thoughts.

And that's whenever you decided to go from just taking her to actually taking her life? Yeah, yeah. It was pretty instantaneous. I had my daughter's clothes with me, and I had a diaper, and that's when I put a diaper over her face. How old is your daughter? She was 14 months. Well, that's extremely abnormal.

It's very hard for me to hear this. I understand that, yes. And it is very abnormal. I understand that. I've thought about this stuff for years. I've also dealt with my drug addiction. I've been open in my treatment programs, and I've discussed this stuff. I feel extremely horrible about what I did. Looking back, I can see all of the things that led up to it were just things that were going on in my mind and really, were not... I don't even know if, like I said, if she was cheating or not, but in my mind, it had magnified to that point. The love for your daughter did not overcome the hate for your wife at the time? At the time, I couldn't feel anything. All I felt was just rage towards my wife. That was all I felt.

Why wouldn't you just kill your wife then? It makes sense. Thinking about that now, the more logical thing at that point would have been just to end the relationship and focus on building my relationship with my daughter and maybe even a friendship with my wife since we weren't getting along. A lot of that stuff centered around my addiction. Our problems centered around my addiction.

I can't blame her for anything that happened. I've had the opportunity to sit in front of her and apologize and make my amends with her. She was accepting of that, but, she didn't deserve that. I know that now, but... You did this inside the apartment? No, it was outside of the apartment. Where outside?

It was right outside the apartment. I lived in a apartment complex and there was also some wooded area behind the place. You know, so that's where it ended... I ended up leaving her, you know. It was right outside the apartment, you know, it was... You went and put her body in the woods by the apartment?

Yeah. Yeah. When you laid her... When you laid your daughter down, did you look at her and think that, wow, I, this is my daughter. I just took her life, or what were your thoughts? I was extremely... Regret. I regretted everything. At that point, I was just... I broke down. I was in tears. I was there for, I don't know, maybe 20, 30 minutes afterwards and I was just, you know, I was just an emotional wreck.

I didn't know what to do. It's... I just, I can't wrap my mind around this right now. It's... I got you. I understand. I have a daughter. I don't know. I completely get that. I'm speechless right now. Um. It's a story that's hard to stomach. I know firsthand the strength of a father-daughter bond. The father is supposed to protect his daughter at all costs. He's the one she's meant to trust the most in the world.

How could Angelyn, just 14 months old and helpless, know that the person she trusted to keep her safe would be the one to take her life? Those final moments of her brief life must have been terrifying. What makes this more difficult to hear is Sean's petty motive. All this for revenge, to get back at his wife for the alleged infidelity that he hadn't even proven to be true. The dark thought came to Sean

on the spur of the moment he would inflict the most pain he could on his wife by doing the unthinkable: killing Angelyn. Next to the Corbetts' apartment block was a wooded area, a green buffer that separated the apartments from a memorial cemetery. Just after 4 a.m., his wife sound asleep, Sean took his daughter out of her bedroom and down to this wooded area.

Then, using his wife's jump rope, he strangled her, and when it was over, he placed her on the ground, covered her little body with leaves, twigs, and bramble, and broke down. Angelyn was still in her pink sleeper.

So after you did this... Did you go back into the house to your wife? No. You went back to work? I went back to work, yeah. What was the drive like from the apartment complex back to work? What were you thinking now? At that point, I was thinking I didn't know what I was gonna do. I didn't... I had no clue what to do.

I mean, there was moments I thought I wanted to kill myself, but I didn't even know if I had the courage to do that. I felt like a coward. I just felt horrible for everything that I did. What was the next day like? You get off of work, you go back. When you get off, is your wife usually up? Was she up when you got back that night?

Yeah, she was there. When she woke up, she went in to check on the daughter. I was there. You know, I just played like I didn't know what was going on. And she said, "Where's our... Where's Angelyn at?" Yeah, I just said I didn't know. She called... we called the police and reported her missing.

Did she suspect you at all at that time? No. I'm sure she didn't because there's just no reason for that to occur like that, but I'm sure she's distraught having a 14-month-old girl missing. She's got to be flipping upside down right now, right? Yes, she was. What did y'all do? Did y'all leave the apartment and just start scouring the area?

No, we went to the neighbors and called the police. And that's when the police showed up. How far from your door, the apartment, is her body? I can't tell you exactly. I mean... Approximately, probably... Is it a football field? Is it a half football field? Is it...? Probably half of a football field. The apartment block complex I lived in was, like, right... It had a gate, had a fence behind it. And on the other side of the fence, just to give you the location, was, right on the other side of that fence, was Jefferson Barracks Cemetery, the memorial cemetery.

I don't know if you're familiar with that. So, the time that this murder occurred to the time that they found her body, how long a distance of time was that? I don't... I'm a little hazy on how long exactly. Maybe a few hours, four, five, six hours, maybe. I'm not 100% sure on the timeline there, but probably within four, five, six hours.

So within hours they found her? No, that was just within hours we reported her. I don't know from the case file when they found her. I know that... Days, weeks? It was the same day. Oh. So they found her that day. Okay. Yes. Who found her? I do believe it was, maybe one of the people searching the area there.

Were you...? I don't know exactly. Were you near? It wasn't me. No, I was... So 50... half a football field's not very far. Were you like keeping your eye on that area? Thinking like she's gonna be found any minute now? No, I was... We weren't even there. Detectives took me and my wife to the police station to talk, to question us and stuff. Yeah.

Alright, so, they take you guys to the police station. What is your demeanor right then? Are you trying to play it... are you acting, or what are you doing? At that point I'm just acting like I don't know what's going on. A lot of people... When there's stories like this that break, and believe me, there's s*** all the time, everywhere, there's some kind of murder story somewhere, and sometimes it's a case like this where the guy or the girl is trying to act like they're also distraught, looking for their loved one when they're actually the ones responsible. What is that like, trying to play that off?

It's very difficult. For me, the emotion was there, was real, because I knew that she was gone. I was distraught over it, but I was just portraying like I didn't know what had happened. As opposed to being... confessing at that point, I was just trying to hide the fact that I was the one responsible for it. And what is your wife... what is her demeanor like with you?

Is she looking to you for comfort? Is she crying a lot? Yeah, up until the point, until we got to the police station. Of course we were separate when they were talking to us, so... So they actually separated y'all? Yeah. Did you feel like at the time that y'all got to the police station, before it even started, did they... did you feel like maybe they knew you did something?

I've been in prison for a long time now and I've seen a lot of stuff on TV, so I know that the police automatically... now, I know things like, that they automatically suspected somebody close to the victim, is where they're gonna first look. I know that now, but then, no. I didn't think those kind of things.

As Sean tells it, the rest of the day was a blur. His wife found the toddler's room empty that morning. Police were alerted, and a large-scale police hunt swung into action. Helicopters, dogs, and foot patrols scoured the area. It didn't take long for Angelyn's body to be found, lightly covered in a wooded area that bordered the apartment complex.

By this time, Sean was already in police custody for questioning, playing the part of the distraught and clueless parent. He also tried to mislead police by reporting that the sliding door to his apartment was open. This fact, he hoped, might lead them to look into the possibility of an intruder who could have entered the apartment to abduct Angelyn.

Despite this, Sean was an immediate suspect. Abduction by a stranger seemed unlikely. Around 66 percent of all homicides are committed by somebody close to the victim so it's standard procedure for the police to rule out family members first. Surveillance footage from the store where Sean worked clearly showed him leaving around 4 a.m. and returning after 5.

This was a perfect window of opportunity, giving Sean no alibi to fall back on. The taste of freedom he had was to be short-lived. After the break, we hear Sean's attempt to cover up the murder.

So what was your interrogation like? Did they seem empathetic? Or were they like, "What's going on? You know something." Or what was it like? They were empathetic, you know, and they were asking me about my day, the day before and leading up to whatever... up to her coming up missing. And I played that I was at work, trying to hide the fact that I left.

I never mentioned the fact that I left work. How long did this last? They talked to me for just, I don't know, maybe about 20 or 25 minutes. Same with your wife? I think so. She was in a different room, so I would imagine so. And they asked me to do a polygraph, so I agreed to do a polygraph. Did they ask your wife too?

Yeah, I think we both did a polygraph, yeah. How were the results? The results they told me, mine were deceptive. And that's when I confessed what I did. Wow, so your wife's came back as truthful, and your polygraph came back as deceptive? It was deceptive, yes. What was that like when they walked in and they said... Tell me about how they approached you with the results?

They sat down, and they told me. They said, "We got the results from your polygraph", and they're like, "And there's some stuff in your story that's come back that you're not being completely honest with us." Did you just break down and start crying, or you just said, "Yeah, this is what happened"? I started crying, breaking down, and I told them what happened.

Had your daughter been found yet? I'm not sure. I don't know if they had found her yet or not. I think they did, you know. Once you confess, they probably asked where's she at, right? Yes, yes. Did you lead them to where she was, or did they find her on their own? I don't, like I said, I don't know. I told them where she was. But I had read in an article of the newspaper, I think, sometime later, that one of the people searching had discovered her.

I don't know if that was a result of what I told them or not. Sean, after you told them this, did the detectives or any of the officers ask you why you would do this? Yes. Yeah. What did you tell them the reason was for? The same reason you told me? Because you were mad at your wife? No, I was trying to... At that point I was so freaked out and scared.

I was trying to rationalize things in a... I guess in a way that made it seem like less... I don't know. I just had a hard time facing the reality of it myself at the time. I tried to make it sound like I wasn't in my right mind. I didn't know exactly what I was doing. That was just me trying to escape the reality of the situation.

So within 24 hours of killing his daughter, Sean's resolve crumbled and he confessed his crime to the police. It was a polygraph test that elicited this confession. Polygraphs measure a person's pulse, blood pressure, and sweat, and any anomalies that these markers might indicate that somebody is agitated.

Though often used as a tool in investigations, there is no scientific consensus on whether polygraphs actually work, nor is there any foolproof way to detect lying. But sometimes, as with Sean, the intention of a polygraph test isn't to prove that somebody is lying, rather it's used as a tactic to put pressure on the person and coerce a confession out of them.

That's exactly what happened to Sean. Confronted with the failed polygraph result and the mounting pressure from police, Sean broke. He confessed everything. Skip ahead two years later and 23 year old Sean pleaded guilty to first degree murder. He managed to avoid the death penalty but was handed a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

At the time, a news report noted that Sean, quote-unquote, "showed no remorse" while in court. Now that nearly 25 years has passed, has that changed? Earlier in our conversation, Sean mentioned that he's spent time in treatment programs overcoming his addiction and grappling with his past. Does he have greater insight into his actions now?

What has it been like to spend the last 24 years with his daughter's blood on his hands? Here's a couple of questions for you. When you were a child, did you ever kill animals or torture them? No. Had you ever been beat up really bad or tortured? I had not, no. Had you ever been... you ever did anything violent growing up?

No. No, I've seen violence being perpetrated. My mother's been in a relationship, a violent relationship before, when she wasn't with my father. A boyfriend she had, so I witnessed some of that stuff. This may be a far shot, but your tone, you just seem like a normal person, but what you did is definitely not f***ing normal.

It's just such an unfortunate event because it just destroyed all kinds of stuff, just crazy, man. How do you feel now, knowing that what you did is... what does that feel like? It makes me feel horrible. I feel like a monster. I feel like the biggest piece of s*** on the planet, for real, to be honest with you.

In prison, you're considered a baby killer. Are you in protective custody? No, I'm in regular population. A lot of people I hear, especially people that don't know, they, when something like this happens and you go to prison for something like this, people automatically think that you're going to get killed in there, and I know you probably get a little bit more so you don't get a little bit of s*** from it, but it's not that bad, is it?

No, it's not. If you portray yourself as weak and you're not willing to stand up, then I... those are the kind of people that end up in protection and protected custody, you know? Yeah. I'm not... I don't consider myself a violent person. I know I'm in prison for a violent crime, but I don't like seeing people get harmed.

I know that sounds weird coming from someone like me, but I don't like to see harm perpetrated on other people. I feel horrible about what I did, and I live with it every day. It's not easy to face every day. The daily struggle just to... Do you think you deserve to be out of prison? Do I think I deserve to be out of prison?

No. You think you should die in prison? I think, yeah, I deserve to die in prison for what I did, yes. If the parole board said you could get out, would you get out? If they said I could, I would be grateful for the opportunity and I would definitely live a whole different kind of life, definitely a life of giving back, just to try to make up for some of the stuff I did.

I could never make up for what I did, but I definitely don't want to be the same person. Yeah. Did the judge lecture you whenever you were in the courtroom. No. No. He just pronounced the sentence when I pled guilty. How has prison been for you? Prison's been... It's been okay. I've actually, I've done a lot with my life since I've been in prison.

I didn't go very far in school. Prior to coming to prison, I was a very irresponsible drug addict. I've gotten clean. Been clean for 24 years. I've learned computer technology. I learned how to program computers. I've worked with a lot of networking and programming stuff. So I've really educated myself, and I've also dealt with the therapeutic side of facing my issues that have led me to be that kind of person.

So the addiction and the mental illness, I guess you could call it a mental illness. You know, the criminality, criminal. Have you ever been diagnosed with anything, any kind of mental disorders? Just depression. When I first initially got arrested, you know, I went to a mental hospital and they diagnosed me with depression. Yeah.

And I think I asked you this at the beginning of the call, did you have a relationship with your... the victim's mother? I do not have a relationship with her, but we've had... I've had meetings face to face, visits with her. But that's... the last one was a long time ago. The last time was for her, she was, had a lawyer who was filing, who was taking care of her divorce for her, but yeah, it was just a couple visits, but...

She's not mad at you? She doesn't... she does not hold any animosity towards me, at least that's what she said then. I was able to express my remorse to her for what I did. She accepted my, you know, my apology. Like I said, I do not portray her as anything. She was not a horrible person. She was a great mother.

Everything that happened was of my own making. Sean, I... thank you for opening up to me today. It's strange because in your voice you sound like a normal person that, I don't know... Obviously what you did was not normal, and to your own child and stuff, what you did was bad. It's just very unfortunate. I wish that there was some kind of way that we could fix these kind of things, but it's just so off the wall. I... you know, I look at your past, it's not like you were tortured as a child, or, I don't know, man.

It's just so unfortunate, but I appreciate you talking with me today and... Okay. All right. All right. It was nice speaking to you. Yep. Take it easy. All right. You too. The caller has hung up.

On the next episode of Voices of a Killer. In 2003, I was here 20 years ago working. I've always worked for what I got. I grew up in a neighborhood where this case blew up and I bought the house from my parents. It's just been a rough neighborhood ever since.

It sounds just like you have some neighborly friction with every single neighbor you got down there. Why is that? He said, "You guys did this to me. I'm going to f*** your life up. I'm going to kill you when I get out of prison." Safe to say that y'all didn't get along? No. It was self-defense. Nothing's pretty. Nobody plans for self-defense.

That's a wrap on this episode of Voices of a Killer. I want to thank Sean for sharing his story with us today. His ability to be open and honest is what makes this podcast so special. If you would like to listen to the raw recordings of these interviews, you can visit https://www.patreon.com/voicesofakiller.

By becoming a patron, you can access not only this, but hours of bonus recordings, correspondence, and you can contribute to the way the show is produced. A big shout out to Sonic Futures who handle the production, audio editing, music licensing, and promotion of this podcast. If you want to hear more episodes like this one, make sure to visit our website at https://www.voicesofakiller.com/. There you can find previous episodes, transcripts, and additional information about the podcast. Lastly, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback helps us improve and reach new listeners. Thank you for your support, and we can't wait to share more stories with you in the future.

Thank you for tuning in. I'm your host, Toby, and we'll see you next time on Voices of a Killer.