Earl Corey, Sr. had prepared himself for his daughter to be found guilty.

He sat through Julie Corey's entire trial, waking up before 6 a.m. each morning and driving with his wife the 150 miles from their home in Warren, New Hampshire to court in downtown Worcester. Watching every witness and lining up each fact with his theories about who killed Darlene Haynes.

Earl Corey knows his daughter was involved. After all, she had Haynes' baby. She would have to take some responsibility for that. Second-degree murder, he was ready for that. But first-degree murder seemed out of the question.

"There's just so many unanswered questions," Earl Corey said. "I just don't understand how a jury could come up with first-degree murder."

Last week, a Worcester County Superior Court jury deliberated for about a full day before returning their verdict: guilty of murder in the first degree. They believed Julie Corey murdered Haynes in her apartment, cut open her stomach and pulled out her unborn baby.

On Tuesday, after his daughter was officially sentenced to spend the rest of her natural life in state prison, Earl Corey and his wife, Elaina Corey, sat down with a reporter to discuss the trial.

"I don't think justice has been served," Earl Corey said. "I think there's still some pretty bad people walking the streets of Worcester that should be in jail."

The Coreys plan to travel to Boston, if there's an appeal hearing before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Julie Corey's attorneys have filed a notice of appeal.

Julie was involved

Earl Corey, a burly man with white hair and a thick New England accent, is not naive enough to believe his daughter knew nothing about the murder. He's spent the past four-plus years agonizing over just how it all happened.

"I don't believe she had anything to do with killing Darlene," Earl Corey said. "She obviously knows who did."

Julie Corey told her father and stepmother that she got a call to come take the baby. She didn't say who it was from and they didn't press her on it.

They said they wish she had just hung up the phone and called the police.

Julie Corey was pregnant in the months leading up to the murder. Then, in June, she had a stillbirth. She didn't go to the hospital. Elaina Corey, who is Julie Corey's stepmother, said she thinks Julie -- who hated hospitals, like her father -- had the baby in her apartment.

She didn't want her boyfriend, Alex Dion, to find out because she feared he would leave her, Earl Corey said.

After they had the baby, Julie Corey and Dion drove to New Hampshire and stopped at her father's house. Dion testified that they were planning to stay with the Coreys, but the home didn't have enough room.

Elaina Corey says that's not true. They had room, and wouldn't have turned away a 3-day-old child. Earl Corey didn't care much for Dion, but he tried to get along so he could see his daughter and the baby he thought was his granddaughter.

The Coreys visited Julie in prison on Saturday, a few days after she was found guilty. She broke into tears the minute she saw them.

They have custody of one of Julie Corey's five children, a 17-year-old boy. He visits his mom in prison, and attended the trial for one day. Corey's four other children are scattered, living on their own or with other relatives.

Months before the murder, in December 2008, Julie Corey was living with them in New Hampshire. Earl Corey said she was "three days away" from getting approval for a Section 8 apartment in Concord, N.H. Before that could happen, she got back together with her boyfriend, Alex Dion, and moved back to Worcester.

Earl Corey wonders what might have happened if she'd stayed up north.

Other suspects

Earl Corey believes a number of people were involved in Haynes' death.

"You couldn't listen to that evidence that came out in that trial and not think that others were involved," Earl Corey said.

There was Haynes' boyfriend, Roberto "Tito" Rodriguez, who the cops initially suspected and who the defense tried to focus blame upon. He had a history of violence against women, and was seen coming out of a cemetery the day after the murder.

"Who knows? Did he get in a fight with her, did he whack her a little bit too hard? Who knows?" Earl Corey said.

Then, there was Julie Corey's boyfriend, Alex Dion. Earl Corey believes Dion was in the apartment the night of the murder. The prosecution argued that calls from Rodriguez's phone to the apartment Dion and Julie Corey shared were coming from Julie Corey, pretending to be in the hospital giving birth. Earl Corey believes it was Dion calling Julie Corey.

Then, there were the men seen entering Haynes' apartment the weekend between her death and the day her body was found. Timothy Tripp, a friend of a neighbor, went in to retrieve a fish tank, apparently with Rodriguez's permission. There was William Daviau, who died days before the trial began, who a neighbor claimed to have seen on the porch with Julie Corey and Haynes hours before the murder.

"I get so mad at Julie too," her father said. "All these people who are involved in this thing, she considered them friends, and all they did was kick her under the bus a little bit further."

Police investigation

Then, there was the police investigation. Earl Corey said it seemed haphazard and incomplete. He admitted that he probably watches too many cop shows, but he couldn't see how detectives could let so much potential evidence in Haynes' home go untested.

"The Worcester Police just let a lot of leads slide down the drain," he said. "They investigated a murder the way you might investigate a fender bender at the intersection."

Corey's defense spent much the two-and-a-half week trial hammering away at the investigation. Why hadn't police collected more than 12 items from Haynes' apartment? Why hadn't they tested more than three of them for evidence? Why didn't they search Rodriguez's van, or his apartment?

Two fathers

An urn containing the ashes of murder victim Darlene Haynes

Earl Corey wasn't the only father to spend nearly every day of the trial in court. Fred Haynes, father of the victim, was a fixture in the seat just behind prosecutors.

He broke down in court on Tuesday when asked to make a victim impact statement. Prosecutor Daniel Bennett spoke for him, displaying a can of ashes that held Darlene Haynes' remains.

Outside the courtroom, Fred Haynes told reporters he had waited five years for the verdict, but it wasn't enough.

"Life in prison ain't good enough for her," he said.

Earl Corey says he feels for Haynes.

"Her father, I can't imagine what he's going through because I haven't gone through that," Earl Corey said. "I'm going through the second-worst thing, he's going through the worst."