Martens Corbett trial: Maintain your lies for so long, and you might start to believe them
Molly and Tom Martens were sent back to prison on Wednesday after pleading guilty to the voluntary manslaughter of Jason Corbett. Picture: Jerry Wolford.
The concrete slab Molly Martens used to brutally kill Jason Corbett was in her marital bedroom because it was to be used with her children “for artwork”.
That’s what she said when she called me from the US shortly after killing her Irish husband in 2015.
The conversation quickly turned to a self-serving campaign to blacken her husband’s name as she painted herself as a victim.
She had a carefully prepared story and claimed she was abused by Jason Corbett, “for years and will prove it”.
For 30 minutes she cried almost non-stop and started every answer with “So me and my children said/did...” before attacking her dead husband.
“He [Jason] is just not the man people think he is and this stuff, him being so gentle and innocent, I can’t say much, but that’s not the case, no, no, not at all.
“I felt so, lucky or blessed, yes blessed to marry this big Irish guy and he had lost his wife and had two kids.” However, Molly went on to claim, “the real Jason” tried to “pursue her fast”.
“It was so quick. I was a mom overnight,” she said.
“We were in love, it happened so fast, that feeling, the emotions, yeah like almost too fast. I didn’t want it like that, but it happened. I was concerned though. He pursued me fast. I was real young when I met him.
“I just went there to Limerick; I was a nanny for the kids. There was a crush or a bond, something. And Ireland was beautiful. But I was naïve I really was.”
When I asked her why a slab was in her bedroom on the night, she and her father killed Jason Corbett she replied: “The brick is art, it’s a piece of art.” When asked for more details she said her and the children “often painted bricks”.
She described a strong bond between her and Jack and Sarah Corbett.
She claimed she killed her husband in “self-defence” because he was an “abusive husband”.
As part of her campaign to garner public support through the Irish media, she told a story of jealousy and control.
“The jealousy and controlling was there but I refused to see it at first you see that as love, he was always asking me where I went, stuff like that, who I was talking to.
“He was paranoid. You hope it will get better. It didn’t. I couldn’t leave the children no matter what.
“There was message checking and we argued a lot, an awful lot.” When asked why she didn’t raise the abuse or controlling behaviour with police, or take it further she whispered: “The children.” And then she burst into tears again.
“He would say sorry, and we would just move on and that was it.”
Last Wednesday, Martens was returned to prison after pleading guilty to the voluntary manslaughter of Jason Corbett in August 2015. Her father Tom pleaded guilty to the same charge.
Both have already served 44 months behind bars, but with good behaviour, will walk free early next year.
As part of the sentence, Martens and her family have been formally banned from contacting Jason’s two children.
The order was issued by Judge David Hall at Davidson County Court in North Carolina after he heard details of a relentless campaign by Martens, much of it over social media.
The court heard lengthy details of Martens’ attempts to harass the Corbett family over an eight-year period.
Tracey Lynch, Jason’s sister, also outlined how she continues to receive “hate mail” from supporters of the Martens family.
The court heard within days of Sarah and Jack Corbett returning to Ireland as young children in 2015, their stepmother launched a social media campaign uploading dozens of images of her with the children.
She wrote hundreds of posts, directly addressing the traumatised children who told the US court they were trying to deal with the sudden loss of their father as well as leaving their home in North Carolina, their school, friends, and country.
Martens wrote messages saying, “I will always love you Sarah and Jack, love from Mom” and “I won’t stop fighting for you”.
Every day for months, she uploaded photos, letters, cards given to her by the children — details of them baking cakes at home as well as trips to the park and picnics.
Last Wednesday, Judge David Hall ordered a full psychiatric assessment of Molly Martens and placed her on suicide watch.
When handing down his sentence to the father and daughter he said: “None of the Martens family shall contact the Corbett family.”
Judge Hall made the order after hearing details of a “stalking” campaign by Martens who refused to “quit” in her efforts to keep Jason Corbett’s children.
During her victim impact statements Sarah Corbett, 17, described how she felt “betrayed” by her stepmother saying she was “used by her”.
The teenager said: “When I got home to Ireland, Molly posted all my images over Facebook and went on the radio to tell people to find me.
“Molly Martens took notes I wrote for her when I was younger, and pictures of me as a child, and shared them all publicly on social media for everyone to see.
“She betrayed me again and again — and even shared a note I left with her, the last time I saw her. And she did all this to get publicity for her lies about my father. There was nothing I could do to stop her. I was eight years old.
“I was trying to start a new life in Ireland, but she stalked me.
“The gardaí — the Irish police — were called to the school.
“Detectives watched over us and our home for a while until her passport was taken away, but it didn’t stop her trying to contact me.” Sarah Corbett said it was very hard for her to make friends when she arrived in Limerick when “your father has been killed by your stepmother, and everyone is looking at you, the new girl. Can you imagine trying to make friends when you are the troubled girl?” She went on to tell Judge Hall that Molly Martens contacted a schoolfriend of hers when she was nine years old.
“I was nine years old. People avoided me in school — they still do. They whisper about me.” Sarah has since gone on to write a book about coping with grief and held a memorial service for victims of domestic violence in the US ahead of the sentencing hearing last week.
Jason Corbett’s sister also outlined how she has been harassed by supporters of the Martens family for years.
In her victim impact statement, Tracey Lynch told the court: “I continue to receive hate mail from the defendants’ supporters” and that she was “never allowed to spend time closely with Sarah in the preceding two years so I didn’t know her. Molly Martens did not allow it.” Martens’ desperate attempts to “gain custody” of Jason Corbett’s children, were highlighted repeatedly throughout the eight-day sentence hearing in Lexington.
State prosecutor Alan Martin said: “She was living a lie. Molly Martens had a choice, all she had to do was quit living a lie.” He suggested Martens was “delusional” and described how she told lies about being friends with the Corbett children’s late mother, Mags, who died following an asthma attack in 2006.
She claimed Mrs Corbett had asked her to care for her children after she died.
While another friend became concerned when Martens placed a photo of a woman by her bed at college, whom she claimed was her sister who had died from leukaemia.
The friend realised the photo was a generic picture sold in frames and that there was no sister.
Martens also told a Bible study group that she gave birth to Sarah Corbett and outlined details of a fake difficult labour.
The court heard Martens flew to Ireland in 2008 to be an au pair to Jason Corbett’s children after his wife died.
Jason and Molly married in June 2011 and within weeks, Molly went to a divorce lawyer and later sought legal advice about gaining custody of Jason’s children.
The “entire family was living a lie” Alan Martin told the court during the sentence hearing, as details of Molly and Jason’s unhappy marriage were laid bare.
“Was this a happy home? No,” he said.
“Would anyone want to grow up in anger and frustration? No.” He said Martens entered into a marriage to get Jason “out of the picture” and “take his children”.
“The primary focus of her existence from before she married Jason Corbett was to adopt his two children, then divorce him and then have custody rights of the two children,” he said.
She needed “an event” to take place so that she could get rid of Jason, he claimed.
Mr Corbett was beaten to death by Molly and Tom Martens on August 2, 2015, after they claimed they acted in self-defence.
However, Judge Hall said there were holes in their evidence. He said he could not understand how Mr Martens, who had devoted his entire live to law enforcement at the FBI, did not “call for back up” that night.
He also said it made “no sense” that Mrs Martens who was also in the house that night, heard a noise upstairs and left her husband to deal with it.
He asked why “did she not call 911” adding that instead she just went back to sleep.
Judge Hall said if Mr Martens had even taken the bat and called 911 it would have made more sense, but the fact he didn’t “call for back up” left “holes” in the evidence.
Molly Martens was also wearing a delicate bracelet on her arm during the night she was supposedly “being choked” by her husband.
But the bracelet he said was still on her arm and not damaged.
“I don’t know what happened that night,” Judge Hall continued, but he said the evidence did not make sense and sent the father and daughter back to jail.
In her conversations with me, Molly Marten never accepted her role in Jason’s death.
Even last Wednesday at her sentence hearing she told the court: “I did my best in the circumstances.”
