There is a new Netflix documentary out titled ‘A Deadly American Marriage’. It outlines the murder of Jason Corbett, by his wife Molly Martens and her father Thomas, so we thought this might be a good time to dive into the case.
Jason was born in Ireland on February 12, 1976, just minutes after his twin brother Wayne arrived. Jason was the youngest child in a family of eight.
Jason’s parents are Rita and John Corbett.
“He was a loving brother and friend to all of us,” said Wayne.
Jason loved living in Limerick. He also loved rugby and golf.
Jason and Wayne both attended St Ciaran’s national school in Galvone, and later St Enda’s secondary school, before Jason went on to undertake a number of business management courses.
In terms of employment, Jason worked “his way from the bottom up” in Multi-Packaging Solutions for about 15 years in Limerick.
Wayne said their life was practically ‘idyllic.’ In the 1990’s, Jason met Margaret “Mags” Fitzpatrick. Quotes from the family describe Mags as “his soul mate and love of his life.”
“When he met Mags, everyone knew that was it. It was love,” said his sister Tracey Lynch.
The couple married at the Star of the Sea Church in County Clare in 2003.
Mags owned a childcare creche at the time and the couple purchased a home together. ‘Life was complete’ after their two children Jack – born 2004 – and Sarah – born 2006 – arrived.
‘They were just so happy and so excited with life and so enthusiastic about it as well. And — and they had Sarah, and you know, I remember them sayin’ that they had, that their family was complete. They had their little prince and princess.’ Tracey said.
In November 2006, when baby Sarah was three months old, Mags died after she suffered an asthma attack.
Tracey spoke to CBS about Mags’ death. ‘Mags woke Jason to say that she was feeling wheezy. And he sat her up. She started to take her nebulizer. And she started to get progressively worse. … We found out later, they called him in and told him that she had died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.’
Jason was a 30 year-old widow with a two-year old son and a 12 week-old daughter.
Jason began raising the children alone after Mags passed. In 2008, he placed an ad for an au pair to help him with the children. Molly Martens answered the ad.
Molly was born on September 28, 1983, making her 24 at the time that she answered the ad.
As some background into Molly, she is the only daughter of Sharon and Tom Martens. She has three brothers, Connor, Bobby and Stewart.
The family lived in Farragut in East Knoxville, Tennessee.
Her mother Sharon was a doctor of mathematics who had attended the prestigious Emory University in Georgia and her father Tom, an FBI agent, was also a trained attorney.
Described as ‘pillars of society’ by those who knew them, the Martens aspired to a life of prestige and affluence.
Molly attended Farragut High School. She was on the swim team there.
‘She was just a normal girl,’ said one neighbour. ‘She was shy and quiet. There was nothing remarkable about her. She was very good at swimming but she had physical health problems and she missed a lot of school because of that.’
Despite the neighbor saying Molly had physical health issues, some reports indicate that she was actually also suffering mental health issues and her family tried to keep it quiet. Molly attended a weekly youth group and her ‘issues’ were discussed amongst her peers. ‘She started crying over something one day,’ said a friend named Rita Stallard. ‘When some asked what was going on her friends said she had some issues and that she didn’t like to talk about it.’
Molly was said to have had a lot of absences from school. Molly’s brothers were said to be very successful in both academics and sport, but Molly was the opposite.
She worked several casual jobs after she left school. By 2004, she had a job as a receptionist at a hair salon in Knoxville. Her former boss Monty Howard remembers her as a ‘good worker’ who got along with staff. ‘She worked for me for about a year and a half,’ he said.
‘She answered the phones, took bookings and greeted clients, that sort of thing. I always found her easy to deal with. There were no problems.’
Molly would eventually move out of her parents’ home and into a condo that they also owned. By her mid 20’s, she was working as a nanny and teaching children how to swim.
Molly had numerous relationships over the years, including one with a man named Keith Maginn. ‘To her credit, Molly told me early on in the relationship that she is bipolar,’ Keith said.
‘I didn’t think much about it because medications had her stabilised and everything was blissful and bright. A month or two into our relationship, she got a staph infection. The infection medications she was given overrode her bipolar medications and knocked everything out of balance. Like someone flipped a light switch.
‘Molly was the saddest person I had ever been around. She would cry in bed for hours. Seeing the person I loved suffering so much was a very trying situation. I did everything I could, but nothing seemed to help.’
Keith has spoken to the media frequently about their relationship.
Unable to continue her job as a nanny due to her mental health, Molly stayed at home while Keith earned rent money for them both.
‘It was paid to her parents just like you would pay rent to any landlord,’ he says. ‘Molly couldn’t work any more so it was down to me. I was supporting us both. We were paying rent to her parents. I think if she was on her own they would have helped her more [financially].
‘But knowing that she was in a relationship they were kind of like, “You guys need to make this happen.” They would have paid for anything major that came up, but for the most part she was financially dependent on me. I paid the rent, bought groceries, paid the bills. You don’t make much money working for a non-profit. We were scraping by on my salary.’
At the beginning, the relationship was ‘amazing’. Keith said they both genuinely cared for each other and because they were both struggling, had mutual respect and understanding.
‘Once her depression took over, things were stressful,’ he says. ‘Heartbreaking, actually. I never knew what mood Molly would be in when I got home from work. I walked on eggshells much of the time, trying my best to keep things stable. But things were usually tense.
‘We were both going down on a sinking ship. For better or worse, mental illness has such a negative stigma and Molly didn’t want people to know the truth of the situation… I finally swallowed my pride and sought out a therapist.’
As the relationship came under increasing strain, Keith became concerned by the ‘plethora’ of drugs Molly was taking. At one point, he claims, she was taking 16 prescribed medications a day and another ten to be used ‘as needed’.
‘Most of the stuff she was taking was for bipolar or manic depression,’ Keith said.
‘So she was taking some serious drugs. They were prescribed, it wasn’t like she was doing it on her own. She was insomniac, so she sometimes would be up all night. She was taking stuff for that. She had a tremendous amount of stuff on her plate.’
‘Her parents were very much aware of her mental health issues,’ he says. ‘They are well aware of the many doctors, the medications she was taking. They knew about it all. They did try to help. They lived relatively close and they would come over. I don’t know how much they actually helped but they tried to. I felt that they were at times overwhelmed and frustrated about the whole thing.’
Molly and Keith became engaged. He purchased a $150 ring online as that was all he could afford.
‘It was completely her idea to get engaged,’ he told extra.ie. ‘She really thought being engaged would make her happy. She thought that was going to be the cure. I knew it was not but I thought it would help for a while. It worked for like one day.’
Molly suffered a miscarriage in 2007. Months after that, she checked into a ‘medical rehab centre’ in Atlanta to try to deal with her mental health issues.
‘The psych ward in Atlanta was a last-ditch attempt to try and get her medications right,’ Keith told the media. ‘It was to try to get her off all the stuff she was on and get her on the one or two things that could make her stable. It was very heartwrenching. The people that were in there… It was hard to recognise them as human sometimes. The sounds they were making, just staring at the walls.
After Molly completed four days of treatment, she went back to Knoxville with Keith. One night, out of nowhere, she told Keith that she wanted to go and be a nanny in Ireland.
‘It was very odd,’ said Keith. ‘She literally turned to me one night and said, “I want to go nanny somewhere in Europe.” I was, like, “Oh, here we go.” She sometimes came up with these ideas and I was always like, “This is not the fix.” So she was like, “I want to go to Europe,” and I was like, “Okay, Molly… whatever.”
‘I went to bed, she stayed up, which was pretty normal.’
One morning soon after, Molly told Keith she had found a nannying position in Ireland. ‘I was like, “How did this happen so fast?” She said, “I’m going to go very soon.” So I was quite taken aback. I was used to her not following through on things that she was planning, so I didn’t think it would happen.’
In the Netflix special, Molly speaks about how she joined an au pair agency and when she was connected with Jason, she felt for him as she said he had lost his wife.
Molly initially told Keith that she would be gone for a week, then she said ‘several’ weeks. Keith has said that he heard her talking on the phone and telling other friends she would be gone for varying amounts of time – a month, two or three months.
Molly arrived in Limerick in April 2008. If you’re not familiar with the area, Limerick is on the west of the country and has a population of around 102,000.
Lynn Shanahan, one of Jason’s friends spoke about meeting Molly for the first time.
‘My first thoughts and the first sentence to my own husband were, “This is not what Jason needs right now. The minute I saw her with the big bouncing curls, she was in her 20s. She had a big bright color coat, fur collar, cowboy boots, was dressed and make-up done like a pageant queen as we would have said. She just seemed not the nannyin’ type.’
Molly got along well quickly with Jason’s children.
His sister Tracey said ‘He liked her. She seemed gentle with the kids. … We started to see, you know, a little glimpse of the old Jason comin’ back, that he was just, you know, not so sad all the time.’
Jason and Molly soon began a romantic relationship. On Valentine’s Day in 2010, almost two years after Molly arrived in Ireland, Jason asked her to marry him. Molly said yes and they began to plan a wedding in the US.
The family moved to Lexington, North Carolina in April 2011. Jason got a transfer with his company to a plant in the area.
Tracey would later speak about how Molly changed upon her return to the US. ‘She was just very controlling. She was angry, I would say. And for someone who was about to get married, you know, she just wasn’t herself. … She stayed in bed curled up in a ball. She didn’t come out and socialize with anybody.’
‘What really set alarm bells ringing for me was when one of the bridesmaids told us before the wedding that Molly had told them that she had been friends with Mags, Jack and Sarah’s mother, before she died of cancer. Mags didn’t die of cancer, she died of an asthma attack.’
Jason apparently began to wonder if he was making a mistake by marrying Molly. On the big day, later in 2011, Paul Dillon, Jason’s best man told him ‘you’re the most unhappiest man I’ve ever seen on his wedding day. I asked him to just leave her and just get on a plane and go home. And he said he can’t. He made the commitment.’
Jason purchased a house in the Meadowlands area. The development includes an 18-hole Hale Irwin-designed golf course, clubhouse, pool, tennis courts, playgrounds and parks, as well as more than 40 acres of natural area.
Jason paid cash for the 2,545 square foot house – said to be worth at the time between $350-390k. He gave Molly $80,000 to furnish their new home.
Molly drove a BMW SUV and she took up a job as a swimming coach. By all outward appearances, the \family seemed to be living the dream.
‘They were the most loved-up couple you would ever see,’ said a neighbour. Always holding hands, always kissing and laughing. They just seemed very, very happy.’
Despite how their marriage appeared on the surface, there were some underlying problems. Molly had become persistent about adopting Jason’s two children and Jason was resisting this. Molly even led neighbors to believe that she was the biological mother of the children. She told people stories about her ‘pregnancy with Sarah.’
Jason did not love living in the US. He was homesick and depressed. He told people that he wanted to return one day to Ireland and open a pizza restaurant. He began to gain weight and Molly was not impressed by this.
The couple married in 2011 and by 2013, Molly had sought legal advice regarding possible custody of the children in the event of a breakup. She also spoke with another lawyer about her parental rights in 2014.
Jason’s family were becoming increasingly worried about Molly’s behavior. Tracey would say that Molly began lying and described her as a fantasist. Tracey also alleged that Molly was self-harming and day drinking before driving the children around.
Since Jason’s death, documents have been released that outline Molly’s wild behavior. In one instance, she held Jack’s face under a running kitchen tap as punishment for splashing her with water. He was 7 at the time.
We have also learned that during their wedding, Molly had screamed at one of her bridesmaids after the woman purchased McDonald’s for a boy with an allergy. The boy was allergic to egg whites and could not eat the main meal.
A few days before Jason’s death in August 2015, the couple were at a party and Molly made a remark to Jason about his weight in front of multiple people. Jason left the party early. His family believe that this was the straw that broke the camel’s back in their relationship and that he was planning to return to Ireland without Molly.
On 2 August, 2015 at 3am, Molly’s father Thomas called 911. He told dispatchers that Jason was badly injured. Tom told authorities that he had intervened during a fight between Molly and Jason and that he may have killed his son-in-law.
911 DISPATCHER: Davidson County 911…
TOM MARTENS: My son in law, uh, got in a fight with my daughter. I intervened and he’s in bad shape. We need help.
911 DISPATCHER: OK. What do you mean he’s in bad shape? He’s hurt?
TOM MARTENS: He’s bleeding all over and I – I may have killed him.
TOM MARTENS: He’s covered in blood
911 DISPATCHER: Alright, listen carefully. I’ll tell you how to do chest compressions. I’ll set a pace for you. … One, two, three, four.
MOLLY CORBETT TO 911 [crying]: I — I’m certified. I just c — can’t think.
911 DISPATCHER: OK, you have to stay calm. Let your training take over. We need — we need to try to do this to help him, OK?
MOLLY CORBETT: OK.
Molly also told police that Jason was “screaming ‘I’m going to kill you.'”
According to a police incident report, the incident was recorded as “an assault” by 911.
The report, written by Deputy CS Dagenhardt, says that at 3.04am on August 2, the deputy advised that he was en route to the scene of the incident.
“At this time the Davidson Co 911 Center advised that the complainant in the call had stated that he had been in an argument with his son-in-law and that he had struck him with a baseball bat.”
When police arrived, Molly was covered in blood.
Tom and Molly were questioned by police. Tom said that he had been spending the night in their home and he had been awakened by a commotion upstairs. He said he grabbed an aluminium baseball bat that he had purchased as a gift for the kids and ran up the stairs.
TOM MARTENS [police interview]: He’s got Molly by the throat like this.
TOM MARTENS [police interview]: He sees me coming and he goes around her throat like this [demonstrates a choke hold]. And I said, “Let her go.” He turned and like, you know … “Let her go. I’m gonna kill her.”
TOM MARTENS [police interview]: I hit him with the baseball bat.
TOM MARTENS [police interview]: He reaches out and he grabs the bat and he’s stronger than I am, and he pushes me down and I was scrambling on the floor. My glasses fall off. Now I’m thinking, “he’s gonna kill me.”
MOLLY CORBETT [police interview]: He tried to hit my dad, I think, but he might have missed. And I, um, I hit him on the head.
She hit Jason with a paving stone that was sitting on her nightstand:
INVESTIGATOR WANDA THOMPSON: You have a brick on your nightstand?
MOLLY CORBETT: Yeah.
INVESTIGATOR WANDA THOMPSON: What was that — what was that for?
MOLLY CORBETT: Um, the kids and I — we were going to paint — paint these bricks and flowers around the mailbox.
TOM MARTENS [police interview]: I get the bat back. … I can’t tell you how many times I hit him. … I can’t tell you that. I mean, it was battle.
If you’ve watched ‘A Deadly American Marriage’ on Netflix, they show photos of the paving stone as well as other crime scene pics and you can see them here also.
After Molly and her father were initially released from questioning, Molly spent $5,500 on having the home industrially cleaned to remove all traces of blood.
She also attempted to have Jason’s body cremated before his family could arrive from Ireland. The North Carolina police and medical examiner’s office prevented her from doing this. Molly only consented to giving Jason’s family access to the body when they agreed to pay all costs for the funeral and for repatriation of Jason’s body to Ireland.
Four days after their father died, the children were interviewed by a social worker. Sarah told the social worker that her dad had anger management issues. Jack said that he had seen Jason physically hurt Molly on previous occasions. Jumping ahead slightly, nine months after they were questioned, Jack renounced what he had said and declared that Molly had coached him on what to say.
You can see clips of the childrens’ interviews in the Netflix special and an expert does say they use vocabulary that is not typical of children of their age.
According to the Independent, Molly arranged a memorial service for Jason in North Carolina and hired security to ensure that none of Jason’s Irish family were able to attend.
A few days after Jason died, Molly filed for custody of Jack (10) and Sarah (8). Jason had created a will in 2007 and had named his sister Tracey and her husband as the guardians of the children. He never altered the will after he married Molly, and as we mentioned, he had never let her adopt them. Jason’s family challenged the custody filing, and on 20 August 2015, custody was formally awarded to Tracey. She took Jack and Sarah back to Ireland.
After the children left the US, Molly would continually post photos of them on Facebook and would beg them to get in touch with her. Jason’s family sent her a cease and desist letter and told Molly to stop posting photos of the children on social media.
During the investigation, it was discovered that Jason had been planning to return with the children to Ireland permanently on 21 August 2015. He had made preparations to transfer $60,000 to his Irish bank account in preparation. It was also discovered that Molly had removed large amounts of money from joint accounts after Jason died.
On 5 January 2016, Molly and Thomas were charged with second degree murder and voluntary manslaughter in relation to Jason’s death, after unsealed indictments revealed that a grand jury had determined that sufficient probable cause had been established.
The court ordered both of them to turn in their passports and also ordered that they were not to attempt to contact Jason’s children in Ireland. They were released on a bail bond of $200,000 and awaited their trials.
The first trial began on 17 July 2017. Both Molly and Thomas pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder charge and said they both acted in self defense.
During the trial we learned that Jason’s injuries were so severe, the medical examiner was unable to determine how many times he had been struck. When photos of Jason’s injuries were shown to the jury, one person became physically ill and had to leave the room.
It was also revealed that he had Trazodone in his system. He had never been prescribed that drug, but Molly had been issued with a prescription for it, three days before his murder.
Jason was found naked and covered in blood. The DA testified that neither Molly nor her father had injuries or signs of trauma.
Corporal Clayton Dagenhardt, who was the first officer to arrive at the house, described to the jury how blood was splattered on the walls, floor, bed, hallway and bedroom.
Paramedics who arrived on the scene also testified. Amanda Hackworth said that she noticed that Jason’s skin felt remarkably cool. She said his lack of body temperature was ‘alarming’ and that she spoke with officers at the scene about how long the Marten’s waited before calling 911. She was informed by officers that Molly and her father claimed to have phoned for help as soon as Jason was injured.
Crime scene examiner Lieutenant Frank Young spoke to the court and said that when he arrived at the home, he was told that Molly said Jason had strangled her. He photographed Molly to record any injuries and he could not find evidence of any. He said he had to tell Molly to stop rubbing and tugging at her neck while he took the photos.
Another police officer, David Dillard, said that Molly continually rubbed her neck in a ‘scrubbing motion’ while she was in the police car. He also said she was making crying noises but that he did not see any actual tears.
Thomas took the stand in his own defence. He ran through his version of events from that night. He also said that he disliked Jason and had advised Molly to seek a divorce because Jason did not measure up.
Molly exercised her right to silence and declined to speak in court.
The DA alleged that Molly’s motives for killing Jason included her inheriting the home and contents, as well as a $600k life insurance policy. She also believed she would get custody of the children.
On 9 August 2017, after deliberating for less than four hours, Thomas and Molly were unanimously found guilty of the second-degree murder of Jason.
Both were then sentenced to a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of 25 years in prison, as per the prosecution’s recommendation.
A victim impact statement written by Jack (who was 13 at the time) was read out to the court by D.A. Martin on his behalf. Jack wrote that losing his father just nine years after the death of his mother was incredibly difficult, adding that his Dad was always there for him as a child but would now never see him grow up.
Jack addressed Molly directly in his statement. He said she was not a part of their family and that she would never be again.
Jack said that she would forever be remembered as a murderer who killed her husband and his father for no reason. Molly was said to have wailed uncontrollably in anguish as Jack’s statement was read out, and many of the jury were reportedly reduced to tears also.
On 12 March 2021, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that Molly and Thomas were due a new trial. This happened after the appeals court quashed their convictions on the grounds that statements made by Jason’s children were wrongly excluded from being used by defence lawyers during their original trial in 2017.
In response, Jack and Sarah expressed willingness to testify against the Martens in the event their previous statements would be relied on by the defence legal teams.
On 30 October 2023, Molly and Thomas both took plea bargains to charges of class D manslaughter, in return for the district attorney agreeing to drop murder charges against them.
In November 2023, Molly pled no contest to a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter, while Thomas pled guilty to the same charge, and on 9 November 2023 both were sentenced to between 51 and 74 months in prison. Due to time already served, it was expected both defendants would only serve an additional seven months in prison before being eligible for release.
At the Martens’ re-sentencing, Jack and Sarah who were 19 and 17 by that time were in court to deliver their victim impact statements in person.
Sarah described how she had endured years of therapy due to the fact her statements as a young child had been twisted and then used to help Molly and Thomas escape punishment. Sarah said that Molly had devastated their whole family.
Sarah also asserted that Molly had shown no remorse for killing her father. Sarah said that Molly had removed her wedding ring almost immediately after Jason died. She also told Sarah to stop crying and ‘get over it’, days after his death.
Jack asked that the judge not be fuled by Molly and said that she was a “monster” who had abused him and weaponized his earlier statements in an effort to get away with killing his father.
As the children read out their statements, Molly sobbed loudly and eventually laid her face down on the table in front of her.
On 6 June 2024, Molly and Thomas were released from prison after completing their sentences for voluntary manslaughter. Both were to be subjected to one year of post-release supervision, which was reported to be served in Tennessee.
DISCUSSION POINTS
- In the show, there is a lot of focus on the idea that Jason killed Mags and that she did not die from an asthma attack. Some experts who were interviewed talked about how her symptoms could have been explained as happening after strangulation. Mags’ sister and Jason’s children strongly dispute that he killed Mags.
- Another large part of the documentary includes recordings from devices that Molly set up in an effort to prove Jason was abusive. One recording in the show outlined an argument about food between the two. Why was there no recording of him being abusive on the night of the murder?
SOURCE LIST
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Jason_Corbett
https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/a-deadly-american-marriage-release-date-news
https://www.limerickleader.ie/news/local-news/264496/the-real-jason-corbett-a-true-limerickman.html