Irish Daily Mail

‘SHE KILLED HIM WITH THE BRICK ...HE KILLED HIM WITH THE BAT’

Shocked jurors recoil as prosecutor slams bat on table and says:

- By Catherine Fegan From North Carolina

JURORS recoiled in shock yesterday as a prosecutor smashed the baseball bat used to kill Jason Corbett against a table.

‘What kind of force does it take to crush a man’s skull?’ Alan Martin asked them.

‘It takes “I hate you” force,’ he said, striking the bat loudly. Mr Martin made his dramatic re-enactment during a powerful closing speech, before the jury in the case retired to consider their verdict.

During his speech, Mr Martin showed one photo of Mr Corbett taken before his death and one of his bloodied body afterwards.

‘This is how they left him,’ he said, and pointing at Molly Martens added: ‘She killed him with the brick.’ He then pointed at her father Tom and said: ‘He killed him with the baseball bat.’

The lawyer said he was demonstrat­ing the ‘excessive force’ used to kill the Limerick father-of-two in his US family home. Molly Martens, 34, and her father Tom, 66, deny the second-degree murder of Mr Corbett, 39. They say they were acting in self-defence.

Earlier, Mr Martin said the

defence had said Ms Martens was ‘not afraid of the evidence’ but he said she should be. ‘If she isn’t afraid of the evidence and isn’t afraid of your verdict then she hasn’t been paying attention,’ he added.

Evidence had shown, he said, that Mr Corbett had received at least ten blows to the head. In two areas there were multiple blows and an expert witness wasn’t able to say exactly how many.

At least one blow was delivered after he had died.

Using the bat to demonstrat­e force, Mr Martin struck it violently off the table. ‘What kind of force does it take to split flesh all the way to the skull?’ he asked jurors.

He then hit the table with the bat repeatedly, with increasing force each time. Gasps were audible in the public gallery as the sound of the bat clashing with the table rang out in court.

He said that the force used had ‘ripped the flesh off the bone’.

And he said scalp tissue had been found embedded in the brick recovered from the scene, rather than hair, meaning it was used to strike Jason Corbett.

The DNA of both belonged to Jason Corbett. Molly Martens, he said, had ‘little bits of Jason’ all over her pyjamas in the form of human tissue stains that had been examined by experts. ‘That puts her right in the thick of it,’ he said.

Throughout the struggle, which was described as a ‘fight for her life’, a delicate bracelet, on one of her wrists, remained totally intact.

The only evidence of strangulat­ion was her saying to a paramedic that her throat was sore.

‘In some houses that story might get a first grader out of school, but it will not get Molly off murder,’ said Mr Martin. He added that she said in a statement that ‘she couldn’t remember’ if her father had said anything when he came into the room, but this was not credible.

Tom Martens had said he repeatedly told Jason to ‘let his daughter go’. And the prosecutor reminded jurors that she had been prescribed Trazodone three days before the killing and had Mojitos that night, which Jason Corbett had drank.

He said most of Tom Martens’ testimony on Friday was simply not credible, and he accused Mr Martens of delaying a call he made to 911 and faking CPR.

He said in Tom Martens’ mind, Jason Corbett was ‘beneath him’ and that he was the ‘greater’ person. He didn’t think Jason was good enough for his daughter and he had told her to get a divorce. This establishe­d malice. And malice, in Molly’s case, sounded like, ‘I want a divorce but I want his kids’, he said.

Mr Martin said that from the outset, Tom Martens had endeavoure­d to ‘outfox’ investigat­ors, and he had carefully scripted and rehearsed his testimony to match the forensic evidence from the scene. His FBI training and experience of crimescene investigat­ions had equipped him with the skills to do so.

Mr Martin said Tom Martens had expertly organised his testimony to ensure Mollly was protected, to protect himself as much as he could from a murder charge, and if necessary, be as vague as he could or ‘leave it out’, so his answers would match the evidence.

He said that the only truth to be found in Mr Martens’ testimony was the level of disdain he had for Jason Corbett.

And Mr Martin said Mr Martens’ wife Sharon, who was also present in the house on the night of the killing, had ‘vanished off the face of the earth’ in her husband’s testimony. He alleged she had been strategica­lly left out of the story because getting Molly and himself to stick to the same version was hard enough.

‘One person keeping a story straight that isn’t the truth is awfully tough’, he said. ‘Two people is even harder... Three people is damn near impossible. So we gotta get Sharon out of the picture. We gotta go from three to two.’

Mr Martin argued that the delay in time that it took for Mr Martens to call 911 was because he was downstairs telling his wife that she ‘didn’t see or hear anything’.

So effective were his instructio­ns that when an officer opened the door to the downstairs basement, where Sharon was allegedly sleeping, she said, ‘Is everything okay?’

‘Does anyone know a grandmothe­r on the planet who would respond in that way?’ asked Mr Martin. He said it was incredulou­s to believe that with all the banging, thumping and fighting upstairs Sharon Martens heard nothing.

‘The super spy is trying to outwit you,’ he said of Tom Martens.

In concluding, Mr Martin said Jason Corbett did not have to die.

‘His children did not have to become orphans,’ he said, standing over Molly Martens. ‘He didn’t have to die that brutal and savage death at the hands of the woman he came to America for.

‘He didn’t have to die at the hands of his father-in-law. His kids didn’t have to go back to Ireland without their daddy. You have a duty to deliver a verdict that says Jason didn’t have to die. Justice for Jason.’

Earlier, during closing arguments for the defence, Jones Byrd, for Tom Martens, said Mr Martens’ testimony ‘corroborat­ed the evidence’. He argued that bloodspatt­er patterns, as detailed by expert witness Stuart James, showed things played out in the room exactly as Mr Martens said.

‘There was no impact spatter in the hallway,’ he said. That is consistent with what Mr Martens said. There is a transfer stain on Mr Martens’ shirt, on the upper part of the chest. This is consistent with Jason Corbett catching that bat and pushing him across the room.’ He said that all the physical evidence in the case did not refute what Mr Martens had said.

With reference to a vacuum cleaner that the prosecutio­n alleged was moved, Mr Byrd said Jason struck it as he fell.

He added, if the vacuum cleaner was ‘so important’ why hadn’t it been brought into court?

Mr Byrd said nothing had been heard from the two detectives who led the case and jurors should ask what the state wasn’t telling them. He said the blood-spatter expert who testified for the state had ‘not bothered to go to the house’ and that no-one had taken pictures of Mr Martens at the scene.

Mr Byrd’s colleague David Freedman said during his closing argument that Tom Martens had spent his life protecting the country and on August 2 he had been protecting his only daughter.

‘Tom Martens woke from a dream to a nightmare,’ he said.

He had no idea what was about

‘That puts her right in the thick of it’ ‘Super spy is trying to outwit you’

 ??  ?? Accused: Molly and Tom Martens at court yesterday
Accused: Molly and Tom Martens at court yesterday
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