OUR ANGUISH AT MOLLY RETRIAL
THE family of murdered Jason Corbett have told how they are ‘distraught’ at the news his wife Molly Martens will get a retrial for his brutal killing.
They were surprised at the North Carolina Supreme Court decision, as Martens and her father Tom admitted killing the father of two young children but expressed no remorse.
Yet they both could walk free despite being found guilty for the horrific murder six years ago.
Tracey Corbett Lynch and her husband David Lynch, the guardians of Jason’s children, Jack and Sarah, last night expressed their horror at Martens’s ‘unrelenting smear campaign’ against Jason.
‘We are so disappointed and distraught that the Supreme Court of North Carolina has decided to grant a retrial to Tom and Molly Martens who admitted killing our
beloved Jason – a father, a brother, a son and a loyal friend – who is dearly missed by all who knew and loved him. Neither of the convicted defendants has ever expressed remorse for Jason’s killing,’ they said.
The Martens are now likely to apply for bail in preparation for the appeal. Both are serving sentences of 20 to 25 years in North Carolina prisons.
Jason’s family said Molly and Tom had put Jason’s orphaned children, then aged eight and ten, and Jason’s parents, siblings and friends, ‘through the horrific ordeal of the first trial, all the while waging a vicious and unrelenting smear campaign in
‘Heinous, atrocious and cruel’ crime
the media and in the courtroom.
‘The jury unanimously found them guilty of second-degree murder, concurring with the detectives and EMT [emergency medical technician] workers who found the crime scene to be wholly inconsistent with the defence claims, concocted by Tom Martens, a former FBI agent, and his daughter, Molly, who drugged Jason prior to attack,’ they said.
‘We can only put our faith in God to guide us through the torment of a second trial. We place our trust in the Davidson County Sheriff’s Department and in the District Attorney for North Carolina, both of whom recognised from the outset that Jason was the victim of a cold and calculated murder, designed to give Molly custody of Jason’s children, and the financial benefit of an insurance policy,’ they said.
They also noted that yesterday’s court ruling came by the slimmest of margins, with three judges of the seven strongly opposed to a retrial. ‘Despite our disappointment at this decision, by a 4-3 majority, to grant the Martens a retrial, we retain our faith in the US criminal justice system and our confidence that a jury will once again find the Martens guilty of this ‘heinous, atrocious and cruel’ crime. Our priority is to continue providing love, care, support and protection to Jason’s two wonderful children, whom we are blessed to have as part of our family,’ they said.
The judges yesterday endorsed a state Court of Appeal decision that the Martens had not been allowed to fully argue that they had acted in self-defence.
Molly claimed Jason attacked her, and her father came rushing in to the room to defend her. However, forensic evidence clearly showed she was lying and that Jason was lying down from the moment he was attacked. Neither she or her father had any injuries.
They then delayed ringing for an ambulance until they were sure Jason had stopped breathing, the court heard before their murder conviction in 2017.
The North Carolina Supreme Court heard oral arguments for an appeal, last January.
Jason was murdered at his North Carolina home in August 2015 by Tom and Molly, who married Jason in 2011. She had been working in Ireland as his nanny after his first wife died.
Over time, he got a work transfer from Limerick to North Carolina.
Evidence during their 2017 trial showed that Jason and Molly’s marriage was falling apart at the time of his murder. She and her father beat Jason to death with a metal baseball bat and a concrete paving brick on the night of August 2, 2015. Blood-splatter evidence showed they beat him even as he was on the ground. Evidence from an emergency call centre showed that they delayed making a 999 call until they were sure they had killed him.
At the time, Jason had privately told family members that he wanted to leave Molly and take his two children back to Limerick. The North Carolina Supreme Court heard oral evidence from defence lawyers last January that the Davidson County Superior Court trial had restricted the Martins’ right to plead self-defence.
Specifically, Tom Martens was not allowed submit statements by Jason’s children, and what Tom Martens alleges he heard his daughter shouting on the evening of the murder.
They also contested evidence by a blood pattern expert.
The contested statements by Jack and Sarah were given to a North Carolina social services agency, Dragonfly House, which allowed them to speak about the killing in a safe environment.
The original trial judge refused
Beaten while lying on the ground
to admit the children’s statements because they were contradicted by sworn statements they gave weeks later, after they returned to the Corbett family in Ireland. Those statements could form the basis of the appeal. They were given while the children were in Molly’s care immediately after the murder.
Tom Martens’ defence team insisted that ‘cumulative errors’ denied them fair trial.
‘The majority of the [Court of
Appeal] panel held inter alia that the trial court committed prejudicial error in excluding statements made by Jack and Sarah Corbett as they were admissible under the medical diagnosis and residual exceptions to the rule against hearsay.’ Last November Molly was caught in bed with another female prisoner and was cited for refusing to return to her cell. She was temporarily banned from visits as a result. A prison officer found her on top of the other prisoner, according to the prison officer’s written report. When she refused to get
‘Statements by children excluded’
out of the bed and go back to her own cell, the officer called for reinforcements. When other officers arrived, she got out of the bed and returned to her cell under supervision.
The standoff occurred at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women in Raleigh, where she is held. She was banned from receiving prison visits for 30 days for what is her fifth time breaking prison rules in three years. At the time, a wellplaced source at the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, which oversees the state’s prison system, confirmed the details of her latest run-in with prison authorities.