Irish Daily Mail

Will Jason get justice?

As Molly Martens prepares to stand trial, the tragic story of love, loss... and a father’s horrific death

- by Catherine Fegan CHIEF CORRESPOND­ENT IN NORTH CAROLINA

IT HAS been two years since Limerick father-oftwo Jason Corbett was found bludgeoned to death in the master bedroom of his luxury North Carolina home. His wife, pretty, all-American girl Molly Martens and her father Tom, a former FBI officer, were later charged in relation to his brutal killing.

Since then, there has been a protracted battle for custody of Jason’s two children from a previous marriage, allegation­s of domestic abuse, and the explosive publicatio­n of evidence that points to bitter acrimony in the marriage.

The prosecutio­n claim Jason wanted to come home to Ireland with his children and was preparing to leave his wife. Her side, on the other hand, say she is the victim. Her life was in danger, they say, and her father stepped in to protect her.

This week, in a trial that looks set to grip the nation, an American jury will weigh up the evidence on both sides and ultimately decide who is telling the truth...

JASON & MAGS – A LOVE STORY

JASON Corbett had always been a hopeless romantic. When his close friend Lynn Shanahan introduced him to Mags Fitzpatric­k at a birthday party, he was immediatel­y smitten. From then on they were inseparabl­e.

‘That was it,’ Lynn told the Mail. ‘He just followed her around all night. He was absolutely besotted with her. He knew what he wanted. There were bunches of flowers arriving to the crèche and he would just pull up and take her out for lunch. And she would be saying, “He can’t be just turning up and thinking I’m going to drop everything and go.” But he wooed her and swept her off her feet.’

It was the mid-1990s, shortly after Lynn and Mags had opened a crèche together in a converted house in Beverley Close, Raheen, Co. Limerick. Lynn and Jason had met many years before, when they attended the same primary school, Our Lady Queen of Peace in Janesboro, which was just metres from the Corbett family home. As they moved into their 20s, Lynn remembers Jason as the ‘fun-loving’ member of the group, who everyone ‘loved to see coming through the door’.

In Mags he had found a kindred spirit.

‘They were crazy about each other,’ recalled Lynn. ‘He had a fabulous voice and he sang at occasions, always The Dance by Garth Brooks. He would sing in front of everyone and everyone knew he was singing to her.

‘No matter where she was in the pub, she would come up when he was finished and give him a kiss before going off back with the girls.’

The couple were later married in the Star of the Sea Church in Quilty, followed by a reception in the Bellbridge Hotel at Spanish Point. Even in the hectic run-up to the wedding, Jason’s romantic gestures continued.

‘He was unreal,’ said Lynn. ‘When they got married he was down in Spanish Point for three nights before it. For each night before they got married he left her a letter to open and read.’

Children quickly followed. Their first-born, Jack, was followed almost two years later by a daughter, Sarah.

‘When the kids came along they were just so happy, so proud,’ Mags’ sister Catherine told the Mail. ‘I’m glad to have been living with them in their family home at the time and that I got to see all of that.’

Tragically, in the early hours of November 23, 2006, their blissful future together was brutally cut short.

‘I was there in the house that night when Mags passed away,’ said Catherine. ‘Mags had asthma all her life. It’s in the family, I have two brothers with it as well. It wasn’t bad, not anything that you would have been worried about.

‘That night, she gave out to the two of us because neither of us emptied the dishwasher. At 2.05am Jason knocked on my door and said he needed to bring Mags to hospital, that she was having a bit of an attack.

‘I knew it was something different, something serious. I knew there was something wrong when she got into the car in her pyjamas because she wouldn’t have gone anywhere without getting herself organised.

‘They met the ambulance halfway and he tried to revive her in the car. He did everything. He was devastated, totally, totally heartbroke­n. We all were.’

A widower at just 30, Jason Corbett was left with a two-year-old son and a 12-week-old daughter.

‘He was absolutely brokenhear­ted,’ said Catherine. ‘He lost the love of his life.’

A YOUNG MODEL’S LIFE IN TURMOIL

MEANWHILE, across the Atlantic, a pretty young blonde was seeing her life falling apart. Molly Martens had been engaged to Keith Maginn for a year, but her mental health issues were beginning to take a toll on the relationsh­ip.

In an exclusive interview with the Irish Daily Mail last year, Keith spoke for the first time about his ‘explosive’ relationsh­ip with the woman charged with Jason’s murder.

The 37-year-old, who met Molly online and lived with her in a condominiu­m owned by her parents, said her father, who is also charged with murdering father-of-two Jason, was aware of her many problems.

He told the Mail that Molly was taking 16 prescripti­on drugs a day — with another ten to be used ‘as needed’. She often misled him, fabricatin­g and embellishi­ng so often that he never knew if she was telling the truth or not.

When she left to travel to Ireland, he says he ‘thought she would be gone for a week’. He also revealed she would spend days crying in bed as a result of her illness, culminatin­g in a four-day stay at a psychiatri­c facility. Molly also became pregnant and was ‘heartbroke­n’ when she had an early miscarriag­e.

Keith, from Cinncinati in Ohio, also gave an extraordin­ary new insight into Molly and her father Thomas.

He said: ‘The psych ward in Atlanta was a last-ditch attempt to try and get her medication­s right. It was to try to get her off all the terrible stuff she was on and get her on the one or two things that could make her stable.’

He added: ‘It was very expensive and her parents paid for it. It has been going on her whole life. Her parents are well aware of the many doctors, the medication­s she was

taking. They knew about it all.’

His account also gave some insight into her state of mind when she first came to Ireland and met Jason.

‘After the first month or two that I was with her she was never good [mentally] again, that I saw,’ he said. ‘She was struggling a lot until she left for Ireland. She was definitely still unstable when she left and I seriously doubt she got cured as soon as she set foot on Irish soil.’

Keith said he was left so traumatise­d by the relationsh­ip that he sought solace in writing and wrote a self-help book entitled, Turning This Thing Around, outlining his relationsh­ip with the former model.

In it, he claims that Molly, whom he calls Mary in the book, would spend days crying in bed as a result of her illness, culminatin­g in the stay at the psychiatri­c facility to try to ‘stabilise’ her condition.

A month later she boarded a flight to Ireland after replying to Jason’s advert for a nanny to look after his two children.

Keith said he knew nothing of the claims against Molly and her father in relation to Jason’s death until he was sent an email from a detective investigat­ing the killing.

‘The detective said he understood that I was once in a relationsh­ip with Molly and that I had written a book about it,’ he said. ‘He said she was a person of interest in a crime and he would like to talk to me as soon as possible. I was shocked. I thought, oh my God, what is going on?’

In his book, and in his interview, Keith claimed that his ex-fiancée suffered from bipolar disorder during their relationsh­ip.

‘She was taking some serious drugs,’ he said. ‘She took so many things. They were prescribed — it wasn’t like she was doing it on her own. She had a tremendous amount of stuff on her plate, but I couldn’t believe that doctors just let her keep taking all these medication­s without finding out what else she was on because they interacted dangerousl­y and unpredicta­bly.’

The couple, who met in 2007, were together for almost a year. He says they later became engaged ‘to make her happy’ and ‘she ended up getting pregnant’.

‘I was terrified because I knew how many medication­s she was on. High-powered medication­s that would hurt a horse, let alone an unborn child. I was terrified.’

Molly ended up suffering a miscarriag­e.

Keith said he was compelled to speak out about his experience with Molly after she claimed in a court hearing, for custody of Jason’s children, that her mental health issues were historic. During a guardiansh­ip hearing in August 2015, Molly claimed that the last time she saw anyone for bipolar depression was ‘around age 17’.

She said that ‘probably the last time I saw anyone for depression was eight or nine years ago’, and that she hadn’t been prescribed medication in ‘over eight years’.

Keith said: ‘She told me she was bipolar early in our relationsh­ip, which was in 2007. She was taking all kinds of medication­s and seeing a therapist. I can’t say with 100% certainty what she was taking, but I recall thinking that some of them were very serious, potent medication­s.

‘She went to the rehabilita­tion centre in Atlanta to try to get her medication­s under control near the end of our relationsh­ip and shortly before she went to Ireland.’

THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE

MOLLY was living in her hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, when she responded to Jason Corbett’s advert for someone to look after his children, Jack and Sarah, following Mags’ death.

After several phone calls and emails, she uprooted her life and made her way to Limerick to look after Sarah and Jack. In an interview with the Mail, Lynn Shanahan recalled her first impression­s of the blonde American.

‘If you got her to speak to you, she was very intense,’ she said. ‘Other than that, she tried not to converse. It was very hard to engage her.

‘Anything that had to do with the children I would go through Jason. Socially or in the house she wouldn’t involve herself in the conversati­on. We are talkers, you know, so it was hard. She didn’t involve herself, she made a point of staying out of conversati­ons.’

Some time after her arrival in Ireland, a relationsh­ip developed between Molly and Jason. He eventually confided in Lynn that her role in his life had taken on a new meaning.

‘He was almost upset and embarrasse­d because it had been so soon, in his eyes, after Mags,’ she said. ‘He was definitely still grieving at that point.

‘He said he was just so lonely and so sad, and she offered comfort. He was upset about it as well, it was too overwhelmi­ng for him and he couldn’t straighten his feelings in his head.

‘We wanted it to succeed, we wanted him to be happy, but we were worried because we could see how upset he was as well. He wanted it to be good, but you could tell he was upset by how the relationsh­ip was progressin­g. He was nearly afraid of it because he didn’t want to be disrespect­ful to Mags and of course his whole heart wasn’t in it. He wasn’t emotionall­y ready at all.

‘He said that he wished he could have seen what their true feelings were separately before she met the kids, but it was muddled because she was in the wife role.

‘He couldn’t settle... He was home every three months for the first year’

‘She was sitting at the kitchen table when they got home, she was caring for the children, she was minding them when they were sick. He kind of felt like the pace was way too fast, but he went with it.’

Despite their reservatio­ns, Jason’s friends and family supported him in his new relationsh­ip. Lynn and her husband Tim socialised with Molly and Jason in a bid to get to know her better.

‘Molly was always that bit protected and stand-offish,’ said Lynn. ‘We never got to know about her friends, there was never any talk about that. In terms of her life and history, we learnt very little.

‘I said to Jason, “She’s been here so long, almost four years, and not one friend has visited. Not one friend in four years. Not one.”’

During a night out with friends some time later, Jason announced that he and Molly were engaged.

‘We had arranged a big night out,’ said Lynn. ‘There was a whole gang of us and we were to meet Molly and Jason later. He told none of us what he was doing and they went for dinner. He came after that and said they were engaged. We were all shocked. I said to him, “God Jason I wasn’t expecting this,” and he said, “Don’t talk to me about it now.”

‘Later he said that he felt really guilty about it for Mags and her family. He said that Molly said she wanted validation. She wanted to be seen as his partner and not the nanny.

‘She didn’t want people viewing her in that role and that she felt she was living in Mags’s shadow. It was awkward there that night. We were like, “Is this what you want?”

‘We told him we wanted him to be happy. I said to him, “You are young, you have babies, we don’t expect you to be a widower for the rest of your life.”’

According to Lynn, soon after the engagement Molly told Jason that she was homesick and wanted to return to the US. She also said problems with her visa meant she could no longer stay in Ireland.

‘Jason’s decision to leave Ireland with the kids was a huge thing,’ she said. ‘He felt that the choice was to move to America with her or never see her again. His huge fear was that he would split the family again and he didn’t want to do that to the kids.

‘He was devastated leaving here. Up to the point where he was leaving, he had changed his mind so many times. He struggled with it a lot and then he said, “Look I’ll give it a shot, I can always come back.”’

A WEDDING... AND A NEW LIFE IN AMERICA

ON a sunny evening on June 4, 2011, in Knoxville on the banks of the river Tennessee, Jason married Molly Martens. The venue was Bleak House, a historical confederat­e memorial hall. Molly was given away by her father Thomas, a retired FBI agent. In the ceremony in Bleak House’s extensive gardens, Jason’s two children played an integral part in proceeding­s. Jack, then aged six, was the ring bearer, while Sarah, then four, was a flower girl.

‘I didn’t go to the wedding,’ recalled Lynn Shanahan. ‘I didn’t really want to go. Jason was Mags’s husband and I didn’t really feel like I should be there. I then felt guilty for not going but when it was over, I was glad I didn’t. But I was supportive of him. In 2012, I went over to see where they lived and where they worked, to try to get a feel for them as a family over there. I can’t really talk about that trip [for legal reasons]. Everything had changed.’

The move saw Jason buy a luxury house in the sought-after Meadowland­s area of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The developmen­t boasts 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. The Corbetts’ 2,545-sq-ft house, set on 0.58 acres of land, was paid for in cash. Its estimated value is $350,000 (€312,000).

Jason’s employer Chesapeake had arranged to transfer him to its Lexington plant in North Carolina, where he took up a role as plant manager.

The couple had two cars — Molly drove a BMW SUV, while Jason opted for a more practical Sedan. They quickly adapted to community life.

Jason joined the local golf club and Molly took up a role as a swimming coach. While the men on the street gravitated towards him for his sociable spirit, the women marvelled at Molly’s ability to bake cakes and keep a supermodel figure.

She was athletic and wellgroome­d. He was gregarious and welcoming. They appeared to have it all.

But despite the trappings of his new southern lifestyle, Jason longed for home.

‘He couldn’t settle,’ said Lynn. ‘He was home every three months for the first year. He had a work meeting arranged every three months, always a meeting in London, so he could pop over here. He would also come back every July or August with the kids. Then he would be back at Christmas or Tracey would go over to him.

‘He had always intended coming home. He said the best time to move the kids would be before secondary school, or high school as they call it over there. That was the window, before they got too old. I know he missed home and was struggling with that. He had always said to me he would definitely be home.’

Little did any of them realise that Jason would never be home again...

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 ??  ?? Ill-fated: Molly Martens and Jason Corbett on their wedding day Accused: Molly Martens and, left, former FBI agent father Tom
Ill-fated: Molly Martens and Jason Corbett on their wedding day Accused: Molly Martens and, left, former FBI agent father Tom
 ??  ?? Kindred spirits: Jason and his wife Mags on their wedding day
Kindred spirits: Jason and his wife Mags on their wedding day
 ??  ?? Engagement: Molly with first fiancé Keith Maginn
Engagement: Molly with first fiancé Keith Maginn

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