Sorry that I don’t have my children’s DNA, writes Molly Martens
Bizarre message from wife of Irishman beaten to death
TUG- of- l ove stepmother Molly Martens has posted more photos and messages to the two stepchildren she lost custody of last month.
The 32-year-old, who US police regard as a ‘person of interest’ in the investigation into her husband Jason Corbett’s brutal death on August 2, was forced to surrender Jack, ten, and Sarah, eight, two weeks ago.
Now she has posted more messages to the children having previously written about them on Facebook. In one new post, she said: ‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t born with matching DNA to my children.’
The pair are in the guardianship of
‘Please let me say, “I love you”’
their Irish aunt Treacy Lynch and her husband David in Limerick and were flown to the city last week. Their uncle John Corbett has since claimed the children had ‘not once’ asked after their stepmother.
His comments followed numerous online attempts to contact the children by Ms Martens, who has lodged an appeal against a US court’s decision to appoint guardianship to Jason’s sister.
Previously in a series of posts on her Facebook account, Ms Martens filed photographs of a letter which appears to have been written by both of her stepchildren on the day she lost custody of them.
And yesterday afternoon she posted more comments, writing: ‘Jack and Sarah, i t never once crossed my mind not to love you as much because we didn’t share our genetics. I am sorry that others seem to think this trait should be valued above all others.
‘Please let me say, “I love you,” to the children I tucked into bed every night, who called me “mom,” and said, “love you too.” You can have them call me whatever you want, but how could it harm them for me to remind them they are loved by the person who raised and nurtured them every day.’
And in another, she said: ‘ My babies – I could never forget the billion memories that strand together to make the life line we share.
‘There would be no way to fabricate the details of making you breakfasts and lunches and dinners, of buying the perfect band aids (and) making Christmas lists for Santa.’
She also mentioned ‘fixing your hair, helping you arrange your stuffed animals, teaching you how to read, playing memory games, singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’.
Ms Martens also referred to ‘holding you when you had a nightmare, reading our favorite books, baking countless cakes and cookies together, painting, coloring, listen- ing’. And she ended the message by saying: ‘No one can take those things away from us or say they never happened.’
Last week, she posted a letter she says was written by her two stepchildren after she lost custody of them. Her late husband Jason, 39, suffered a fatal head injury in the morning of August 2 at his house near Winston-Salem in North Carolina.
A grand jury is due to decide whether Ms Martens will be charged with his murder. Her father has already admitted hitting Jason with a baseball bat after a row, according to an explosive police report seen by Irish Daily Mail reporter Catherine Fegan. Thomas Martens, a former FBI agent, told 911 emergency operators he had been ‘in an argument’ with his son-in-law and that he had ‘struck him with a baseball bat’, the i ncident i nvestigation r eport reveals.
The alleged admission could be a key factor in the police investigation into the killing of Mr Corbett, who was found bludgeoned to death in an upstairs bedroom of his North Carolina home. His children Jack and Sarah are from a previous mar- riage to his first wife Mags, who died of an asthma attack in 2006.
After his death, the North Carolina Department of Social Services had custody of the children but had left them in the care of Ms Martens.
However, Ms Lynch – who is the CEO of Tait House Community Enterprise in Limerick – flew to America to get guardianship of them as their legal guardian.
Before he died, her brother said in his will that he wanted her and her husband to be guardians of the children if anything happened to him.
He had met Ms Martens when she worked as an au pair in his home in 2009. They married in 2011 and then moved to the US.
Although she did not adopt them, Ms Martens is to fight their guardianship in a battle that could start in six to 12 months’ time and could prove to be a bitter contest.
‘No one can take those things away’