The agonising ordeal faced by Jason’s grieving family to bring children home
Molly caused havoc even after the children returned to Ireland by bombarding social media… and even tried to hire a plane to fly messages over school
TRACEY Lynch was on day four of a two-week family holiday in Saint-Jean-deMonts, France, when a text message beeped into her phone. The message, one she will never forget reading, was as blunt as it was cold. Her brother was dead, her sister-in-law Molly informed her, providing little further detail.
She instinctively tried to call Molly but could not get through or there was no answer. Tracey flew from France to Limerick, met her sister and best friend and the three flew onwards to North Carolina.
Inside Tracey’s hand luggage was a document that would prove crucial in the coming months – Jason’s will. In 2007, a year after his first wife tragically died, Jason Corbett made a will making Tracey, and her husband, David, legal guardians of his children Jack and Sarah, should anything happen to him. He did not change the will after he met Molly Martens.
While en route to the US, Tracey and her companions were notified that arrangements were being made for Jason’s cremation. When she found out where it was due to take place, the venue was changed. Eventually, Tracey had to hire a lawyer to stop the cremation from going ahead.
By the time they reached North Carolina, Tracey was not allowed
Had to hire lawyer to stop cremation
to entry her brother’s house at Panther Creek Court and she also struggled for days for permission to see her brother’s remains.
Despite all of this, the main concern was for the children, Jack and Sarah. Having lost their mother, who died of an asthma attack when they were both under the age of two, now their beloved father was gone, too.
Since Jason’s death, they had been with their stepmother, Molly.
Before she got to the US, two days after Jason’s death, Tracey got to speak to Jack on the phone. According to court documents, Molly Martens later claimed that Tracey told the boy that she was flying out to the US for him and Sarah. Molly filed for custody of the two children by 9.51am the next day, marking the beginning of a string of custody battles that dragged on for over a year.
Following Jason’s death, his family were forced to suspend their grief for almost three weeks while the children’s guardians – their aunt and uncle, Tracey and David Lynch – on one side and stepmother, Molly Martens, on the other, fought for custody.
In the middle of this turmoil, on August 11, Jason Corbett’s body was repatriated to Ireland. But his parents, Rita and John, and siblings refused to lay him to rest in the absence of Jack and Sarah.
Eventually, Brian Shipwash, the clerk of the Davidson County Court, indicated in a private hearing that he was siding with the Lynches. That night, social services took the children from Molly Martens.
Mr Shipwash determined that after careful thought and prayer, and considering Jason’s will, he had decided it was in the children’s best interests to be with the Lynches. Molly was allowed to have an hour with the children before they were handed over to Tracey and David Lynch. When Tracey texted delighted friends back in Ireland from her hotel late on the Tuesday night, the children were tucked up beside her.
There was one more hurdle to come. Two days later another court had considered Molly’s claim for custody and ruled against her. The guardianship order stipulated that Jack and Sarah could leave the US once that custody hearing was over. Less than an hour later, Ms Martens filed a notice of appeal. Her appeal included a motion that the children should not be allowed to leave the US before the appeal was heard, as it would become impossible for her to enforce any orders of the court once the children were out of the country.
It didn’t work. By 4pm that afternoon, they were on a plane to Washington, on the first leg of a long and circuitous journey home.
They landed in Limerick on August 22, following an exhausting 39 hours by train and planes, and a trail of hefty legal and travel bills in their wake.
Jason’s body was finally laid to rest later that week. His children were comforted by family members as they said their goodbyes at a service in Our Lady of Peace Church in Limerick.
But despite Jason being laid to rest and his children finally back in Ireland, the family’s battles were far from over. According to her lawyer David Freedman, Molly Martens ‘would do everything appropriate she can to be reunited with her children’.
Outside of what was ‘appropriate’, Molly went further.
Through her own Facebook profile, she bombarded the social media platform with desperate pleas for contact with Jack and Sarah. She posted hundreds of photos of both children, with her mobile phone number and email address plastered all over the place for the children to reach her at.
She tried to take out a full-page advert in a Limerick newspaper and even tried to hire a light aircraft to fly messages over the children’s new school.
Even with thousands of miles between them, Molly Martens continued to torment the Corbett family.
She was asked to desist as part of a court order. Through the same US courts, she continued her battle. In a two-page notice of appeal on the guardianship issue, she argued that ‘the guardianship hearing was inappropriately terminated before the close of evidence’.
She added that Mr Shipwash had, in August 2015, announced his
Posted hundreds of photos of children
intention to appoint a guardian ad litem (a guardian appointed by a court to represent a child’s best interests) to protect the interests of both children. He had also discussed the logistics for both children to be interviewed and advised counsel for both sides to prepare closing statements.
Molly contended there were ‘multiple errors of law’ that occurred to prejudice her.
However, in an appeal against the decision, heard in a North Carolina Superior Court in December 2015, this was denied. Upholding an earlier decision, Superior Court judge Ted Royster ruled that District Court judge April Wood was cor-
Tried to get children to testify
rect in ruling that Brian Shipwash, clerk of Superior Court, was within his jurisdiction to grant guardianship to David and Tracey Lynch.
Molly then took a case to the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Again, the decision to give custody of Jason’s children to their aunt and uncle in Ireland was upheld. In December 2016 the ruling by the appeal court brought an end to Molly’s yearlong battle for custody.
Against this background, the Corbett family, led by Tracey and David, began a long and traumatic transatlantic battle for justice for Jason’s brutal killing.
They knew Jason had been savagely beaten and that detectives did not believe his attackers had acted in self-defence.
Meanwhile, Molly Martens’s cousin Amanda Mui, originally from Naples, Italy, but living in Seminole, Florida, posted a message on Facebook making a string of extraordinary allegations.
She wrote: ‘Please everyone who can, think of and pray for my cousin Molly Martens Corbett. After surviving years of emotional and physical abuse from her late husband, she’s now fighting to retain custody of the children she’s raised for years now. Should two children lose the only parent they have left? Should two children be separated from the only real mother they’ve ever had?’ she added.
‘Molly is a wonderful mother; it’s the love she has for her kids that has given her the strength to survive the abuse her late husband put her through. Pray that the courts acknowledge her as the children’s mother and guardian,’ Ms Mui wrote.
No evidence had emerged of Molly ever having made any allegation of domestic violence against her husband and there were no police records or hospital records to support any such claim.
In interviews, Jason’s brother John said efforts were being made to degrade his brother’s character. He said: ‘He was a gentle giant. He was 6ft 2in, 18 stone, but he was a big teddy bear and he wouldn’t hurt a fly. They are trying to degrade my brother’s character.’
Molly and her father were eventually charged in January 2016.
Conscious of the legal process that was under way, the Corbett family maintained a steely silence. Their focus, as it always had been, was on keeping things as normal as possible for Jack and Sarah.
Tracey and David had been receiving updates from the Sheriff’s Office in Davidson County. They were not familiar with the US investigation and trial process and the staff in the sheriff’s office provided the necessary support.
In pretrial hearings, the defence sought to use this to their advantage. They accused the Sheriff’s office of having an ‘improper’ relationship with the Corbett family and accused the agency of acting prejudicially.
Soon the tables would begin to turn. As the trial entered its second week Tracey’s husband David filed a wrongful death suit against Molly and her father Tom Martens.
Against this backdrop, Molly was attempting to summon Jack and Sarah to North Carolina to give evidence in her defence.
The Corbett family resisted in a bid to shield Jason’s two children from the trauma of a trial.
In court, Judge David Lee said that it was a jurisdictional issue and that the children could not be subpoenaed because they were in another country.
Molly’s legal team had tried to get statements made by both Jack and Sarah to specialist care workers entered as evidence in the trial.
As the weeks wore on, the Corbett family were joined in court by more of Jason’s friends who had travelled, at their own expense, from Limerick.
During the trial, they had to listen to Jason being referred to as ‘the alleged victim’ by the defence.
They watched, their faces anguished, as bloodied pictures of his body were displayed in court.
The only time they weren’t present in court was when the defence gave its closing arguments. Sending a strong message to jurors, they left the row where they had been sitting for four weeks.
Soon they will be home in Limerick, thousands of miles away from the evil that has consumed their lives for more than two years.
They will never know the whole truth about what happened to Jason in the early hours of August 2, 2015, but they return home to his two children in the knowledge that their brave battle for justice has finally come to an end.
Moreover, they can hopefully move forward in the knowledge that they carried out Jason’s most heartfelt wish – that his children be raised by their extended family in Ireland, a family that includes not just their father’s siblings, but their late mother’s family, too.