A GENTLE GIANT WHO OUR FAMILY ADORED FROM THE VERY START
Jason Corbett’s sister-in-law dismisses any allegations that suggest he was an abusive partner, saying ‘nothing could be further from the truth’
‘He was a good husband. He was
a good dad’
‘Molly never had to work and he spoiled her’
THERE is a small grave at the back of Castlemungret cemetery in Co. Limerick. On it, a granite headstone with a striking picture of a beaming bride and groom depicts a couple in the thralls of newlywed bliss. The picture, chosen by the couple’s two orphaned children, shows Mags and Jason Corbett, a couple who in death, as in life, remain side by side.
It is here that Jack and Sarah Corbett make visits to their mum and dad. Aged just 11 and nine, they are taken ‘when they ask to go’ and find comfort in the routine. They never leave the graveside without kissing the picture of their late parents. ‘It’s just devastating,’ says Mags’ sister Catherine Fitzpatrick.
‘When you stand at that grave and think about these two young people who had their whole lives ahead of them, about the tragedy that visited them both. They had the perfect family, two young kids and they are gone. Their father used to visit their mother at that grave and now they [the children] are visiting them both.’
Catherine, now 36, was 27 when her older and much-loved sister passed away from an asthma attack. Her family was dealt a further heart-breaking blow in August when Mags’ husband Jason, who relocated to the US with the couple’s two children after his wife’s passing, was killed in his luxury home in North Carolina. He had remarried in 2011 and his second wife, Molly Martens, and her father, Tom, have been charged with his murder.
In recent days, as it emerged that Molly and her father will claim selfdefence, allegations that he was an abusive partner look set to form the thrust of an attack on his character.
According to both defendants, the 39-year-old Limerick man was ‘choking’ his second wife on the night he died. He said he was going to kill her, alleges Tom Martens.
For Catherine, the claims are seen as a shocking attack on the brother-in-law she loved. She lived with her sister and Jason on two separate occasions during their relationship — for six months before they were married, and for nine months prior to Mags’ death. Behind the closed quarters of their family home, not once did she witness any abuse, physical or verbal.
‘I never worried about my sister when she was with Jason,’ she says adamantly. ‘He never raised his voice, never raised his hand. Never, ever. Even if it was something that happened when I wasn’t there, Mags would have told me.
‘It would never have been part of their life. It never came on the radar. He was a doting husband and father and he gave them a great life. From what I saw in later years, he gave Molly a great life as well. Any suggestion otherwise is deeply damaging to his memory and that of my sister.
‘There could be nothing further from the truth and it’s heartbreaking to hear otherwise. He was the same man he always was, even when he was with Molly. He was a good husband. He was a good dad.’
Furthermore, if claims he changed into an abusive partner during his second marriage are to be believed, the couple were very good at hiding it, claims Catherine.
‘It’s beyond reason,’ she says, her eyes flared with anger and tears. ‘If all this was going on behind closed doors why on earth would Jason bring my parents over to the States and run the risk of them witnessing it?
‘He had me over as well and countless others. No one saw anything but the Jason we had known before.
‘Yes it was a different relationship, but again he gave [Molly] a great life. He was always very affectionate with her, very kind and loving. He was nice to her and never, ever raised his voice to her in front of any of us.
‘She never wanted for anything. She seemed happy with the relationship. They had the best of holidays, this beautiful home, she never had to work and he spoiled her. That was Jason.’
Catherine Fitzpatrick has vivid memories of the night Jason Corbett walked into her sister’s life. Mags was just 22 when she accompanied her best friend, Lynn Shanahan, to a birthday party where Jason was also a guest. From then on they were inseparable.
‘She was in work the following day and these flowers arrived,’ she recalls. ‘I think for a week flowers arrived every day. He really, really wooed her. They fell in love instantly.’
Soon after, Mags — who ran a busy crèche with Lynn — introduced Jason to her family as her new boyfriend. The Fitzpatricks, a large family from the rural village of Pallaskenry, knew little about the ‘city slicker’ with the fancy clothes, but within minutes they warmed to him.
‘I remember we all went to the village pub to meet him,’ says Catherine. ‘My father called him the “city slicker” because we were from the country and he wasn’t a local. From the get-go he immediately took to everyone and everyone took to him.
‘We were all slagging him because he was wearing this silky cream shirt. He just got on with everyone straight away. He had this big smile on his face and everyone took to him. That was it for him and Mags.’
As the madly-in-love couple set about building their dream home in Ballyneety, they moved in with Catherine to save money. An engagement announcement after a trip to Barcelona soon followed.
The couple were 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 runup to the wedding, Jason’s romantic gestures continued.
‘I was chief bridesmaid at the wedding,’ says Catherine. ‘On the Thursday we all travelled to Spanish Point for rehearsals. The previous day Jason had taken me aside and he had given me all these things I had to do for Mags before they got married. The wedding was on the Saturday. After rehearsals they had to say goodbye to each other because the boys were staying down there and we were travelling back up home.
‘We were coming back up and I gave her a card he had given [me for] her. He had written something soppy in it and she was crying in the car. Then we had Friday. Getting prepared, and she had another card. Then on the Saturday morning I had to give her a three-page letter that he had written to her. It was read out at her funeral.’
Following their wedding, the couple encouraged Catherine to buy an investment property of her own. They convinced her to move in with them to save money and as she watched the family grow with the addition of children, she witnessed their love grow even stronger.
‘They were just meant for each other,’ she says. ‘When the kids came along they were just so happy, so proud. I’m glad to have been living with them 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,’ says 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.
‘I stayed on to help Jason,’ says Catherine. ‘But I needed to stay on for me, too. Eventually I had to go back to work and so did he. We shared the duties. He would drop the kids off and I would collect them. If I was home first I would make the dinner and if he was home first he would do it.
‘But my house was sitting [ready] and it was time for me to move on. He needed to get on with things as well. I was a constant reminder of Mags for him, we were very alike. He was just a broken man. He used to go to the grave on his lunch and read his newspapers and talk to her. The groundsman told my father that recently.’
Almost a year-and-a-half after Mags’ passing, Jason returned to fulltime hours at work. Jack and Sarah were being cared for in the crèche, but the father-of-two needed more help.
After advertising for a nanny, Molly Martens, a striking blonde from Tennessee, flew to Ireland and took up the job.
‘He had two or three au pairs before that,’ Catherine says. ‘The language barrier was an issue so he wanted someone English-speaking. Obviously we were cautious about anyone who came into the house, that was a natural instinct.
‘She seemed to be good to the kids though at the start. I still stuck to my routine with them and went out to the house during the week and the weekends. I still felt very protective of them, and of Jason. He was grieving, but he was still making sure everyone else was ok.’
Some time after her arrival in Ireland, a relationship developed between Molly and Jason. He eventually confided in close friends and family that her role in his life had taken on a new meaning.
‘He kind of hid it for a while but I kind of knew,’ Catherine says. ‘He rang my mum and told her, which must have been hard. It was hard to see him with somebody new. He was a bit awkward in front of us for a while but we knew that Mags would have wanted him to move on. We kept saying, “We will do it for Jason, we will do it for the kids.”
‘We didn’t really get to know much about Molly because she didn’t really socialise much. She didn’t make friends or seem to make an effort to do anything. You would ask her to go shopping or go do this, but she just wasn’t interested.
‘If the kids had to do something with us she always insisting on coming. We never had them on our own. Or if Sarah wanted to sit beside me or hold my hand I found she didn’t like it. There were little things along the way, but then you think “am I just being overprotective because she is my niece?”’
After a surprise engagement, Jason announced that he was moving to the US. The move, say family, was sparked by his fiancée, who cited visa issues and homesickness as reasons for her need to leave Ireland.
Jason’s employer MPS arranged to transfer him to its Lexington plant in North Carolina, where he took up a role as plant manager. He bought a luxury house in the sought-after Meadowlands area of Winston-Salem, and the couple were married in 2011.
‘Even when he went to America, he still maintained the link,’ says Catherine. ‘He Skyped and texted and he flew my parents out to see where the kids where living, where they went to school. I went out myself to visit as well. Even when he came home on a business trip he still called out to my mother. He would say, “Mags was the only one for me”, and the two of them would sit crying. I always knew when Jason had visited because there would be tears, but she still loved the fact that he came out to her. He often confided in her that he was very homesick, up to a few weeks before he died. She was telling him to come home.’
In August last year, Catherine was performing bridesmaid duties at a wedding when she received a phone call informing her that Jason was dead. Days later, Molly Martens went about securing custody of Jack and Sarah. Her actions resulted in Jason’s sister Tracey flying to the US with a copy of his will, which stated that both children were to be placed in her custody in the event of his death.
‘We knew Mags would have wanted Jason and her kids home,’ says Catherine. ‘She would have wanted them in Ireland with both families. The thought of someone else having them was just a no-no. Tracey was the one out there doing all the work. I remember Paul, Jason’s best friend, who went out to America when Tracey was fighting to get them back, saying, “I won’t come home without them. I promise.” My mother said, “You better not.”’
In August, a protracted courtroom battle ensued between Molly and Jason’s sister. Eventually a judge ordered that the children return to Ireland with their aunt. For the next five months, Molly stormed social media in efforts to reach the children, posting daily Facebook messages of love and endless photographs of their happier times, often including her private phone number and email address. They are the children she says she raised from infancy — and to whom she claims bonds stronger than blood.
‘That is just so horrific to hear,’ says Catherine. ‘Molly has been ringing my mum and sending her letters [for the children] signing them off from their “mom”. It was all very upsetting and hurtful for my mother to read. Even when they first started calling her mum, that was hard. Sometimes Jack wouldn’t and she would correct him. It was very hard, she was very insistent.
‘At the time you were caught thinking, “Should I say something or should I just keep my mouth shut?” Since this all happened, the insistent and relentless social media campaign is just unbearable. I try to stay off Facebook.’
Last week, as Molly and her father were formally charged with seconddegree murder and voluntary manslaughter in relation to Jason’s death, a spokesperson for the family indicated their intention to mount a strong defence.
With a trial on the horizon, the Corbett and Fitzpatrick families are steadying themselves for a defence narrative that paints Jason as a perpetrator of domestic abuse.
‘Yes, we know what’s coming,’ says Catherine. ‘And it’s so far from what I know of Jason, he wasn’t like that at all. He was a gentle giant, as my mother said. I don’t believe the allegations for one minute.
‘I never heard Jason even raise his voice with anyone, he wasn’t that type of person. I even know from people who worked with him who say that if he had to pull them up or correct them on something he did it, but he didn’t raise his voice.
‘I’m worried about what [the Martens] are capable of doing to his memory. Jack and Sarah will eventually come along and get curious and we don’t want them to even think that people could accuse their dad of this kind of stuff. It’s so, so far from the truth.’
‘ I don’t believe the allegations for one minute’