THE LIFE OF HAPPINESS JASON HAD WITH FIRST WIFE MAGS
Much has been said about Jason Corbett’s second wife Molly Martens but she only entered his life after he was left shattered by the death of his f irst love Mags. In this two-part special, their best friend Lynn Shanahan lays bare their incredible love
LYNN SHANAHAN is sitting in the office of her Limerick crèche, poring over photographs in an old red album. Behind her, on the wall, there is a picture of a handprint, that of her friend and business partner Mags, next to the tiny hand of Mags’ son Jack.
‘Mags did that on the photocopier,’ she says. ‘She put her hand down next to Jack’s and made a photocopy. When she died, Jason did one with Sarah, that’s the one next to it.’
The subtle nods to Mags are everywhere. On Lynn’s desk, where there is a heart-shaped frame of the two of them embracing on a night out. On the walls, where there are drawings by children, yellowed with the passage of time, with ‘ Lynn and Mags’ scrawled in crayon. And in the hall, where a picture of Mags on her wedding day hangs outside a room full of lively toddlers.
Mags Corbett was 31 when she died following an asthma attack. She was happily married to Jason Corbett and the couple had one son, Jack, who was two at the time, and a daughter Sarah, who was just weeks old.
On August 2 this year, their father died in his home in North Carolina. His second wife Molly and her father Thomas have been named by detectives as persons of interest in the investigation into his violent death.
In Limerick, the place where Mags and Jason’s story began many years before he ended up in North Carolina with their two precious children, those closest to them cling to the many happy memories they have.
Lynn had known Jason since their primary school days. In later years she met Mags and together they started a business. She introduced them to each other, attended their wedding and was godmother to Sarah.
Two months ago she flew to North Carolina to join Jason’s sister in her desperate bid to bring Mags’ children back to the place of their birth.
As she flicks through the dozens of pictures in the album, her hand rests on a shot of Jason, leaning in for a kiss from Mags. His back is to the camera and both are unaware that a moment in time is being captured on film.
‘They were just crazy about each other,’ says Lynn. ‘So, so in love. They were just so suited. We all miss them both. There is a huge void in our lives now, but we have great memories.’
In the mid-Nineties Lynn was working in Kiddies Kampus, the only crèche in Limerick at the time, when a nervouslooking Mags walked through the door.
‘She came in for a job interview,’ she says. ‘She was just so nervous and fidgety and she started roaring laughing. She said, “I have to get this job, I just tipped my dad’s car off a pillar reversing.” She was just so funny and so kind and natural and honest. So honest. I just burst out laughing.
‘She got the job and we worked together for over a year.’
As their friendship grew, so too did their aspirations to start a business of their own. So much so that in 1996, they opened a crèche in a converted house in Beverley Close, Raheen.
‘We started off there with no children,’ recalls Lynn. ‘Mags sat on the wall and cried on the first day because she didn’t know what I had gotten her in to. That was on the open day on the Saturday. On Monday we had three kids. We stayed there for four years and when we left to open this purpose-built facility we had 45 children and five staff.’
Jason and Lynn’s paths had crossed many years before. They had 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 ‘funloving’ member of the group, who everyone ‘loved to see coming through the door’.
‘I had met Mags, we had opened the crèche together and obviously we were out together all the time,’ Lynn recalls. ‘On one occasion we were out and we all met up and I introduced her to Jason. That was it. He just followed her around all night. He was absolutely besotted with her. They were 22.’
Jason was a ‘hopeless romantic’, says Lynn, laughing. Mags, in return, ‘made him work for it’.
‘He knew what he wanted,’ she says. ‘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 gong to drop everything and go.” But he wooed her and swept her off her feet.
‘They were crazy about each other. That continued for years. 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.’
Lynn met her husband Tim at around the same time and as a foursome they regularly socialised together. Both couples enjoyed weekends away together in Paris and Edinburgh, but it was a trip away to Spain on their own that saw Jason and Mags come home engaged.
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.
‘Spanish Point was always a special place for them,’ says Lynn. ‘Jason’s mam used to hire a mobile home down there every single year for the summer. It was a really close to Jason’s heart and then Mags started to go down as well. They used to rent a house that overlooked the ocean. It was all glass.
‘Jason loved going down there in winter and seeing the waves. It was just completely peaceful. Their dream was to retire down there. They loved it, so it was a natural choice when it came to getting married.’
Even in the hectic run up to the wedding, Jason’s romantic gestures continued. ‘He was unreal, ‘says Lynn, laughing. ‘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.
‘At her funeral David [Jason’s brotherin-law] read one of the letters. It was about how he fell in love with her. He was mad about her.’
Children quickly followed. Their firstborn, Jack, was followed almost two years later by a daughter, Sarah.
‘From the minute they got married they wanted kids,’ says Lynn. ‘Being involved in childcare, Mags was super with kids. It was totally what they wanted. When Jack was born, Jason was so busy with work but he took weeks off work to be at home with them. He did everything with them. Then Sarah came along and they were just delighted. It was pretty perfect.
‘The conversation about “what would happen if...” of course came up. Every pregnant mother talks about what would happen if they died. Everyone has that conversation.
‘Straight away Mags was like, “Tracey and her husband David would get the
They were just crazy about each other, so, so in love From the minute they got married they wanted children
children.” She said that they had done an amazing job with Dean, that he was such a fantastic kid and that’s exactly who she wanted to raise the kids.’
As their personal and business lives progressed, Lynn and Mags’ friendship remained steadfast.
When Lynn and her husband built a house in Ballyneety, Mags and Jason followed suit, building a home close by. They socialised together, had their pregnancies together and became godmothers to each other’s children.
‘We were all enjoying life at that point,’ says Lynn. ‘We were talking about going on holidays, rearing the kids and registering them in school. The boxes were just being ticked and Mags was starting to relax and enjoy her life. She had asthma all her life and had been hospitalised a good few times with severe attacks, but obviously she thought she had it under control. It came as a total shock when she died.’
A widower at just 30, Jason Corbett was left with a two-year-old son and a 12-week-old daughter. ‘It was just devastation,’ recalls Lynn. ‘Jason went part-time in work and he used to come in [to the creche] every day. He really didn’t know what to be doing. He used to take days off work and bring the kids in here while he went up to the graveyard for hours. Then he would call back here and chat because we would all be talking about Mags as if she was still here. We would be telling stories and he just loved that, he was feeding off it.’
In the months after his wife’s passing, Jason retreated to the sanctuary of Spanish Point, a place filled with memories of the woman he had lost.
‘He took a house down there after Mags died,’ says Lynn. ‘It was heartbreaking to watch him.
‘He was just so close to her down there. He even talked about buying a place there and travelling up and down to work. Some of Mags’ anni- versary masses were held down there. We used to go to the church they got married in for Mass and then we would all go the Bellbridge after for lunch.
‘That place was in his heart and even when he moved to the States with the kids he went there every time he came home.
‘There is nothing down there, no entertainment, but its like the crèche here — she’s very much still here.
‘I think he felt a connection to Mags in both those places and that’s why he always took the children down there. I would join him with my kids and we would spend a few days down there.’
Almost a year and a half after Mags’ passing, Jason had returned to fulltime hours at work. Jack and Sarah were being cared for in the crèche, but he told Lynn that he needed more help and was considering hiring a nanny.
‘I told him that he needed a housekeeper, not a nanny,’ she says. ‘But he said that if he had to be in work for 8am he needed someone in the house with the kids. Likewise if he had to stay in the evenings.
‘Their full days were here in the creche but he needed someone for the times in between. One of my parents recommended a website and I passed it on to him.
‘He said that he was talking to a few different people to try and find someone suitable. That’s where he found Molly Martens.’
ON MONDAY JASON, MOLLY AND A DOOMED ROMANCE