Irish Sunday Mirror

How could a delicate beauty like Molly be capable of such violence?

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JASON CORBETT MURDER: AN

It was the sight of the leg-irons that really brought it home. Not only was killer Molly Martens dangerous enough to require handcuffs, she needed shackles on her ankles as well. The Davidson County Police had got their killer, and they were making sure she wasn’t going anywhere.

With her stunning looks and simple shift dresses, she seemed like an allamerica­n girl – her name sounding more like something from a nursery rhyme than a horror movie.

But former model Martens, 33, had just been found guilty by a US court of murder in the second degree after she and her father Thomas beat her Limerick husband Jason Corbett to death with a brick and baseball bat.

The picture of her bound by both ankle and wrist as she was led by an officer to a waiting prison vehicle was an incongruou­s one.

How could this delicate beauty be capable of such horrendous violence?

Many of those watching as the news came through on Wednesday found it hard to process. Surely there was some mistake? But there wasn’t.

The jury was unanimous in its verdict and found Martens had concocted a “self-defence” story, claiming she and her father had only killed Jason because he tried to throttle her.

Instead, they found the evidence showed how the father and daughter had beaten dad-of-two Jason so badly he was left looking like a car crash victim.

The trial heard the duo continued to strike him as he lay dead on the floor of the couple’s master bedroom in their home in Panther Creek.

The jury head said: “It was clear the level of force used here was totally excessive.”

District Attorney Gary Frank noted: “This was a particular­ly extreme injury, even for an assault with a bat and a brick.”

Neither Molly nor her former FBI agent dad, 67, had any injuries despite claiming they acted out of fear for their lives.

When the verdict came through shortly after 4pm on Wednesday, it set newsrooms from Dublin’s North Circular Road to North Carolina alight.

Martens-corbett – as she became when she married Jason in 2011 – not only looked like actress Rosamund Pike in the movie Gone Girl but, like her character Amy, was a twisted and manipulati­ve murderer with a capacity for gruesome violence too.

But would this case have attracted such huge internatio­nal interest had Jason Corbett’s killer been a man? Of course not.

As a society, we are fascinated by female killers. They never fail to shock us into attention. Molly Martens now joins the ranks of the infamous, along with Black Widow Catherine Nevin, serving life for the murder of husband Tom at Jack Whites pub in Wicklow in 1996, or the notorious Scissor Sisters – Charlotte and Linda Mulhall – who were convicted of killing their mother’s boyfriend Farah Noor.

As Molly’s stepson Jack, 13, said in a letter read out at her sentencing: “She will always be remembered as a murderer.” The Molly Martens story is a particular­ly chilling one – the outwardly loving stepmother who beat her husband to death in the marital bed. The Tennessee model had come into Irish immigrant Jason’s life soon after he lost his first wife Mags, going from his children’s nanny to his lover. But love turned to obsession when she became preoccupie­d with taking Mags’ place, and fixated with the role of “mother”. She described 10-year-old Sarah in

Jason Corbett an interview as her “daughter”, had the kids call her “Mommy” and flooded her Facebook page with picture perfect family photos.

But behind the scenes, she battled with Jason to let her officially adopt them.

Prosecutor­s in the US believe she killed Jason as she was afraid he was going to move back to Ireland and take the boy and girl with him.

We are obsessed with why women kill. Criminal psychologi­sts believe it is because we can no longer be shocked by men committing violence as it is so commonplac­e. More than 90% of convicted killers are male.

By contrast, women are seen as being life-givers, not life-takers. When they become murderers, it betrays society’s idea of their gender, and idealised notions of motherhood.

And so, say experts, their monstrosit­y is magnified. They are seen as outside the realm of humanity and motherhood – they are like modern-day witches. Their crimes are sensationa­lised, sexualised, festished. We see this perception played out in court cases and in media reporting.

The trial of Amanda Knox, a 20-yearold student from Washington State who stood accused of murdering British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, is a case in point. The young, attrac-

 ?? Picture: DONNIE ROBERTS/THE DISPATCH ?? BEHIND BARS Molly Martens is taken to jail after guilty verdict in North Carolina
Picture: DONNIE ROBERTS/THE DISPATCH BEHIND BARS Molly Martens is taken to jail after guilty verdict in North Carolina
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