I woke up in my childhood bedroom with the house full of police and covered in blood - what my stepmother had done turned my life upside-down

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

A young woman has spoken out about her stepmother's violent killing of her father - which saw her wake up to her childhood home full of police and covered in blood.
Sarah Corbett Lynch, 18, appeared on This Morning today, sitting down with presenters Ben Shepherd, 50, and Cat Deeley, 48, to tell all about her experience.
It came after a documentary about her ordeal, titled A Deadly American Marriage, was released on Netflix last month, which she features in.
She has also written a memoir, called A Time For Truth, about her experience, which came out earlier this year.
Her appearance on the ITV chat show saw her recall the night of her father Jason Corbett's death in August 2015, at the hands of his wife Molly Martens and her father Thomas Martens.
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Sarah explained to Ben and Cat: 'I remember everything from that night.'
She recalled being woken up by a kind police officer, who gave her two options: 'I could walk down the stairs backwards with my eyes closed or he could carry me down the stairs with my eyes closed.'
The house was full with the sound of police officers - which fell suddenly silent when they reached the bottom of the stairs: 'There were dozens of people inside the house...
'As he carried me down the stairs, he covered my face with his hand and put my head in the nape of his neck.'
He was shielding her from the grisly, violent scene that lay below - Jason, then 39, had been beaten to death by Molly and her former FBI agent father.
Sarah said: 'I'm extremely lucky for the fact that he did that and I couldn't have asked for a better officer to have been there with me.'
Originally from Ireland, Sarah was born to businessman Jason and his first wife Margaret Fitzpatrick, known as Mags - who sadly died when Sarah was just twelve weeks old.
The widower, then 32, hired American 24-year-old Molly as a live-in nanny two years later to take care of Sarah and her older brother Jack, then aged one and three.
Jason and Molly (pictured, in an old picture shown in the Netflix documentary) soon fell in love, marrying in 2011, with the whole family relocating from Limerick, Ireland, to North Carolina in the US when Sarah was just four
Jason and Molly soon fell in love, marrying in 2011, with the whole family relocating from Limerick, Ireland, to North Carolina in the US when Sarah was just four.
Sarah said the move was 'really exciting at the beginning... The weather was great, the houses were huge and I remember running around my new bedroom, really excited.
'And Molly and my dad hand in hand picking out furniture and pointing where they were going to put it, so at the beginning, it was like a new beginning.
'She cooked us dinner, my dad would take us to school and she'd collect us.'
But things soon turned sour: 'Most of my memories looking back on it now, it probably wasn't a healthy relationship.
'Molly was very manipulative and would pit me and Jack against each other.'
She explained: 'If Jack did good at a swim meet, he was the favourite child and she would give him all of the glory and then I would be "the little shrimp", as she used to call me, when I didn't do well in swimming.'
Sarah added: 'Molly started telling me that my dad killed my birth mum when I was six years old. She told me my dad was a bad man.
'Molly also taught me that vomiting was OK to keep myself skinny for swimming when I was six and that shoplifting was OK.'
The atmosphere at home 'was always tense', with Sarah always feeling 'a ball of anxiety': 'But it was our normal.'
She emphasised: 'My dad was always extremely loving to me and Jack and he did try his best with Molly, bringing her flowers home.
'It was really difficult to keep Molly happy and if you didn't, you knew about it.'
Following their father's death, Sarah and Jack were soon called in for interviews.
But Molly told them beforehand: 'We had to say dad was a bad man and he hit her and if we didn't say those things, we would be separated and we'd never see each other again.
'So, we were really scared and we lied - I told social workers that Molly told me my dad hit her and Molly told me my dad was a bad man.'
The siblings recanted those statements just weeks later - but they were nevertheless brought up in court, which saw Molly and her father Tom have their charges dropped from second-degree murder to voluntary manslaughter.
They were both released from prison in June 2024.
Molly, now 41, and Thomas, 75, still say they killed in self-defence, amid a pattern of abusive, threatening behaviour from Jason towards Molly.
Sarah said: 'We have to live with the fact that words we said are part of the reason why the Martens are walking free today.'
And her memoir was a chance to tell the truth: 'We didn't have a voice. I wasn't allowed to give evidence. I wasn't allowed to be a character witness.
'I was under a gag order so I couldn't even talk to my friends or family or media.
'And it was extremely difficult because you can't defame the dead so the Martens could say anything about my dad.'
It was difficult to hear this 'completely fabricated narrative about my dad's personality': 'That really shows the character of the people that the Martens are.'
After their father's death, Sarah and Jack moved back to Ireland to live with their aunt and uncle Tracey and David, who she now calls her parents.
Sarah described it as 'the best thing that happened to me... I was put into a safe family environment and I was extremely lucky.
'Tracey and David took us in like we were their own kids. They have never treated us differently. They have two of their own sons who I now call my brothers.
'And another thing was they never said a bad thing about the Martens.'
It was to the extent that several years ago, Sarah said: 'I was begging Tracey to say something negative about Molly and she said, "I don't like that woman, she killed my brother", and that was it.'
Molly and Thomas's initial convictions, for second-degree murder, in 2017 - for which they were sentenced to 20 to 25 years in prison - were overturned in 2020, over errors in and omission of evidence.
The Martens reached a plea deal in October 2023 to drop the second-degree murder charges, with Molly pleading no contest and Thomas guilty to voluntary manslaughter - getting a minimum of 51 months in prison and credit for time served.
Sarah and Jack had had no contact with them up to this point - 'other than Molly trying to fly planes over our school and going on social media, trying to contact friends of mine I sat next to in school'.
But it was then Sarah was finally able to contribute to the evidence process, reading out a victim impact statement.
She said: 'I wasn't afraid of them anymore. They had taken up so much space in my life and I didn't want to give them the power over me anymore.
'I've cried a lot less since writing the book because I took all of my childhood trauma and everything bad that happened to me and put it into it.'
She finished: 'People who are going through similar, really difficult situations, know that: you will be able to find the light at the end of the tunnel and have a normal life.
'Everybody has good and bad days, whether they've been through traumatic experiences or not.'