My brother was bludgeoned to death by his new wife and her FBI agent father - she tormented her stepchildren with lies about their dad before she killed him

Daily Mail​

12-05-2025

The sister of Jason Corbett, an Irishman who was bludgeoned to death by his second wife and her ex-FBI father, has revealed how the former beauty queen tormented her stepchildren with lies about their father before killing him.
Tracey Corbett-Lynch described Jason and Molly's marriage as a 'toxic nightmare' while honouring the memory of her 'hero' brother - who fought till the very end to 'protect his family' - before his murder in August 2015.
On August 2, 2015, Molly and Tom, a former FBI agent, 'beat Jason to death' with a baseball bat and brick 'in his own home, in his own bed, as he slept,' Tracey wrote in the Irish Independent.
She described his death as the tragic final chapter in a 'fairytale' gone horribly wrong as Tracey recalled how Molly 'dripped poison into his children's ears' and tried to turn them against their devoted father.
Jason met Molly, originally from Tennessee, after she responded to an ad for a nanny for his children Jack and Sarah after the death of his first wife and their mother Margaret 'Mags' Fitzpatrick in 2006.
In the wake of Mags' death, from a sudden asthma attack 12 weeks after Sarah was born, Molly seemed to the widower 'like an answer to his prayers' as she promised to share the load and 'fill the void' in Jason's life, Tracey said.
However, his decision to leave Ireland and relocate to North Carolina, US, where he eventually married Molly, would ultimately prove fatal - with Jason's final days spent living in fear of his new wife, Tracey claimed.
She described how Molly taught Jack and Sarah 'twisted' versions of their favourite jingles that mocked Jack as a 'Big Fat Meany Weeny' who 'won't stop until his auto shot'.
Molly also allegedly whispered 'Your dad killed Mommy with a pillow' during conversations with Jack and Sarah as she worked to plant seeds of doubt about the circumstances of Mags's death in their minds.
Mags' family have disputed any suggestion Jason might have been involved in her death, describing him as a 'warm and caring person who loved Mags more than anything else in his life'.
Tracey's account was published after the release of a new Netflix documentary titled A Deadly American Marriage that revisited Jason's murder case and Molly and Tom's subsequent trials.
It comes after Jason and Mags' daughter Sarah, who moved back to Limerick, Ireland, with her brother following their father's death in 2015, made similar allegations in her memoir.
In the book, titled A Time for Truth: My Father Jason and A Search for Justice and Healing, Sarah claimed Molly, now 41, abused her, destroyed her father's memory, and forced her to lie about the murder case.
She told the Daily Mail: 'My father's name was dragged through the mud. He was a loving, decent man and they made him out to be a monster.'
She recalled how Molly allegedly taunted them with claims that Mags had been murdered by their father.
'Molly didn't have to warn us not to tell our dad,' Sarah said. 'We knew that, if we told him what she'd said, we'd get punished.'
In addition, Sarah claimed that her stepmother had been controlling. For a start, she says that Molly would tell people she was the children's birth mother. When they were in elementary school, she allegedly dyed their hair blond to look more like her but told Jason they were going through a 'phase'.
And the alleged abuse didn't end there. Sarah said that Molly - who has denied the allegations - would punch and slap the children when they 'misbehaved' - and she once had to 'drag' her stepmom off a battered Jack when he was curled up on the ground in pain.
But Molly's biggest flashpoint was their birth mother, Margaret. 'Molly hated Jack or me talking about her,' Sarah admitted.
In the days after their father's death, Sarah and Jack had made statements to police and social workers which upheld Molly's claims that Jason had been abusive.
However, following their return to Ireland in 2015 - where they were adopted by Jason's sister, Tracey Lynch, and her husband, David - they recanted the statements, which were then deemed inadmissible in court.
On the night of his death, Jason had been beaten with a baseball bat and concrete brick, sustaining so many injuries a coroner was unable to count them all.
Tom and Molly, who always claimed she acted in self-defence, were convicted of second-degree murder at their first trial in 2017 but this was overturned on appeal.
In October 2023, they accepted a plea deal for voluntary manslaughter on the theory of imperfect self-defence or defence of another. Molly Corbett pleaded no contest and Martens pleaded guilty to the charge - and they were released in June 2024.
Jason's family described the plea deal as an 'injustice', claiming the family has 'no room for closure or peace' in a heartbreaking social media post. Calling the pair 'Mad Molly & the FBI Killer', the family said although they are free from jail they will always see them as 'convicted felons' and 'murderers'.
This controversial plea deal 'reignited questions over the incident's true nature', according to Netflix, as the true crime documentary explores whether it was 'actually self-defence' as Tom and Molly argued - or ' a calculated killing'.
The streamer added that 'for some, the intricacies of Jason and Molly's marriage add further complexity, including a long-simmering debate over the custody of [Jason's children] Jack and Sarah, who were ten and eight years old, respectively, at the time of Jason's death'.
Jason and Molly first crossed paths in 2008, when he hired the then 24-year-old Molly to be their au pair.
The pair quickly fell in love and it appeared the romance brought colour back into Jason's life after he was widowed at the age of 30.
His sister Jocelyn in 2019 told CBS News that his family 'began to see glimpses of the old Jason coming back' when he became romantically involved with Molly.
According to the Irish Times, Molly was welcomed into the family by the children she once looked after - and was even lovingly referred to as their 'mom'.
One month before their June 2011 wedding, the family moved into a four-bedroom home in the picturesque suburb of Winston-Salem in North Carolina, with some saying that they made the move after Molly complained of homesickness, saying she could not settle in Limerick.
Tracey alleged that Jason's decision to 'sell his beloved family home' and leave Ireland was the result of Molly's efforts to 'isolate him' from his family but the Knoxville-native has claimed otherwise in a 2017 episode of American program 20/20.
'Jason loved the United States and he thought the opportunities for the children were significantly better,' she said.
After their wedding, however, the couple's relationship quickly began to deteriorate as Molly's brother Connor told CBS that he noticed more 'verbal altercations' between his sister and Jason.
At the time, Molly says the pair were in conflict over whether Jason was going to let her legally adopt Sarah and Jack - making her their mother in the eyes of the law.
In the lead-up to his death, Jocelyn said her brother had started talking about moving back to Ireland and was clearly unhappy. Meanwhile, Molly claims her husband became increasingly 'controlling' and 'paranoid' she would cheat on him.
Writing in the Irish Independent, Tracey shared that Jason, who felt trapped and fearful in his marriage to Molly, was making 'desperate plans' to secretly escape with Jack and Sarah.
On the day before Molly and Tom killed Jason, he had been 'frantically' looking for tickets back to his home so Jack and Sarah, then 10 and eight, would be out of the 'Martens' insiduous reach'.
The year before Jason's death, it is believed that his relationship with his father-in-law had worsened and Thomas, who had been an FBI agent for around 30 years, reportedly encouraged Molly to divorce him.
However, unfortunately the couple did not split, and on August 2, 2015, Jason was bludgeoned to death in his bedroom by Molly and her father Thomas - who claims he only intervened because his son-in-law was strangling his daughter.
In his chilling 911 call, obtained by Netflix, the former FBI agent and convicted felon tells the dispatcher: 'My...My daughter's husband, um, my son-in-law got in a fight with my daughter. I intervened and I hit him in the head.
'With a baseball bat,' he continues, before confirming Jason wasn't conscious.
Speaking during the Netflix documentary, Lieutenant Wanda Thompson from the Davidson County Sheriff's Department described the master bedroom of Jason and Molly's North Carolina home as the 'bloodiest crime scene' she had seen 'in a long time'.
'It's pretty horrific,' she recalled.
On the night of Jason's death, Molly claims she was woken up in the middle of the night by Jason's daughter Sarah - who had had a nightmare.
The children's step-mother says Jack and Sarah would whisper at the bedroom door to get Molly's attention as they knew they weren't supposed to wake up Jason.
After getting Sarah back to sleep in her room, Molly claims she returned to bed and accidentally disturbed Jason - who was furious that she had 'coddled' the eight-year-old.
Downstairs, Molly's father - who had made an impromptu overnight visit with wife Sharon - said he heard 'thumping' and instantly felt something 'wasn't right'.
Molly claims Jason wanted to make her be quiet so he covered her mouth and started choking her.
'At some point, when he stopped, I screamed, and he started again, and the next thing I remember is my dad standing in the doorway,' she told ABC.
Thomas claims he walked into the couple's bedroom to find Jason with Molly in a chokehold. He says his son-in-law told him he was going to kill Molly as he dragged her towards their bathroom.
At this point, Thomas claims he hit Jason in the back of the head with a metal baseball bat - but then alleges the Irish father was strong enough to grab it off of him.
The pair claim a struggle ensued as Molly feared Jason would then hit Thomas with the bat.
She added: 'I'm trying' to hit him with the bat, and hit him with this end of the bat, and hit him with my elbow, and hit him with my fist, or anything else... but I'm going to hang onto that bat. And he goes down, and I've got the bat... and I back off.'
Thomas was the one to call 911 and a recording of the conversation reveals how he calmly told emergency services: 'My son-in-law got in a fight with my daughter, I intervened and he's in bad shape. We need help.'
He added: 'He's bleeding all over and I may have killed him.'
Molly claims her husband was strangling her and yelling 'I'm going to kill you' when her father intervened.
In February 2016, the father and daughter pled not guilty to murder during Davidson Superior Court during a hearing. Greg Brown, the attorney representing the state of North Carolina in the case, said the crime was especially 'heinous, atrocious and cruel'.
Both applied for bail, which was granted on the condition that $200,000 was lodged with the court for each defendant, that they surrender their passports and agree to cease all contact with Jason's immediate family, specifically his children Jack and Sarah.
Following their father's death, the two children were interviewed by officers who upheld Molly's claims that Jason 'physically and verbally hurt' their step-mother.
Eight-year-old Sarah said at the time: 'He would scream at my mom every day, or sometimes twice a day. He would fight with her. One time I saw him step on her foot. He called her bad names.'
In a separate interview, Jack said: 'He would physically and verbally hurt my mom. She would cry and try to plug her ears. Sometimes she would just curl herself up in a ball. It made me very sad and angry.'
The children both also recalled being coached by Molly's mother Sharon to call her and use the code-words 'peacock' and 'galaxy' if their father turned violent. However, Sarah said she never actually had to put the plan into action - and simply practised a lot.
Following their return to Ireland, Jack and Sarah recanted their statements - a move which Molly and Thomas' legal team have claimed was influenced by Jason's family.
As a result, the judge deemed Sarah and Jack Corbett's initial statements inadmissible when the case went to trial.
While the father and daughter never denied killing Jason, they always claimed they had acted in self-defence, with Thomas telling 20/20 in 2017: 'I'm going to do everything that I have to do to save her life. And if I die trying, well… she's my daughter. I'm not going to live with not trying. I'll tell you that.'
He also said while giving evidence that he believed Jason was going to kill him, and that he continued to hit the father-of-two with a baseball bat until he felt Jason was no longer a threat.
However, during the 2017 trial, prosecutors disputed claims that Molly and Tom Martens acted in self-defence, arguing that they started attacking Jason when he was asleep in bed. They said blood spatter on Tom's shorts indication that Jason had been hit while he was lying down.
In addition, paramedics who had attended the scene said that Jason was cool to the touch - suggesting that the Martens had delaying contacting emergency services, to ensure that the father-of-two could not be saved.
The prosecution team also argued that Jason and Molly had been in disagreement over whether she could adopt his two children in the lead-up to his death - something she wanted to do.
In their closing statements, the prosecution claimed that Molly Martens 'bashed Jason's skull' after learning that he wanted to take the children back to Ireland.
Jason's autopsy showed he died from blunt force trauma to his head. The description of the 'means of death' is a 'ball bat and landscaping stone'.
During the trial, forensic experts argued that the physical evidence - including blood splatter patterns - proved that Jason sustained severe head injuries while on his bedroom floor. It has also been suggested that Jason sustained wounds post-mortem - meaning he was beaten after he died.
After just hours of deliberation, the jury returned a guilty verdict for both Tom and Molly. They were sentenced to 20-25 years in prison.
In 2020, the pair appealed and a new trial was ordered on the basis that some evidence was left out of their first trial that should have been shown to the jury. The North Carolina Supreme Court upheld that decision in 2021.
This included evidence the defence said could have explained Tom Martens' state of mind on the night of the killing. They also argued that the children's statements should have been admissible.
Towards the end of 2023, the judge accepted plea deals for involuntary manslaughter, in exchange for dropping the second degree murder charges. Instead of a whole new trial, the father-daughter pair had a sentencing hearing.
At the hearing, the court was played a recording Molly had made of Jason in which he could be heard shouting at his wife for not preparing a meal that he wanted to eat with Jack and Sarah.
Instead, Molly had fed the children early and taken them to play in the snow before Jason returned home from work.
Jason is heard saying: 'I'm talking to you! Is this how you treat... you just ignore me? I said I'd like to have dinner with my family. I'm talking to you. I shouldn't have to say it over and over.'
The short clip ends with Sarah screaming at Molly and Jason to try and put an end to the argument.
It was argued by the prosecutor that this was manufactured evidence, and Molly had created the scenario to obtain the recording.
However, it was used as a mitigating factor when it came to their resentencing as Davidsoin Superior Court Judge David Hall sentenced Molly and Tom to spend between 51 and 74 months in prison.
The pair were released from prison in June 2024, seven months later, thanks to good behaviour sentencing reduction earned during the 44 months they had aready served following their first conviction.
Ahead of their release from prison the following June, North Carolina's former sheriff David Grice said Molly and Tom 'got off with a slap' for the 'gruesome' crime.
The former sheriff wrote on social media: 'They got off with a slap. I have had to bite my tongue for years for fear of saying something which could have affected the appeals.
'It was a gruesome crime scene. I believe they (Tom and Molly) just spent enough money on appeals until the courts got worn down and accepted their last appeal.'