KILLER TELLS OF FEARS SHE MIGHT DIE LIKE HUSBAND’S FIRST WIFE

CONVICTED killer Molly Martens Corbett has dramatically claimed in a US TV interview that her Irish husband subjected her to years of verbal and physical abuse, writes Ralph Riegel.

Martens Corbett said she feared she might die in circumstances similar to that of the Limerick man’s first wife.

Now, in a pre-trial interview with US network ABC, Martens Corbett said she always had concerns over the circumstances in which Mr Corbett’s first wife, Margaret ‘Mags’ Fitzpatrick (pictured inset), died in November 2006.

The Limerick woman, mother of Mr Corbett’s two children, died from cardiac arrest due to an asthma attack. However, both Martens Corbett and her father have raised doubts over what happened to Mr Corbett’s first wife.

“Sometimes he (Jason) would be angry and choking me would turn into something sexual,” Martens Corbett said.

“Or sometimes the other way around. Everything always felt so scary in the moment when it was happening.”

Martens Corbett claimed she occasionally passed out during such incidents. “It did always make me think of Mags his first wife and wonder if that is what happened to her?”

Both the father and daughter claimed they had heard whispers about the precise circumstances in which the 2006 death occurred. “Yes, it definitely was — prior to that I heard that (questions over the circumstances in which Mags died.)”

“The first time, the second time, the third time, the 20th time that you are suffocated or strangled or someone holds their hand over your mouth or a pillow on your face and you can’t breathe for an extended period of time, you think: ‘Oh, well, his first wife died at 3am.’ Maybe that is going to happen to me.” Mr Martens said Michael Fitzpatrick, Mags’s father, told him he held Mr Corbett responsible for his daughter’s death.

However, Mr Fitzpatrick, before his death, signed a sworn statement with a Limerick solicitor that he had never passed such a comment to Mr Martens.

Martens Corbett said the abuse was ongoing in her marriage.

“The incidents became more frequent but the apologies became less frequent and less extreme.”

But she insisted she stayed in the marriage for the sake of the two children she adored. “Ultimately, I always came to the same conclusion that it wouldn’t be better for them to lose a second mother.”

She says she repeatedly asked her husband to sign legal papers giving her equal rights to the two children.