THE LAST TIME I SAW MY TWIN JASON ALIVE
Jason Corbett poses with his brother in the US. Five days later he was murdered by wife Molly
THIS is the last photo of Jason Corbett his family have, before he was brutally murdered in his home.
Taken just five days before his wife and father-in-law beat him to death, it shows the father of two relaxing on a family trip to Washington DC with his twin brother, Wayne.
Recalling the visit, Wayne told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘We went back to North Carolina that night and I flew home the following morning.’
And that was the last time he saw his much-loved brother.
Wayne had flown to the States on July 18, 2015, and
the brothers were joined on the trip – that included a visit to Murphy’s Grand Irish pub, in Virginia – by Molly Martens, her mother Sharon and Jason’s two children, but Molly’s father Tom refused to go.
During the trial, it emerged that a work colleague of Tom’s had asked him why he didn’t go and he replied: ‘Why would I go anywhere with that asshole?’
Our picture on page one was taken on July 27. Just five days later, on the night of August 2, Ms Martens and her father pulverised him with a brick and baseball bat, landing at least 12 savage blows to his head.
In another picture, taken on the day Wayne arrived in the States, the two men are pictured inside Jason’s house, smiling for the camera and sharing a beer.
The photographs have come to light after fresh allegations made by Ms Martens about Jason emerged yesterday. The 33-year-old and her father claimed they beat her husband with the baseball bat and brick in self-defence. However, they were found to be totally uninjured at the scene.
She has now claimed, in an interview shown on the US network ABC yesterday, that she suffered years of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of Jason, and she even said she feared she might die in similar circumstances to Jason’s late wife Mags, who had died from cardiac arrest following an asthma attack.
‘It did always make me think of Mags, his first wife, and wonder if that is what happened to her? The first time, the second time, the third time, the twentieth 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 breath for an extended period of time, you think: “Oh, well, his first wife died at 3am. Maybe that is going to happen to me.”
‘Sometimes he would be angry, and choking me would turn into something sexual,’ she sensationally claimed. ‘Or sometimes the other way around.’
She told ABC that she stayed in the marriage for the children: ‘I couldn’t imagine – sometimes I thought maybe I am being selfish.
‘Maybe their lives would be better if they don’t have to deal with it – but ultimately I always came to the same conclusion, that it wouldn’t be better for them to lose a second mother.’ Her father told the ABC interview: ‘I wasn’t going to interfere in Molly’s marriage, that was Molly’s marriage.’
However, he said ‘I feel righteous’ about defending his daughter. ‘When you get involved in a fight, you either lose or you win. It is what it is.’
This week Wayne told of his relief when multiple text messages appeared on his phone confirming the jury’s guilty verdicts.
‘It’s been a long two years,’ he said, shortly after the verdicts, from the home of his parents John and Rita in Janesboro, Limerick.
‘We’re just delighted, as a family, that the whole ordeal is over and done with, and that they have been found guilty.’ However, it was a ‘bittersweet’ moment.
He said: ‘We’re delighted it’s finally at an end but it’s not a celebration. Jason is still gone, but finally people have been found guilty, and justly so. It was a coldblooded murder.’
It was Wayne who was first contacted by the Martens family to tell him that his brother was dead. However, he said he got the call 10 hours after Jason was killed.
He said: ‘It’s surreal. It’s like we were living a nightmare for the last two years. It was 10 hours… As far as I know, the police asked Molly Martens did she want them to contact us, and she said no on a number of occasions.
‘She wouldn’t let them contact us because she was next-of-kin at the time,’ he said.
Wayne has told how his 76-year-old mother was too emotional to talk to reporters.
‘It’s been a great relief for my elderly parents that this has finally come to an end; that we can all now grieve for Jason without having to worry about the court case.
‘Hopefully, we can start to try to put this behind us. I’m overwhelmed, but I’m not shocked with the verdict. I was totally confident the jury would find them guilty.
‘I was [at the trial] for three weeks, and for me, that was the only conclusion they could come to,’ he added. He believes Ms Martens and her father deserved to go to jail for the rest of their lives. ‘Yes, I feel
‘Choking me would turn into something sexual’ ‘Police said Molly didn’t want them to contact us’
they should serve life in prison. Nothing will make up for the last two years that family put us through, nothing at all,’ he said.
He said Molly and Tom Martens ‘finally got their just deserts now’ and that former FBI agent Tom ‘thought he was above everyone’ and ‘he thought that nothing would touch him’.
Wayne added: ‘He thought that we were a small family from Ireland, and that we wouldn’t fight – but we did. He has a long time now to think about that.’
This week Ms Martens collapsed into tears when the jury found her and 67-year-old Tom guilty of the second-degree murder of Limerick man Jason on August 2, 2015.
Crying uncontrollably, she turned to her family in the public gallery and said: ‘I’m really sorry, Mom. I wish he’d [referring to Jason] have killed me.’
She and her father were sentenced to a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of 25 years. But with good behaviour they could be out up to seven years earlier.
Under US criminal law, seconddegree murder means intentional but unpremeditated killing.
The jury, three men and nine women, took just under four and a half hours to deliver their verdicts, which were unanimous, as is required under US law.
During a brief sentencing hearing, Jason’s sister Tracey Lynch read a statement on behalf of the Corbett family. She said Jason’s death had changed the course of his children’s lives forever. A handwritten letter from Jason’s 12-year-old son Jack was read by a tearful prosecutor Alan Martin.
‘I will never be able give him [my dad] a hug or give him a present or a Father’s Day card,’ wrote Jack. ‘He won’t see me grow from a kid to a teenager and into my adult life.’
Before Judge David Lee handed down his sentences, both defendants offered evidence of ‘prior character’. When Molly Martens was asked if she had any comment to make, she sobbed uncontrollably and said she was ‘not a murderer’.
She said: ‘I did not murder my husband. My father did not murder my husband… the incidents that happened on that night happened on a somewhat regular basis only this time my father was there… maybe I shouldn’t have screamed… now my children will lose both parents.’
She cried out and collapsed in her attorney’s arms as Judge Lee sentenced her to 20 to 25 years. Immediate appeals were lodged by attorney’s for both parties.