Molly: I’m ashamed of my lies... but I’m not a liar now
Article reveals details of secret tape recordings which Martens claims prove she was a victim of domestic abuse
KILLER Molly Martens has admitted to having ‘an issue’ with lying throughout her life, in a new bombshell interview with a major US magazine.
Martens’ lies went as far as to manufacture a dead sister and leading people to believe her Irish step-daughter was actually her biological child.
Elle magazine also reveals details of shock audio recordings that Molly secretly made in an attempt to catch her Limerick husband in examples of alleged abuse.
Molly and her father, Tom Martens, remain in jail in North Carolina pending a retrial for the death of her husband, father-of-two Jason Corbett, who was bludgeoned to death in August 2015 in the master bedroom he shared with his American nanny and wife.
The magazine piece details how Molly, who dropped out of a prestigious US university ostensibly after contracting glandular fever, told her freshman roommate that her younger sister died of cancer and kept a framed photo of the girl.
Molly is one of four Tennesseeraised siblings and the only girl.
‘After visiting the Martens household and not seeing any photos of the little girl, Molly’s roommate “looked at the picture closer and noticed a ‘5X7’ in the corner of the photograph, meaning it was a
‘Molly spoke of a dead sister she never had’
standard photograph of a model that comes with the frame when it is purchased”,’ a detective wrote in a sheriff’s report following Jason’s death, according to Elle.
‘Molly says she could have said something like that as a way to relate to someone, then gotten caught in a lie she didn’t mean to tell, but “there’s no excuse,” Elle journalist Alex Ronan writes. ‘She insists she didn’t have any framed photographs in her dorm room, but with a collage of photos and magazine tear-outs on her walls, it’s possible she referred to someone pictured as a younger sister who died.’
Molly also refers to a dead younger sister in an email to Jason six years later after an alleged betrayal by her Irish husband, writing ‘other than my sister’s death nothing has ever devastated me so much’, according to Elle.
The journalist flat-out asked Molly whether she had ‘an issue’ with lying.
‘At first she says, “I think that I did,” before adding, “I don’t think I do now”. But then she expresses uncertainty,’ Ronan writes. ‘I don’t think I did necessarily more than the average person,’ Molly said, ‘it’s just everything that I’ve ever said and done [has] come to light… I have a hard time thinking about myself doing those things, and I feel very regretful.’
The piece also details claims that Molly, at book club or Bible study, told friends and neighbours about giving birth when she’d never gone through labour. She’d been pregnant before meeting Jason during a previous relationship but did not carry to term.
‘She says she didn’t talk about labor, but about pregnancy, which she has experienced,’ the Elle piece says.
‘I’m sure that there’s a possibility that I led people to believe that was directly related to my children or one of my children,’ she says – later admitting to the Elle writer that she ‘could have said Sarah was biologically [hers]’.
Molly’s tenuous relationship with the truth didn’t fool everyone, the Elle report says, and it details how neighbors told authorities the former model ‘would say things that did not add up, according to the prosecutors’, the interview states.
‘First of all, everybody lies, that’s true,’ Molly tells Elle. ‘And anybody who says that they don’t, they’re lying… If you had to ask me what I am most ashamed of in my life, it would be the times that I have not been honest with people.’
She also tells the magazine that she’d ‘said things to make myself sound better because I’m ashamed of who I am or aspects of who I am’.
She clearly did not tell Jason she was recording him during interactions well before his death; they are outlined in the new Elle piece but were never admitted or played at trial. While the North Carolina Supreme Court ordered a retrial – which currently remains in the hands of the district attorney – that decision centred on issues with blood spatter expert analysis and the admissibility of statements from Jason’s two children, Jack and Sarah, who remain in the custody of the Corbett family in Ireland.
From the outset, the case has anecdotally focused on claims that Jason was secretly abusive, while Jason’s family call him a ‘gentle giant’ and point to Molly’s obsessive, desperate pleas for the children to contact her after she and her father beat him to death with a paving stone and a baseball bat.
Molly’s former FBI agent father, also serving 20-25 years in prison for the killing, admitted he never saw Jason touch his daughter until he allegedly walked in on a physical altercation on the night of the crime.
‘Years ago, fearing no one would believe that Jason was abusive, and at the advice of a custody lawyer, Molly says she began using hidden recording devices,’ Elle reports. ‘Molly says many of the recordings have been destroyed or lost, but the few that remain were given to the district attorney’s office.’
It is understood this was done ahead of a charge in an attempt to guide a decision to not charge Martens and her father with murder.
North Carolina is a one-party consent state, meaning that it is legal to record an interaction if one person – in this case, Molly – knows the recording is happening and agrees to it (or is the person making it).
It is not clear why the tapes, if provided to prosecutors, were never presented at trial, though it is difficult to prove their veracity.
In the article Elle journalist Ronan says: ‘While I compared the audio provided to other audio of Molly, Jason, and the children, there was no way for me to determine exactly when they were made or under what circumstances.
‘On a recording titled “Jason Comes Home Late,” he finds the door locked and rings the bell. She opens it within 39 seconds and apologizes. “You never mean to do anything, do ye?” he asks angrily, then mocks her,’ Elle reports.
‘Molly pleads, multiple smacking sounds can be heard, and she begins to whimper. “I hate you,” she sobs before the recording cuts out.’
Some neighbours told authorities they’d never seen any signs of abuse, while others said they believed Molly – the doting mother, so devoted to her children – could have been telling the truth. It’s unclear whether those are the same people who knew that both children were not biologically hers.
While a retrial will likely not be
‘I don’t lie any more than the average person’
‘I said things to make myself sound better’
held until 2022 – and that’s if the DA chooses to pursue one – Molly and her father will be eligible for bail in the coming weeks. And if a retrial does happen, it’s almost certain that Molly’s previous tendency to distort or inflate the truth – or outright lie – will be brought into evidence by the prosecutors.
The case hinges strongly on statements previously excluded at trial provided by Jack and Sarah concerning conditions in the home, particularly on the night in question, which seem to support domestic unrest if not abuse. But with Molly’s admissions of her own ‘issue’ with the truth – it will be fascinating to see how any trial plays out.