Molly and Tom Martens, killers of Limerick man Jason Corbett, set for release from US jails

Tom and Molly Martens, the North Carolina father and daughter sentenced last year for the killing of Limerick man Jason Corbett on voluntary manslaughter, will be released from prison on Thursday.

They were originally scheduled for release on June 27th but the original date listed was due to a systems error.

The North Carolina Department of Corrections amended the date by 21 days following the receipt of documents from the US to reflect the time the Martens had served during their first period of incarceration after they had been found guilty of second-degree murder in the original trial.

In October 2023, the Martens were sentenced to a minimum of four years to include time already served under a plea deal they accepted for the voluntary manslaughter of Mr Corbett.

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Molly Martens will be released from the Correctional Institute for Women in Raleigh. Tom Martens will be released from Piedmont Correctional Institution, about a 25-minute drive from Lexington.

In their original 2017 trial, the Martens were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to between 20 and 25 years in prison.

[ What US police think really happened in the run-up to Jason Corbett’s killing ]

The court heard that in the early hours of August 2nd, 2015, paramedics were called to the home Mr Corbett (39) shared with his wife Molly and his two young children Jack and Sarah, from a previous marriage in Ireland, at Panther Creek Court in a suburb of North Carolina city of Winston-Salem.

They found Ms Martens attempting to carry out CPR on Mr Corbett, who had suffered traumatic injuries.

State prosecutors argued that the victim had been beaten to death with a baseball bat and a paving brick by Tom Martens, now 73, a former FBI agent, and Molly Martens, now 40, because the Martens feared that if Corbett returned to Ireland, the children would be taken from Molly Martens.

The prosecution also made the case that Molly Martens would benefit from a $600,000 life insurance policy. In their defence, the Martens argued the killing was in self-defence against an abusive spouse.

Their 2017 second-degree murder conviction was overturned on appeal in 2020 and the retrial was moved to Forsyth County due to the intensity of the media and public interest in the story.

Before the retrial began, the Martens accepted a plea deal for voluntary manslaughter in October 2023. The district attorney dropped the murder charges, but Judge David Hall advised them that a ‘no-contest’ admission, under North Carolina law, was taken to be an admission of a guilty plea.

Under the deal, Thomas Martens admitting hitting Mr Corbett on the head with a metal baseball bat and his daughter admitted striking Jason on the head or shoulder with a concrete landscaping brick.

The plea agreement stated that the “autopsy and circumstances of the scene establish that at least some of the fatal blows inflicted were of a nature, number and level of force that exceeded what could have been reasonably necessary in furtherance of perfect self-defence”.

Both Jack and Sarah Corbett delivered a powerful testimony at the sentencing hearing about the heartbreak and suffering they had endured since their father’s death.

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