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Molly Martens weaponised Jason Corbett’s children against him, before “bashing his skull” in, when she learned he wanted to take the children back to Ireland and divorce her, a court heard.
The Tennessee woman (40) knew “the endgame was coming” and she took advantage of having her father, a former FBI agent, in the house on the night of the killing to unleash an explosive and lethal event, assistant district attorney, Alan Martin, told the Davidson County Superior Court.
Molly Martens had an extraordinary ability to dissemble, deceive and manipulate others through lies, and placed recording devices around her home to manufacture evidence of domestic abuse, the Davidson County Superior Court heard on Tuesday, the seventh day of a sentencing hearing for Tom and Molly Martens who have pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter.
Although there were multiple recording devices all over the house, recording for several months, only one recording was produced for an expert witness in domestic violence, Dr Scott Hampton, to review. This one tape showed Jason raising his voice, but not resorting to any violence.
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“All the others were destroyed,” Mr Martin said.
He then outlined a litany of lies by Molly Martens, when he was cross-examining Dr Hampton, an expert witness for the defence. Dr Hampton was put forward as an expert in domestic violence, but while he had reviewed multiple sources of information provided to him by the defence, he had never spoken to the only independent witnesses who lived in 160 Panther Creek, Jack and Sarah Corbett. Nor had Dr Hampton sought documentation on how the children had recanted claims they made when Sarah was eight and Jack ten years old. These claims – that their father was an abuser – were recanted once the children were taken out of the custody of their father’s killers and returned to Ireland with their guardians, David and Tracey Lynch.
The expert spoke in general terms about the patterns normally at play in domestic violence situations but said he preferred to use the term ‘intimate partner violence’. He reviewed a psychological assessment which was carried out by Dr David Adams for the prosecution which found that Molly was driven – even before she married Jason – to marry him, adopt his children and then divorce Jason and take away his children.
“Adoption was her desire,” Alan Martin told the witness, and she would stop at nothing to achieve it. When the domestic violence expert said he didn’t like the word “lie” because there were good lies too, when someone is not telling the truth but they are doing it for what they believe are good reasons. He said: “Molly was all about the kids, and everyone knew that.”
This opened the door for Mr Martin to outline Molly’s multitude of lies, and ask what good reason did she have for lying that she was a foster parent, that she was on a varsity swim team at a prestigious Division One university.
“Why would you lie about something like that when in fact you didn’t even complete a semester at that college?
Dr Hampton suggested these lies were innocuous and were about ‘future-pacing’. “This is what I want my life to be and I’m going to talk about it until it happens”.
Mr Martin countered: “Say when I was in college I had a roommate and I had a photograph framed in my dorm room and I had the picture in it that came with in when I bought it, and when asked about it, I told my roommate: ‘that’s my sister, she died of leukemia. And I never had a sister and certainly not one who died of leukemia. This is emotional manipulation.”
Dr Hampton said some people create non-factual events because they want their life to be better.”
“So,” Mr Martin responded: “I’m going to fake a sister who died. That’s bordering on delusional. It’s very manipulative. She had an extraordinary way to manipulate other people’s emotional states.
Mr Martin then described how Molly told other women at a bible study group Meadowlands that she was Sarah’s birth mother, and she told them in shocking detail about the difficult birth she had had with Sarah, when in fact Sarah was not her daughter.
Dr Hampton said this was again, wish-fulfilment.
Mr Martin replied that Molly Martens had told friends that Jason’s first wife had begged her: “If anything happens take care of Jason and Jack and Sarah.’ She had never met Mags.”
This was a further example of Molly’s “insidious” lies, Mr Martin said. “We know all these things are false.”
Dr Hampton claimed that Molly was highly motivated to save Jason Corbett from dying on the night they called 911 on August 2nd 2015. “She had to use the right amount of force that’s necessary to stay alive. She had to ensure that Jason wasn’t dead. That was a high priority because if Jason is killed, she hasn’t adopted the kids, so she wont have access to the kids. How to decide how much force to use and keep that balance of keeping Jason alive is very challenging.”
With Dr Hampton, a psychologist rather than a crime scene investigator, straying into the realms of forensics and evidence by offering his opinion on what happened in the bedroom that night, Alan Martin seized the opportunity to ask him a loaded question. He showed him photographs of Tom and Molly Martens at the scene with not a mark on them. Then he showed him pictures of Jason’s autopsy where his skull was bashed in with such violence, bits of his skull from either side of the back of his head fell out on the autopsy gurney.
“Does that look like a reasonable amount of force to you?”
Dr Hampton drew gasps of disbelief and ironic laughter from Jason Corbett’s family, friends and some former neighbours and work colleagues when the expert said: “I believe it’s a measure of how terrified Tom and Molly were.”
The Judge reiterated his opening day warning that there was to be no public displays of emotion or visible reaction to testimony. He told those in the public gallery to leave the court if they could not obey this order.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr George Corvin later told the court that he believed Tom Martens was a Type A personality who didn’t show any emotion when interviewed.
Dr Covin said he believed Mr Martens was a stickler for rules, after he had interviewed the former FBI agent for two and half hours in January of this year to prepare a report for Tom Martens’s lawyers. Dr Corvin said Tom’s recollection was not 100 per cent but it was consistent with other versions he had told police officers and lawyers.
“He was polite, thoroughly methodical, and a typical Type A personality. He lived a life in which order is important and organisation is important. He is deliberate analytical.
He would be inclined to use logic over emotion, to follow rules rigidly. He had a Q security clearance with the Department of Energy. He was a pro-social man driven to find solutions and help other people,” Dr Corvin said.
“I don’t want to say that he is devoid of emotion but he likes to deal with situations that are just the facts. He was not very emotive,” Dr Corvin, who is based in Raleigh, North Carolina said.
He explained gaps in Tom’s memory - particularly when it came to seeing the brick in the room, Molly using it, or how many times he and Molly hit Jason Corbett - as being the normal reaction of someone who was thrust into a ‘sudden, severe, scary, and life threatening situation.’
The forensic psychiatrist say he believed Mr Martens went into the room to diffuse a row between Jason and Molly but instead it escalated. He tried to use this Type A personality skills to deescalate the situation but instead Jason began choking his daughter and a ‘fight or flight’ response kicked in. This was the body’s ‘emergency overdrive’ for when your life was in imminent danger, Dr Corvin said.
Tom Martens hit Jason multiple times until he was down, but said he did not hit him once he was no longer a threat.
The case continues.