US prosecutors described Sharon Martens as the ‘void’ in the Martenses’ story: a wife, mother and grandmother who saw her husband rush upstairs with a baseball bat, heard her daughter screaming, and knew her grandchildren might be in danger… yet her response was to fall asleep.
Sharon and her husband Tom had arrived at their daughter Molly and son-in-law Jason’s Meadowlands home at 8.30pm on August 1, 2015, seven hours before the former FBI agent and Molly beat Jason to death with a baseball bat and a brick.
Corporal Clayton Dagenhardt, the first police officer to arrive, had encountered a noisy scene.
Two paramedics and two fire officers were frantically attempting to revive a tall, naked man lying motionless between the open ground-floor master bedroom door and the south wall to the right.
Dagenhardt used his phone to take two quick photos of the victim before paramedics hoisted the 262lb man onto a gurney and rushed him outside to a waiting life-support ambulance.
The officer then asked Tom Martens if there was anyone else in the house. Tom replied in a clear, steady voice that there were two young children upstairs and that his wife, Sharon, was asleep downstairs in the basement.
Sharon Martens arriving at the court in July 2017 to attend her husband and daughter’s trial
Descending pattern of blows on the south wall in the room where Jason Corbett was killed
Four more emergency responders arrived at the scene. As Molly cried loudly between rapid shallow breaths, Dagenhardt and another officer, Corporal Rusty Ramsay, went upstairs to take the victim’s children, Jack, ten, and Sarah, eight, from their beds.
As the children were brought downstairs to the ground floor, and then, to the basement, they were told to cover their eyes, but both remember the loud noises of heavy footsteps on the wooden floors, and how the sound of police radios echoed up the vaulted two-storey ceiling.
None of this noise appeared to have registered with Sharon in the basement.
When Dagenhardt and Ramsay brought the children to the furnished basement, they saw a thin line of lamplight under a bedroom door.
The door opened and Sharon Martens stepped into the frame. Sharon didn’t fire questions at the policemen. She didn’t ask if anyone was hurt, or if her husband and daughter were safe upstairs.
Instead, Dagenhardt noted, she appeared remarkably calm and merely asked if everything was okay.
As the children were brought downstairs to the ground floor, and then, to the basement, they were told to cover their eyes. Pictured: Jack and Sarah Corbett before their father’s death in 2015
Dagenhardt told Sharon there was an active investigation and that he needed to leave the children in her care. He instructed her not to leave the basement until officers returned to get them.
Three hours later, at 6.34am, Detective Nathan Riggs informed Sharon that Jason was dead.
Riggs recalled in a statement for the prosecution case file: ‘She had not been informed about what had occurred upstairs and did not know that Jason was deceased. I explained to her what had occurred and that Jason had not survived. She became emotional and started to cry.’
Riggs took a statement from Sharon. The 65-year-old mother of four said she was awoken by dogs barking, followed by screaming.
‘I could hear Molly screaming upstairs and some thumping. My husband said he was going up to get them to calm down or he was going to call the police. He told me to stay there. I heard more screams and more thumpings. Then it got quiet and the dogs settled down. I figured that he got them calmed down.
‘I pictured that he had taken Molly to the living room and was talking to her, and I thought it wouldn’t be good if I went up there all emotional after he had calmed things down. I guess I had fallen back to sleep because the next thing I knew, I was woken up by a strange voice calling “Sharon”. It was an officer who asked me to stay down here with the kids.’
Then, Sharon told Riggs that she had been concerned for Molly and the children’s safety with Jason.
Molly Martens pictured at the crime scene the night Jason Corbett was killed at their home in 2015
She said: ‘Jason and Molly have fought since they were married. Molly always told me it was only verbal but I suspected it was physical. Molly knew I would be hysterical if I knew he was hurting her. But Jack and Sarah have told me about when Jason would grab Molly or push her into the wall and hit her. I would ask Molly about it and she would say they were just exaggerating. After the kids told me about the fighting, I asked them to write my phone number on the bottom of something near the upstairs house phone.’
She had instructed the children to write her phone number underneath a Russian doll which was kept on a bedside locker in the guest bedroom. She had given the children codewords – Sarah’s was ‘peacock’ and Jack’s was ‘galaxy’ – and she had told them to call her if there was ever an emergency.
Molly Martens Corbett and her father Thomas Martens were each found guilty of second-degree murder
Sharon told Riggs: ‘They were afraid of their dad. They made practice calls to me. We had a codeword that they would be able to just say and I would know it was them and I would call the police so they wouldn’t have to. Molly would tell me “Mom, everybody fights except you and Dad”.’
The head of Crime Scene Investigations, Frankie Young, found the doll with Sharon’s number written underneath – but, as prosecutors would later note, the writing was not that of a child. An adult had written the number.
Though Tom and Molly were brought to the police station for voluntary interviews, Sharon was allowed to remain with Jack and Sarah.
Sharon waited until Tom and Molly returned shortly after 9.30am, before informing the children that their father was dead.
Sharon summoned one of her three sons, Bobby, a federal agent, to come from Charlotte 90 miles south of Meadowlands to collect Jack and Sarah. Sharon, Tom and Molly remained at the house for at least an hour before following the children to Bobby’s house.
They discussed who should call Jason’s family to let them know he was dead.
Molly had said in her police interview that she was afraid of Jason’s family and asked if the police could call them. In the end, Sharon called Jason’s twin, Wayne, who recalled: ‘It was ten past six in the evening, Irish time. That was ten hours after they killed Jason. I saw Molly’s number and I answered, expecting Jason or Molly, but I got Sharon. It was a short call.’
Former FBI agent Thomas Martens
Sharon’s tone was as curt as the call, said Wayne.
‘She said, “Jason and Molly had an argument. Molly pushed Jason. Jason fell and hit his head. Jason’s dead.” I couldn’t believe it. I demanded to talk to Jack and Sarah. She said, “No. They’re too upset.” I asked to speak to Molly and she said “no,” and hung up.’
The call lasted approximately one minute.
Wayne had met with Sharon, Molly, Jason, and the children while visiting Washington DC a week before the killing.
He had overheard Sharon discussing how Jason would not allow Molly to adopt the children. Tom pulled out of the Washington trip, citing work commitments. When a work colleague, Jonathan Underwood, asked Tom why he didn’t go on the Washington trip, Tom replied: ‘Why would I want to go on vacation with that a*****e?’
Four days after the killing, the children were brought to Dragonfly House to meet a social worker trained in conducting forensic interviewers with children who were suspected victims of abuse.
Molly had been ordered by police and the Department of Social Services not to attend this interview as she was a ‘person of interest’ in the killing. Sharon brought the children to Dragonfly. Jack and Sarah later alleged that Sharon coached them in Bobby’s house and en route to Dragonfly to tell any social worker who interviewed them that ‘daddy hit mommy’.
Detective Riggs was set up to watch the Dragonfly interview via an audio-visual monitor in an adjacent room.
Prior to starting the interview, Riggs was alerted by Dragonfly House staff that Sharon was attempting to dictate the order of the interviews. Sharon wanted Jack interviewed first. Riggs later told a court: ‘We decided Sarah should go first. A lot of the time in investigations we see that kids have been coached. If there was coaching, then we would disturb it.’
The lead investigators and the district attorneys charged with prosecuting Tom and Molly Martens were all suspicious of Sharon’s statement on the night. Their suspicions were heightened when the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory completed their forensic analysis of the bloodied brick and baseball bat.
Forensic scientist Melanie Carson had found 25 hairs on the brick. All but one of them were Jason’s. The outlier was a pale yellow, almost colourless hair.
DNA testing had shown this hair was not Tom’s or Molly’s but that it bore ‘genetic similarities’ to Molly.
Forensic scientist Melanie Carson had found 25 hairs on the brick. All but one of them were Jason’s. Pictured: The bloodstained brick used in killing
The Martenses 2017 trial on second-degree murder charges did not explore further whether this hair was Sharon’s – the only other person in the house with genetic links to Molly. But assistant district attorney Alan Martin told the court that Sharon’s story of falling back to sleep was not credible.
Martin said Tom delayed calling 911 so he could get his story straight.
‘He had to think about all this pounding, smashing, screaming and yelling, skulls being crushed, flesh being ripped from the bone, and why and how Sharon could have slept through it all and not come upstairs.
‘That’s why the blood was dried and the body was cool – because Tom was staging the crime scene and getting his story straight.’
Martin painted the picture, from Sharon’s perspective, of two police officers arriving in the basement at 3.30am with her grandchildren, saying they are conducting an investigation upstairs; yet Sharon is totally calm, and merely asks: ‘Is everything okay?’
This was not credible, Martin said: ‘Do any of you all know a grandmother on the planet that would respond in that situation in that way?’
It was unbelievable, Martin added, that this loud exchange between Tom and Jason – with Tom shouting, ‘Let her go’ and Jason responding, ‘I’m going to kill her’ – could have happened without Sharon waking.
He said Tom deliberately kept Sharon out of the story.
‘Did you call her? No. Did you wake her up? No. Did you scream for her to call 911? No. Did she show up? No. It is like she vanished from the face of the earth in Tom Martens’s testimony. Why is that?’
The assistant district attorney then answered his own question.
‘One person keeping a story straight that ain’t true is awfully hard. And the special agent who was in charge of the crime scene that night, if anyone knows that, knows that. Two people keeping a story straight is exponentially harder and three people keeping a story straight is darn near impossible. To go from three to two, we have to get Sharon out of the picture.’
Born in Manhattan, Kansas, in 1950, Sharon grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, in a conservative middle-class home, the daughter of Professor Robert Earnest, who was director of the MBA program at Florida State University College of Business.
Tom’s father was an engineer who worked on the development of the atomic bomb.
The Martenses were wealthy – they had a luxurious home in Knoxville, a $780,000 beach house in South Carolina, as well as an investment property in Tennessee. Tom had admitted in his police interview he did not think Jason was good enough for his daughter.
‘That’s, you know, Dad speaking – pretty hard to ever measure up to my daughter’s standards in Dad’s eyes.’
Alan Martin also said he believed the family did not think Jason was good enough for Molly.
‘He’s not good enough for her. He’s not good enough for my family. He’s beneath me and beneath my family. I hate him. That’s what malice sounds like.’
Sharon had instructed the children to write her phone number underneath a Russian doll which was kept on a bedside locker in the guest bedroom
Sharon, a mathematics teacher at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee, was never criminally prosecuted.
However, she was named as a co-defendant, alongside Tom and Molly, when Jason’s estate brought a wrongful death claim.
The burden of proof was lower in such a civil case – the estate would only have to prove its case on the balance of probabilities rather than beyond reasonable doubt.
The Martenses eventually reached an out of court settlement with Jason’s estate.
‘What a life we will have… I can’t wait’
Detectives accessed Molly’s Gmail account under search warrant. A tranche of emails dating from three weeks after her arrival in Ireland to months before the killing were released following a public records request. The tranche includes emails which Molly sent herself to diary alleged incidents of abuse.
While the emails between Molly and Jason reveal that their relationship was fractious and volatile from early on, they also show some loving and tender exchanges, which appear to directly contradict the abuse which Molly catalogues via emails she sent to herself.
Within three weeks of Molly’s March 2008 arrival in Ireland, Jason was telling Molly that he loved her. Five months later, in August 2008, Molly was pushing Jason to propose. She emailed him a link to a recruitment company in August 2008 so he could apply for jobs in America and move his family there.
But then, according to the email thread, Jason wanted to slow things down.
When Molly’s visa expired she returned to Tennessee for a few weeks. Jason used the break to suggest that she get a job au pairing for another family when she returned. That way, they could have a normal dating relationship, instead of living like husband and wife.
Jason said that he did not want Jack and Sarah (then aged four and two) to get too attached to Molly, and then lose her, like they lost Mags.
Molly replies on August 5, 2008: ‘Quite honestly I feel if you have felt this way then you should have been up front with me a while ago. I’ve been led to believe that you want me in your life and the kids lives for sure… I can’t help feeling that you lied to me.’
In chat messages three days later, the argument continues:
Molly: I wish you wouldn’t think of me as such a weapon for the kids. Shut up. It feels horrible. And even if I was with you, it would be eating me up and tearing me to pieces knowing you weren’t sure you wanted me… I just want to be loved. Not even as much as I love you. I just want to be loved back. What I am saying is that neither of us should live life with so much doubt.
Jason: I’m not made of stone. I’m sick of fighting. I feel bad. I’m as upset as you are. It hurts me, too, you know. I just want a normal boy-girl relationship. You were right that this does put pressure on us to sink or swim. That is pressure after five months we should not be under. We should be having fun getting to know each other. Going on dates. Not husband and wife.
Molly: You want to stay together even though you know you won’t marry me. I know you don’t want to lose me, but I’m not sure you want to keep me either. I wish you were as sure about me as I am about you. I’ll be missing and mourning you and the kids for a long time to come.
Jason: Please know that I miss you and I love you so much. But I’m scared. Scared to let go in case I lose someone again. Or the kids lose someone again. I couldn’t live through it. I really want to work through this, Molly. It may take time, but I want to try. Lots of love, and please don’t cry… My concern is for Jack and Sarah. They’ve had enough tragedy in their short lives… I am really scared, Molly. I don’t want to lose you. But more so. I don’t want to risk Jack and Sarah losing another mother if we don’t work out.
Jason Corbett with Molly Martens on their wedding day
Molly returned to Limerick and they continued as before. Emails indicate the couple secretly got engaged in September 2009, and Molly began planning their relocation to America. While Molly was in the US in October 2009, a text exchange showed them clashing over Molly’s suggestion that Jason was using his two bereaved children as a ‘sob story’.
Jason: What sob story?
Molly: The ‘I’ve two babies, bla bla bla’. Like I just don’t give a shit about them? I gotta go. Sorry. Much love.
Jason: Are you trying to be cruel and by the way, I said ‘we have two babies’
Molly: No, you didn’t. I love you. Bye. Sorry for everything, as usual, I’m sure I caused it all.
Jason: I love you too, and yes I did [say we have two babies]. Stop with the pity.
By January 29, 2010, the couple were constantly arguing. Molly sends Jason a strange email which reads as if she had meant to send it to herself:
Molly: I’m not really doing great. I’m extremely depressed. I cry everyday and argue with Jason everyday. He says horrible things and I say horrible things back and I hate myself for it. Several months ago Jason told me he wanted us to move to the States…now he claims he felt forced to say that he wanted to move… that he was never sure. And the proposal? Well, he doesn’t want to marry someone so sad.
The following month, Jason suggests Molly should return to Tennessee for three months so they both have space to decide on their future. Molly describes feeling trapped in Ireland. Jason told friends that she complained about living with a ghost – his late first wife Mags.
Molly: So, do I feel trapped in this country where I will never feel like the love of your life. Of course I do. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. No, if I could choose, I wouldn’t choose here… I would rather be with you here than anywhere without you. I am sorry if that’s not good enough for you. I’m not going to have a magic transformation and love it here. But I will always love you.
Later, on February 10, 2010, she emails Jason:
Molly: You have been great to me and given me more than I ever deserved, I’m sorry I have not done the same for you. I know I can do better. I know I can be who you want me to be. I don’t want to live without you and I don’t want to live without the kids. I’m sorry, so very sorry. Please let me make it up to you. I am begging you with everything I have inside of me, to please give me another chance. I won’t mention marriage or promises or any other selfish whimsical desires… I don’t need them, but I do need you. I love you. Please say that you still love me too.
Four days later, on Valentine’s Day 2010, two years after Molly arrived in Ireland, Jason told family members and friends that he had proposed that night.
The following month, on March 11, 2010, Jason emails Molly referencing her complaints about him being aggressive:
Jason: If you feel that I am aggressive (remember it is you who hits out at both of us and not me) then you shouldn’t want to be with someone like that. I am sorry but I resent that you say I am aggressive as I don’t feel I am… [I get] annoyed sometimes but there is a difference.
By September 2010, she had convinced Jason to sell the house he built with his first wife and move to America. On October 4, 2010, Jason emails Molly about their frequent arguments:
Jason: You are correct about the fighting but in our defence we have been under quite a bit of stress over the past 12 months with moving/work/health etc… I want to marry you babe and I know you do too and I am so looking forward to it. What a life we will have… I can’t wait Molls. I looked up Bleak House [their wedding venue in Tennessee] again last night and it looked beautiful. I was just imagining seeing you walk through the archway in your wedding dress, Wow!!! It was a great vision.
By September 2010, Molly had convinced Jason to sell the house he built with his first wife and move to America
When Jason sold his family home, the sale went through on November 21, 2010 – the fourth anniversary of his first wife’s death. He told his sister Tracey he believed this was a sign he was making a mistake moving to America. Nonetheless, he goes ahead with the move.
In the space of a week, between March 28 and April 2, 2011, Molly went from breaking up with Jason and making plans for her father Tom to come to Ireland and pack up her stuff, to changing her mind and continuing with their wedding plans for June 2011.
Six weeks before the wedding, Jason emails Molly. She is in America for a gynaecological procedure, and to prepare for their wedding day. After what appear to have been some fractious phone calls, Jason emails Molly on April 26:
Jason: Are you sure you want us to move??? We are moving to America as the belief is that you will be happy. It doesn’t seem to be the case, Molls. Please don’t have me do this if you are going to be unhappy either way. You can’t even talk to me without shouting or crying… I can’t ask a question or speak without exaggeration from you hun… then you tell me you’re broken. What does that mean? You found a house, new car, kids and future husband moving to where you want, getting married. Ask yourself this: Are you happy???????
Then two days later, he emails:
Jason: I won’t be able to make a go of it in the States under this emotional pressure you are placing on me… you just accuse me of things off the cuff when you have no valid reason for doing so. Please think about what I actually said in conversation and point out what I did wrong. You bang the phone down, you sound like an emotional wreck. I’m moving to your country to be with you, I need YOU to be strong for us and not constantly crying, accusing me of things, banging down phones. You are supposedly getting what you want and yet you sound more sad now than ever.
Molly: I am an emotional wreck right now. I have every right to be. I have not seen my children in three weeks and I still have a week and a half until I do. Will the kids even want to see me after they’ve been living in party land for a month? You threaten me all the time. ‘I’m not coming if you’re emotional Molly’ ‘I don’t want a relationship without sex Molly, so you better get fixed…’ You tell me all the time how I am making you do something and how much you are hating it. I might not be able to conceive and I will deal with this disease no matter what for the rest of my life. Every time I get excited about something I call you and you couldn’t care less. Those are all pretty good reasons to be emotionally distraught right now. And I will hang up every time you threaten me; that is not how a relationship works.
Jason: You’re right this is not how a relationship works. Your statements, by the way, are your statements – and not mine – so please don’t attribute them to me, apart from the last few lines which I do totally agree with.
The tensions continue up to a week before the wedding, when Jason emails Molly:
Jason: Is there anything I can do to make you happy… I’ve done everything… And still you hate yourself, hit yourself, cry in the shower, vomit, curse, shout at me… I feel so inadequate Molls… I’ve given you everything in my life including my and my kids hearts and I know you love us so so much but you still in the last three days only have done all the above things… I don’t know what to do.
Once they are married, the emails become less frequent, but by March 2013, married life seems to be working for both.
Molly sends Jason an email with 21 lines, each beginning with the words ‘I love you,’ followed by simple things Jason does to make her feel good, like telling her she’s beautiful, kissing her lips, holding her hand. She finishes the email with: ‘I love you for so many million itty-bitty things. I love you for sharing your life with me.’
Jason: Very sweet. Talk later.
Molly: Please answer me. We can be so good together. I have loved you since the day I met you and will love you until the day I die. Please don’t throw me away.
By January of 2015, eight months before Jason’s killing, Molly has started to email herself about alleged behaviour, as a form of ad hoc diary:
Molly: Something is changing me and I can’t keep doing this. I don’t know what to do. I’ve given everything for my children. He threatens me every day. He said if I ever text him about how he hurts me that you will never see me again [and] that I will never see my children again. What he doesn’t understand is that when he physically hurts me it doesn’t hurt me as much as when he tells me how I’m an incompetent b***h, you’re a stupid woman, ugly and fat, scatterbrained or the worst mom possible or slutty or pathetic or disgusting. I hear them over and over and over in my head.
By the time she sent this aide memoire to herself she had been spreading rumours with neighbours in Meadowlands that she was a victim of domestic abuse. Yet when detectives investigated these claims after the killing, they were told by neighbours that Jason and Molly always appeared to be a loving, affectionate and tactile couple in public. Though Molly regularly wore swimsuits as a part of her role as a neighbourhood swim coach, no-one noticed any injuries or bruising.
On February 1, 2015, she sent herself another email with what she claims is a text from Jason apologising for hitting her: ‘“I’m sorry for my behaviour. You do make me feel bad by not fully wanting me and by letting me know it’s a hardship to actually make love to me. It’s devastating for me as I love and want you. Nevertheless my behavior is unacceptable. I’m truly sorry…” [That’s] a text from him. As close to apologizing for hitting me as I’ll ever get.’
The timing of this email to herself is significant. She sent it the day after she had met with Melissa Sams, a family lawyer who specialised in child custody disputes. Molly told Ms Sams she was a victim of domestic abuse but wouldn’t leave Jason because he wouldn’t allow her to adopt the children. Ms Sams advised her that she had very limited rights, but she should start recording the abuse, and to use the recordings as the basis of an application for an emergency custody order.
That month Molly emailed herself six recordings.
Six months later, on August 2 2015, Molly and her father beat Jason to death and claimed they acted in self-defence.
- A Deadly Marriage by Brian Carroll is published by Sandycove, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and is available online and in stores from August 21.
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