Jason Corbett’s first wife did not die of asthma attack, prosecution witness tells court

The first wife of Jason Corbett did not die from an asthma attack, a medical expert commissioned by prosecutors in North Carolina has said.

Dr George Nichols, a former chief medical examiner in Kentucky, said it was possible that Margaret Corbett’s death in 2006 was a homicide.

Giving evidence in court in Lexington, North Carolina on Thursday, he said the opinion of Dr Elizabeth Mulcahy, the doctor in Ireland who had carried out the autopsy into Margaret Corbett, was “completely wrong”.

“There is no cause of death evidence here at all. There is nothing we can go on that has killed this woman. "

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“There is no determined cause of death. "

[ Jason Corbett’s children remain stoic as court hears Molly Martens’s choking claim ]

Earlier this week Molly Martens Corbett did not contest a charge of voluntary manslaughter in relation to the death of her husband Jason Corbett in August 2015. Her father Thomas Martens pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter.

The court is holding a hearing to determine the sentences they will receive.

Counsel for Molly Martens Corbett told the court earlier this week that his client believed that Jason Corbett’s first wife had been killed and the same fate could befall her.

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On Thursday afternoon forensic pathologist Dr Nichols, who had been commissioned by the prosecution, criticised the Irish autopsy report on the death of Margaret Corbett which he said was two pages in length.

Dr Nichols said Margaret Corbett had received treatment for asthma including IV and nebuliser therapy in Ireland.

He said she had died in the family car on the way to hospital. He said she was functionally dead when paramedics arrived on the scene.

He said the cause of death was due to an acute cardio respiratory attack following a bronchospasm in a known asthmatic.

Dr Nichols said the autopsy showed no evidence of external injury.

However, he said “there was a whole bunch of stuff not mentioned “.

He said the upper airway had not been removed and examined by hand by the pathologist.

It was put to Dr Nichols that another medical expert for the defence had argued the death was due to homicide. He said this was possible but not close to probable.

Questioned by Douglas Kingsberry counsel for Ms Martens Corbett, Dr Nichols said Margaret Corbett “did not die from an asthma attack”.

He said the manner of death was undetermined. He said it was possible the death was due to homicide.

Earlier, the court heard Ms Martens claimed to a social worker that her husband, Jason Corbett, forced her to have sex during which he placed his hand over her face until she passed out.

The claim was set out in evidence given by investigative social worker Sheila Tyler who interviewed Ms Martens as well as her mother and Jason Corbett’s two young children the day after the Limerick man was killed in 2015.

The court heard that the two children, then aged eight and 10 and who are from Mr Corbett’s first marriage, described how their father shouted at and hit Ms Martens.

However, the court was told that in 2016 and again in 2021 the two children had recanted the comments they had made in 2015 to the investigative social worker and at a child advocacy centre known as Dragonfly.

Prosecution counsel Marissa Parker said the children in 2021 said they had never seen their father hit Molly Martens.

She contended the children had been “coached” about what to say. She said they maintained in the 2021 statements that in 2015 they had been warned if they did not say what they had been told to say, they would be “taken away”.

Ms Parker urged the court to take into account only the later statements by the children and not those made in the United States in the immediate aftermath of the killing of Mr Corbett in August 2015.

Douglas Kingsberry, counsel for Molly Martens, contended that the statements made by the two children in 2015 were the accurate versions. He said medical records showed that Jason Corbett had told his doctor that he was getting stressed and angry. He suggested this was in keeping with the comments made by the children about their father.

He said in January 2016 Jason Corbett’s son, Jack, sent a message to Ms Martens telling her he loved her and missed her. He said this was after she had been indicted for the murder of his father.

In August 2015 Mr Corbett was beaten to death after being hit with a baseball bat by his father-in-law Thomas Martens and with a brick by his wife. Both have claimed self-defence.

The court on Thursday heard Mr Corbett’s voice for the first time in a recording made in February 2015 on Pancake Tuesday. The audio featured a row between Mr Corbett and his wife at the dinner table at their home near Winston Salem in North Carolina.

The recording indicated that Mr Corbett was angry on arriving home from work to find the rest of the family had already eaten when he said he had told his wife earlier he wanted to have dinner with his children.

He accused her of ignoring him in front of the children and of talking about something else when he was speaking to her.

The tape recorded attempts by the children to say that they did not like listening to fighting.

The audio also recorded Jason Corbett demanding that his wife show him her mobile phone in a row over when she had responded to some messages.

Defence counsel for Molly Martens suggested elements of the recording backed up the statements made in 2015 by the children to social workers.

Assistant district attorney Alan Martin said the tape had been recorded secretly “to manufacture evidence, period”. He maintained there were other recordings made in the Corbett home which had not been produced during the court discovery process.

Ms Tyler said Ms Martens had maintained in her interview with her in August 2015, the day after Mr Corbett was killed, that she was often afraid of her husband.

She said Ms Martens said he had sometimes destroyed her possessions and that he stopped her from calling people on her phone. She said the children often overheard what was going on in the house and tried to protect her.

Ms Tyler said Ms Martens told her that her husband had on occasion forced her to have sex, during which he would place his hand over her mouth and nose so that she could not breathe.

“Every time it got worse. He would hold his hand there a little longer,” she quoted Ms Martens as saying.

She said Ms Martens maintained she passed out after this happened but did not know for how long.

Ms Tyler said Sharon Martens, the mother of Molly Martens, had told her in a separate interview that her daughter’s relationship with her husband was “horrible”. She said Sharon Martens had maintained that the two children would tell her about the abuse but her daughter would not.

Ms Martens and her father, Thomas Martens, have pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges. A court hearing in Lexington, North Carolina, which is under way this week, is aimed at determining the sentences they will receive.