This was, by any yardstick, the most excruciating day of testimony for Jack and Sarah Corbett Lynch, who had to sit impassively while life inside their home at 160 Panther Creek Court in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was dissected and displayed with forensic coldness.
First, they heard how Molly Martens, their former stepmother, told an investigative social worker, Sheila Tyler, how Jason Corbett would choke her during sex, placing his hand over her mouth so she couldn’t breath.
Ms Tyler was dispatched to make an immediate, unannounced visit to Ms Martens’s brother’s house, where Jack and Sarah were staying on the day after their father was killed. When Ms Tyler arrived, Molly and her father, former FBI agent Tom Martens, were not there. Ms Tyler called Molly who told her she was two hours away. Ms Tyler agreed to interview her later. When Molly arrived for that interview, the element of surprise was gone, and she had sufficient time to have her lawyer, Kelly Gondring, present for the interview.
Podcast: They killed Jason Corbett. How much time will they serve?
Ms Tyler testified to the Davidson County Superior Court on Thursday that Molly had told her: “He [Jason] would force her to have sex and that when they were having sex he would place his hand over her mouth and nose so that she couldn’t breathe. Each time he would keep his hand over her a little bit longer. She passed out and she didn’t know how long she was out [unconscious] for.”
This will form part of Molly and Tom Martens’s case that they should be given a reduced sentence or probation on the extreme mitigating grounds that they believed Jason had killed his first wife, Mags Fitzpatrick, who died of an ashtma attack in 2006, when Jack was two and Sarah was 12 weeks old. An Irish coroner found Ms Fitzpatrick died of asphyxiation following a severe asthma attack that left her unable to breath. The Martens, each represented by two separate lawyers, argue that the Irish coroner’s conclusions were wrong. In their opening statements on the first day of the trial, defence lawyers outlined how they would show that Jason’s first wife died in mysterious circumstances and “manual strangulation” was “a possibility”.
Molly’s claims to the social worker that she was being choked during sex will be added to her and Tom’s claims that Jason was choking her on the night of the killing, and that he had also “possibly” choked his first wife to death.
Jack and Sarah had been prepared for this line of argument and remained stoic throughout the evidence as the courtroom dissection of their lives when they were aged 10 and eight respectively, then continued, moving from the bedroom to the kitchen. A “surreptitious” recording – made by Molly Martens using one of a number of recording devices she had placed around the house – was played to the hushed court. In this recording, the family are sitting around the kitchen table, ostensibly for dinner after Jason has returned from work. It’s an ordinary domestic scene on Shrove Tuesday, February 17th, 2015, less than six months before Jason was killed by Tom and Molly Martens, who beat him to death with a baseball bat and a brick.
It’s a normal scene – except for the boiling undercurrent of anger audible in Jason’s voice. He’s angry that Molly has already fed Jack and Sarah, even though Jason had spoken to her earlier about wanting to come home from work and have a family meal with his children. We hear that Molly had not gone to work that day, but had gone sledding with the children because there was snow outside. Molly said she didn’t get time to make dinner.
“I work 12 hours a day and I couldn’t have dinner with my family because you ignored me,” Jason, who was the manager of a multinational packaging company in North Carolina, says, his voice seething with frustration. Later in the recording he pounds his fists on the table with anger. “I’m sure I don’t have the luxury to choose not to work because I don’t have anyone else who is going to provide. You have the luxury to cancel your work [Molly worked as a part-time swim instructor and stay-at-home mom].”
As Jason’s voice rises, Molly tells him to stop screaming.
Jason shouts: “You have made it very clear you want to separate me from my kids.”
Sarah tries to calm everyone down, and Jason tells her to “Shut up, Sarah.” Sarah asks them both to “please stop. It’s very upsetting.”
Jason angrily asks to see her phone to check that she had called a doctor about Sarah’s blood tests because the doctor had left a message three days earlier. His voice rising, Jason says: “Show me where you called on the cell phone.”
This appears to reinforce claims made by the children that Jason was controlling and would check Molly’s phone, call her repeatedly, and get jealous when she wore revealing clothing. The children had told Tyler that Jason pushed and hit Molly, and that he was angry and controlling over small things, like lights being left on, or bills not being paid on time.
As the tape played, Molly Martens rocked forward and back in her seat before the judge, wiping her eyes. Earlier during a morning recess she had stayed in court, pacing up and down in front of the public seating area, her arms clasped behind her back, staring trance-like into the distance.
The defence have presented the Pancake Tape – so-called because it was Pancake Tuesday – as almost a smoking gun. Doug Kingsberry, representing Molly, said it was evidence of an angry, abusive and controlling husband who was frightening his wife and children. The prosecution say the recording was just one of many surreptitious recordings made by Molly Martens in the house, and that only one or two were presented under discovery. The assistant district attorney, Alan Martin, said Molly had made numerous tape recordings for one reason only – in order to “manufacture evidence”.
“This may be one bad instance out of 150,” Mr Martin said.
After hearing the tapes, the court then heard how the children had recanted their allegations about their father hitting Molly, once they returned to live in Ireland with their aunt Tracey and her husband, Dave. They said they were coached and forced to make these false allegations by the Martens, with whom they were living. The children had made fresh statements to detectives in 2021 again recanting their allegations and saying how much they loved and missed their father.
Molly’s lawyer then showed text messages that Jack had sent to Molly after he had returned to Ireland. Molly had just been indicted in January 2016 on second-degree murder charges, but Jack tried to call her nine times, and left a message. “Hi mom, this is Jack. This cannot go public. I miss you and I love you. Keep fighting really hard. I want to know how you are. I love you so much.”
The content of the then 11-year-old’s deeply personal text to the only mother he had really known was then shared on social media by Molly Martens.
