Jason was a widower who thought he'd found happiness again. One night, everything changed.

Jason Corbett's life had already been marked by tragedy. The Irish businessman lost his first wife, Margaret Fitzpatrick, in 2006 when she died suddenly from an asthma attack, leaving him a widower with two young children, Jack and Sarah, to raise.

Struggling to balance work and single parenthood, Jason hired a young American woman as an au pair to help care for his children. That woman was Molly Martens, a former model from Tennessee who had travelled to Ireland to start her new position in the Corbett household.

What began as an employment relationship soon blossomed into romance. Jason found himself falling in love again. In 2011, the couple married, and together, they relocated to North Carolina in the United States, where they lived in a picturesque brick home in a quiet suburb.

But behind the façade of domestic bliss, tensions were brewing. And one night… everything changed.

Watch the trailer for Deadly American Marriage. Article continues after video.

On August 2, 2015, neighbours called emergency services after Thomas Martens — Molly's father and a former FBI agent — reported that he had struck his son-in-law with a baseball bat. When first responders arrived at the Corbett home, they found Jason lying beaten and naked on the floor of the master bedroom. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Netflix's upcoming documentary Deadly American Marriage has brought renewed attention to the case, examining the evidence and the dramatically different narratives presented by both sides.

The 39-year-old Irishman had suffered catastrophic head injuries. Investigators would later determine that he had been struck several times with a concrete paving brick and a baseball bat.

"It was one of the bloodiest crime scenes I've seen in a long time," an investigator is heard saying in the trailer for A Deadly American Marriage.

Both Molly Martens-Corbett, then 31, and her father, Thomas Martens, 65, claimed they had acted in self-defence. Thomas Martens told authorities he was visiting the couple and heard a commotion in their bedroom during the night. He claimed he found Jason choking Molly and intervened to protect his daughter, striking Jason with an aluminium baseball bat.

But forensic evidence would tell a different story. Investigators noted that Jason's body temperature was surprisingly low when they arrived at the crime scene, calling into question whether there was a delay in Thomas' call to the police. Neither Molly nor her father had any visible injuries, and Jason's children were sleeping nearby during the violent attack.

Image: Netflix.

In the aftermath of Jason's death, a custody battle erupted over his children. Although Molly had been Jack and Sarah's stepmother for several years, she had never legally adopted the children. Ultimately, the children returned to Ireland to live with their aunt, Tracey Lynch, Jason's sister.

The children would later claim that Molly had coached them into claiming they had witnessed their father abusing Molly.

"My brother and I had our words weaponised against us by the people we had trusted and loved, so they could mitigate their crime of killing the most important person in my life. They betrayed our trust to avoid consequences for their actions," Jason's daughter Sarah said while discussing her memoir, A Time for Truth.

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Court documents revealed that Jason had been planning to return to Ireland with his children — without Molly.

In January 2017, after a high-profile trial, both Molly and Thomas Martens were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 20–25 years in prison. The prosecution had argued that the excessive force used against Jason, coupled with the lack of injuries on either defendant, undermined their self-defence claims.

But this wasn't the end of the story.

The case took a dramatic turn in 2020 when the North Carolina Court of Appeals overturned the convictions, citing issues with evidence admission and jury instructions. The Supreme Court upheld this decision in 2021, prompting a retrial.

In November 2021, through a plea agreement, both Molly and Thomas Martens pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. They received sentences of 51–64 months, with credit for time already served, allowing for their release shortly after the plea.

Image: Netflix

For Jason's family in Ireland, particularly his sister Tracey Lynch, the fight for what they see as full justice continues. They maintain that Jason was the victim — not only of a brutal murder, but of a judicial system that ultimately failed him.

Meanwhile, Jason's children — the most innocent victims in this tragedy — continue to grow up without either of their biological parents, their lives forever altered by the events of that August night in 2015.

On 6 June 2024, Molly Martens Corbett and her father, Thomas Martens, were released from prison.

Feature Image: Netflix.