Inside the blood-spattered bedroom where former model and her ex-FBI agent father 'slaughtered' her Irish husband with a 'baseball bat and landscaping stone'
- Molly Corbett, 33, and her father Thomas Martens, 67, found guilty of murder
- They killed her Irish husband Jason Corbett, 39, in August of 2015
- The Martens insisted they acted in self-defense saying Jason attacked her in their home
- The jury didn't agree, the judge sentenced them both to 20 years Wednesday
- Molly said in court 'I'm really sorry to my mom, he should have just killed me'
Gruesome crime scene photos have been released that show the room where a man was beaten to death by his former model wife and her ex-FBI agent dad.
Jason Corbett was killed by Molly Corbett and her father, Thomas Martens, at the couple's home in North Carolina.
He was repeatedly hit with a baseball bat and brick, and the bat is seen propped against a dresser, while the brick sits next to it.
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A jury in Davidson County found 33-year-old Molly and her father, 67-year-old retired FBI agent Martens guilty of the charge of second degree murder. They both face a minimum of 20 years in prison.
Both Molly and her father, who served the FBI for over 30 years, claimed self defense when they killed her Irish businessman husband Jason Corbett, 39. The second degree murder charge means the jury concluded Jason was killed out of malice.
Molly told ABC News 20/20 that she didn’t want to talk about hitting Jason with a brick, but said it was ‘horrible’ her father ended up in court over her husband’s killing.
The Martens claim on the show – which airs in the US tonight – that they were acting in self-defence.
In the interview, Tom said: ‘I’m going to do everything that I have to do to save her life. And if I die trying, well… she’s my daughter. I’m not going to live with not trying. I’ll tell you that.’
Molly, 33, sobs on camera as she says: ‘I was sure that he was going to kill my father.’
She claims she was woken up on the fateful night by Jason’s daughter Sarah at around 3am.
‘She’d had a nightmare, and she came down. And the kids were not supposed to come in the room, you know, and wake up Jason.
‘So they would just kind of stand outside the door and whisper until I heard ’em. So I heard her calling me. And I got up as quietly as I could and tiptoed up to her room.’
Molly claimed she got Sarah back to bed and returned to her room, trying not to wake her husband.
‘But he woke up, and he was angry, and he wanted to know why I’d gotten up. Then he was furious because Sarah had been doing this lately and, you know, she just wanted to be coddled. And she was too old for that, and I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed.
‘I said, “She’s just eight. She had a nightmare. I should be allowed to go upstairs and comfort our daughter”. He forgot my parents were there, and he, you know, just got angry with me.’
Tom told ABC: ‘I don’t know what precisely woke me up, but what I heard were loud voices and a kind of thumping, like heavy feet moving around. It was coming from the floor above me. It was in the dead of the morning, and it wasn’t right. Something bad was going on.’
Molly said Jason wanted to make her be quiet so he covered her mouth and started choking her.
‘At some point, when he stopped, I screamed, and he started again, and the next thing I remember is my dad standing in the doorway.’
Tom Martens had the bat in his hand at this stage. The father said: ‘He quickly moves to not having his hands around her neck, but to move her in front of him in between me… with her throat right in front of the crook of his elbow, and so he’s got her in a chokehold.
‘I said, “Let her go”. And he said, “I’m going to kill her”. Then he starts to edge toward the master bathroom, which has a door. And my thought was: “If he gets into the bathroom, if he gets that door between me and him, then she’s dead. And there’s nothing I can do about it”.
‘And so I reached around to his left, and my right – I’m right-handed – with the baseball bat. I hit him in the back of the head with the baseball bat.’
Tom Martens said that, after the blow, Jason kept dragging Molly towards the bathroom. The father said he was able to get into the bathroom with Jason and hit him again with the baseball bat.
‘I hit him hard on the back of the head again. He’s still got her by the throat, but he changes tactics. He decides to come back at me, and I’m swinging the bat, and he catches the bat in his hand.’
Molly said: ‘Jason just grabbed the bat away. It was like it was nothing. He could choke me with one hand – with one arm – and grab the bat with the other. He was just so much stronger.
‘He grabs the bat and, you know, pushes my dad.’
Molly said she then screamed at her husband not to hurt her father. ‘I thought: “He’s going to hit my dad with the bat, and that’s it… he’s going to kill my father”.
‘So I rush him and I grab the bat with two hands, and I hang on for dear life. We’re struggling back and forth now four hands on the bat...
‘I’m trying’ to hit him with the bat, and hit him with this end of the bat, and hit him with my elbow, and hit him with my fist, or anything else... but I’m going to hang onto that bat.
‘And he goes down, and I’ve got the bat... and I back off.’
Tom Martens said he realised Jason was not going to get up: ‘It looks like the threat is over, so I tell Molly, “We need to call 911”.’
Molly said she was told in a patrol car that her husband was dead. ‘We gave separate statements and I was told, “Don’t worry. It looks like self-defence. It’s going to be okay”.’
Molly said that it was ‘horrible’ Tom had ended up in court over the death.
‘It makes me feel like I’ve ruined his life. That I’ve impacted my whole family. And it’s not a good feeling.’
Thomas insisted: ‘I didn’t murder my son-in-law. And I would challenge any reasonable man, much less a reasonable father, to say that this was unnecessary force.
‘I used the force that was necessary to end the threat.’
After the verdict was read in court, Molly Corbett said: 'I'm really sorry to my mom, he should have just killed me' according to ABC News.
Molly and her father Thomas killed the Limerick born Jason, at his home near Winston-Salem in North Carolina in August of 2015.
Greg Brown, the attorney representing the state of North Carolina in the case, said the crime was especially 'heinous, atrocious and cruel'.
Jason, a 39-year-old father of two from a previous marriage, suffered fatal head injuries at his luxury suburban home in Panther Creek Court.
His autopsy showed he died from blunt force trauma to his head.
The description of the 'means of death' is a 'ball bat and landscaping stone'.
Molly's father, Thomas, made a 911 call from the Corbett family home at 3:05am on the night Jason was killed and claimed to the operator there had been an argument between Jason and Molly.
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'He was choking my daughter, he said he was going to kill her,' Thomas alleged in the recorded call.
The defense maintained the actions of the accused were 'reasonable and necessary in self-defense' of Molly's life and that of her father.
After his death, his Limerick-based family successfully fought Molly for custody of Jason's two children from his first marriage. Jason's sister Tracey Lynch won custody of his children from Molly.
Molly had met originally met Jason while working as an au pair for his children, Jack and Sarah in Ireland. They married in 2011, and moved to North Carolina.
Prosecutors pointed to a $600,000 life insurance policy and that Molly wanted custody of his children as the motive for the killing.
They also alleged that Martens hated Jason and pointed to testimony from a former co-worker at Oak Ridge Laboratory's Office of Counterintelligence, where Martens worked for eight years.
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