Five women testified in-person at the Jason Corbett manslaughter sentence hearing today.
All told of hearing about or seeing first hand incidents of domestic violence and abuse in the marriage of Molly Martens Corbett and Jason Corbett.
One witness, a family law attorney who was also a friend of the Corbett family in North Carolina, told the court she had spoken to Martens Corbett on the day of Mr Corbett's death.
Melissa Sams said Martens Corbett had told her she was being choked or strangled by Mr Corbett and said "it was him or me".
Ms Sams said she had gotten to know the Corbetts because their children went to the same school, and her two sons were good friends with Jack Corbett.
She was able to produce a set of notes for the court, which she had compiled in the days after Mr Corbetts death.
They started in January of 2015, when she texted Martens Corbett offering her work writing up notes for legal work.
Martens Corbett did not reply for ten days, then rang Ms Sams who said she pulled her car into a car park because the phone call was becoming intense.
She said Martens Corbett told her of difficulties in the marriage.
Martens Corbett said she felt all alone and did not know who to turn to for advice, apologising for asking Ms Sams because she knew she practiced family law.
Then Ms Sams told the court Martens Corbett started outlining physical and verbal abuse by Mr Corbett.
She also told the lawyer that she did not believe Mr Corbett’s first wife Margaret had died of an asthma attack.
She said she did not want to leave the marriage because she would lose the children, who she said she loved very much.
Ms Sams asked Martens Corbett if Sarah was her biological child. She said no, but said it was Mr Corbett’s idea to tell people she was.
Martens Corbett said she was in a really bad situation, and Mr Corbett used the threat of taking the children back to Ireland as leverage against her.
She also revealed to Ms Sams that she had made some audio recordings of rows and abusive situations in the house.
Ms Sams said she encouraged her to keep making recordings and if she wished, could send them to her for safe-keeping.
Martens Corbett told her she believed Mr Corbett was having a 'Facebook affair’ with another woman.
At the end of January 2015, Ms Sams hosted a session of the book club Martens Corbett ran in the neighbourhood.
She supplied Martens Corbett with the name of another attorney she believed might be able to help in her situation.
Later the two women communicated by text messages, using coded language in case Mr Corbett took Martens Corbett’s phone.
Using this system Ms Sams got Martens Corbett to send her audio recordings, starting with one where she was in a shower and Mr Corbett was arguing with her.
Ms Sams said she did not listen to other recordings emailed to her as she kept meeting the Corbetts in the neighbourhood.
Later Martens Corbett went to the lawyer recommended by Ms Sams, but did not think he could be of any use, and said the situation was hopeless.
Her notes contained no other entries until 1 August 2015, when Jack Corbett came to the Sams house for a birthday party.
Mr Corbett and Martens Corbett came to collect him after 10pm that night, and the couple came into the Sams family living room to collect their son and chatted to Mr and Mrs Sams.
It was the last time she would see Mr Corbett, as five hours later emergency services were in the master bedroom of the Corbetts house trying to revive him.
On learning that Mr Corbett had died, Ms Sams rang a mutual friend, Marten Corbett’s next door neighbour Shannon Grubb, to ask her to ask Martens Corbett to ring her if she had time.
Ms Sams had assumed Mr Corbett, who was overweight, had died of a heart attack.
Martens Corbett rang her and told her what had happened. She said Mr Corbett was choking or strangling her – Ms Sams could not remember exactly which word had been used.
She said Martens Corbett told her "it was him or me".
Ms Sams told the court she was "completely in shock – sick to the stomach" on hearing what had happened. The prosecution lawyers did not cross examine Ms Sams.
Witness 'feared for Jason to find out we were on the other end of the call'
Ms Grubb, a friend and neighbour, said she was awoken by a phone call from Martens Corbett’s mobile phone at 1am on 14 October 2014.
When she answered she heard somebody breathing, and in the background, sounds of an argument between Mr Corbett and Martens Corbett.
Ms Grubb assumed the call had been made by one of the Corbett’s children, but nobody responded when she called their names.
Ms Grubb said she put the call on speakerphone so her husband could hear as well.
She said she remembered Martens Corbett saying "Stop, don’t do this to us."
She said she discussed with her husband Charlie whether to call the police but "we more or less feared for Jason to find out we were on the other end of the call. We decided after four minutes to disconnect the call."
The next day she called Martens Corbett to see if she was alright.
Martens Corbett was unaware of the phone call from the previous night.
Ms Grubb said Martens Corbett was embarrassed that a neighbour had overheard the argument.
Asked if she had offered any advice to her friend, Ms Grubb said she told Martens Corbett that she needed outside help to handle what was going on inside the house.
Asked if there were other things that suggested an abusive relationship, Ms Grubb said on one occasion a group of neighbours had rented a limousine to take them to a charity gala event.
She said she saw Martens Corbett get out of the car, followed by Mr Corbett, who "yanked her" aside and was angry that Martens Corbett had gotten out of the car near where a group of men could see her and her dress.
She said he was jealous about his wife. On another occasion she said a group of neighbours and their children had gone to a hilltop during winter. Ms Grubb said she saw Martens Corbett pull a tissue paper from underneath her woollen hat and noticed the paper was covered in blood.
She replaced the paper under her hat. She asked Martens Corbett what had happened and she told her she and Mr Corbett had been in a fight.
On another occasion she received a phone call from Martens Corbett, asking if Ms Grubb could drive to the park with a pair of shoes from her own daughter that Martens Corbett could borrow for Sarah Corbett.
She explained that she and Mr Corbett had been fighting, and she had left the house with Sarah without any shoes and did not want to go back to get them, but Sarah needed to go to school.
Ms Grubb said she brought the shoes over, and Sarah became very emotional, and did not want to go to school in case Martens Corbett had to go back to the house on her own.
Asked if she had seen Mr Corbett get angry in public, Ms Grubb recounted an occasion when the Corbett's car had some sort of a breakdown, and the Grubbs came into town to help.
She said Martens Corbett was sitting in her car, and Mr Corbett reached in the window to "grab" the keys to his own car from Martens Corbett.
She said it was the first time she had seen Mr Corbett show his anger in public. Asked if she had fears for Martens Corbett’s safety, Ms Grubb replied "Yes."
She said she did not exchange texts with Martens Corbett because she was aware that sometimes Mr Corbett took her phone and would be able to see the messages.
She said if she could not reach Martens Corbett on the phone during the day, she assumed that Mr Corbett had her phone.
Cross-examined by Kaitlin Jones for the prosecution, Ms Grubb was told that Martens Corbett, in her videotaped statement to police on the morning of her husband's killing, told them she had not confided in anyone about abuse in the marriage.
"So that statement to law enforcement was a lie," said the Assistant Attorney General.
She also noted that Ms Grubb and her husband were the only people, out of around 50 interviewed in the case, who had changed their statements to police.
'Controlling habits'
She was followed into the witness box by Helen McCormack, a neighbour of Martens Corbett's brother Bobby.
She told the court that she got to know Martens Corbett from before the time she went to Ireland as she was an occasional visitor to Bobby’s house for birthday parties and the like, and they became acquainted.
This relationship continued when Mr Corbett and his children moved to the United States.
Ms McCormack said she began to observe controlling habits by Jason that became more pronounced over time.
She said he stood really close to Martens Corbett and kept a close watch on who she was talking to and for how long, especially if any men joined the conversation group.
She said he would guide her out of the group and move her away to a corner or back to where the children were playing.
She said he would place his hand on the nape of her neck, which appeared to be an indication for her to move.
She said Martens Corbett never looked behind her, "she just knew that she had to go."
Ms McCormack also said Mr Corbett appeared to want to control what clothes Martens Corbett would wear.
She recounted one occasion when Martens Corbett unexpectedly drove into her street and was crying.
The two were talking when the phone rang, Martens Corbett put it on speakerphone inadvertently and Ms McCormack said she immediately heard Mr Corbett "screaming down the line. He called her a bitch, said she should never have left the children, and that she was going to pay for leaving."
Ms McCormack said Martens Corbett would always say that everything was ok at home, and that she did not want to talk about it.
In cross-examination by Assistant DA Marissa Parker, Ms McCormack was asked if she knew that Martens Corbett was not the biological mother of Jack and Sarah Corbett, to which she replied, "Yes."
She asked if she was aware that Martens Corbett had told the bridesmaids at her wedding to Mr Corbett that she was the birth mother, Ms McCormack replied: "She didn’t lie to me about things."
Asked why she and her husband had recorded their statement to police on video, Ms McCormack said she had heard that some witness statements taken by police in the investigation had been inaccurate and she wanted to make sure that hers was accurate, so insisted the police made a video recording in the interview room in Lexington.
'Worried that someone was going to get hurt'
A third witness took the stand, Billie June Jacobs. She became a close friend of Martens Corbett because their children attended the same school, and the two women used to go for walks as exercise.
During these walks they started confiding in each other about the state of their marriages.
She said Martens Corbett had told her of suffering mental, physical and emotional pain from Mr Corbett.
She said that when the two women were out walking there would be frequent phone calls and texts from Mr Corbett demanding to know where Martens Corbett was, who she was with and when she would be back in the house.
She said sometimes she could hear Mr Corbett "yelling" down the phone line – even without the speakerphone being used, and that he called her names.
Asked if she gave advice to Martens Corbett, Ms Jacobs said she was empathetic to Martens Corbett as she herself grew up in an abusive household.
She said, "I was really worried that sooner or later someone was going to get hurt."
She said Martens Corbett told her Mr Corbett would do things that were not visible to hurt her, like pull her hair or pinch her.
She also said he would stamp on Marten Corbett's foot, where she had a cluster of veins that pressed on a nerve.
She said Martens Corbett confided in her about her concerns over the death of Mr Corbett’s first wife.
She said things were happening that she thought were the same as happened to Margaret Corbett.
Ms Jacobs said Martens Corbett told her that when they were having sex, Mr Corbett would cover her face with a pillow or would strangle her.
She said she passed out on a number of occasions and worried that she would never wake up one day.
She said Martens Corbett believed something similar had happened to Ms Corbett.
Yesterday, in testimony to the court, a social worker, Sheila Tyler, who interviewed Martens Corbett two days after the death of Mr Corbett said Molly had told her (in answer to a standard questionnaire) that Jason Corbett would put his hand over her mouth and nose during sex, causing her to sometimes pass out.
She said on each occasion this behavior seemed to last longer, and she had no idea how long she had lost consciousness for.
Martens Corbett told 'these things never get better'
Jennifer Turner used to live across the road from the Corbetts. Her then husband was English and was very friendly with Mr Corbett, the two men sharing an interest in English Premier League football.
She left the area and moved to Georgia a year before Mr Corbett was killed.
She told the court that she could not recall being told by Martens Corbett that Mr Corbett had ever hit her.
But she did say she was aware that Mr Corbett got angry very quickly over small things, like not buying the right sort of fruit. Most of the women mentioned fruit in their testimonies.
She recalled an occasion when the two women went shopping to a mall, got back in their car and Marten Corbett’s phone was ringing.
There had been nine missed calls from Mr Corbett. He rang a further three times before she answered.
Ms Turner said even without speakerphone she could hear Mr Corbett shouting at his wife, demanding to know where she was, who she was with and how long she would be out.
Ms Turner said she had been in an abusive relationship herself and had urged Martens Corbett to leave the marriage, as "these things never get better".
Martens Corbett told her she could not leave because of the children.
The hearing resumes on Monday.
