The Jason Corbett manslaughter trial resumed today, with prosecutors playing the entire video recording of Molly Martens Corbett's interview with police just hours after her husband had been killed on 2 August 2015.
In the recording, Molly Martens Corbett said she was afraid of the Corbett family, and feared they would come over from Ireland to kill her and take Jason Corbett’s two children back to Ireland.
She said she had not told anyone about
Interviewed by a female officer, Lieutenant Thompson, Molly Martens Corbett is first asked to explain what had happened. She began "we were fighting".
This began a lengthy query about violence in the marriage. Asked how long it had been going on, Ms Martens Corbett replied "forever".
Asked if she had ever been to a hospital with any injuries she said she had been "a couple of times" but had never told anyone about what had happened at home.
She had visited one hospital a few months before the fatal attack on Jason Corbett, complaining of headaches and seeking an MRI scan.
The doctors gave her painkillers and said it was a stress headache.
A physical exam revealed no cuts or bruising on her head.
She told police during the interview that Jason Corbett had slammed her head against the headboard of their bed.
Asked why she kept rubbing her neck in the interview room, Molly Martens Corbett said that her neck hurt and her throat was sore.
She said Jason Corbett had grabbed her by the throat while they were in bed after Jason’s daughter Sarah had disturbed them because she was having a nightmare and the couple were arguing about it.
She said he also put his arm around her neck and held her in front of himself when her father, Tom Martens, entered the room with a baseball bat, after she had started screaming.
She said Tom Martens had hit Jason Corbett twice.
She said Mr Corbett had let go of her and grabbed the baseball bat from Tom Martens, and shoved Molly Martens to the floor.
She said Mr Corbett "tried to hit dad, and missed, and I hit him (Jason) with a brick".
She then explained that Mr Corbett's daughter Sarah had brought a paving brick from the garden some days earlier that they planned to paint and decorate as part of a garden project, but had not gotten around to doing it.
She said her father recovered the baseball bat from Jason Corbett and began hitting him.
Asked how many times, Molly Martens Corbett replied "I don’t know".
She then became emotional and said "I shouldn’t have screamed". The police officer said, "you were afraid – why wouldn’t you cry out for help".
Molly Martens Corbett explained that she was not the biological mother of the two children in the house, Jack and Sarah, and they were not US citizens.
She believed Jason Corbett could have removed them to Ireland at any time.
She also expressed her fears that the Corbett and Fitzgerald families, representing the biological parents, could go through social services to have the children transferred to Ireland and she would never see them.
The police officer said that was "a legitimate concern".
She described taking the children to another doctor about some issues connected with stress in the home.
She said she implied things were bad between her and Jason but did not complain of any physical violence.
Lieutenant Thomspon then asked about Jason Corbett’s drinking.
Ms Martens Corbett said he had been drinking beer with a neighbour between 3.30pm and 8.30pm that evening.
Asked about Jason Corbett's demeanor she said he was drunk.
Happy and drunk – but a little irritated because his parents-in-law had showed up a day earlier than expected.
The police officer who conducted the interview said "the Irish people are known for drinking".
Lt Thompson called in a police photographer to photograph marks on her neck, and looked for other signs of physical damage on her body, notably on her hands and arms.
Later in the interview, Ms Martens Corbett asked if she could go home after the interview and if the house would be clean.
The officer said she could go there, but it would not be cleaned.
She could give her the names of some "crime scene cleaning companies", but they probably would not be able to clean up for a day or two.
Lt Thompson then informed Molly Martens Corbett that her husband did not survive the assault on him. "I didn’t think so", she replied. Then she began crying.
After that she said she was scared of the Corbett family. Asked why, she said, "I am scared of the family – scared they will kill me and take the kids".
She then wrote out her statement for the police, having initially been reluctant to do so.
When she finished writing, Lt Thompson came back into the interview room and said the District Attorney would decide what happens next, but that having talked to her and her father (Tom Martens) it sounded like self-defence.
Assistant District Attorney Kaitlin Jones told Judge David Hall to note that Molly Martens clearly stated she had hit Jason Corbett on the head with a paving brick.
She also said Molly Martens had not confided in anybody that she was in a physically violent relationship with her husband.
Earlier, another Assistant DA, Marissa Parker said Jason Corbett, in holding his wife in a necklock and putting her in front of himself could be seen to have been acting in a defence, not a threatening position when Tom Martens entered the room with a baseball bat.
Defence lawyers say they will introduce audio recordings to back their claims of a violent and abusive relationship between Jason Corbett and Molly Martens Corbett, and that such scenes were witnessed by their children.
Earlier in the case, a prosecution lawyer told the judge that Molly Martens Corbett "struggled with and had a very complicated relationship with the truth".
Assistant District Attorney Marissa Parker was giving the state's view on why the evidence presented by Martens Corbett's lawyer, that painted Mr Corbett as a violent man, should not be given great weight.
That evidence came in the form of a written report, first presented at the original trial, by John Guard, a former police officer, who in the course of a 30-year law enforcement career had specialised in investigating domestic abuse.
Mr Guard had lectured in the topic in police colleges and had a particular insight into strangulation attacks in domestic settings.
He has assessed photographs of Martens Corbett taken on the night that Mr Corbett died and said red marks on her neck and a small cut near her left ear were consistent with strangulation, or an attempt to prevent strangulation.
Defence counsel Douglas Kingsberry also showed the court a photograph of Martens Corbett with what appeared to be a bruise on her neck.
He said the photograph had been taken a few weeks after an incident in which Martens Corbett claimed her husband had tried to strangle her.
A 2013 photograph apparently showing bruising on one of her legs was also reported by Mr Guard to be the result of a physical attack on Martens Corbett by Mr Corbett.
However, Assistant District Attorney Parker said Mr Guard was not an expert in the conventional sense in that he had no degree or special qualifications in criminology.
She also said he was prone to "confirmation bias", in that he tended to believe what he was told by Martens Corbett. She said Martens Corbett "struggled with, and had a very complicated relationship with, the truth".
Ms Parker had urged Judge David Hall not to give much weight to a statement made by Sharon Martens, Molly Martens' mother, to police in Lexington on the night Mr Corbett was killed.
In it, she told Detective Nathan Riggs of the Davidson Country Sheriff's Office her daughter and son-in-law had always fought in their marriage, but said her daughter insisted it was always verbal, not violent.
In her statement to police, Ms Martens said: "Molly knew I would be hysterical if I knew he was hitting her."
However, she was suspicious, especially when Mr Corbett's children told her they had seen the couple physically violent. She told police the children said they had seen their father grab Martens Corbett and push her into a wall in the house.
Ms Martens said she had trained the children to call her with a phone number she had hidden on the bottom of a wooden doll in a spare bedroom, with a code word to use so Ms Martens could alert police in case of a violent attack.
She said she had practiced the procedure with the children, and told Detective Riggs where to find the hidden phone number.
The statement from Detective Riggs said he had gone upstairs to the guest bedroom and found the phone number written in black marker pen on the bottom of a large Russian doll. Photographs were shown in court of this.
On the night of Mr Corbett's death, Ms Martens told Detective Riggs she had heard her daughter screaming and dogs barking. Her husband Tom ran upstairs with a baseball bat, and said he would restore calm or call the police.
She said the noise stopped after a few minutes, and she fell asleep again, not waking again until a policeman entered her room with the two children, and asked her to mind them.
Assistant District Attorney Marissa Parker told the court that Ms Martens had only ever made one statement - that given to Detective Riggs. She had never been compelled to appear at the original trial, and had never made herself available for further questioning.
Ms Parker said the state never had any opportunity to cross-examine Ms Martens, and if it had done so would have concentrated on a number of points.
Ms Parker said Ms Martens' statement that "I wasn’t aware of any physical violence", and her subsequent statements that she suspected there was physical violence against her daughter by Mr Corbett, was more about Ms Martens' state of mind on the night of Mr Corbett’s death.
The Assistant DA also said she would point to the unreasonableness of Ms Martens' actions on the night Mr Corbett was killed.
She said that if a mother suspected her daughter was being physically assaulted by her husband, and had been awakened by a commotion upstairs, and heard her daughter screaming, and her husband - Tom Martens - has rushed upstairs with a baseball bat to sort it out, it was simply not credible that Ms Martens would just turn over and go back to sleep.
Ms Parker said that if given the opportunity she would have cross-examined Ms Martens on the reasonableness of her actions as a mother.
Prosecutors also introduced physical evidence into the hearing. Alan Martin, Assistant District Attorney, removed the baseball bat Tom Martens had used to kill Mr Corbett with from the two evidence bags it was sealed in.
Judge Hall asked if he could "wield" the bat for a few moments. The prosecutor passed the bat to the judge, both men wearing black latex gloves.
Mr Martin also unwrapped and presented the judge with the concrete paving brick that was also used in the assault of Mr Corbett, so he could assess the weight of the object in his hand.
Much of the afternoon session was taken up with a screening of the entire, unedited video recording of Martens' interview with police in the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office, just hours after the fatal assault on Mr Corbett.
On Monday, Martens entered a guilty plea to a charge of manslaughter in the case, in return for the DA dropping a charge of second-degree murder.
His daughter entered a plea of no contest to the manslaughter charge, which in North Carolina is considered to be a guilty plea by the justice system.
In the interview, Martens told police officers his son-in-law was "cruel and controlling".
Giving details of his daughter's relationship with Mr Corbett, he said Mr Corbett’s first wife had died "in mysterious circumstances" from an asthma attack in his car. He described Mr Corbett as being abusive.
Martens described to officers how he had gone upstairs to the bedroom and found Mr Corbett holding Martens Corbett by the neck. He told the officers that when he told Mr Corbett to let her go, he replied: "I’m going to kill her."
He said he repeated the request two more times and got the same answer from Mr Corbett. He said he was afraid Mr Corbett was going to kill Molly.
He then acknowledged hitting Mr Corbett with the baseball bat, and described Mr Corbett grabbing the bat from him and shoving him to the ground.
Martens said he was scared that he would be killed by Mr Corbett as he lay on the ground.
He said Molly had "distracted" Mr Corbett, and that gave him a chance to wrestle the baseball bat from Mr Corbett’s grasp. He began hitting Mr Corbett, adding: "I can't tell you how often I hit him."
He told the police Mr Corbett was "a big strong guy, he practiced boxing and martial arts" with a heavy bag in the basement of the house.
"I was scared to death he was going to kill her (Molly). Subsequently I was scared to death he was going to kill me. He was crazy - he wasn’t just sloppy drunk," he said.
He then gave details of calling the emergency services for help, and of he and his daughter administering CPR to Mr Corbett.
