The Jason Corbett manslaughter case in North Carolina has been shown video recordings of his children recounting scenes of domestic violence, in which they said their father physically and verbally abused his second wife Molly Martens Corbett.
The two children, who were then aged eight and ten, were interviewed four days after Mr Corbett was beaten to death at his home in 2015.
This ruling was later upheld by the state supreme court, which said the exclusion of the children’s interviews"impermissibly constrained the defendants’ ability to mount their defence". At the time of the interviews, four days after the killing of Mr Corbett, the two children were being cared for by Martens Corbett and her mother Sharon Martens.
She said she knew this because her brother had scrolled through Martens Corbett's phone and saw the missed calls. Sarah told the interviewer that when she was six, Martens Corbett had told her that"your dad isn’t that good of a dad". Asked about violence in the home, he said Mr Corbett would physically and verbally hurt Martens Corbett. He said on one occasion he was woken up by noise, went out and saw his father punch her in the face.
They were told that if there was serious trouble in the house, they were to ring their grandmother, say the codewords, and then hang up. That would be a signal for their grandmother to come over. She lived in Tennessee, which was a five-hour drive away.Prosecution lawyers told the judge the children had rescinded the statements they had made in Dragonfly House when they had returned to Ireland in 2015, and again in police interviews in 2021 in preparation for the retrial.
Interviewed by a female officer, Lieutenant Thompson, Martens Corbett is first asked to explain what had happened. She began by saying"we were fighting". This began a lengthy query about violence in the marriage. Asked how long it had been going on, Martens Corbett replied:"Forever." Asked why she kept rubbing her neck in the interview room, Martens Corbett said that her neck hurt, and her throat was sore.
Martens Corbett then explained that 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 got around to doing it. She also expressed her fear 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".
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.
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