The images of Tom (71) and Molly (37) Martens walking free yesterday from Davidson County jail in North Carolina were in stark contrast to the photographs of them confidently strolling into the same courthouse complex in July 2017 as their second degree murder trial opened.
n Wednesday evening, Molly Martens walked free after 44 months in custody for the second degree murder of Irish businessman Jason Corbett (39) on August 2, 2015.
She was freed, along with her father, in the wake of North Carolina Supreme Court quashing the original conviction and ordering a full retrial.
Molly's hair was noticeably darker than the blonde locks she usually wore in a neat pony tail during the five-week murder trial in 2017.
There was a visible rash on her face and it was apparent to all that almost four years in prison had clearly taken its toll.
Her father, Tom Martens, looked fresher but had visibly aged from the high-profile trial almost four years ago.
Both wore prison-style grey leisure gear including T-shirts as they embraced waiting family members outside the jail.
The father and daughter also wore masks given the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic in the US.
Few could have thought that just a decade earlier as Molly Martens married Limerick father-of-two Jason Corbett at a lavish June 2011 ceremony in Tennessee, both father and daughter would find themselves at the centre of an international murder controversy which shows no sign of ending.
Molly Martens was brought up outside Knoxville, Tennessee in the southern part of the United States.
Born in 1984, she was the only daughter of Thomas Michael Martens, an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and his wife, Sharon.
Molly has three brothers – one older, Bobby, and two younger, Connor and Stewart.
One of her brothers, like his father, now works for the Federal Government.
She attended high school in Tennessee before attending a prestigious Carolina college. However, she left without completing her degree. Until her early 20s, she lived in North Carolina and Georgia, mostly based in a condominium owned by her parents.
Molly grew up to be a striking young woman. She briefly worked as a model and was a talented swimmer in her teenage years.
In later years, she worked briefly in a restaurant and had a number of other lower-paid jobs. But the young woman also battled mental health problems.
She was involved in a relationship with a young man from Ohio in her early 20s and became engaged.
However, she suddenly decided on a total change in direction for her life in 2008.
Aged 24, she decided to apply for a job as a nanny-au pair for an Irish businessman, Jason Corbett, who had two young children and had lost his wife to a tragic asthma attack in November 2006.
Some time after travelling to Ireland in March 2008, Molly became romantically involved with the father-of-two.
Jason's two children, Jack and Sarah, soon became the centre of Molly’s attentions.
By 2011 the couple became engaged and set a wedding date for June 4 that year. Molly wanted to be married in her native Tennessee.
The Corbett family travelled en masse to the US for the ceremony which was staged at Bleak House, a famous manor with close associations with the Confederacy and Tennessee aristocracy.
Molly was walked down the aisle by her father, Thomas.
Her new husband had paid $49,000 (€41,000) towards the cost of the lavish ceremony though her father hosted the wedding.
At Molly's request, both of Jason's children had prominent roles in the wedding ceremony, his son Jack as a ring bearer and his daughter Sarah as a flower girl.
By that point, Molly had indicated she was homesick in Ireland and hadn't settled in Limerick. She wanted to move back to the US where her new family could have a fresh start.
With her husband able to transfer to his company's plant in Lexington in North Carolina, she quickly settled in Davidson County and a luxury new development at Panther Creek for their new home.
Her husband bought the property for $390,000 (€329,000) in cash. The luxury property – located midway between Lexington and Winston-Salem – boasted its own golf club, pool, tennis courts and even specially designed children's playground.
The property also had the attraction of being only four hours’ drive from Knoxville and Molly's extended family.
The luxurious nature of the couple's lifestyle in North Carolina was underlined by the fact Molly had a BMW while Jason had a large Honda saloon.
Molly did not work beyond undertaking voluntary work as a local swim coach.
Problems began to emerge in their marriage and Jason steadfastly declined to sign adoption papers to offer Molly equal rights to his two children amid concerns about her mental health and increasingly erratic behaviour.
Molly's father also intensely disliked her Irish husband.
However, neighbours were shocked at 3am on August 2, 2015 when Davidson County Sheriff's Department officers and paramedics raced to Panther Creek where Jason Corbett had been found dead with critical head injuries.
For his part, Thomas Michael Martens set up home in Tennessee in the United States in the 1970s to raise his four children with his wife, Sharon.
The Martens home was in Knoxville, in the eastern part of Tennessee, as close to Charlotte in North Carolina as it is to the State's most famous city, Nashville.
With his wife, Tom raised their four children.
He also became very close to his brother-in-law, Michael Earnest. For over 30 years, Tom Martens worked as an agent for the FBI, one of the most respected law enforcement roles in the US.
He had to mandatorily retire after 31 years’ service over a decade ago.
Mr Martens had qualified as a lawyer having attended Emory, a prestigious Georgia college. However, he never practiced as a lawyer and instead focused his legal skills on his work with the FBI.
He was only briefly a field agent, based in Miami in Florida when the US state faced a crisis over the activities of drug gangs. On his retirement from the FBI in the late 2000s he got a job with the US Department of Energy.
He worked in the counter-intelligence unit based at Oak Ridge in Tennessee.
Mr Martens, a staunch family man, was a keen golfer. He only drinks moderately, usually having a single glass of wine with a meal.
In 2008 his daughter decided to move to Ireland to work as a nanny. By 2010, the Martens family were aware she was now in a relationship with Jason Corbett, who was eight years Molly's senior.
Following their wedding, the Martens family were delighted with the decision by Molly and Jason to relocate their family to Davidson County in North Carolina.
Tom and his wife were frequent visitors to the home their daughter and son-in-law had set up at Panther Creek in the Meadowlands. Tom considered Jason's children, Jack and Sarah, to be his grandchildren.
However, the 2011 wedding marked the first deterioration in the relationship between Tom, his son-in-law and Jason's Irish family.
He admitted he disliked and had disdain for Jason because of the alleged level of drinking, his rowdy behaviour and the way his home was treated during a pre-wedding party. He passed similar comments about Jason's Irish family and friends.
Eventually, Tom disliked his son-in-law to the point where he actively encouraged his daughter to divorce the Irishman.
At one point, he refused to go on an extended family holiday because Jason was travelling with the party.
Mr Martens said that, when with Jason he "made nice" and worked to have a superficial relationship with the Irish businessman.
"He was not my favourite person," he said.
