BLEARY-EYED and frightened, eight-year-old Sarah Corbett Lynch was lifted out of her bed and carried from her home by a burly police officer.
What she was about to learn would turn her world upside down.
While she and brother Jack, ten, were asleep – allegedly drugged to make sure they wouldn't wake – their dad Jason Corbett had been bludgeoned to death by his beauty queen wife and her FBI agent dad.
The 39-year-old Irishman was hit at least 12 times with an aluminium baseball bat and a brick at their house in North Carolina.
In the days after the killing, Sarah asked callous stepmum Molly Martens what happened to her dad and was told: “Get over it.”;
In fact, Sarah says swim coach Molly didn’t appear to be grieving at all, taking Sarah and Jack on a beach break days after the killing in August 2015.
“It was like she had a new lease of life,”; says Sarah, now 18. “She took us to the beach and taught her niece how to swim.
“Molly also took off her wedding ring within days. I told her I wanted my dad and she told me several times to get over it.
“It was like he never existed and it was eating away at me.”
Two weeks later, in the midst of confusion, Sarah and Jack were whisked back to their dad’s family home in Limerick, Ireland, as Jason’s sister Tracey battled Molly for custody in court.
Five months after the fatal attack Molly, 40, and dad Tom Martens, 74, were charged with second-degree murder for the attack on Jason. They were sentenced to serve between 20 and 25 years in jail.
The pair never denied killing Jason but claimed that Molly was the victim of domestic abuse and they acted in self-defence as he tried to strangle her.
They appealed in 2020 and three years later took a plea deal for manslaughter which drastically reduced their sentences. They are now free.
In an explosive new book, Jason’s daughter Sarah refutes Molly was ever abused – and claims her stepmum forced her and her brother to lie about their dad to save her own skin, threatening them with being separated and put into care.
She told Flying Eze: “Dad loved Molly and the narrative the Martens made up was all a lie.
“I never saw any bruises or any evidence of physical abuse inflicted on Molly and she never seemed to fear Dad. In fact, he was the one who walked on eggshells around her. We all did.”;
‘Volatile' life
Molly and Jason met when he advertised for an au pair in 2008 to help care for Sarah and Jack after his wife Mags died of an asthma attack.
They fell in love and were married in 2011 before Molly became homesick and the couple moved to America, settling in Davidson County in California.
Molly told the courts that Jason became more controlling and physically and verbally abusive as time went on and that he would drink heavily.
Her dad Tom, who served with the FBI for over 30 years, was visiting the family home at the time of the killing and testified that he was awoken by his daughter’s screams.
Tom said he found the couple in their bedroom with Jason’s hands around his wife’s neck, bellowing: “I'm going to kill her.”;
Sarah’s book reverses the story as she claims life with Molly was volatile as she denied both kids food if they failed at swimming sessions, regularly hit Jack and goaded Jason into fights.
Sarah also controversially claims she and Jack both remember being given pills by Molly the night their dad was killed – causing her to have a nightmare before her stepmum hushed her back to bed.
The teenager also says ex-beauty queen Molly taught her how to throw up to “stay skinny”; aged six and indulged in shoplifting – blaming Sarah for accidentally picking up stolen goods if caught.
Sarah said: “My dad loved Molly and he loved me and Jack, he didn’t want us to lose another mother.
“Molly would say the most awful things. She told me dad would rape her and accused Dad of killing my mum Mags.
“She was spiralling before Dad died, and a few days before, she came up to my room shouting and screaming, saying that my dad was going to kill her like he killed his first wife.
“She said the same to my dad and I saw his heart shatter.
She was spiralling before Dad died and a few days before, she came up to my room shouting and screaming, saying that my dad was going to kill her like he killed his first wife
Sarah Corbett Lynch
“Molly told me awful things about my dad my entire life, that he was abusive and hit her.
“She told me he was a bad man, but Molly also taught me at six years of age to vomit to stay skinny. She taught me how to steal in department stores.
“She humiliated me in front of all my friends all of the time and she did the same to my dad.
“I think something that speaks volumes is that a few days before Dad died, he called his friend and told him if he were to leave (Molly) he would have to be on a plane before the Martens even knew he was gone.
“I think that shows the severity of the situation, that it wasn’t safe for us to live with Molly or be around the Martens anymore.
“I never saw my dad hit Molly, I knew her story wasn’t true. My dad was the guy who used a piece of paper and a cup to take spiders outside of our house.
“Molly was a master manipulator.”;
Forced to lie
Sarah says that in the days after her dad’s killing, Molly and her parents, Tom and Sharon, sat her down and told her to lie to social workers.
She said: “They told me (and Jack) that if I didn’t tell them that my dad was a bad man, and that he hit Molly, and that he hurt Molly, I would never see Molly again and that me and Jack would be separated and put into foster care.”;
The siblings later retracted the statements after Jason's family took them home to Ireland.
The interviews were barred as evidence in the original trial – a move that helped the Martens appeal their conviction.
The Martens' first trial in 2017 heard how Molly once invented a sister who died fromcancer, claimed to have been the editor of a magazine in Ireland and related bizarre stories ofbeing pregnantwith Sarah at her bible study book, even though she had never given birth.
She also set up surveillance and recording devices in the family home and told friends she was being abused.
In 2020, an appeals court overturned the pair’s conviction because the original trial judge didn’t allow the social services statements given by Sarah and Jack.
The Martens claim they were influenced by Jason’s family when they took the kids back to Ireland.
In October 2023 the father and daughter entered plea deals to voluntary manslaughter and were told to spend between 51 and 74 months in prison. Both are now free.
Sarah and her family flew over to the hearing from Ireland so she and brother Jack could give victim statements to the court.
Sarah said: “When I arrived at court the first time I saw Molly was when she came out of the elevator and she was laughing with two of her friends.
“She looked me in the eye and stopped laughing but then just walked away. I got very upset because I couldn’t understand how you could be laughing on the way to a hearing for killing someone.
“There was no sign of remorse from any of the Martens and the defence weren’t careful with the crime scene pictures either. Jack and I had to keep bowing our heads or looking away not to see them.
“The evidence was extremely hard to sit through and hear in such detail what happened to Dad.”;
Sarah is now trying to rebuild her life, teaching children diving and swimming in Ireland but she can still suffer nightmares and panic attacks.
She writes: “Some days will be darker than others. I think about what happened and feel a mixture of rage and despair inside me.
“It’s a struggle sometimes, but I try to fight those emotions. I realise it’s pointless to harbour negative feelings because I only hurt myself.
“I know that, as a family, we did all we could to get justice for Dad and I knew he would never want me to be defined by what happened to him.”;
A Time for Truth: My Father Jason and My Search for Justice and Healing by Sarah Corbett Lynch is published by Hachette Books Ireland, £16.99
