Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
“It’s one of the bloodiest crime scenes I’ve seen in a long time,” Lt. Wanda Thompson of the Davidson County Sheriff’s Department says at the beginning of the Netflix documentary A Deadly American Marriage, recalling the house in which Jason Corbett was found dead from multiple fatal wounds.
Like many non-American and non-Irish viewers, I knew nothing about the 2015 Jason Corbett killing, and archival footage from the crime scene is indeed extremely disturbing. There are blood splatters on the walls, the floor, the bed sheets, charging sockets, the bedroom door, the night lamp… it would put horror movies to shame. Jason’s wife, Molly Martens Corbett, and her father, retired FBI agent Thomas Michael Martens, made a 911 call, reporting he had hit Jason with a baseball bat while defending Molly from domestic violence. Jason Corbett was an Irish citizen running a business in America and had two children from his first wife, who had died when they were toddlers. The children, Jack and Sarah, both under the age of 11 at the time, were found asleep in their bedrooms and were made to close their eyes to spare them the trauma of witnessing the horrific crime scene.
Interestingly, the Netflix documentary features interviews with all key surviving members connected to the case, from primary accused Molly Martens and Michael Martens, to the children, their relatives, lawyers on both sides, and investigators. Ideally, that’s how a balanced documentary should be. However, many true-crime documentaries on Netflix end up lopsided, often due to the reluctance of key people to come on camera. In such cases, the creators typically insert a note: “we attempted to interview X but were denied permission.” For instance, in American Murder: The Gabby Petito Story, the documentary makers couldn’t get any close family members of her boyfriend Brian to participate. In contrast, A Deadly American Marriage divides its 1 hour 42-minute runtime almost equally between both sides of the case.
Everyone presents their version of events, while Molly claims she was being strangled by an abusive husband when her father intervened in self-defense, Jason’s family believes the Martens murdered him with malicious intent so Molly could gain custody of the children. It’s a classic ‘he said, she said’ case, though there’s no denying the brutal nature of Jason’s death – he was clearly bludgeoned to death.
The documentary spans years of coverage, from the Martens’ original sentencing in 2017 to their appeal and re-sentencing in 2023. What happened to them, and to everyone else, is a matter of public record, but the interviews offer a disturbingly close look into a case where the full truth of what happened on the night Jason was killed remains elusive. But we do have concrete answers on how the system and the law dealt with the case and the prime accused.
If you’re a true-crime enthusiast unfamiliar with the Jason Corbett case, A Deadly American Marriage might be worth your time.
Watch it on Netflix.
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