Molly Martens and Jason Corbett - Part 1 - Love Marry Kill

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
I'm Rich and I'm Tina.

Speaker 3 (00:01):
And if there's one thing we've learned in over twenty
years of marriage.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
It's some days you'll feel like killing your husband, and.

Speaker 3 (00:07):
Some days you'll feel like killing your wife.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to love, Mary.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Kill, Hey Tina, Hey Rich?

Speaker 3 (00:28):
How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
I'm very good? How are you?

Speaker 3 (00:30):
I'm doing good. I'm all hopped up on diet PEPSI
and I trimmed my eyebrows for you this morning, so
I am like ready to go. You trimmed your eyebrows
just for you because I knew i'd be sitting across
from you for a couple hours here and wanted to
make sure I look as nice as possible for you.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
I don't think I have commented on your eyebrows honestly in.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Years, because I keep him trimmed.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Now, what about the space in between?

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Yeah, that's trim too.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Oh yeah, Okay, there was a time in our marriage
that maybe.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
I have kind of heavy eyebrow hair. Let's just leave
it at that.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Okay, Well, I think that I haven't mentioned it since.
Remember the time when I got wax between your very
defined eye rounds and then I left a blister between.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Your eyebrows, and I.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Still feel bad about that to this day.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
You shouldn't feel bad. I have forgotten it. I'm moved on.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
You've moved.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, well the eyebrows. Everything looks great. You're very handsome.
It's funny because I think about that too, because really,
when we're podcasting, we sit across, we stare at each
other more than we normally do, because normally we're like
side by side or Yeah, so I always put makeup
before we record something. I don't want to make up.
Look at me without makeup.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
Well, you look very nice to Thank you so much.
We have a couple of really busy months coming up.
Are you prepared for all the busyness?

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Do you mean football season?

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Well, it's not just football season. It's the Tigers are
making a playoff run. They're gonna make the playoffs. Who
knows how far they'll go. Michigan football starts tonight tonight.
We're recording on August thirtieth, so we're a little bit
ahead of schedule. The Lions start next week, so it.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Sounds like busy for you.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
I know how much you love.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
My free time when you're watching a football game. Yes,
I do.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Okay, Well, I just want to make sure you're prepared
for me to be busy.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Oh honey, I know, I know. Do you want to
give us any bold predictions? You have twenty seconds because
I don't want this to linger too long.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Okay, Well, bold prediction, Lions, this is the year super Bowl.
We are winning the Super Bowl this year.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
I don't think that's especially bold, but that's my.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
So is that what the other football people.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Are And my other bold prediction, the Tigers will win
the World Series. It's going to be a magical.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Sounds amazing, sounds great. What about the Michigan because do
they have a new coach this year?

Speaker 3 (02:58):
No, last year they had a new coach. Okay, yeah,
they're not going to win the National Championship this year,
but they'll.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Do Okay, Yeah, I still think it's great that they
wanted that a couple of years ago.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
That was a great season, that was magical.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yes, so they don't have to win every season.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
I think we've gone on more than twenty seconds about football.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Let's move on.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah, I do. But before we have a snack, I
did want to mention, really briefly, a redditor made a
nice post about us the other day on the true
crime podcast subreddit killer Kim, and we just wanted to
give a shout out to killer Kim and say thanks.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
That was really that was so kind. Thank you so much, Kim.
I was scrolling you had sent it to me, But
then the other day I was scrolling through Reddit and
I saw it again. It was just like jarring to
see you know the name of our podcast. Because we're
still a smaller podcast, We're still growing and so it
really does make a difference. And I've had several people
message me since or leave you know, a comment or whatever. Hey,

(03:52):
I found you from this Reddit post. So again, thank
you so much. That was so generous, Kim.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Yeah, I just saw it randomly. I was scrolling through
Reddit on my phone while waiting for our takeout order.
See all of a sudden I say love Mary Kill.
Is like, oh, what a nice surprise.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
It was nice to see it was positive and like,
oh and you believe that woman?

Speaker 3 (04:08):
Yes, So thank you again, Kim. We appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Other podcasters have like, you know, a love Mary Kill
like in their name, and we don't. We just kind
of lurk on there. I think I like it. I
think it seems more organic that way, so we're looking,
we're watching. So if you say nice things about us US,
it really means a lot.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yes, all right, Well, part of our case today takes
place in North Carolina. The other part takes place in Iraq.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
We've been in North Caroline.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
We have been in North Carolina a lot lately. But
I did when I was in North Carolina recently for work,
and so I picked up some snacks at the airport. No,
these are from a company. They're called me Ma's Country Kitchen,
and they are based in North Carolina. And I brought
you three snacks.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Wow. Thanks.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
Now the first one, I'm a little embarrassed to say
the name of this, but this is the name of it.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Uh huh.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
They are called cheese tids. That's tid d I e s.
Just in case you were wondering. But they're these little
they're little cheese crisps and I bought I bought lemon
coolers and they're chocolate chip cookies. So we've got three
little snacks to try.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
All right? You ready, what did you think about the
MEMA's Country Kitchens.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
I liked all of them. I think Mema knows what
she's doing in that kitchen.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, I really like the cheese things. Those are like really.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Like those two. Yeah, just like spicy, but like the
perfect amount of spice. We've had something called moon cheese
before that have gotten at Costco. I haven't bought it
in a long time, but it reminds me of that.
But yeah, I loved all of these snacks. They were
really good. They don't love like a packaged cookie like
that always, and yet they were really good. Yeah. I
think I approached it the wrong way. I went cheese doodle,

(05:55):
lemon cooler, and then chocolate chip. I probably should have done.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
I think they should have said the lemon with a lemon.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
I don't know, I don't know, but yeah, very good,
Thank you good.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
Do you want to give them a rating?

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Sure, I'll give the cheese titty a night out of ten,
and the cookies I'd give the lemon probably eight out
of ten, and the chocolate cookie like seven and a
half out of ten.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
I pretty much pretty much the same.

Speaker 4 (06:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah, Well, as I mentioned today's case, part of it
takes place in North Carolina, part of it is from Ireland.
So tomorrow when we do part two, I've got a
really good snack plan for you. From Ireland.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
You have been talking about this snack for a couple
of weeks.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
I'm really excited about it.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Okay, I can't wait.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
Well, this was a case recommendation from Marion who listens
to us in Dublin, Ireland. So thank you Marion for
the recommendation. Appreciate it. There's a Netflix documentary called A
Deadly American Marriage which is about this case. It just
came out, I think in the spring March timeframes. A
really good documentary. If you're interested in the case, I
definitely encourage you to check it out. They interviewed pretty

(06:57):
much everyone involved in the case directly, and when it
comes to a case like this where there is maybe
some question about what happened, I think it's really valuable
to hear from the people so you can kind of
judge for yourselves based on you know, the person and
there the way they talk about themselves and they talk
about the case. So definitely recommend watching that documentary.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Did you feel like the documentary was unbiased.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
I think it was. Yeah. I think it was fairly unbiased.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
That's unique because usually there's, you know, some sort of bias.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
In some ways. The documentary may have tried a little
bit too hard to be unbiased. It may have been
like kind of you know, one of those both sides
things like. But I think overall it was very well done.
We're going to go deeper than the documentary. I read
three books on this case, all written by people very
close to the events that took place.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
That is dedication, sir. We well appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
They were all really interesting, and I'll talk more about
the sources at the end. The nine to one to
one call came in just after three am on Sunday,
August seventh, twenty fifteen. On the line was Tom Martin's
thirty year FBI veteran, who had spent his career calmly
navigating high pressure situations. But this wasn't a case he
was investigating. It was happening within his own family. Tom

(08:11):
told the dispatcher he was at his daughter Molly's house
in Davidson County, North Carolina. Her husband, Jason Corbett, had
attacked her. Tom said he stepped in to protect her,
wielding an aluminum baseball bat. His voice was steady, but
his words were chilling. I may have killed him. When
first responders arrived, they were met with a horrifying scene.

(08:32):
Jason Corbett lay motionless, his head injuries so severe that
when a paramedic tried to tilt his chin to prepare
for intubation, his fingers slipped inside. Jason's fractured skull blood
stained the walls, the bedding, the carpet. Tom and his
daughter Molly told investigators the same story. Jason had wrapped
his hands around Molly's neck and threatened to kill her.

(08:54):
Tom rushed in to intervene, and what followed was, in
his words, a real Donnybrook, a cho struggle that ended
with Jason dead on the floor. Molly backed up her
father's account and added more. Jason, she said, had been
abusive for years, both toward her and the children. Despite
the bloody scene, it initially seemed to investigators like a

(09:14):
case of self defense. Lieutenant Detectivemanda Thompson even assured Molly, quote,
at this point, after talking to your dad and talking
to you, it looks like this is going to be
self defense. Okay, I don't think there's going to be
any issue with that. But in the days and weeks
that followed, doubts began to creep in. Evidence at the
scene didn't quite match the story. Jason's acquaintances in Ireland

(09:36):
painted a very different picture of him, and whispers grew
louder that this was less a desperate struggle for survival
and more a calculated plan to stop Jason from taking
his children back home across the Atlantic. So which was
it a violent fight for Molly's life or a carefully
plotted murder.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
You said a word I've never heard before, Donnie brook
You I've never heard that.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Okay, it's an old fashioned word, for sure, but it
just means like a brawl, like a chaotic sort of
all out brawl.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
Okay, definitely, Mary forever. But you still say things sometimes, Well,
is it me or.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
Well, this was Tom's word, not mine. I probably wouldn't
use that word either, but he was the one that
described it that way.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Did Tom live with Molly and Jason.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
No, He and his wife, Sharon lived about four hours away.
They had just come in for a visit that day.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
It seems odd that he would start a fight with
his wife when his wife's parents were there in the house.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
Well, that is certainly a good observation, and we will
talk about that. Jason Corbett was born in February nineteen
seventy six in Limerick, Ireland. He was one of eight children,
a twin in fact with his brother Wayne. He and
Wayne were the youngest in the family. Jason's parents, John
and Rita, had known each other practically all their lives.
They grew up next door to one another, and John

(10:54):
even attended school with Frank McCourt, who would go on
to write the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir Angela's Ashes, which
we both read many years ago, Really good Look. The
Corbett household wasn't wealthy, but Jason's sister Tracy remembers their
childhood as full of warmth and joy. Rita was the
heart of the family, always keeping the home cozy with
the smell of something baking or simmering on the hob.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
You know what a hob is, well, I'm guessing it's
a stovetop right.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
Jason grew up surrounded by love, laughter, and the noisy
chaos of a big Irish family. When the nineteen eighties
recession hit, life grew more difficult. John lost his job
with Shell Oil and money became tight. Even as a teenager,
Jason stepped up, taking on part time security work to
help out and to earn a little pocket money. After
finishing school, he landed a steady job with a local

(11:42):
company called field Box More. That company later became Multi
Packaging Solutions, a global leader in specialty packaging, and Jason
would remain there for the next two decades, right up
until his death. During those early working years, Jason moved
in with his older sister Tracy and her husband, Dave Lynch.
He had always been close to Tracy, but in Dave

(12:02):
he found not just a brother in law, but a
role model and a trusted friend. Jason leaned on Dave
for advice and support, and the two grew to share
a deep bond. Friends and family described Jason as kind hearted, charismatic,
and always smiling. He had a booming voice and a
big personality. If Jason was in the room, you knew
it more than anything. Though, He was remembered as someone

(12:24):
who made people feel like they mattered. To everyone who
crossed his path, Jason Corbett felt like a friend.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
As a young man, Jason David here and there, and
even when relationships ended, he rarely left things on bad terms.
More often than not, former girlfriends became lasting friends, a
testament to his easygoing nature. In nineteen ninety seven, when
Jason was twenty one, he went to a party with
his good friend Lynn Shanahan. Lynn brought along a colleague

(12:51):
from work, a woman named Margaret Maggs Fitzpatrick. The moment
Jason met her, he was captivated. Like so many gatherings,
the night stretched lad into laughter, music, and song. After
the party wound down, the group drifted back to a
friend's house for a nightcap or two in what they
called a sing song, where everyone took turns belting out

(13:14):
traditional Irish tunes. One by one. People dozed off in
armchairs and on couches until only a few stragglers remained.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
I want to go to a party like that?

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah, I think I went to some like back in
the day, but it's been a long time. The next morning,
it was Maggs who was first up, bustling around the
kitchen to make a proper Irish fry up sausages, bacon, pudding,
fried eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, and thick slices of soda bread.
She realized she was missing a few ingredients and mentioned
walking to a shop. Jason immediately offered to go with her.

(13:46):
It was on that walk, hand in hand along the
quiet road that Jason later said he fell head over
heels and love for him. That was the moment everything changed.
A week later they had their first official date, and
from then on the two were inseparable. Jason would come
home from nights out with Maggs to keep his roommate
up half the night, gushing about how lucky he felt.

(14:08):
Before long, Jason and Maggs moved in together, renting an
apartment directly above Tracy and Dave's place. Those were golden years,
Tracy later recalled two young couples stacked one above the other,
sharing dinners, laughter, and endless evenings together. At work, Jason
was thriving at multi packaging solutions. He never shied away

(14:29):
from responsibility, volunteering for extra shifts, taking on difficult tasks,
and quickly earning the respect of his colleagues. He became
the union representative, then went on to sit on the
European Works Council, where he represented employees across the continent
in labor negotiations. By nineteen ninety seven, he was promoted
to shift supervisor, and a few years later he began

(14:51):
attending night classes to further his education. His dedication paid
off in two thousand and five, Jason was promoted again,
this time to operations director, a position that came with
a company car and a sense of pride For a
boy who'd once taken odd jobs just to help his
family make ends meet. It was like a dream realized,

(15:11):
and alongside his career success, Jason's personal life was blossoming.
In two thousand and two, while on holiday in Barcelona,
he proposed to Mags. She said yes, and the following
year they were married in a church overlooking the ocean.
They had promised not to see each other for three
days before the ceremony, but Jason, ever the romantic, couldn't

(15:32):
resist bending the rules in his own way. He secretly
gave three handwritten notes to Catherine, Max's sister and maid
of honor, with instructions to deliver one each day, and
then he poured out his love, his hopes for their marriage,
and the dreams he imagined they would share. By the
time Mags read the final note, just hours before the wedding,
she was in tears, so emotional that her father worried

(15:55):
something was wrong, that perhaps she was changing her mind.
But no, Mag was overwhelmed with happiness, knowing she had
found her soulmate. After the wedding, the couple bought a
piece of property in the village of bally Needy, just
fifteen minutes outside of Limerick, where Jason set about building
what would become their dream home. Their joy only grew

(16:16):
with the arrival of children. In September two thousand and four,
they welcomed their first child, a son named Jack. Two
years later, in September two thousand and six, their daughter
Sarah was born, completing their family. For Jason and Magg's
life felt complete. They had built their dream home in
bally Needy, Jason's career was flourishing, and their little family,

(16:36):
first Jack and then baby Sarah, filled the house with
laughter and love. To friends and family, they seemed inseparable.
Jason often called Mags his anam kara, his sole friend,
and the Celtic tradition, the one whose spirit is bound
to yours for eternity. Their careers, their home, their family.
Everything seemed to be falling perfectly into place. But life,

(16:57):
of course, can change in an instant, and just twelve
weeks after Sarah's birth, tragedy struck. Mags had long battled asthma,
and the early hours one morning she woke gasping for air.
Her nebulizer wasn't doing it for her, and she knew
immediately that something about this attack was different. Panicked, she
woke Jason. He called for an ambulance, then roused Mag's

(17:18):
sister Catherine, who had been staying with them temporarily. I'm
going to die, Mas, whispered to Catherine, clutching her chest
and pain, I'm going to die. Jason couldn't bear to
wait for help to reach their house outside of Limerick.
He bundled Mags into the car, keeping the emergency dispatcher
on the line as he sped toward a halfway meeting
point with the ambulance. But before they arrived, Mags slumped

(17:42):
forward in her seat. Jason pulled over, dragged her from
the car, and performed CPR on the side of the
road until paramedics arrived and took over. He followed the
ambulance to the hospital, desperately hoping Mags would be okay,
but once there, doctors pulled him aside with the news
no husband is ever ready to hear. Mags was gone.
She had died in the ambulance en route. She was

(18:04):
just thirty one years old. The post mortem determined the
cause a severe asthma attack that had stopped her heart.
The pathologists later explained that her heart had been weakened
a ticking time bomb. He said, the fatal attack could
have come at any time. That is really devastating.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah, really really tragic.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
Asthma attacks are so scary because you can have it
like Mags did her whole life, and you know, you
don't know how severe the next attack will be.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yeah, and I get the sense that they were really,
really in love with each other. And you know, their
daughter was only twelve weeks old when this happened, so even,
you know, more tragic because of that.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
We'll be back after a break.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Jason was shattered just thirty years old. He was suddenly
a widower, left to raise a two year old son
and a twelve week old daughter on his own. At
Mags's funeral, Jason wrote a farewell note to his wife.
He knew he couldn't get through it himself, so he
asked his brother in law, Dave, to read it out loud. Quote,
to my soulmate and beautiful wife, mag mag You've just

(19:11):
heard how much I loved you before we got married,
and it has been a million times better than I
could ever have dreamed. I know we crammed in so
much in the little time we had together, but it
was only a fraction of the life we had planned.
Jason promised Mags that their children would never forget her. Quote,
don't worry about the babies. All of us here today,
family and friends will make sure they always remember how

(19:33):
great their mommy was. I promise I will stay strong
for our wonderful kids. And finally, he spoke from the
deepest part of his heart, quote, you always said I
was lucky to have you. You were the girl of
my dreams, and then you became the love of my life.
Now you are the girl of my dreams again, my
mag mag I'll love you all of my life. Please
look in on us from time to time. Love you

(19:55):
always and forever. In the months that followed, Jason was
lost without her. Most days, on his lunch break, he
could be found at Maggs's grave, leaning against her headstone,
reading the newspaper out loud, or updating her on the children.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
That is so sweet, I know, it really is.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
He tried to channel some of his grief into action,
raising money for the Irish Asthma society in her memory,
but the happy, go lucky, always smiling Jason, his family
knew was gone. His children became the only reason he
kept moving forward. In the aftermath of Maggs's death, Jason
leaned heavily on family. Mag's sister Catherine stayed with him
for a while to help with the children. Tracy and

(20:34):
her husband Dave were constantly by his side, and many
others pitched in as well. But as the months stretched on,
Jason realized he needed something more permanent. His loved ones
had their own families and responsibilities, and he didn't want
to depend on them forever. He tried hiring live in help,
first one nanny, then another, but neither arrangement lasted long.

(20:56):
The first two women struggled with English, and Jason worried
about stability for Jack and Sarah. By two thousand and eight,
he placed a new ad for an au pair. That
ad would change everything. It was how Molly Martin's came
into his life. Molli Martins was born in nineteen eighty three,
the second of four children and the only girl in
a close knit family from Knoxville, Tennessee. Her mother, Sharon,

(21:18):
held a mathematics degree while her father, Tom, graduated from
Emory University before embarking on a thirty year career with
the FBI. The first half of his service was spent
in the criminal division, the second half in counter intelligence.
After retiring from the Bureau, he continued his work in
national security at the Department of Energy's Oakridge National Laboratory.

(21:40):
Molly grew up in comfort. The Martin's family home was
spacious and elegant, six bedrooms, a swimming pool, a sweeping lawn,
and a broad, multi level deck for entertaining. Today, Zillo
values the house at over a million dollars. It was
a picture of upper middle class stability, the kind of
place where children seemed destined for bright futures. Much of

(22:00):
what we know about Molly Martin's before she moved to
Ireland comes from an unusual source. In the years leading
up to her move, she had a serious boyfriend, eventually
a fiance named Keith McGinn. After their break up, Keith
wrote a memoir called Turning This Thing Around, published in
twenty twelve, three years before Jason Corbett's death. To be fair,

(22:21):
the book isn't specifically about Molly. It's Keith's personal account
of his struggles with depression and anxiety. But in these pages, Molly,
referred to under the pseudonym Mary, plays a central role,
and through his story we get a revealing portrait of
the woman who would later enter Jason's life. Molly had
dropped out of Clemson University after less than a semester

(22:42):
and was working a series of jobs, some caring for children.
When she met Keith online. She struck him immediately as fun, different,
and when they met in person, stunningly beautiful. Way out
of my league, he later admitted. The two fell in
love quickly, almost recklessly. Within a month, at Molly's insistence,
Keith moved into her apartment. She told him she lived

(23:05):
with bipolar disorder and manic depression, but assured him that
medication kept things under control. Keith, who battled his own issues,
felt empathy more than concern. But only weeks later he
saw the other side of her. The vibrant, free spirited
woman he'd fallen for slipped into despair. She stopped working,
spent days in bed or curled up in the bathtub.

(23:26):
Plagued by migraines, insomnia, and relentless self loathing. She thought
herself hideous, even as she turned the heads of strangers,
compliments only made her recoil. Their relationship became a cycle
of highs and crushing lows. Keith wrote that he sometimes
came home from work not knowing whether Molly would be
asleep under the weight of her medications or sobbing on

(23:48):
the bathroom floor talking of ending her life. He says
he pulled her back from suicide more than once. Still,
he loved her and wanted desperately to help. In two
thousand and seven, he wrote a poem titled how Can
I Make Happy the Sad Girl? One line read, how
can I convince her? Can I ever make her see?
I'm not going anywhere? But she's running away from me.

(24:09):
Molly began to pin her hopes for happiness on milestones.
If they got engaged, she insisted it would prove his
love and make her feel whole. So Keith proposed, and
for a short time she seemed happier, but soon came
new turmoil. She announced she was pregnant, despite being on
birth control. She wasn't distressed. She loved children and believed

(24:29):
motherhood would fix everything. Keith worried about her heavy regiment
of medications, sometimes as many as sixteen daily prescriptions, plus
others as needed. His fears proved justified when she soon miscarried.
The loss plunged her deeper into depression. We'll talk about
this a little bit later, but Molly has trouble with

(24:50):
the truth in a lot of ways. She was prone
to making up stories. So I have no way of
knowing if this pregnancy was real or not. But there's
certainly when I read this, knowing what we'll get into later,
I certainly had some doubts about it, they'll say. Keith
eventually convinced Molly to admit herself to a psychiatric facility
to reduce her dependence on medication. After four days, she

(25:11):
left unchanged, and then, almost without warning, she told him
she wanted to move to Ireland. She saw it as
an escape, a chance to start fresh. She asked Keith
to come with her, but he couldn't. They had no
money and he needed his job and his health insurance,
so she went alone. She promised she would check in,
but weeks passed without a word. Finally, three weeks after arriving,

(25:34):
Keith received an email. Molly told him she was happy,
apologized for the chaos she had caused in his life
and urged him to move on and find happiness without her.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Wow, why Ireland?

Speaker 3 (25:45):
I don't know for sure. I think a lot of people,
myself included, view Ireland very romantically. Like it just seems
like if you were looking for a place to get
away and start fresh, it seems like a great place
to do that.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
I would love to go to Ireland.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
Same.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
When five year old Molly Martin's answered Jason Zad for
an AWE pair, she presented herself as the perfect candidate.
She claimed to be a certified Montessori teacher, a Clemson
University graduate, vetted as a foster parent, and even a
near qualifier for the US Olympic swim team. None of
it was true, though Jason and his family wouldn't discover

(26:21):
that until much later.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Wow. Yeah, it's pretty bold, I'll say.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
But she sounds like the perfect candidate, right.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
Oh yeah, you would totally look at that on paper
and say excellent.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Molly arrived in Ireland in March two thousand and eight,
flying into Shannon Airport on a one way ticket. She
had no work permit, no visa, none of the paperwork
required to live and work legally. Immigration officials quickly flagged
the issues and ordered her onto the next flight home.
Jason rushed to the airport to try to intervene, but
the officers wouldn't budge. Molly was placed on a plane

(26:52):
to Boston. From there, she purchased a round trip ticket
to Dublin and got back on another plane, and when
she arrived in Ireland the following day, Dublin immigration waved
her through without incident, just like that Molly was in.
So it was the one way ticket that set them off.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
I think it was, But also I think the airport
in Limerick is much smaller than Dublin, so it's probably
a little harder to get through those things. But it
is interesting though, I think I don't know if she
just didn't think about it, but you know, you have
to have paperwork to work in another country, you can't
just show up.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Almost immediately, she bonded with Jack and baby Sarah. Jason
encouraged her to explore Ireland on her days off to
make friends and feel at home, and little by little,
friends and family began to notice a change in Jason himself.
He seemed lighter, a touch, more like the man he
had been before losing Mags. Molly struck people as kind, attentive,
and considerate, a welcome presence and a house that had

(27:49):
carried so much sorrow. But within two months others began
to notice something more. Jason and Molly linger together, talking
closely off and trailing behind the group. Soon it became
obvious a romance was forming. How much time had passed
between Mags's death and Molly's arrival.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
I think it was about a year and a half, okay.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
Reactions were mixed. On one hand, everyone wanted Jason to
find happiness again after everything he had endured. He deserved it,
but there were also concerns things were moving quickly. Molly
was not just a girlfriend. She was living in his home,
caring for his children. It was a complicated situation, and
some worried about where it might lead. Before long, though

(28:32):
there was no denying it, Jason and Molly were a couple.
It didn't take long before the cracks began to show.
Jason was in love, but it was also conflicted. Things
were moving quickly, too quickly for his comfort. Molly was
becoming a mother figure to his children, and while part
of him was grateful, another part wasn't ready for that.
He wanted space to sort out his feelings, to separate

(28:55):
his roles as a father from his role as a
romantic partner. In June two thousand and eight, only a
month into their romance, Jason suggested Molly return home to
the US for a visit. It would give him a
time to think to slow things down. Molly reluctantly agreed,
but instead of giving him the distance he needed, she
flooded him with emails and phone calls, pressing for reassurance.

(29:17):
As she wrote in one email, I just want to
be loved back. Neither one of us should live life
with so much doubt. It hurts to carry out, and
it hurts more to know that someone you love doubts you.
Jason's reply was gentle but firm. It hurts me too,
you know, I just want a normal boy girl relationship.
We should be having fun, getting to know one another,
going on dates, not husband and wife. In another message,

(29:41):
his fears came pouring out. Please know that I miss
you and I love you so much, but I am scared,
scared to let go in case I lose someone again,
or the kids lose someone again. I couldn't live through it.
My concern is for Jack and Sarah. I've had enough
tragedy in their short lives, and while I know they're resilient,
I'm nervous about them through anything. Further, I don't want

(30:02):
to lose you, but more so I don't want to
risk Jack and Sarah losing another mother if we don't
work out.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
I think that email is a really good encapsulation of
how he must have been feeling, and I can totally
imagine that it's a really difficult situation asolutely.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
We've done enough of these cases and looking at it objectively,
those are pretty big red flags, and it's good that
he took a pause, and it sounds like maybe he
should have vented things there By August, Jason relented. He
agreed Molly could return, but on the condition that she
find a different job. His friend Lynn, who managed a
child care facility, even offered to hire her, but when

(30:37):
Lynn asked Molly to provide her Montessori certification, Molly brushed
her off, saying her credentials wouldn't transfer to Ireland without proof.
Lynn refused to hire her. Mollie never pursued another position,
and before long things slid back to the way they
had been before. Over time, Jason's friends and family began
to notice troubling changes. Molly seemed to want Jason all

(30:59):
to herself. She pushed him away from people he had
once been close to at social gatherings. If Jason didn't
give her enough attention, she might cause a scene, something
he came to dread so Mollie. When she returned to Ireland,
she moved back into the house with her I believe
so yes, and slowly patterns began to emerge, the same

(31:19):
patterns Keith McGinn had described in his memoir years earlier.
By twenty eleven, Jason's emails to Molly could have been
lifted straight from Keith's book, and one he wrote, is
there anything I can do to make you happy? I've
done everything, and you still hate yourself, hate yourself, cry
in the shower, vomit, curse, shout at me. I feel
so inadequate. Models. I've given you everything in my life,

(31:40):
including me in the kid's hearts, and I know you
love us so so much, But in the last three
days you've still done all of the above. Even vacation,
Jason isn't enough anymore. I don't know what to do.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
I'm not sure exactly what he means by vacation, Jason.
I can only assume it's just, you know, when he's
relaxed and fun and.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Not the weekend Jason. Yeah, probably vacation Jason is kind
of hard to say.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
It's a little tricky. On Valentine's Day twenty ten, nearly
two years after Molly first arrived in Ireland, Jason proposed
and Molly said yes.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
I'm a little surprised that he proposed. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
I mean, I think Jason did love Molly. I also
think that he really struggled with separating her from his kids.
I think his kids loved her. They called her mom
after a period of time, and I think he didn't
want his kids to lose another mother, right.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
I can understand that.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Jason's family wanted to be happy for him, but beneath
the congratulations lingered unease. They worried about Molly's volatility, though
they reassured themselves she was normal crazy, not dangerous crazy.
What they didn't see were the struggles behind closed doors,
the endless emails filled with doubt, conflict, and Jason's fear
of losing yet another partner. Molly's discontent was constant. She

(32:58):
complained about the house that Jason had built for Mags
their dream home, the place that symbolized his first marriage.
Molly said she felt like she was living in Maggs's shadow.
It wasn't unreasonable, but the bitterness in how she spoke
about it unsettled those around her. Eventually, Jason gave in
and put the house on the market. Molly was also homesick.

(33:19):
She told Jason she hated living in Ireland and pushed
hard for a fresh start in America. Jason was open
to the idea. He had fond memories of the United States.
He and Maggs had honeymooned in Boston and New York,
and he remembered the trip warmly. And at MPs, a
new opportunity had opened up plant manager at their facility
in Lexington, North Carolina, just over four hours from Molly's

(33:42):
family in Knoxville.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Kind of selfish for Molly to want to move back
to the United States when Jason his support system, support
system off, his children are all in Ireland.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
Yeah, I agree, And she chose to move there to
take the job as his au pair, so yeah, I agree.
It seemed like fate. A fresh start close to Molly's
family with career growth for Jason, but his sister Tracy
noticed something in him when he told her the plan conflict.
He admitted that Molly had given him an ultimat him

(34:14):
moved to the US with her or the relationship was over.
Tracy urged him to seek counseling, even paying for the
sessions herself, but in the end Jason agreed to the move.
One reason weighed especially heavy. Jack and Sarah now called
Molly Mom. Jason couldn't bear the thought of his children
losing another mother figure. The wedding was set for June

(34:35):
twenty eleven in the United States. Afterward, Jason and Molly
would settle in North Carolina, ready to begin what was
supposed to be a brand new life. Three months before
the wedding, Molly flew back to the US to handle preparations,
while Jason stayed in Ireland to finish out his work
and put things in order. The distance only deepened their problems.

(34:55):
The emails they exchanged during this time don't read like
messages between a couple excited about their future. Instead, they
sound like two people struggling just to hold it together.
In March, Molly wrote, I believed you when you told
me we should try for a child after marrying. I
believe this was exciting for you. I feel so so, so,
so so stupid, ridiculous, ashamed and humiliated for believing in you,

(35:19):
and I will look like an idiot to everyone. A
month later, Jason's frustration spilled onto the page. I won't
be able to make a go of it in the
United States under this emotional pressure you're placing on me.
You just accused me of things off the cuff when
you have no valid reason for doing so. You bang
the phone down. You sound like an emotional wreck. I
am moving to your country to be with you. I

(35:40):
need you to be strong for us and not constantly crying,
accusing me of things, banging down phones. You are supposedly
getting what you want, and yet you sound more sad
now than ever. You even told me you hate talking
to me because you end up curling up in a ball.
Just weeks before the ceremony, Molly finally disclosed something she
had kept hidden for their entire three year relationship, her

(36:02):
history of diagnosed mental health conditions.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Are you kidding?

Speaker 3 (36:06):
I am not kidding.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
They lived together and that he never knew nope.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
Jason was blindsided, upset, yes, but also relieved in a way.
It explained some of her volatility, and it seemed to
make him all the more determined to stand by her,
to help her to make it work. I think it's
always such a challenge in this type of situation, because
mental illness is an illness, right, it really is. And
you want if you love someone, you want to help

(36:31):
them through it. You want to support them, you want
to be there for them. But at the same time,
there comes a certain point when you got to think
of yourself.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
Too and your children. Yeah, was she not taking her
meds regularly? Or do you have any idea about that?

Speaker 3 (36:44):
I am not really sure. What Jason never knew was.
Around this same time, Molly quietly consulted a divorce lawyer.
She wanted to know her chances of gaining custody of
Jack and Sarah if the marriage ended. The lawyer told
her it was unlikely unless the children were old, perhaps
twelve or so, when their preferences could carry weight in court.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
Wow, that is wild, it is.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
It was a troubling glimpse of what might already have
been in Molly's mind even before she walked down the aisle.
We'll be back after a break.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Several of Jason's family and friends made the trip to
Tennessee for the wedding, arriving days in advance. Molly's parents,
Tom and Sharon hosted a number of events to welcome
their new Irish in laws, including a party at their home.
But in those days leading up to the ceremony, a
few more unsettling signs began to emerge. At a party,
Jason's sister Tracy noticed that Molly was nowhere to be seen.

(37:46):
When she asked about it, someone explained that Molly wasn't
feeling well. Tracy went to check on her and found
her lying in the fetal position crying. Tracy tried to
comfort her, but Molly wouldn't say what was wrong. The
encounter left Tracy uneasy. Later that evening, Tom Martin surprised
Jason's family with what he framed as a gesture of hospitality,

(38:07):
a whitewater rafting trips scheduled for the next morning at
eight am. It was the first anyone had heard of it. Tracy,
caught off guard, politely declined, explaining that there weren't prepared
for such an outing and already had plans. From that
point on, she said, Tom's demeanor towards Jason's family noticeably changed.
He seemed offended, even hostile, and the Irish guests got

(38:30):
the impression that they were being looked down on. Judged
to many, Tom came across as arrogant and dismissive.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
Can you imagine that, Like you're at a party and
your host is like, hey, good news. Tomorrow morning, eight am.
I got whitewater rafting tickets for us.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
I would probably have a hard time with that too.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
I think I think most people would. Yeah, that's something
you don't just, you.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Know, spring on people. At the wedding rehearsal. A couple
of days later, the temperature soared above one hundred degrees.
Molly suddenly fainted, but curiously, she collapsed in the only
patch of grass in an otherwise rocky area. Tracy noticed
several of Molly's relatives roll their eyes as they walked past,
as if this was nothing unusual, hardly worth concern.

Speaker 3 (39:16):
I should say that, you know, most of my sources
in this case were books written by Tracy and by Sarah,
the daughter, So some of these stories definitely come off
as sounding a little one sided. If Molly or her
dad had written a book, I definitely would have read
that as well, but they haven't. So just you know,
I feel like I need to explain a little bit

(39:36):
why there's a lot of Molly kind of stories in here.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
Yeah, it sounds a little insensitive, but it sounds like
that was something that Molly. She was just traumatic. Yeah, Individually,
the moments might not have met munch, but taken together,
they gave Jason's family an uneasy feeling. This marriage was
already showing cracks and the wedding hadn't even happened yet.
But then some one thing that truly alarmed Jason's family

(40:02):
and friends came. Just days before the wedding, Jason's best
friend Paul struck up a casual conversation with one of
Molly's bridesmaids. At one point, she remarked how romantic it
was that Molly was fulfilling Max's final wish. Paul was
taken back. Excuse me, he asked. The bridesmaid explained Mollie
had told her that she had been pen pals with Mags.

(40:25):
According to Molly, before Mags died, she asked Molly to
look after Jack and Sarah and that's why she had
originally gone to Ireland. Paul was stunned. It was an obvious,
blatant lie. Another bridesmaid soon revealed a slightly different version
of the story. She said that Molly had told her
that she had been childhood friends with Mags and she

(40:46):
was the children's godmother. She had supposedly traveled to Ireland
after Mags died of cancer, another fabrication. Since Maggs had
died of an asthma attack. Paul and Jason's sister Tracy
tried to track Jason down to warn him from the
whirlwind of wedding preparations. They never had the chance. This
wasn't the only time Molly twisted her past. In fact,

(41:09):
lies and exaggerations seemed to follow her everywhere. At a
book club meeting, when another woman shared the news that
she was expecting, Molly launched into an elaborate story about
giving birth to Sarah, complete with details of a difficult labor.
Several women in the room knew full well that Molly
was not Sarah's biological mother, but that didn't seem to

(41:30):
matter to Molly. Yikes. Back in college, Molly told classmates
that she had a sister named Grace, who had died
of leukemia in childhood. She even kept a photo of
a little girl in her dorm room, telling her roommate
it was Grace. Only later did the roommate realize that
the photo of Grace was just the stock picture that
came with the frame. Years later, she was still invoking

(41:52):
the same lie. In one email to Jason, after feeling
betrayed about something, she wrote, other than my sister's death,
nothing has ever devastated me so much. At various times,
she claimed that she had been the editor of a
magazine in Ireland, or that she had once served as
a foster mother. Each story seemed grander than the last one.

(42:14):
Woman who knew Molly through book club and Bible study
later put it this way quote no one had more
life experiences, career paths, borest complike stories than Molly. She
could one up any story you told, and she had
experienced it all, even though she was only in her
late twenties. She used her looks and her seemingly well
educated mind to manipulate and create the picture of herself.

(42:37):
She wanted others to believe. Her wild stories destroyed her
credibility to a private circle of people. She was the
growing joke for all of her outlandish claims. Years later,
after Jason's death and all of the events that were
going to be talking about, Molly herself admitted to the fabrications.
She said, first of all, everybody lies, and anybody who

(43:00):
says they don't, they're lying. But if you had to
ask me what I am most ashamed of in my life,
it would be the times that I have not been
honest with people. I've said things to make myself sound better,
because I'm ashamed of who I am or aspects of
who I am. She would later claim that some of
her lies stemmed from Jason's discomfort about how they met.

(43:21):
He didn't want people to know that she had been
as nanny as she said, so he made up a
story and she built a backstory to fit it. But
to those who encountered her, it was clear Molly loved
being the center of attention, and she was willing to
reshape reality over and over again to hold that spotlight.
Did she ever lie to Jason about things that Jason

(43:43):
could crosscheck or did he catch her and lies?

Speaker 3 (43:46):
Well, I know that she lied, like when she became
his au pair, right, she lied about having a degree,
about the Olympic swim team, about her Montessori certificate. I'm
sure there were other things as well, and I don't
I think in the beginning he didn't check those things,
or didn't feel the need to check those things. I
think over time he probably caught on. I'm not sure

(44:06):
if I have any specific examples in the story where
he did catch her or went back and did some research,
but I'm sure he must have realized after a while
that she was prone to lies and exaggeration.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
Yeah, because when they met, she was twenty five, and
she already had like kind of a rich history for
someone that young.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
Right. The wedding ceremony itself went smoothly, beautiful, traditional, exactly
what Jason and Molly had planned, but the reception told
a different story. At the children's table, Tracy and Dave's
young son, Adam, sat quietly, looking miserable. Molly's maid of
honor and longtime friend Susie noticed and asked what was wrong.

(44:45):
Adam explained that because of food allergies, he couldn't eat
anything that had been served. Susie tried the kitchen, but
it was already closed. Thinking fast, she remembered seeing the
McDonald's nearby. She asked Adam if a happy meal might
cheer him up. His face lit up. Susie slipped out,
returned with the meal, and handed it to the grateful boy.

(45:06):
But when Molly spotted Adam crossing the reception hall with
the McDonald's cup in hand, she exploded in front of
the entire room. She screamed at Adam's father, Dave, who
had no idea what she was talking about. Do you
know how much this wedding cost? You've ruined my wedding? Dave, blindsided,
stood his ground. He told her two people got married

(45:26):
here today, not just one, and you paid for nothing.
Mollie stormed off upstairs, where a bridesmaid later found her
lying on a sofa, punching and kicking pillows like a
child in the throes of a tantrum. She also lashed
out at her maid of honor, Susie, the person who
had helped Adam. Humiliated. Susie and her family left the
reception early the next day, Tracy called Susie to thank

(45:49):
her for her kindness to Adam and to apologize for
the drama that it had caused. Susie confided that Molly
had been bad mouthing Jason's family all week and that
she was finished with my Dolly altogether. As the reception
wound down, Molly waited in the limo for her new husband.
Jason lingered inside, where his best friend Paul pulled him aside.

(46:10):
Paul told him, you're the unhappiest married man I've ever
seen on his wedding day. You don't have to get
in that car. You can walk away, get on a plane,
go home. But Jason shook his head. No, I've made
a commitment and I can't take a second mother away
from the children.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
That sounds like that's a reoccurring theme for Jason. He
really wanted his children to have a mother.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
Yeah, for sure. After the wedding, Jason, Molly, Jack and
Sarah settled into their new life at North Carolina. They
purchased a four hundred thousand dollars home in a gated
community outside Winston Salem, paying cash from the sale of
Jason's house in Ireland. Jason gave Molly eighty thousand dollars
to furnish it. However, she liked the neighborhood was warm

(46:52):
and welcoming and Overtime, the couple formed friendships with many
of their new neighbors. Jason thrived in his role managing
the MPs plant, nearly doubling their profits over the next
four years. The children, seven and five at the time,
adjusted quickly. They loved the big house, the spacious yard,
and the chance to make new friends. Jack and Sarah

(47:13):
joined activities in sports, settling happily into their new routines.
Molly picked up a part time job as a swim instructor,
but spent most of her time at home being a
mother to the children. On the surface, it looked like
a fresh start, but just beneath the surface, tensions were
already simmering. Only four months after the wedding, Molly quietly

(47:33):
visited a divorce attorney in North Carolina. She wasn't ready
to leave Jason, but she wanted to know her rights
if she did. The attorney was blunt because Jack and
Sarah were Jason's biological children and Molly hadn't adopted them.
Custody would remain solely with Jason in the event of
a divorce. Now the sun similar earlier. I mentioned she
saw a divorce attorney before the marriage. I believe that

(47:57):
these were two different events, but I wonder if they
got conflated as well, if maybe the timing was off,
So it may have just been one. It may have
happened either right before or right after the marriage, But
in any case, very early on in the marriage, or
even before the marriage, Molly was already thinking about Yeah, well,
not of always out, but would the children? Would she

(48:19):
be able to get the children if they did end
up splitting up? Adoption had been a fraught topic from
the beginning. Molly and her father claimed that Jason had
promised that she would adopt the children after their marriage,
but he never followed through. Perhaps his growing doubts about
Molly's behavior gave him pause. Emails discovered after Jason's death

(48:40):
suggest that he did explore the possibility. In November twenty twelve,
he wrote to a law firm quote, I have been
married to Molly for just over a year now and
we live in Forsyth County. Is it possible to structure
an adoption such that if I ever get divorced, not
planning to that, the right to keep the children is
with me over Molly, what would you need from me

(49:00):
if we were to proceed? Whatever advice he received, Jason
never moved forward with adoption. His fear that Mollie might
one day try to take the children seemed to weigh
heavily on him, even went so far as to keep
Jack and Sarah's passports hidden away from the family home. Molly,
for her part, would later insist the refusal was a
form of control. In her view, Jason held the adoption

(49:24):
over her head as a threat, a reminder that if
their marriage ended, she could lose the children that she
had been raising as her own.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
In the final months of Jason's life, Molly began painting
a disturbing picture of her husband to friends and neighbors.
She claimed Jason was a drunk, that he neglected the children,
and that he was abusive. She even showed people bruises,
she said reproof of the abuse. Roughly seven months before
Jason's death, Mollie sought legal advice from a family law

(49:52):
attorney who also happened to be a neighbor. She told
the lawyer that she was considering divorce, but she didn't
want to leave without custom of Jack and Sarah. The
attorney told her bluntly, if she wanted custody, she would
need evidence that Jason was a domestic abuser, an alcoholic,
and a danger to his children. Soon after, Molly began

(50:13):
hiding small, voice activated recording devices around the house and
even in Jason's car, apparently trying to capture him losing
his temper. The district attorney later estimated that she recorded
more than one hundred and fifty hours of audio, but
when prosecutors requested the tapes, Molly turned over only three hours.

(50:33):
Here's one of the few clips that ever surfaced.

Speaker 4 (50:36):
Could I have dinner with the kids. That's what I
asked you, but you ignored it.

Speaker 3 (50:39):
I went anyway, Now, I was on the phone with
you ten minutes ago and I said, I'm gonna make
some soup.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Do you want something?

Speaker 4 (50:45):
He said no? They said no, because of how we're
going to offend it together? Is you just do this
is not what you wanted to do.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
I said, I'm making soup for the kids.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Do you want something?

Speaker 4 (50:56):
The reason why I said no is because you ignored I.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
Didn't ignore anything.

Speaker 4 (51:00):
You forgot what I'm gonna asked.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
You couldn't care less.

Speaker 4 (51:02):
I said I'd like temp dinner with my family. That's
what I said to you.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
You decided to stop hanging up the banister please and
go up to your room.

Speaker 4 (51:10):
Well, don't up to now here, please, don't you can
stay there? Please?

Speaker 3 (51:17):
Can you look at me?

Speaker 4 (51:17):
Can you have some respect? I asked you to have
dinner with my family. You said you were feeding the kids.
That's why I said no, because you ignored by that.
There about dinner my family.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
Go and sit down.

Speaker 4 (51:26):
Who cares what he says? Don't send them out of
the room again when I'm talking, you don't have.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
The right pancake Tuesday? Why don't I make some pancakes?

Speaker 3 (51:34):
I asked you over and over again.

Speaker 4 (51:35):
You made it very clear you want to try to
separate me.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
I'm like, no, I don't want to.

Speaker 4 (51:38):
I'm gonna I shouldn't have to see it over and over.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
I shouldn't have to see them.

Speaker 4 (51:46):
Molly, can you guys get have the stuff for pand
I'm here. You won't get on and you're still gonna
talking about some girls. She just got scared a bit.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
So those were all clips from the same argument, but
there was They're a little bit choppy because that was
all that I was able to find from different sources.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Jason can be heard saying you made it very clear.
You want to try to separate me from my kids,
I'm going to do the same to you. The difference
is I will be able to do it to Molly.
This was proof that Jason was controlling using the children
as leverage, but Jason's family saw it differently. They believed
Molly was goading him into fights, hoping to catch something

(52:32):
incriminating on tape. In fact, Sarah later explained the backstory
to this particular clip. It was pancake Tuesday, the Irish
version of fat Tuesday, and Jason had wanted to share
the tradition with his kids. He called Molly about dinner,
but when he came home, she had already fed them.
Frustrated after a long day of work, he snapped. Molly

(52:54):
later claimed the loud bang on the tape was Jason
pounding his fists on the table. Sarah insisted it was
his chair falling as he stood, and then the unedited recording,
Jack can be heard saying, Dad, be careful, they're one
hundred dollars chairs.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
So before we go any further, what do you what
do you make of that recording? Like, what do you hear?
Does it sound like Jason's potentially abusive.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Well, first of all, the little kids with their Irish
accents is adorable.

Speaker 3 (53:21):
Yeah, it's also heartbreaking that they're that they're.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
They're witnessing the argument. Yeah, I mean he sounded very angry,
but it sound it escalated. He's sounded very calm in
the beginning. He was trying to have a calm argument
because I think he knew the kids were listening. But
then he just kind of lost it. But I mean,
it didn't sound like he was being abusive. He was
just angry.

Speaker 3 (53:43):
That's how I took it. When I first heard it,
I thought, oh boy, that's that sounds bad. But then
as I listened to it again, it didn't sound that
different from what could be considered a normal, you know,
marital argument. I mean, yeah, definitely escalated, and the banging
sound was a little shocking, But if it really was
just the falling, you know, it's still that didn't sound great.
But I think one thing to keep in mind is

(54:04):
that if there really were like one hundred and fifty
hours of recording, and this is the worst that Molly
could come up with, because she was in control of
the recordings, she made them, so she decided what to
share and what not to share. So if this is
the worst of it, it doesn't seem like it's out of.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
There are three hours that she released them.

Speaker 3 (54:22):
Yeah, and I never found any others that I had
never heard anymore. So yeah, I wish I could.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
About a month before his death, Jason discovered one of
the recording devices hidden in his car. He founded thanks
to Jack, who was helping clean the car. Jason confronted
Molly about it, and that argument, too, was recorded. That's
such an invasion of someone's privacy. I know I would.
I think that's unforgivable. Yes, Jason's family believes Molly's ultimate

(54:47):
goal was clear. She wanted the children for herself, and
to get there, she waged a month long, even years
long campaign to tear Jason down. Emails show her tactics.
At times, she did de liberately gave Jason the wrong
start times for the kids' sporting events so he would
miss them. She would then tell the children that their

(55:07):
father hadn't bothered to show up. Frustrated, Jason sent an
email to Molly in her capacity as a swim team coach.
He wrote, going forward as a swim team parent who
helps pay for our kids to attend. I would like
to be included in correspondence so I know what is
going on with the team. My wife does not tell me.
I have asked you to communicate prior to this, and

(55:30):
it is with great sadness that I now have to
resort to email for communication regarding our kids. I would
also like to be included in school events. It was
brought to my attention the other day about upcoming events
regarding fathers. That was also kept for me for some reason.
I would just like to know what is going on,
and since you will not or forget to tell me,

(55:51):
maybe copying me on an email might help.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
So.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
In the years since, both Jack and Sarah, who were
nearly eleven and nine when their father died, have corroborated
many of these claims. They said that Molly sometimes created
bruises on herself then showed them to friends as supposed
proof that Jason.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Had heard her.

Speaker 3 (56:08):
One reason I recommend watching the documentary is because Jack
and Sarah are both interviewed in the documentary, and it's
really interesting to see them and hear them talk about
different things. Because they were pretty young when Jason died,
and I think, you know, you could argue that they
either didn't remember something directly or their memories changed over time.
And I think, you know, those are really good questions.

(56:30):
But I do think watching them in the documentary, you
get a sense of kind of their perspective on things, So.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
You believe that they had clear memories of what happened.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
They seem to, Yes, they seem to have very clear memories.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
In the months leading up to his death, Jason began
quietly laying plans of his own. About a year before
he was killed, he confided to his sister Tracy that
he was thinking of returning to Ireland with Jack and Sarah,
but without Molly. He told her it would take time,
that he would need to be extremely careful. A few
weeks before his death, Jason called his best friend Paul

(57:03):
in Ireland. He told him outright that he was planning
to leave Molly and bring the children home, but he
would have to arrange everything in secret. Tom Martin's had
convinced him that Molly had equal parental rights in the US.
Jason worried that she might block him from taking the kids.
Jason said, I would need to be on a plane
before the Martins even knew I had left the call

(57:25):
with Paul took place while Jason was driving. By then,
he had already discovered and removed one of Molly's recording
devices from his car. But it raises an unsettling question
had she planned another, and if so, was she tipped
off to his plans. What we do know is that
less than twenty four hours before his death, Jason was
actively searching flights back to Ireland on Expedia. Both Jack

(57:48):
and Sarah later recalled seeing him scrolling through the flight
options on his laptop. Sarah also remembered spotting the children's
passports sitting on his night stand under a book, and
thought Mollie may have seen them. Jack said he noticed
a packed suitcase sitting beside his father's bed that same night.

Speaker 3 (58:04):
I read a number of different things about Jason's plans
to leave for Ireland. One source I read said that
he planned to leave on August twenty first, which is
a very specific date, and that he had sought to
transfer sixty thousand dollars from his bank in North Carolina
to one in Ireland. The source that I read didn't
say how they knew that, so I didn't say it
in here. But we do know that Jason hadn't purchased

(58:26):
plane tickets yet, but it seems clear that he was
at least planning to move back to Ireland.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
Just a day before his death, Jason and Mally attended
a neighborhood party. They played cornhole with friends, but witnesses
recalled Molly belittling him loudly, calling him a fat ass
and joking that he must have robbed his twin brother
of nutrition in the womb because he looked like he
had eaten for two Wow. That's really mean, very mean.
Jason left the party early that night. He posted a

(58:54):
short message on Facebook. It read, people will question all
the good things they hear about you, but believe all
the bad without a second thought. We'll be back after
a break.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
That brings us to August first, twenty fifteen, the last
day of Jason Corbett's life. That morning, Tom and Sharon
Martin's decided, seemingly on a whim, to make the four
hour drive from Tennessee to North Carolina. Tom would later
say they woke up, had nothing to do and thought
it was a beautiful day for a visit with Molly
and the kids. Before leaving, he grabbed two old sporting

(59:33):
items from home an aluminum baseball bat and a tennis
racket once used by his own children, gifts for Jack
and Sarah. Throughout the day, Tom and Molly were in
frequent contact. Phone records show thirteen calls between them starting
at two twenty one PM, and twelve more between Molly
and her mother. Why so many calls? That's never been explained.

(59:54):
I don't know if that was normal for them or not,
but really, I mean thirteen calls.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
Yeah, Molly was on the phone twenty five times.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
Right with her mom and dad that day. The Martins
arrived shortly after eight pm. Jason and a neighbor were
sitting in the driveway sharing a beer, a weekend tradition
after mowing their lawns. Molly and the neighbor's wife joined them.
Tom would later claim Jason was obviously drunk. Later, Molly
ordered Domino's pizza and mixed mohitos for the adults. Jack

(01:00:24):
left for a birthday party and came home around eleven PM.
By then, the household had settled in. Jason, Molly, Sarah,
and the Martins ate pizza, and according to Tom and Molly,
the evening passed without incident, no arguments, no fights, As
it got late, Tom and Charon went downstairs to the
guest space known as the Blue Room, directly beneath the

(01:00:45):
primary bedroom. Tom left the baseball bat and tennis racket
in the Blue Room for the night, planning to give
them to the children in the morning. Here's what happened next.
According to Tom and Molly, sometime after midnight, Sarah awoke
from a nightmare. She imagined the fairies on her bed
sheets had turned into spiders and lizards. Frightened, she ran

(01:01:06):
to her parents' bedroom. Molly later said she took Sarah
back to her room and stripped off the bed sheets,
but Jason, awakened, became angry, and a violent fight erupted.
Molly claimed that Jason grabbed her by the throat and
began choking her. When he loosened his grip for a moment,
she screamed now. Sarah later recalled this nightmare in her book,

(01:01:27):
but her memory of what happened next was different. She
said that on nights when she was scared, she would
usually be allowed to crawl into bed between her parents,
but this time, she said that her mother intercepted her
at the door. She remembered seeing her father asleep in
bed undisturbed. But again keep in mind that Sarah was
nine years old and this was something that happened in
the middle of the night when she woke up. Downstairs,

(01:01:49):
Tom claimed that he woke to loud thumps, raised voices,
and then a scream. He grabbed the aluminum baseball bat
that he had brought for Jack, and, wearing only boxer
shorts and a gull shirt, he ran upstairs. According to Tom,
he found Jason in the bedroom with his hands around
Molly's neck. Seven or eight feet inside the doorway. Tom
shouted for Jason to let her go. Jason's reply, I'm

(01:02:13):
going to kill her. Tom repeated the command, but Jason
repeated the threat. Tom said that Jason began edging backwards
toward the bathroom, his arms still locked around Molly's neck.
Fearing that Jason might shut himself inside with her, Tom
stepped forward and swung the bat, struck Jason's head. Tom
later claimed the blow only enraged Jason further. He swung again.

(01:02:37):
This time, Jason wrestled the bat away, knocking Tom across
the room, but Tom said he somehow scrambled up, charged
Jason and wrenched the bat back From there the details
grow murkier. Tom would describe it simply as a Donnybrook,
a chaotic brawl. Molly too joined the fray, at one point,
grabbing a paving brick from her bedside table. Why she

(01:03:01):
had a paving brick beside her bed is something we
will come back to in a minute. Tom, however, insisted
he never saw her strike Jason, and what of Sharon
Martin's According to her, she briefly woke when Tom went upstairs,
but then went back to sleep. She said she somehow
slept through the entire violent struggle that followed. The children, too,
were said to have slept through it all.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Wow. Interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
According to Tom, the moment that he was sure that
Jason was incapacitated, he reached for the phone and dialed
nine to one to one. The call lasted for fourteen minutes.
We're not going to play at all here, but I
did want to share just a few key moments. Here
is the opening of the call, Vidson County.

Speaker 5 (01:03:42):
Now when one want to steer margesty, my name is
Tom Martin. I meant one sixty Panther Creek Court and
we need help. Okay, what's going on there? My daughter's husband,
my son in law. He's gotten a fight with my daughter.

(01:04:02):
I intervened, and I think he's in bad shape. We
need hill. Okay, what do you mean he's in bad shape?
He's heard he's leading all over and I may have
killed him.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
He sounds like towman's having another day at the office,
doesn't it like he see he sounds so. I know
he's an FBI agent, so maybe he's, you know, trained
to remain calm in situation.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
But that's what I was thinking, Like he said, I
was like, well, he really sunds very calm. Yeah, but
I mean he is an FBI agent, so we have
to remember that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
A couple of minutes into the call, the dispatcher asked Tom,
what had happened?

Speaker 5 (01:04:40):
All right? Coming, what happened? Did you hit him in
the head or hit him in the head with what
with a baseball bat? With a baseball bat? Yes, ma'am.
He was choking. He was choking my daughter. He said,
I'm going to kill her.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
Well, there we have the over explaining by the nine
one one collar, which is always a bad sign.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
Right from there, the operator calmly walked Tom and Molly
through CPR. She counted out the rhythm two beats per second,
urging them to keep going until help arrived. She told
them to switch off when they grew tired to keep
Jason's heart pumping. About ten minutes into the call, the
dispatcher addressed Molly directly, two Night.

Speaker 5 (01:05:18):
Mollie, I listened to one two four four one two
four wine two.

Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
At the end of the fourteen minutes, paramedics finally arrived
and took over, but almost immediately they could tell there
was nothing left to be done. Jason Corbett was dead.
He was just thirty nine years old. When paramedics and
police arrived, the scene was bloody and chaotic. Blood was everywhere,
spattered across the walls and the floor, smeared on the
blinds and the dresser, staining the mattress and even the lampshade.

(01:05:54):
Drops trailed into the hallway and the bathroom. A vacuum
cleaner had blood on it too. In the walls. Investigators
later noted indentations that appeared to have been made by
the bat or by the brick. Jason lay naked on
the bedroom floor. His face and chest were streaked with dried,
flaking blood. When a paramedic tried to tilt his head
back to intubate him. He realized immediately the back of

(01:06:17):
Jason's skull was crushed there was no possibility of saving him. Upstairs,
his children slept through it all. Police carried Jack and
Sarah from their rooms, shielding their faces from the horror
as they brought them downstairs. They asked Sharon Martin's to
look after them. At first glance, the bloodied bedroom might
have seemed to fit Tom's account of a donnybrook a

(01:06:38):
desperate struggle, but investigators quickly noticed troubling inconsistencies. First of all,
timing paramedics said that Jason's body was already cool to
the touch. If Tom had really called nine one one
the moment that Jason was subdued, and if help had
arrived only fourteen minutes later, shouldn't his body still have
been warm. Similarly, much of the blood in the room

(01:07:01):
was already dried or congealed, suggesting that Jason may have
died earlier than claimed. Second was the injuries. Jason's wounds
were concentrated on the back of his head, a fact
confirmed later in the autopsy. But Tom's story had been
that he was facing Jason, who was holding Molly in
front of him. How then, were nearly all of the

(01:07:21):
blows delivered from behind Next the blood spatter, some stains
and indentations on the wall were only six inches above
the floor, consistent with Jason being struck as he was
falling or after he was already down. Blood on the
inside of the bedroom door raised another question. Had some
blows been delivered before Tom entered. Tom would later say

(01:07:44):
that he closed the door behind him after he entered
the room, though it's unclear if that explanation came before
or after. Police pointed out the blood on the back
of the door. Next to Tom's clothing. His boxer shorts
had blood spatter inside the lower hemp, suggesting that he
had swung the bat downward at close range while standing

(01:08:04):
over Jason. Lastly, the injuries or lack thereof. Despite the
supposed life and death struggle, neither Tom nor Molly had
so much as a scratch. Molly complained of neck pain
and nausea, saying that Jason had strangled her, but photos
showed only a faint red mark at the front of
her neck, barely even visible. Officers even had to tell

(01:08:26):
her to stop tugging and pulling at her throat, as
if she were trying to create an injury. Later, they
found and photographed another red mark under her ear. Her
attorneys would claim it was a fingernail scratch, consistent with strangulation,
but still no bruising, no torn clothing, no defensive injuries
on either Tom or Molly. Molly's delicate bracelet remained perfectly intact.

(01:08:49):
Her pajamas were unstretched. Even with a bat and a
paving stone, could a sixty seven year old man and
a petite, thirty two year old woman truly subdue a
two hundred fifty pound man without so much as a
bruise in return? And then there was Sharon Martin's. She
admitted that she woke when Tom grabbed the bat and
ran upstairs after hearing screams, but then she said she

(01:09:12):
simply rolled over and went back to sleep. She never
called nine one one, she never went upstairs to see
what was happening. For investigators, it strained all credibility. The
scene told a story, but not the one that Tom
and Molly were telling. The story about Sharon I think
is just baffling to me, Like if you and I
were sleeping in the basement of our daughter's home and

(01:09:35):
we wake up, we hear a scream. I grab a
bat and run upstairs. Are you just gonna roll over
and go back to bed?

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
Probably not. I don't know. I think that I might
be the one that grabs the baseball back. You don't
wake up very quickly, so you might still be sleeping.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
I would roll over right, got this? That could be.
After the bloody scene was processed, both Tom and Molly
were taken to the police station for questioning. They were
interviewed separately, but their stories lined up almost perfectly except
for one detail. Tom insisted he never saw Molly hit
Jason with the paving brick. As for why she had
a paving brick on her nightstand in the first place,

(01:10:14):
Molly told investigators that she and the children had been
planning to paint bricks to place around the mailbox.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
That doesn't make sense, No, it really doesn't. They're planning
on painting the bricks, but you only have one on
your night yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:10:28):
And why is it in your bedroom? We'll talk about
it making part two. But whenever they did arts and crafts,
it was in the kitchen, So why in.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
The bedroom when a brick is really hard to paint too.

Speaker 3 (01:10:39):
Yeah, that part I don't doubt because other neighbors had
done the same thing, and I guess they were planning
to do that, so I think it was their plan
to do that. But why there was one brick in
the bedroom doesn't make a lot of sense. Tom with
thirty years in the FBI, knew what an interrogation looked
like and how to handle one. On the nine to
one one call, he had sounded steady, almost detached. In

(01:11:02):
the interview room, he was the same calm, collected and
careful with his words, as if he was trying to
shape the narrative. From the start, Molly was more emotional.
Her first concern was what would happen to Jack and Sarah.
Through tears, she told Lieutenant Detective Wanda Thompson, I'm scared
they'll try and take the kids. Have you adopted the kids?
Thompson asked. Molly shook her head. Then that's a real possibility,

(01:11:26):
Thompson replied. Molly broke down sobbing, but I've raised them.
As the interview wound down, Detective Thompson tried to reassure her,
quote at this point, after talking to your dad and
talking to you, it looks like this is going to
be self defense. Okay, I don't think there's going to
be any issue with that. Now. Whether Thompson truly believed
that or was simply trying to put Molly at ease

(01:11:48):
in hopes that she would let her guard down is
unclear to me. What is clear is this, by the
end of that night, Jason Corbett was dead and Tom
and Molly Martin's were walking free, but the investigation had
just begun. And that is where we're going to end
part one.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
That's a real cliffhanger. Rich, Well, that's.

Speaker 3 (01:12:07):
How we do things, you know, keep people coming back
for part two. But I definitely think you should come
back for part two because it's really interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
I took my calendar.

Speaker 3 (01:12:15):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
I know a lot of people sleep naked, but I
think when you have young children and the children might
come into the room when they're having a nightmare. Is
that weird or is.

Speaker 3 (01:12:25):
That just me being well, I'm actually glad you brought
that up, because I don't know how Jason slept, whether
he normally slept without his clothes, but his family members,
which again I don't know how they know or whether
they know, they said that he never slept naked like that.
That wouldn't be like him.

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
And especially if you have guests in the house, right.

Speaker 3 (01:12:43):
Yeah, it does seem like you would probably it seems Yeah,
it seems unusual to me.

Speaker 2 (01:12:48):
But could he have been getting out of the shower
and that's when the attack started?

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):
Yeah? Possibly. Well, let me ask you a couple of questions.
So Jason clearly had doubts about Molly early on, but
they he still moved forward the relationship and the move
to North Carolina. We talked about it a little bit.
But do you think that he felt trapped by her
or do you think he was just desperate to give
his kids stability.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
It seemed like he really wanted his children to have
a mother, and it sounded like he did love Molly
and she was good to them in the beginning.

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):
Yeah, I think so. And I think when he found
out about her mental health struggles, I think that made
him want to help her too, and so he maybe
there may have been a little bit of denial there, like, yeah,
I can help her through this and we'll work through
it together.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
We've been doing this podcast for almost three years, and
if there's one thing that I would want people to
know is trust your gut. If you're early on in
a relationship and you're already seeing those red flags, yeah,
and you know, get out of there before you're in
too deep, and yeah, so much harder to you know.
And if you're living together or you're engaged or married

(01:13:56):
and you have children to it's just the longer you're together,
the harder it is right to end things.

Speaker 3 (01:14:01):
And it's not going to be good for your kids
if this relationship is going to be bad.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
So don't sound so idealistic saying it, though, I know
it's harder in practice. But yeah, I can't imagine if
I were ever to date again, which I'm not planning on,
it would I would just be impossible to I mean
I'm already impossible, but you know what I mean, it
would be really hard to find someone to trust. Oh yeah,
not see all those red flags.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
Yeah, absolutely so, based on the crime scene, based on
what we've talked about, you know, one of the challenges
in a case like this is all you have to
go on is what Molly and Tom have said. Jason's
not there to tell his story, so but based on
the crime scene and what you've heard, what do you
think actually happened that night. What's your best guess?

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
I guess, well, like I said just a minute ago,
the fact that he was naked made me think that
maybe he was attacked once he was getting out of
the shower. You know, maybe I don't know his schedule,
but you know, maybe he took a shower at night
and you know, then he was coming into the bedroom
and she was ready, and you know, maybe she hit
him with the brick first. But it's such a gruesome

(01:15:05):
scene and you can't but help compare this to your
own life. And you know, if that situation happened, and
you know, my dad was in the house and we
were arguing, I would think that once you saw him,
you would stud. You wouldn't say I'm going to kill
you in front of my dad, you would be it
would it would quell be argument right way.

Speaker 3 (01:15:25):
I would think, Yeah, I think that whole story just
it just doesn't add up to me. The thing I
struggle with the most is how was Tom involved in this?
Because you know, I'm not going to help my daughter
kill someone unless I mean, if I really had to
and I felt like her life was in danger, of
course I would sit you backpedaling, But not if it

(01:15:46):
was like a premeditated thing, of course not so. I
just wonder like, did she did Molly attack Jason with
the brick and then did Tom come running up without knowing?

Speaker 2 (01:15:56):
And it's hard to believe that the father would be
complicit the plan to murder anyone, especially being a law
enforcement agent. Maybe Molly knew that her parents were there
and it was an opportunity where I don't know, or
maybe she did the overkill. I don't know. Maybe her
dad helped. I can't see him agreeing to killing Jason,
but maybe.

Speaker 3 (01:16:16):
Help covering him. That was what I was thinking too,
is that maybe he came up, saw what she had
done and then helped her cover it up.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
He didn't have the baseball bat. Maybe I don't know,
But Molly, you said that she's a smaller woman. I
haven't seen a picture of her.

Speaker 3 (01:16:29):
Yeah, I think that the first I think she struck
him with the paver when he was in bed asleep.
I think that's what started it. But again that doesn't
explain if he didn't sleep on clothes. But yeah, it's
really hard to know what happened. The one thing I
will say, well, I'll mention this in part two, but
the paving brick had blood on all four sides of it,

(01:16:50):
so which led investigators to believe that he was struck
more than once with that paving brick. So it wasn't
just a one time thing.

Speaker 2 (01:16:57):
Brutal.

Speaker 3 (01:16:58):
Really, it's really horrible, horrible scene.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
Remind us again of the name of the documentary you
watched and where can we find it.

Speaker 3 (01:17:05):
It is called A Deadly American Marriage and it is
on Netflix.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
How many parts is it?

Speaker 3 (01:17:10):
It's just one. It's like, I think an hour and
a half.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
Okay, maybe I'll watch that. When Michigan came this on, Lady.

Speaker 3 (01:17:16):
Yeah, you definitely should watch it. I think I think
it would be really good for you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:18):
It'll be interesting to have the perspective of you telling
me the story and then seeing Netflix. Yeah and yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:32):
As we mentioned at the beginning, a nice listener made
a Reddit post about us, and as a result of that,
we've got some new listeners. On the last episode, at
the end, you asked me that James Lipton inside the
actors studio questions. I thought it would be good for
me to ask you some questions. Not the same type
of questions. These are more get to know Tina questions

(01:17:56):
for new listeners.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
Much as they need to know to.

Speaker 3 (01:17:59):
Know, I don't think they do. So these are these
aren't hard questions. These are a little easier. But I
want to start with, what is your favorite movie of
all time?

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
I don't know that's impossible to answer, Oh it's not.
I really love Bridesmaids a lot. I love to laugh.
I love that. You know, you can watch a movie
and you can be having a bad day. But yeah,
you know, that movie always makes me laugh. And I
am not a person who likes to watch the same
movies over and over. Yeah, I tend to watch something
once and I don't need to watch it again. I

(01:18:28):
like to be exposed to new things. But I have
watched Bridesmaids probably twenty times, and it still makes me laugh.
And I really love it. And you know, like I said,
it's a great movie that's not typical for me.

Speaker 3 (01:18:38):
Yeah, whenever it's on TV, it's like, oh, yeah, it's
one of those threes you gotta stop and watch.

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
To me, that movie is magical.

Speaker 3 (01:18:44):
It used to be better off dead for you, I.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
Used to Yeah. John Cusack was my first boyfriend, my
first love. Yeah, not really, I mean I really used
to love him, but now I don't love him as
much as I used to. But yeah, I used to
when I was like young, that was my favorite movie.
Or I loved The Man with Two Brains with Steve Martin.
Really just silly. But I like, you know, scary movies

(01:19:07):
and silly movies. I love The Ice Storm. I don't know,
there's a lot of movies I love.

Speaker 3 (01:19:15):
Well, I've got more questions, so don't don't go on
too long about each one. What is your favorite book
of all time?

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
I mean you're asking some questions that are like impossible.

Speaker 4 (01:19:23):
I love.

Speaker 2 (01:19:23):
I mean, you know I love books.

Speaker 3 (01:19:24):
I love I know you do.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
I don't think I could give you a favorite book
of all time. They just like every year I might
have a favorite.

Speaker 3 (01:19:32):
I'll just pick one of a book that you love,
that you've read relatively recently that I.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
Have to consult my good Reads. Well, somewhat recently. I
think when we were on vacation, I finished a book
called Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall. I rated that
five stars. I enjoyed that very much. And I think
I've talked about the God of the Woods. I really
loved that book. He read that that was one of
the best things I've read. Like, if you asked me

(01:19:58):
my favorite book, I would say I, I really love
that one's I'm so busy right now that it's hard
to find the time to read books and or to
want like I used to love to like sit I
would read two books a week. And yeah, because we're
so busy with the podcast reading books, I don't have
time to do that anymore. And I miss like being
so engaged in a book that I don't want to

(01:20:20):
put it down.

Speaker 3 (01:20:20):
Yeah, so I'm in a little bit of a reading
slump myself. It's not that I don't have time. I
just feel like, I mean, you're having hard time focus.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
Just said you read three books for this case. So no,
you're well, and you have a demanding full time job
and a demanding full time wife.

Speaker 3 (01:20:34):
So, speaking of vacations, what was the best vacation you've
ever taken? And why?

Speaker 2 (01:20:41):
I mean, every day with you, my darling, sweet, handsome husband,
is like a vacation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know.
I think every time we go away, I feel very
fortunate that we always have a good time together, whether
it's us or with our kids. I mean, I'm not
a Disney adult. But I really love Disney. I would
love to go back. It's been a long time. Maybe
it would be fun to go now, like without the kids.

Speaker 3 (01:21:02):
Yeah, we should, but I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:21:05):
I don't know. What's your favorite vacation. You're not answering
these questions. I'm sorry, I'm being not reciprocal, right, I
know we're going We could go on and on.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):
My favorite vacation I think was the two weeks we
took where we drove. It was like a huge road.
We flew to Las Vegas, but then we drove like
all it.

Speaker 2 (01:21:22):
Was a lovely trip.

Speaker 3 (01:21:23):
Yeah, we went up California, Yosemite. It was really an
amazing trip, long, nice two week vacation.

Speaker 2 (01:21:29):
Yeah, and we got to see your sister and brother
in law and yeah, it was a really nice time.
Our kids are good travelers and that's we've been really
lucky with that too. Yeah, we're your favorite book on movie?
Really quick?

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):
Oh my favorite book? This is going to be a
total cliche, but probably a catcher in the ryde just
because I remember like reading that when I was sixteen
and just fell in love with it. Favorite movie is
a tough one. It varies from day to day. Today
I will say Good Fellas is probably right up there.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
So Jane Ayre also is my cavorite. I love Jane
Eyre and Gone with the Wind actually was you've never
read it before. It kind of holds up on East
of eden By. I'm gonna myself sound literary. She's so fancy,
but those are all really great books that.

Speaker 3 (01:22:13):
Well that I'm gonna throw in Weathering Heights then, because
that's one of my favorite kind of in the class.
I have a couple more questions for you, So again,
speaking of vacations, we talked about vacation Jason, what is
vacation Tina like? What is vacation Tina like? And how
is vacation Tina different?

Speaker 2 (01:22:31):
Vacation Tina is really boring. She used to be a
lot more fun, but now she's just like, just leave
me alone, let me sleep in. I don't know. I
like to have some good sandwiches. We're planning a trip
in a in October and I'm really just thinking about
a sandwich in Traverse City.

Speaker 5 (01:22:51):
Do you know?

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
And you know what I'm talking about talk about? Yeah,
So I don't know. I think I'll have like one
drink at dinner and I'll be fine. Yeah, So I
don't know. I think I'm a little boring right now,
what do you think?

Speaker 3 (01:23:04):
Well, I'm not not that different, really, I just for me,
like being on vacation is about just feeling free and
relaxed and unencumbered by worries and just being able to
chill out and you know, just not worry about stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:23:18):
I definitely did that when we took a week I
thought that was actually a really great trip.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
I had a good time, and I did disconnect from
social media, and for me, I guess that would be
one thing that I'm trying to do, and especially on
weekends or vacations, I'm just because it really does get
kind of stressful. So yeah, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:23:36):
My last question for you is a deep one. Okay,
what is your definition of success?

Speaker 4 (01:23:42):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:23:42):
God, I am not motivated by success, as you can
tell if you listen to this podcast, because I'm like.

Speaker 3 (01:23:48):
Well, your definition may just be different from.

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):
Other happiness just being happy and liking yourself and being
at peace and having people you love in your life.
To me, it's that's what it's about. It's not about
although you know, for me to answer that question is
also somewhat entitled because we're not rich, but we're comfortable
financially so that gives me like a you know, a

(01:24:11):
different when we're older. So I can answer that question,
you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (01:24:16):
Yeah, you're in a position where.

Speaker 2 (01:24:18):
They don't have to say, oh, I, you know, because
we're already financially secure, right, So I'm grateful for those things.

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
Yeah, and what about you?

Speaker 3 (01:24:27):
To me, success is if we have a million people
listen to this episode. I'm just kidding now. I feel
very similarly to you. I mean, and I think a
lot of people feel the same. But I think the
way I want to think about it is that it's
more about the journey than a destination. It's not like,
oh yeah, if I could get to this point, then
I'll feel successful. To me, it's just, you know, feeling

(01:24:50):
like you're on a journey, you've got goals, you're moving
in a direction, and you feel some sense of happening.

Speaker 2 (01:24:57):
We're goal oriented that I am.

Speaker 3 (01:24:58):
Oh, I definitely am a little bit goal oriented, like
I do think I would. I don't know. I have
to have something that I'm working toward. But that makes
me happy. So that makes me feel kind of successful
that I have something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:25:12):
That always makes me feel a little inadequate because I'm
you know, I've never had like a great career or whatever,
and I just kind of just want to be a
free spirit and enjoy the journey.

Speaker 3 (01:25:23):
Well, I mean, you've had a great career as a
mom raising two great kids, so well, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
Nice to be to say. It's funny how we just
get these microphones in front of us and we just
bear our souls and answering questions that no one's asking.

Speaker 3 (01:25:37):
I learned a lot about you today, so that's all
we did you. I don't think I learned anything too new,
but it's always nice to hear your thoughts on you
know it is.

Speaker 2 (01:25:46):
It is nice to have like a more introspective talk
with your partner because we don't do that so much.

Speaker 3 (01:25:52):
I think our listeners have learned a little bit more
about Tina as well, and I'm sure they appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:25:56):
Sorry, I can't see any where's my eyes are rolled
up into the back of the school.

Speaker 3 (01:26:01):
Well, thank you so much for sticking with us. Definitely
come back for part two. If you'd like to listen
to part two right now, you can join us on
Patreon dot com. Slash Love Marykill. You can subscribe, it's
five dollars a month. You get early ad free access
and a monthly bonus episode. Or you can just buy
part two. It's three dollars just to buy and listen
to part two.

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):
And you do that on patreon dot com slash Lovemrykill.

Speaker 3 (01:26:24):
Yeah. And by the way, just so you know, we
Patreon doesn't allow us to make the episode any less
expensive than three dollars per episode, and they also do
a charge if you buy it on your iPhone, So
on the iPhone it's four dollars and fifty cents.

Speaker 2 (01:26:40):
Oh so if you listen on your MacBook or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:26:42):
Yeah, so we don't have any control over that, so apologies,
but we would love it if you joined us on
Patreon one way or another.

Speaker 2 (01:26:49):
We can not just slam Patreon, but Patreon is not
the most user friendly app now, so if you need
help once you become a member, feel free to message us. Yeah,
and also find us on YouTube. We're out there. We're
slowly growing, slowly growing, So if you're on YouTube, it
would be amazing if you wanted to subscribe, and we
always drop the episodes a day early on YouTube. Well,

(01:27:11):
please rate, review, follow and subscribe, find us on social media,
or send us an email at lovemarykilat gmail dot com
and if you listen on Spotify, if you want to
leave us a comment. We always love to hear what
you guys are thinking about the episodes or our banter
before the episode or after the episode. We love that
you are a part of our show and you make

(01:27:32):
it better and you make us better.

Speaker 3 (01:27:34):
Until next time, don't kill your husband and don't kill
your wife.

Speaker 1 (01:28:10):
Compat

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Molly Martens and Jason Corbett - Part 1

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Molly Martens and Jason Corbett - Part 1