A Deadly American Marriage: Horrific true story behind the Netflix documentary, explored

Very few true-crime documentaries will creep you out the way Netflix’s A Deadly American Marriage does. It's not just the brutality of the crime that leaves a knot in your stomach- it’s the eerie familiarity of the people involved. A smiling couple, two kids, a suburban home in North Carolina... and yet, behind closed doors, something was deeply wrong.

Directed by Jessica Burgess and Jenny Popplewell, who also brought us American Murder: The Family Next Door, this documentary goes beyond the headlines to explore the twisted story of Jason Corbett’s murder at the hands of his wife, Molly Martens, and her father, Tom, a former FBI agent.

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A Deadly American Marriage: How did Jason Corbett meet Molly Martens?

After the untimely death of his first wife Mags Fitzpatrick from an asthma attack in 2006, Jason was living alone with his two young children. He was devastated by the loss of Mags and had a great deal of uncertainty about how to parent his two children. His struggles were further added to by his own personal issues, making it difficult for him to continue with his responsibilities.

In 2008, Jason hired Molly Martens, a live-in nanny from Tennessee, to help him take care of his children Jack and Sarah. During their time together, Jason and Molly's professional relationship soon crossed into a more personal and romantically passionate relationship.

So it was not long before Jason and Molly were dating. Then they married in 2011. Molly planned to raise Jack and Sarah as her own as she moved into Jason's family's house in Wallburg, North Carolina. They seemed to be a nice family, but they were having a lot of problems with their children's custody in private.

What looked like a normal American family from the outside had sinister things going on on the inside. Soon enough, their relationship reached a tragic end, with the brutal death of Jason.

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Jason Corbett's death

On August 2, 2015, Corbett and Martens got into a physical altercation. The latter later testified that Jason was often abusive and that the two were involved in a lot of physical, heated arguments. Although it has not been proven, and both the children have denied these claims, Molly stood by her statement, using it as a way to defend her violent actions towards Corbett.

On the night of the incident, the family was being visited by Molly's parents and at night a call was received at 911 from Molly's father Tom Martens, who reported that Jason was bleeding.

In the documentary, he can be heard saying,

"He's bleeding all over, and I, I may have killed him,"

According to the Martens, the couple was fighting when Tom heard the physical altercation and rushed to her defense with a baseball bat. The daughter-father duo later admitted to killing Jason in self-defense, with a brick and a bat. However, it has been proven that it was a case of murder.

Molly stated that Corbett was choking her and when Tom arrived at the scene, Corbett started attacking him and Molly struck him with a brick. Both of them continued to hit Jason with the brick and the bat until he succumbed to his injuries and died. The autopsy report revealed that the physical trauma Jason went through was of extreme lengths and that he was hit on his head for atleast a dozen times.

The documentary shows police and prosecutors constructing a case of murder and manslaughter, despite the initial police belief that Corbett's death was the result of self-defense. According to the district attorney and investigator on the video, the 911 call sounded staged, and the first responders believed Corbett's body was too cold to fit with the Martens' account of what happened.

It was also difficult for anyone to interrogate Tom Martens because he was a skilled FBI interrogator himself. The verdict of the kids also happened to sound made-up. While 8-year-old Sarah's mother told her that her father "is not a very good dad," 10-year-old Jack claims that his father "physically and verbally hurt" Molly.

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How did Jack and Sarah react to the accident?

During the murder, both Jack and Sarah were inside the home, which further adds on to the trauma they faced with their father's death. Immediately after the incident, both children were interviewed by social workers. They initially stood by Molly and made claims that Jason was abusive towards Molly but later retracted their statement and professed that they were following Molly's instructions.

In subsequent interviews and court testimonies, Jack and Sarah stated that Molly had coached them to lie about their father's behavior. Jack, in particular, testified that from the age of four, he was taught by Molly to manipulate and deceive others. He described enduring various forms of abuse at her hands. Sarah also recounted being coerced into making false statements and expressed the psychological trauma she experienced as a result.

Statements given by both the kids, now teenagers, reflected the abusive dynamic of Jason and Molly's marriage, only that it was the other way around. They stated that Molly was abusive to all of them and often tried to turn the kids against each other and made claims that Jason killed his first wife. All of this had a lasting impact on the children who continue to endure the psychological turmoil of such a harrowing incident.

As of now, they are under the custody of Jason's sister Tracy Lynch and her husband, and have relocated to Ireland.

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What happened to the Martens?

After the Martens were found guilty of second-degree murder in 2017, Molly and Tom Martens were initially given sentences of 20 to 25 years in jail. Their attorneys, however, challenged the verdict and were given a new trial.

Both Molly Martens and Tom Martens pled guilty in October 2023: Molly pled no contest to voluntary manslaughter; Tom pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter. They were sentenced to 51–74 months in prison and given credit for time served. Molly Martens and Tom Martens were released in Tennessee on June 6, 2024, and subjected to a one-year supervision.

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A Deadly American Marriage is streaming on Netflix.