Sharon Martens sat in the body of the court, two of her sons either side of her.
Her husband and daughter were 10ft in front of them before a judge who will, in many ways, decide the fate of their entire family.
In the Martens’s telling, Sharon is another victim here. Instead of facing into retirement from her career as a maths teacher, she was left visiting her husband and daughter in separate jails for 3½ years while she battled cancer and they battled to win freedom on appeal after being convicted in 2017 of the second-degree murder of Co Limerick man Jason Corbett.
The process drained their finances and forced them to sell a $600,000 holiday home.
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The Corbett family, detectives and the district attorney have always suspected a different story. When Tom and Molly Martens were convicted, assistant district attorney Alan Martin used his closing speech to suggest it was not just Tom and Molly who had questions to answer about the night of Mr Corbett’s death.
He said it was impossible to imagine how Sharon Martens could have slept through the whole thing oblivious. He said Tom had deliberately kept her out of the night’s terrible events, because two people keeping a story straight was easier than three.
On Tuesday at the North Carolina Superior Court, Sharon’s actions on the night of Mr Corbett’s killing were brought under the microscope. Until Tuesday’s hearing, the now 72-year-old’s story had never been told. She did not testify in the 2017 trial and her statement to police officers on the night her husband and daughter killed Mr Corbett was never previously made public.
For detectives and the Corbett family, the question has always been: how could she have slept through the violent altercation going on directly above her in the master bedroom of 160 Panther Creek Court, especially when her daughter claimed to have been screaming for help, and when two dogs were barking loudly in response to Mr Corbett being beaten and stuck at least 13 times with a baseball bat?
The court heard that Sharon had in fact woken that night. Molly Martens’s counsel read out a statement Sharon made to Det Nathan Riggs at around 4am in the basement bedroom she had been staying in with her husband during an impromptu visit to Molly and Jason’s home.
Tom and Sharon Martens lived five hours away in Tennessee, and Tom was due in work at 9am on Monday, so the midafternoon decision to suddenly drive to North Carolina was not in keeping with either of their regimented and strait-laced characters.
Something drove the Martens to make this visit, and Sharon claimed it was her fear for her daughter. The phone records showed numerous calls between Molly and Sharon as the Martens made the journey, arriving at 8.30pm.
Sharon told Det Riggs that Mr Corbett was “clearly drunk but friendly”. After the Martens retired to bed in the basement, she read on her iPad until about 12.30am. Then, sometime later, she heard “thumps and bangs, and dogs barking”.
“I heard Molly scream. Tom got up and went up,” Sharon told the detective.
She said Tom told them to calm down or he was going to call the police.
“They calmed down and I fell asleep,” she added.
Sharon claimed that Jason and Molly had been “fighting since they married”. She told Det Riggs that Molly had said it was just verbal and not physical abuse, but the children, Jack (10) and Sarah (8), had told Sharon about their father “grabbing Molly, pushing her, and hitting her”.
The court then heard testimony of how Sharon had set up a system of code words for the children to use to alert her if there was ever any physical violence in the house. Jack’s was “galaxy” and Sarah’s was “peacock”. When such an event arose, the children were told to ring a phone number, which Sharon wrote in bold black ink on the bottom of a Russian doll kept under a nightstand in the guest bedroom.
The children were made to practice ringing Sharon and saying the code word. She told them that she would hear the code word and then call the police so they did not have to.
On the night of Mr Corbett’s death, Jack confirmed to police the existence of the doll. The police retrieved and photographed it and the phone number written underneath.
In response to Molly’s lawyer, assistant district attorney Marissa Parker said it was simply not credible that Sharon, a mother, would hear her daughter screaming upstairs, witness her husband going upstairs with a baseball bat, hear dogs barking, and just go back to sleep.
“It’s not reasonable behaviour. It’s not credible and I urge you, judge, not to give her statement substantial weight.”