Andrew Carey
JASON Corbett’s family will have to wait until at least October 5 to find out if anyone is to be charged with his murder last August.
It was expected that a decision on whether to charge any of the “persons of interest” in the case would be taken by a grand jury in Lexington, North Carolina last week but the case was not reached.
39-year-old Jason Corbett, originally from Janesboro, was killed in his home in Winston Salem, North Carolina in what police described as “a domestic assault within the home”.
The father-of-two moved to the US four years ago after he married Molly Martens who was originally employed as a nanny after Jason’s first wife died in 2006. Ms Martens, and her father Thomas, a retried FBI agent, have been named as “persons of interest” in the case.
According to police reports, Thomas Martens phoned the emergency services saying that he had struck Jason with a baseball bat during a dispute.
A bitter custody battle ensued over the guardianship of Mr Corbett’s two children, Jack (10) and Sarah (8), who were aged two years and 12-weeks old when their mother, Mags, died after an asthma attack.
Ms Martens had been named as a temporary custodian of the two children, but that was overruled by a US court which gave legal guardianship to Jason Corbett’s sister Tracey her husband David Lynch in accordance with his will.
While no arrests have been made, Ms Martens and her father have been interviewed by police on at least two occasions.
Under the US legal system, a prosecutor for the District Attorney works with a grand jury to decide whether to bring criminal charges against a potential defendant.
Last Wednesday the case had been listed but was not reached when the Limerick Post contacted the District Attorney’s office in Lexington.
The grand jury will sit again on October 5 and October 26.
Meantime, Ms Martens continues to try to maintain contact with the Corbett children through social media.
However, Jason’s family have said that Ms Martens and her family are engaging in “deluded and very unrealistic desperate propaganda”.
Jason’s brother, John, has said that they hope the District Attorney will bring charges soon so “the world will hear the real truth and not the deluded deceitful version propagated by the Martens family”.
“We will not rest until those who murdered my brother are convicted”, he declared.
