WHEN PARENTS BECOME ACCOMPLICES

AN AU PAIR'S DEADLY TURN

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When Jason Corbett was widowed, Molly Martens seemed to be a gift from God.

Jason's wife, Mags, had died in 2006 after an asthma attack, and 18 months later the Irish businessman advertised for an au pair to help care for their children – Jack, three, and one-year-old Sarah. US-born Martens answered the ad and arrived in Ireland in 2008.

Martens moved into the family home and before long found a place in Jason's heart, too. Two years later, on Valentine's Day, Jason proposed and the family then moved to the US. But the love story unravelled and on August 2, 2015, Jason, then 39, was beaten to death with a baseball bat and stone paver at his North Carolina home.

Martens, now 41, and her dad, Thomas, 75, claimed they killed Jason in self-defence after he became violent.

“My son-in-law, uh, got in a fight with my daughter. I intervened and he's in bad shape. We need help ... He's bleeding all over and I ... I may have killed him,” Thomas Martens, a former FBI agent, told 911.