Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Documentaries, Netflix, TV And Film, True Crime
Jess Hardiman
Netflix’s latest true crime documentary is out, and it seems that viewers are suitably shocked, with many finding it ‘excruciating to watch’.
Back in August 2015, a 911 call came in saying that 39-year-old Jason Corbett was in a bad way.
"He's bleeding all over, and I, I may have killed him," his father-in-law Tom Martens told the dispatcher.
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It later transpired that he had been beaten to death following a dispute with his wife, but was this an act of self defence... or murder?
The new Netflix documentary A Good American Marriage explores just what happened that night, telling the story ‘from both sides’.
According to Tudum, the unresolved question here is not who killed Jason that night, but whether his wife Molly and her father ‘may have been victims themselves’.
The new documentary delves into just how ‘complex the American justice system is’, according to directors Jessica Burgess and Jenny Popplewell, told through the lens of Jason Corbett's death.
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“Where is the truth? Where are the lies? Where is justice? This documentary demonstrates that it’s not clear-cut.”
Jason was 30 when he hired Molly, from Tennessee, as an au pair to help look after his two young kids, following the death of his first wife.
Shortly after the 25-year-old came to Ireland for the job, the pair started a relationship and eventually got engaged, later moving to the States and tying the knot.
However, that marital bliss proved to be short-lived.
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In police interviews, Tom claimed he and his wife arrived at their daughter’s house to find Jason drunk, and that things had spiralled after everyone went to bed.
Jason reportedly got frustrated when he got woken up as Molly went to check on his daughter Sarah after she woke up from a nightmare.
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Molly said this wasn’t uncommon and said that he was often violent and abusive, but claimed on that one occasion, he started to choke her, and she was scared for her life.
When Tom came to help, Jason also turned on him, and Molly grabbed a brick that happened to be in the room and hit him on the head.
Tom also started hitting Jason with a bat, arguing that he felt he and his daughter had been in danger.
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Molly and Tom were convicted of second-degree murder in 2017, but later had the convictions squashed on appeal and respectively pleaded no contest and guilty to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter in 2023.
They were released from prison in June 2024.
Naturally, viewers have already had a lot to say about the doc, with many finding it a hard watch.
“A Deadly American Marriage on Netflix is excruciating to watch,” one tweeted.
Many in particular found they came away with the same reaction - saying they felt especially sorry for the children.
Someone else commented: "Watching A Deadly American Marriage on Netflix. And my god my heart breaks for Jack & Sarah. Those poor kids went through so much.”
A fourth said: “The way she manipulated those kids is beyond belief. How they aren’t rotting in a cell is beyond me.”
Another agreed: “A Deadly American Marriage on Netflix is very sickening, Molly is a mentally sick and obsessive individual and don’t get me started on her father… a retired FBI agent, she thought she could get away with her sick plan to steal someone else’s kids.”