You could tell Tom Martens’s character witnesses had worked in law enforcement or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) even before they opened their mouths. They all dress the same – suit and tie, side-parted hair- and they carry themselves with a conservative, upright deportment, as if at any moment they could be interviewed for a country club membership.
Tom, on the other hand, has eschewed the black suit, white shirt and dark tie he wore religiously to his 2017 trial, and presents himself in court every day in a sports jacket, open-neck shirt, slacks, and black rubber-soled shoes. If the vibe he’s aiming for is retired grandad, he hits that mark with a military precision.
On Tuesday in courtroom number six, we got a little more insight into Molly Martens’s father, the former FBI agent, who upon retirement went to work in counter-intelligence for the US department of energy (DEA). He was based out of Oak Ridge, one of the two original sites for the Manhattan Project, the other being Los Alamos. At Oak Ridge, Tom had a Q-level security clearance, the highest the US government confers. It allowed him to access top secret documents and, according to one of his former FBI colleagues, he could access a couple of levels higher than ‘top secret’ if required. His job was to defend US nuclear energy secrets from foreign spies, principally Chinese, Russian and Iranian ones.
He has never been anything other than calm – even when he was calling 911 and admitting that he had hit his son-in-law Jason Corbett with a baseball and that “I may have killed him” there was barely a quiver in his voice. Detectives reviewing the 911 call even remarked that he “sounded like he was ordering a pizza”.
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And when he was brought to Davidson County Sheriff’s Office to assist them with their inquiries – he was never arrested or questioned under caution – he calmly chatted with the young detective opposite him about how much coffee the young detective was consuming in addition to energy drinks. Tom urged him to cut down on the energy drinks. Then, when the interview started he began a story, from which he has not altered in eight years.
He admits killing his son-in-law and hitting him with the baseball bat multiple times until Jason Corbett (39) was lying motionless on the floor. He denies hitting him when the alleged threat was over. He remembered some things with alacrity, how Jason “by his own admission” had been drinking all day and insisted on the night of the killing on driving to collect his son Jack from a birthday party. Jack remembers that it was Molly who drove.
“He insisted on driving, but that’s just the way he was,” Tom said.
Unfortunately for the investigators, Tom’s recall of other events on the night are not so clear. He managed to miss seeing the brick in the bedroom, and avoided ever witnessing Molly using the brick. This, among other things, is at variance with a high-flying FBI man who led the FBI in Knoxville, Tennessee, heading up a violent crimes taskforce there for 13 years, during which he honed his expert knowledge of crimes scenes, and also trained FBI and DEA agents who were engaged in special operations in how to interview suspects, and how to look other for the common evasive tactics suspects use. Tom used some of these tactics to successfully avoid answering the questions about Molly and the brick, and how many times she’d struck her husband on the head with it.
His character witnesses gave a similar assessment to Dr George Corvin, a forensic psychiatrist who interviewed Tom Martens in January of this year. Dr Corvin said Tom was a Type A personality, rules-driven, a man who liked order and organisation, but wasn’t particularly emotive. “He arrived very early for his appointment. He was meticulously polite with the staff. I found the interview with him was very easy. He was deliberate and analytical – a classic Type A personality. He prefers to use logic over emotion and he follows the rules rigidly.”
Dr Corvin admitted Tom Martens’ perception of what happened in the master bedroom of 160 Panther Creek was not perfect, but he found Martens to be ‘meticulously responsible’.
This chimed with his other character witnesses who portrayed a loving father and husband who would work 10 to 12 hours a day, was something of a workaholic, but always found time to go to his children’s sporting events. These various witnesses had never seen Tom lose his cool in a work setting, or when they met him on social occasions, including dinner parties at his $850,000 home at 12500 Comblain Road, Knoxville, Tennessee.
Tom’s brother-in-law, Mike Earnest, is a former member of the US navy, and was himself a federal agent working with a Washington-based organisation charged with overseeing the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Earnest said his sister, Sharon, had married Tom in 1973, and found “the perfect match”. They had four children: Bobby, who is a federal agent with the Internal Revenue Service; Molly who was a part-time swim coach and stay-at-home ‘mom’; Stewart, an engineer; and Connor who is involved in sports marketing.
“They met at Emory University and I remember Sharon bringing Tom home to meet our parents. I would say we have been quite close in the 53 years since. In the seventies, he was in the FBI on his second assignment in Washington DC and I was in the navy in Delaware so over those two and half years we spent a lot of time together”. Earnest has played the role of spokesperson, and some other less heralded roles, for Tom and Molly ever since the night of August 2nd, 2015. Indeed Earnest was on hand in North Carolina the day after the killing to help Molly try and cash in Jason’s life insurance.
Earnest and Tom often played golf together: “There’s a lot of rules in golf. You play with Tom, you play by the rules. He would say, ‘why play the game if you’re not going to play by the rules?’
Having painted Tom like he was a word cloud of integrity, honesty, and ethics, Earnest then took us inside the domestic scene in Tom’s house. We learned he’s an incredible chef who can make any cuisine you can think of. He learned how to use a phone, Earnest joked, and now he can google how to make a vindaloo. Even then, he follows recipes strictly and never improvises.
We learned how good a father he was when his children were growing up. He would read bedtime stories to the children, and then later books by Tolkien. He coached the children’s swim, soccer and T-ball teams. “He was and remains a dedicated father.”
Stewart Martens is a late arrival to this court case, and had been the sole member of the family not present every day during the first week of hearings. He is Tom’s third-born child and he took the stand to tell the judge how Tom was a dedicated grandfather too. Stewart now has two children of his own and Tom would get involved, even in the diaper changes.
Finally, the court heard how Tom was absolutely devastated when his wife of 53 years got ovarian cancer in January 2016 – the same month as he and Molly Martens were finally indicted on second-degree murder charges. Sharon underwent two rounds of chemotherapy, but Tom could not be there for the second round – he was in jail. Mr Type A was subject to a whole other system of order and rules – the US prison system.