AS THE gruesome evidence of the last moments in Jason Corbett’s life unfold before a jury of US citizens, the Limerick man’s family have been allowed time to pause proceedings to mark his two-year anniversary.
In the early hours of August 2, 2015, the popular Limerick man was bludgeoned to death in his US home where had moved with his second wife and two children.
Mr Corbett was a widower after Mags tragically died from a sudden asthma attack in 2006.
He was left with two children and turned to an au pair service for help at home in Limerick.
Molly Martens, a Knoxville model and au pair applied for the job and moved to Ireland.
In the years that followed, a relationship grew and Jason and Molly were married in 2011 in the US ahead of a move to North Carolina.
Jason had an employment opportunity in his field of expertise and seized it where he lived a perceived American dream until he meet his harrowing end exactly two years ago today.
Some of the Limerick man’s family are sitting in the same court room as Molly and her father, a retired FBI agent – they are both hearing the same evidence, but believing different versions.
The nightmare scenes of August 2015 are now unfolding before a Lexington court house as his second wife and her father deny unlawfully killing the Janesboro man.
The jury, who are ultimately tasked with deciding the outcome of the case, heard that Thomas Martens told a colleague he hated Jason and doubt is cast over Molly’s version of events.
Both deny a charge of second degree murder in a case that took one week to empanel a jury.
The evidence has been difficult to take as jurors wretch at pictures and families sob at the details of the killing.
On Tuesday, it emerged from Irish reporters at the trial that Jason  Corbett may have been hit on the head with paving brick as he lay in bed.
That was the latest harrowing evidence that the jurors in a murder trial have been asked to consider.
Earlier, the jury in Davidson County courthouse was told that Thomas Martens, a retried FBI agent, didn’t like his Irish son-in-law nor the guests the 39 year-old widower brought to the wedding ceremony when he married his daughter in 2011.
A former colleague took to the stand and said that she felt that Mr Marten’s dislike of Jason Corbett was “common knowledge”.
Evidence in the case paused this Wednesday as the date makes the second anniversary of Jason’s death. Those in America will attend a local mass to mark the memory of the 39-year-old father of two, while Limerick relatives also gather to remember their loved one.
See more coverage of the trial here and more news here
