Where there is a body, there is inevitably a Netflix true crime documentary. Having parlayed the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier into binge-watch gold with 2021’s Sophie: A Murder in West Cork, the streamer is now applying its true crime documentary format to the killing of Limerick father of two Jason Corbett, with a new series entitled A Deadly American Marriage.
Corbett was found dead at his home in Lexington, North Carolina in August 2015. His American wife, Molly Martens, and her father, Tom Martens, were convicted of murder in 2017. However, they appealed the conviction, which was later quashed.
Daughter and father claimed self-defence. They agreed a plea deal with prosecutors which avoided the need for a retrial, with Molly Martens not contesting a charge of voluntary manslaughter and Thomas Martens pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter. They were released from prison in June 2024.
The story is clearly a complex one. Corbett’s daughter Sarah Corbett Lynch has described, in her recently-released memoir A Time For Truth, the volatile atmosphere her stepmother created within their home. “My dad was abused, he was a victim,” she told The Irish Times Women’s Podcast. “It’s an important message that anyone can be a victim. Anyone could be abused. It doesn’t have to be someone who is quiet or who is vulnerable. Sometimes it’s the guy who is the bright ray of sunshine”.
Sarah will be interviewed in the documentary, directed by Jessica Burgess and Jenny Popplewell. As will her brother Jack, alongside Molly Martens and Tom Martens. Netflix promises to “[shed] a bright light on the many questions that have lingered since the shocking events of that night”.
True crime has been a reliable ratings winner for Netflix since it clocked up tens of millions of views a decade ago with Making A Murderer, about Wisconsin man Steven Avery and his conviction for murdering a local photographer, Teresa Halbach. But there have long been claims that true crime is more interested in titillation than in accurately reporting the facts and some of the streamers’ forays into the genre have been condemned as crass and exploitative.
One example was 2019’s The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann – which the Guardian described as a “moral failure” for raking over the unsolved mystery of the disappearance in 2017 of three-year-old McCann from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal. “A blatant cash-in on the vogue for the true-crime,” said the newspaper – a critique echoed in other commentaries on the milieu.
“As a survivor whose tragedy continues to be exploited by creators of true crime stories, I know the personal pain of this appropriation, as well as how coverage of these high-profile cases can contribute to broader injustices,” Annie Nichol, whose sister was murdered in 1993, wrote in a 2024 New York Times essay. “The exploitation of victims’ stories often carries a steep cost for their families as their tragedies are commodified and their privacy repeatedly violated for mass consumption.”
Such criticism has been repeated even within Netflix via the dystopian anthology series Black Mirror. A 2023 episode, Loch Henry, tells of two documentary makers exploring unsolved murders in Scotland only to find that they are ultimately the ones who have been commodified. The message was that true crime is an industry, and each new series simply more product rolling off a conveyor built.
“True crime documentaries look so high-end now,” Black Mirror writer and creator Charlie Brooker had told Netflix. “They’re so classy-looking that it helpfully disguises what you’re there for. You know what you’re there for. You’re there to have a good old bloody gawp. True crime docs are like a gourmet burger in that respect. You’re still eating something full of fat and salt, but because it’s called an artisan burger, you almost feel good about yourself rather than like a horrible pig.”
Whether A Deadly American Marriage is gourmet viewing or just more junk food churned out to be binged and forgotten remains to be seen – though we will have our answer when the series debuts on May 9th.
