TM has gone from a well respected retired FBI agent to criminal jailed for murder, because the same standards he would apply to anyone else were not applied to his daughter.
The Martens/Earnests still insist their family trump the children's bio-family as part of the Molly enabling package, because they've already blanked themselves to anyone who might've told them this is a step too far. ME's wife still keeps a photo of the children on her facebook to provoke and bait and frequently removes comments that ask her to take it down for the sake of the children.
They are all still trying desperately to cling to the DV/self defense angle without the evidence to back it up, because they've long fallen into the trap of taking what MM says at face value, as gospel.
If she says it, it must be true and to maintain that delusion, keep that bubble from popping, they've all got used to running with it.
If the facts don't match up to the ideal of white blonde all American MM as a paragon of motherhood, they ignore it and slam anything that might show otherwise. Such as ME's outburst of the verdict being a 'miscarriage of justice'.
They even tried to use the tragic death of JC's first wife to cast suspicion on him. Ignore the fact she died of an asthma attack, ignore the fact he started an asthma charity in her memory, no, instead imply he killed her. Such underhanded tactics, knowing that US media wouldn't pick up on it, even though it got completely slammed by the Fitzgeralds in Irish media and rightly so.
Molly's life is all about the people in her life applying cognitive dissonance towards her. People getting wrapped up in a Molly-centric bubble in regards to her. To the point where they no longer recognise right from wrong if it involves her. Different standards have been applied to her the moment she found what she thought was her calling, what she thought could keep her stable - JC's children Her family bent over backwards to maintain the stability she had found, at a high cost.
As outsiders to what was now tradition, JC and perhaps even his son never did fully convert to the mindset the rest of the family had willingly trapped themselves into. They can try and use the unused statements from the children as a means to appeal, but the son's words now compared to his words two years ago suggest those statements from 2015 had an element of coercion. The pic on MM's facebook with letters from the children proclaiming their 'love' for her and little else, with a lack of effort to avoid spelling mistakes or write neatly, to convey anything else meaninful, just cutesy scribblings that a boy of Jack's age probably wouldn't want to do willingly. SC, with no memories of her mother, likely didn't want to disappoint the mother-figure in her life, even if MM acted like she was a living doll/mini-me to dote on and dress up.
I hope without her influence, her manipulations, her burdens clouding their judgement, they all find clarity.