Constance Marten and her partner Mark Gordon have been found guilty of killing their newborn baby.
Marten, 38, who is from a wealthy family, and Gordon, 51, went on the run with their daughter Victoria to get away from social services after their four other children were taken into care.
The baby’s body was found with rubbish inside a Lidl shopping bag, in the corner of a disused shed, in an allotment in Brighton on 1 March 2023 – two days after the couple were arrested following a 54-day nationwide police hunt.
The couple were found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence on Monday at the Old Bailey. They gave no response and refused to stand up as the verdict was read out.
Gordon leaned his head back with his eyes closed while Marten looked resigned.
Prosecutors had said Victoria’s death was “inevitable” when Marten and Gordon began camping on the South Downs in January 2023 in a “flimsy” tent.
The couple said it was a tragic accident and denied wrongdoing, but were found guilty of perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child, and child cruelty last year after an Old Bailey trial lasting almost five months.
The jury – initially told the case would last six weeks – was discharged after failing to reach a verdict on other outstanding counts, having sent a total of almost 200 notes or questions to the judge.
Twists and turns in court
Marten and Gordon have now been found guilty of manslaughter following a retrial in front of a second jury at the same court.
Both trials were hampered by disruption and delays, taking up more than 33 weeks of court time, which at an estimated £30,000 per defendant a day could have cost in the region of £10m.
Judge Mark Lucraft KC suggested Marten may have made a “deliberate attempt” to “scupper” the retrial when she dramatically revealed Gordon’s “violent rape conviction” in the US after he attacked a woman when he was a teenager.
Gordon’s barrister said the evidence was so prejudicial the jury should be discharged only for his client to change his mind when he realised he would have to stand trial without his partner next year.
Marten then said she wanted to “sack” her KC, the 15th lawyer she had parted company with, but was still represented by a junior barrister, while Gordon’s lawyers withdrew and he represented himself.
He asked for a copy of the 3,500-page legal textbook Archbold, which covers the entirety of the criminal law in England and Wales, and at one point, the judge said: “Do you want me to adjourn for three years while you do a law degree?”
In an extraordinary courtroom cross-examination, Gordon was allowed to question his partner, who took the opportunity to attack her family, who have links to the Royal Family and who she said saw her as “an embarrassment”.
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‘Such obvious risks’
After the verdict, the Crown Prosecution Service’s (CPS) London Senior Crown Prosecutor Samantha Yelland said it was “shocking” that Marten and Gordon “could subject their newborn baby to such obvious risks”.
“Their reckless actions were driven by a selfish desire to keep their baby no matter the cost – resulting in her tragic death,” she added.
“These defendants did everything they could to evade the authorities – from avoiding the use of their bank cards to the point that they were starving, ditching their phones to avoid being traced and travelling hundreds of miles daily from place to place to dodge the police.”
Metropolitan Police Detective Chief Inspector Joanna Yorke, who led the homicide investigation into Victoria’s death, also said that Marten and Gordon’s “selfish actions” resulted in “the death of an innocent newborn baby who would have recently had her second birthday and should have had the rest of her life ahead of her”.
She added: “We know today’s verdict won’t bring Victoria back, but I am pleased our investigation has resulted in the couple who caused her death finally being brought to justice.”
‘Stolen by the state’
Marten met Gordon around a decade ago and the pair married in an unofficial ceremony in Peru, where she later became pregnant with their first child.
She said her family didn’t approve of the relationship and her parents hired private investigators to track them.
“Some people who are privileged think they are above the rules,” she said.
“It is harrowing, you are up against these people who will stop at nothing, who have endless resources and connections.”
A search for Marten and Gordon was launched after a placenta was found in the couple’s burnt-out car on a motorway in Bolton in January 2023.
Marten said they went on the run so their fifth child would not be removed from them after her other children were “stolen by the state”.
The couple spent vast sums of cash from her family trust fund on taxi journeys as they travelled from Bolton, to Liverpool, to Harwich in Essex, to London and then to Newhaven on the south coast.
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Prosecutors said the baby was inadequately clothed in a babygrow and that Marten had got wet as she carried the infant underneath her coat, alleging Victoria died from hypothermia or was smothered while co-sleeping.
The court heard how Marten had been warned against living in a tent with a baby and falling asleep with a child on her chest after she first gave birth in 2017.
Marten said that she was living in fear and that her “number one priority” was to protect Victoria.
But her evidence came to an abrupt end when she refused to answer any more questions after prosecutor Joel Smith KC asked her if leaving her daughter’s body in a bag of rubbish was a “despicable thing” to do.
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‘Treated like monsters’
Gordon, who did not give evidence in the first trial and adopted the same tactic in the second before changing his mind, blamed the police manhunt for setting off a series of “calamitous” events which ended in Victoria’s death.
He wept in the witness box as he claimed the couple had been treated like “monsters” and dragged through mud like “scum” over what happened.
But he also pulled the plug before prosecutors could question his story, declaring: “All right, that’s it.”
In his closing speech, Gordon, wearing a pale orange head covering, told the jury the prosecution case was “like a script from a movie” and the conditions posed no threat to Victoria because they were “experienced campers”.
He said the tent was sheltered, they wore layered clothing and even mentioned his “wife’s excessive body fat”.
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‘Complete madness’
During the retrial, Marten, who trained as a journalist, appeared on the front cover of a magazine written “by and for women in the justice system”, having written a three-page article under her own picture byline.
In the piece, accompanied by a podcast in which her words were read by an actor, she complained about the “disgusting and inadequate” court food, the “stone cold cells in the basement” and 17 to 19-hour days “when I decide to attend”.
“My life depends on the outcome of this trial,” she wrote. “How can I attend a highly emotionally charged case with my liberty on the line and remain alert and attentive for three months? With very little rest and no access to my legal team while my trial is ongoing, it’s just complete madness.”
