A British aristocrat and her boyfriend have been found guilty of perverting the course of justice after hiding the body of their newborn daughter who died as the couple were on the run from the law in the U.K., according to local reports Wednesday.
Constance Marten, 37, and 50-year-old Mark Gordon, were also convicted of concealing the birth of their daughter, Victoria, whose decomposed body was eventually found stashed in a shopping bag in a shed on the south coast of England in March 2023 after a national police search.
The guilty verdicts were reached last month but could not be reported until now due to court-ordered media restrictions on the trial. The jury at London’s Old Bailey was discharged last week after failing to reach verdicts on more serious charges of the manslaughter of their daughter by gross negligence and causing or allowing the death of a child, according to the BBC.
ADVERTISEMENT
Prosecutors confirmed Wednesday they would seek a retrial, which a judge said would probably take place next March. Marten and Gordon had pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
The couple triggered a nationwide manhunt after a placenta was found inside their burned-out car on a highway in northwest England in January 2023. Authorities asked for the public’s help in finding the pair over concerns that they were sleeping rough with a newborn in frigid winter temperatures.
Seven weeks later, police eventually caught up with Marten and Gordon. Victoria’s body wasn’t found for another 48 hours.
At trial, jurors heard that the couple had gone off-grid to avoid having their baby taken away from them—they’d previously lost custody of four other children. Marten told the court that Victoria had been born on Christmas Eve in 2022 and she decided to go on the run, camping in the English countryside, after being traumatized “by what happened with the other children.” “I had to protect her from being taken,” she said.
Prosecutors said Victoria had possibly died from exposure but an autopsy couldn’t determine a cause of death. Marten claimed during the trial that she “did nothing” to her baby “but show her love,” insisting that Victoria hadn’t been exposed to dangerous conditions. She said that she’d fallen asleep holding her newborn on the second day they’d been camping and awoke to find her dead.
Afterward, Marten told jurors, she and Gordon carried Victoria’s body around with them in a bag for weeks, including sometimes when they went shopping and once when they went to the beach.
Marten comes from an aristocratic background with relatives who have ties to the British Royal Family. Her grandfather, Toby Marten, was an assistant to King George VI while his wife, Mary Anna, was a friend of Princess Margaret as well as being a goddaughter of the queen mother, according to The Times. Napier Marten, Constance’s father, was a page to Queen Elizabeth II.
Marten is reported to have drifted away from her family some time after meeting Gordon as a drama student in 2016.
