A British aristocrat and her sex offender partner charged with manslaughter by gross negligence over the death of their fifth baby had previously lost custody of their four other children, a London court heard Thursday.
Prosecutors say Constance Marten, 36, and Mark Gordon, 49, deliberately kept secret the birth of their fifth child, Victoria, because they knew that they would lose custody of her too. The newborn girl’s body was found inside a garbage-covered shopping bag in a shed in March 2023 after an extensive police search.
In addition to manslaughter, Marten and Gordon have been charged with concealment of the birth, cruelty to their baby, perverting the course of justice by hiding the body, and causing or allowing her death, the BBC reports. The couple have denied all the charges.
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Gordon was present in the Old Bailey courtroom while Marten was absent from the opening of the trial. Prosecutor Tom Little KC said the case was about an “entirely avoidable death of a young baby.”
“A young baby girl who would still be alive if it was not for the reckless, utterly selfish, callous, cruel, arrogant and ultimately grossly negligent conduct of these two defendants, who were the parents of that young baby girl,” Little said. He also accused the pair of having “put their relationship and their view of life before the life of a little baby girl,” and had not acted in the “obvious best interests of a vulnerable baby” when they decided to hide the birth.
Last January, police called for the public to help find Marten and Gordon after authorities became “extremely concerned” that the couple were on the run with a newborn and sleeping rough, potentially exposing the infant to freezing temperatures. Jurors heard that on the night of Jan. 5, 2023, a car in which the couple had been traveling caught fire, and a placenta wrapped in a towel was later recovered from the burnt-out vehicle.
It’s still not clear when Victoria was born, Little said, but it appeared to have been after Dec. 28, 2022. He added that the couple’s friends and family—let alone health-care workers—had not been told about Marten’s pregnancy. The pair did not seek any medical help before, during, or after the birth, the prosecutor claimed.
Little told the court that Marten and Gordon “essentially went off-grid” during their time on the run, eventually camping in the South Downs in England’s southeast. Victoria was kept in a Lidl bag for much of her final days, Little added, during which the family camped in “freezing and obviously dangerous conditions.” “It was this grossly negligent and obviously dangerous conduct that caused the death of their baby daughter,” he said.
Marten’s father, Napier Marten, once served as a page to the late Queen Elizabeth II, while her grandmother was a playmate of Princess Margaret as a child, according to London’s Evening Standard. Marten is believed to have met her partner Gordon and become estranged from her family in 2016. Gordon, who is British, reportedly moved to the U.S. as a child and was jailed in the 1980s in Florida after raping a neighbor when he was 14. He was deported back to the U.K. in 2010 after serving a 20-year sentence.
