Aristocrat Constance Marten and her partner Mark Gordon have been found guilty of killing their newborn baby after going on the run in a bid to stop the child being taken into care.
Marten, 38, and Gordon, 51, have been convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence in a retrial after they went off-grid with their newborn daughter Victoria, who died while they were camping in a “thin and flimsy” tent in wintry conditions.
The parents refused to stand as the unanimous verdicts were returned on Monday, after 14 hours and 32 minutes of deliberations.
Marten, wearing a blue top and dark trousers, later shouted “it’s a scam” from the dock.
Gordon has previously served 22 years in a Florida prison for raping a woman armed with a knife and hedge clippers in a 1989 home invasion when he was 14 years old, the jury was told.
The verdict comes more than a year after the parents were first tried over the infant’s untimely death.
Last summer, the couple were found guilty of concealing their daughter’s birth and perverting the course of justice by concealing her body in a rubbish-filled plastic shopping bag following a four-month trial at London’s Old Bailey.
They were further convicted of child cruelty in the original trial, it can now be revealed, but the jury was discharged after they were unable to reach a verdict on the manslaughter charge.
Marten, nicknamed Toots, had broken ties with her wealthy family after she met Gordon in 2014, who had been deported back to Britain after he was released from US prison. They married in an unofficial ceremony in Peru two years later.
Over the course of the two drawn-out trials, it emerged the couple had carefully concealed Marten’s pregnancy with Victoria – their fifth child – before going on the run to stop her from being taken into care.
Their first four children had been removed by a family court – a decision which the parents claimed was a miscarriage of justice driven by a “corrupt” social services system.
She gave birth in secret in a holiday cottage before they frantically travelled the country with the baby hidden inside Marten’s coat – at first by road and later in taxis paid for with cash from her trust fund – after their car caught fire on the M61.
They decided to settle “off-grid” in the South Downs with little more than some sleeping bags and a cheap tent amid a nationwide manhunt after police found the remains of a placenta in their burnt-out car.
But Victoria died after Marten fell asleep with her zipped inside her jacket as they sheltered in the tent in January 2023.
The prosecution said the parents’ “reckless, utterly selfish and callous” conduct led to the “entirely avoidable” death of the girl, whom they deprived of warmth, shelter and food during her short life.
They also claimed the parents concealed the infant in a Lidl carrier bag as they kept her hidden while on the run, something Marten denied. Eventually, they used the same bag to carry around her body, before filling it with rubbish and hiding it.
Speaking outside the Old Bailey following their conviction, Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford said the parents had tried to “disrupt and frustrate” their two trials with repeated delays and interruptions, but justice has finally been served for Victoria.
“She should have recently celebrated her second birthday, but this was snatched away by the very people who should’ve protected and cared for her,” he added.
Marten, a former journalist and aspiring actor, was eventually arrested with Gordon in Brighton on 27 February 2023 after 53 days on the run.
They initially refused to tell police what had happened to their baby, sparking a frantic two-day search of the Brighton woodlands and allotments where they had been camping to find the newborn.
But she tearfully revealed she had awoken to find the child dead inside her jacket after officers made the grim discovery of Victoria’s decomposing remains stashed in a disused shed.
The newborn was hidden in a shopping bag and covered in rubbish “as if she was refuse”, the first trial was told.
Shocking footage played to the court revealed the moment officers pulled a beer can, scraps of newspaper, nappies, a Coke can and an old egg mayonnaise sandwich packet from the bag for life – before reaching inside to find the infant’s remains under a layer of soil and leaves.
Opening the original trial last year, prosecutor Tom Little KC, said: “They decided that in the middle of a cold winter and in cruel, obviously dangerous weather conditions that they would deprive the baby of what it needed – warmth, shelter, food and ultimately safety.
“They essentially went off-grid and lived in a tent with hardly any clothes, no means of keeping and remaining warm and dry with scarcely any food.
“It was their selfish desire to keep their baby girl that led inexorably to the death of that baby girl.”
But the parents, who denied manslaughter, insisted her death was a tragic accident and they should not be blamed.
At the start of more than six days in the witness box at the initial hearing, Marten tearfully told the jury she did “nothing but love” her baby, who deserved to be with her parents, adding: “I gave her the best that any mother would.”
In the aftermath of her death, she said she felt “disbelief, shock”, and “intense grief”, and revealed the couple had even contemplated suicide as they panicked over what to do next.
She told jurors she held the child for several hours before saying some parting words to her daughter, whom she wrapped in a black headscarf and placed in a bag.
“I just didn’t know what to do. They are going to have a field day out of this – the media and press and social services, everyone,” she said.
“She was in my care and the next thing she died. I thought, ‘How am I going to get my kids back now Victoria has passed away?’”
The court heard social workers had previously warned her about the dangers of raising a baby in a tent and co-sleeping shortly after she delivered her first child with Gordon several years earlier. The couple went on to have three more children in quick succession, but all four were taken into care by social services.
In court, the mother was adamant they had “stolen” her children after a family judge concluded there was an incident of domestic abuse between the parents, insisting Gordon had been wrongly blamed for her falling from a window.
However, she conceded that she had neglected herself in their desperation to keep Victoria, telling the jury: “I loved her so much I wasn’t thinking about myself.
“I gave birth, but I didn’t even have time to rest myself, I got straight in a car and was up and down the country in different hotels. I didn’t allow myself to rest, I neglected myself and that’s why I fell asleep in that tent.”
She also admitted advising Gordon to lie to police about being present when their daughter died because she thought they would “automatically blame him, being a black guy”.
The parents made a bid to appeal their convictions before their second trial, it can now be reported, but it was dismissed by Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr and two Court of Appeal judges.
Opening the prosecution’s case at a retrial in March, Mr Little described Marten as a “trust fund child” who has “perfected lying to an art form” as he alleged Victoria had died from hypothermia or “grossly negligent co-sleeping”.
An expert witness who studied the conditions inside the tent told the jury the baby would have been exposed to a “substantial risk” of hypothermia if their clothing got wet.
By the time they settled in the South Downs on 8 January 2023 in a “thin and flimsy” tent, they were “sopping wet”, prosecutors claimed.
Samantha Yelland, senior Crown prosecutor for CPS London, said it had been a “long road” in the fight for Victoria, but added: “I feel that justice has been done.”
The parents are due to be sentenced on 15 September.
