Police officers who searched for the baby of aristocrat Constance Marten and her partner Mark Gordon have spoken of their “shock” and “devastation” after she was found rotting in a bag of rubbish.
The pair were on Monday 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 mother, 38, and father, 51, went on the run in an “utterly selfish” bid to stop the child being taken into care.
For more than seven weeks, Marten and Gordon had evaded police by travelling across England with their newborn baby and living off-grid in a tent on the South Downs, East Sussex.
On 27 February 2023, they were picked up in Brighton, dishevelled and hungry and without their daughter.
More than 1,000 Met officers were deployed in a massive search operation to find Victoria.
Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Sarah Bishop received instructions to deploy a team to Brighton.
Among them was Pc Matthew Stewart, who helped carry out an emergency interview with Gordon.
On hearing of the arrests, Pc Stewart said his first thought was “where’s the baby?”
“Our main concern was locating baby Victoria,” he said.
“When interviewing him, his demeanour was just emotionless. He seemed more concerned about food than anything else.
“So he didn’t tell us where baby Victoria was, he didn’t tell us if she was alive, as I say, he was emotionless.”
On 28 February, Ms Bishop joined her team in Brighton to continue the search, walking around the South Downs in pairs.
The officer said: “We had the hope that she was still alive because she wasn’t with them. Obviously, that didn’t turn out to be the case.
“But we just worked out from where they were located and went to remote areas because we believed they were sleeping in a tent at that time.”
Pc Stewart added: “I was always hopeful that we were going to find her alive in my mind, hoping that someone was looking after her.
“But also there was that part of me that thought, is she in a tent somewhere miles away in the woods on her own?
“I had a newborn at the time myself so it really brought it home, to think if that was my son.”
On 1 March, Ms Bishop received a call from the lead investigator to say the baby had been found dead inside a Lidl bag, covered in rubbish.
She said: “Passing that news on to the team was just devastating because we’d lived and breathed that job. All we cared about was finding the baby alive.
“And as much as we’d probably come to believe that something may have happened to her because of the conditions, the weather – and it was bitterly cold walking around the South Downs – it was still devastating.
“I think it took everybody a little while to get their heads around that and to actually believe it ourselves.”
Pc Stewart said: “When we did find out that baby Victoria was found, my first thought was, ‘Oh, is she alive? Was she with someone?’
“And then to find out the condition that Victoria was found in and that she was no longer alive, it was really, really hard. It was really hard.”
That evening, the team gathered in silence to wait for the public announcement.
Pc Stewart said: “The team was so emotionally invested in this investigation. We really just wanted to find baby Victoria alive and well. It was gutting, it was just really sad.
“As a father myself of a newborn child…to think what baby Victoria went through, it’s hard to comprehend.”
Ms Bishop said: “We all knew what was coming but it was still a shock to hear it and to see it again.
“We just had a moment. It was just really difficult.”
Ms Bishop rejected the defendants’ claim in their trial that they loved and cared for their baby, saying: “They abandoned [her] like a bit of rubbish.”
She added: “I have worked in child protection and missing people for a number of years and I’ve never come across a case like this before. It’s just shocking.
“If my baby passed away, I just can’t imagine leaving her in a bag with rubbish on top of her.
“And then leaving her again, in an abandoned shed on an allotment in the freezing cold to go and buy alcohol and hummus, just doesn’t bear thinking about.”
If Victoria was found sooner a cause of death might have been established, but it was unlikely she could have been saved, she suggested.
Police had tracked the couple on CCTV but were often left feeling like they were “playing catch-up” due to the scarcity of leads and digital footprint.
Ms Bishop said: “They were already on the South Downs in the Brighton area when we picked up the investigation and if we’re going by what Constance has told the court then Victoria was already deceased at that point.”
After a six-month Old Bailey retrial, Marten and Gordon were found guilty of the manslaughter of their daughter on Monday.
Ms Bishop said: “I think the guilty verdict will just show that we’ve got some closure for baby Victoria, and that her parents are being brought to justice because what they did, should never be accepted by anybody.”
