Aristocrat Constance Marten and her convicted rapist partner are due to be sentenced for killing their newborn baby while on the run from authorities.
Marten, 38, and Mark Gordon, 51, exposed daughter Victoria to dangerous conditions when they went into hiding in early 2023 to avoid her being taken into care, as four other siblings had been before.
The couple led police on an extraordinary nationwide hunt after their car burst into flames on a motorway near Bolton, Greater Manchester, on January 5 2023.
Marten, who hails from a wealthy aristocratic family with ties to the Royal Family, travelled across England with Gordon, attempting to stay off-grid and then sleeping in a tent on the South Downs where baby Victoria died days later.
After seven weeks on the run, they were arrested in Brighton in late February 2023.
After a desperate search, police found baby Victoria dead amid rubbish inside a Lidl bag-for-life in a disused shed nearby.
The newborn had been dead for some time, and the exact cause of death was impossible to determine.
At the Old Bailey on Monday, Marten and Gordon both face lengthy prison terms, having been convicted of gross negligence manslaughter, as well as child cruelty, perverting the course of justice, and concealing the birth of a child.
The prosecution say Victoria died from hypothermia in the cold and damp conditions inside the flimsy tent or was smothered.
In the course of two trial, Marten and Gordon claimed their daughter’s death was a tragic accident.
But two juries found them guilty of the charges they faced.
The trials were also marked by the contempt for legal proceedings by both defendants, protracted disputes with the judge, and both defendants walking out of the witness box to avoid the questions of the prosecution.
Gordon is a convicted rapist, who at the age of 14 attacked a neighbour while holding against her will for more than four hours.
He had been armed with a knife and hedge clippers when he invaded the woman’s home and raped her, in 1989.
Around a month later, Gordon entered another property in the US and battered the homeowner in a serious attack.
Gordon, who moved with his mother from Birmingham to the US at the age of 12, was sentenced to 40 years in jail and was released after 22 years.
His grim past was kept from jurors in the couple’s first trial, for fear of prejudicing his case. But Marten blurted in out in the second trial during her evidence.
The judge was on the cusp of ordering a retrial for Gordon, before he agreed that the case could continue.
Jurors were then also told of another conviction from 2017, when Gordon assaulted two female police officers at a maternity unit in Wales where Marten gave birth to their first child under a fake identity.
Gordon was also suspected of a incident of domestic violence in 2019 which left Marten with a shattered spleen.
Gordon had refused to allow paramedics into their London flat to treat her after she fell out of a window when she was 14 weeks pregnant, it emerged during legal argument.
She spent eight days in hospital then put her life and that of her unborn child at risk by attempting to discharge herself, with Gordon’s support, it was alleged.
It was after that incident that the family court decided the couple’s other children should be taken into care.
When Marten became pregnant for a fifth time, she kept it secret, giving birth in a hired holiday cottage on Christmas Eve 2022.
The defendants’ attempts to keep Victoria under wraps prompted the major police alert after a placenta was found inside their abandoned car near Bolton.
While on the run, Victoria was only briefly glimpsed on CCTV footage in London wearing the same teddy bear motif babygrow later recovered with her body inside the Lidl bag.
The prosecution said Victoria was carried under Marten’s jacket or in a Lidl bag without adequate clothing, warmth or shelter.
Jurors were told Marten had been warned by social workers about the risk of falling asleep with a baby lying on her and that a tent was unsuitable.
After Victoria died, the defendants were caught on CCTV scavenging in bins for food even though Marten had received thousands of pounds from a trust fund and had £19,000 in the bank.
Both defendants gave evidence in their retrial but each cut short their testimony before they could be cross-examined by the prosecution.
