Constance Marten and Mark Gordon refused to tell police where their newborn baby was
Aristocrat Constance Marten and boyfriend Mark Gordon refused to tell police anything about the whereabouts of their missing child in the hours before she was found dead inside a shopping bag, a court heard.
Marten, 36, and Gordon, 49, are accused of killing their newborn baby Victoria by taking her on the run in January last year to prevent her being taken away by social services.
The baby’s placenta was found in an exploded car on a Manchester motorway sparking a huge police hunt as the couple traversed the country trying to find an escape route.
The couple then spent nearly two months camping in a tent on the bitterly cold South Downs near Brighton before the baby, wearing only a onesie, allegedly froze to death.
Victoria was later found dead in the Lidl bag for life where prosecutors say she spent most of her life.
The couple met in 2016 and had four children in quick succession who were all taken into care after Marten gave birth to her first child using a fake Irish accent pretending to be a traveller, jurors have heard.
The couple deny the manslaughter of Victoria by gross negligence, concealment of the birth of a child, cruelty to a person under 16 and perverting the course of justice by disposing of the body.
Marten comes from a wealthy aristocratic family and her father was a page to Queen Elizabeth II.
Today the court heard transcripts of police interviews with the couple on 28 February and 1 March 2023, while the search for their baby was underway, in which they tried to get information about the baby.
Gordon was interviewed at Worthing police station on 28 February 2023 just before 6am but the interrogation ‘did not bear fruit.’
Early the following morning, on 1 March 2023 at 12.27am, Gordon, who had been kept in Worthing police station, was interviewed again.
She attended the interview in a wheelchair but as the officer was explaining the purpose of the interview Gordon climbed out of the chair and lay on the floor.
The officer told him to get back into the chair but he refused, saying he was in pain and, and asked to be given something for it.
He said: ‘I am in pain. I can’t focus on what you are taking about. I have changed positions because of the pain. Maybe a nurse can give me something.’
The officer replied that he had already seen the nurse and she had decided nothing was wrong with him.
He added that he was happy to interview him while he was on the floor if that was more comfortable for him.
However just 12 minutes into the interview, and before the officer could put any further questions to him. Gordon said he had to go to the toilet, and the interview was terminated
They resumed at 12.52am, but Gordon remained uncooperative, claiming he was in ‘distress’ and had the right to medical treatment.
He said: ‘You are a man, we are all men here. I’m in custody but that doesn’t mean I’m a dog. I want pills but you say “I’m not prepared to stop”. You don’t know what it’s like.’
’I thought I had rights. I obviously don’t have any rights here. I have the right to see a doctor.’
‘That’s not going to get my co-operation, talking to me like I’m nothing.’
He added that his hands and feet were swollen and painful, and continued: ‘All I say is I want some pills but you seem to think I’m in a situation like I’m playing games with you. I’m in distress.
‘I’m in here with you, trying to co-operate.’
The officer again repeated that he wanted to ask about the baby and Gordon said: ’I understand that but I’m a person. I feel.’
DC Shales asked him directly: ‘What’s the baby’s name?’.
Gordon turned to his solicitor, who was in the interview with him, and asked her to answer for him, but she said she was there to advise rather than answer questions for him.
He eventually told police: ‘Didn’t she already say? I thought my solicitor said. It puts me on the record’
The solicitor said: ‘It’s my client’s intention to answer “no comment” to through the course of this interview.’
At which point the interview ended.
Marten, who was being held in Brighton Custody Suite, was approached by officers in her cell at 1.50am on 28 March 2023.
They asked her whether she was prepared to speak to them without a solicitor.
She replied: ‘I haven’t eaten or slept for a long time. I need to get some sleep before I can make a proper decision.’
Officers returned at 3.48am with a solicitor, and asked her about where she had been staying, where she was going when they arrested her, and whether her child was till alive.
They also said: ‘We are going to give you a final opportunity for the sake of your child, please tell us more.’
However she answered ‘no comment’ to all questions.
She was interviewed again later that day, at 10.08pm, and was asked repeatedly about her child.
At one point the officer asked: ‘If you are not willing to tell us where the child is, please, if we show you a map, draw a circle and say it’s in that location.’
Again Marten answered ‘no comment’ to all questions.
Marten, who appeared in court wearing a pink top, was previously represented by John Ryder, KC, who had only attended the trial for one day in person, but was today represented by a new barrister Francis FitzGibbon, KC.
Her junior barrister Tom Godfrey, who has been attending the trial, remains on the case.
Mark Gordon was dressed in a pale blue shirt and dark blue tie.
Marten’s mother Virginie de Selliers also attended court dressed in a green jacket.
The wealthy family lived at Dorset estate Crichel House during her youth and her grandmother was a playmate of Princess Margaret and goddaughter to the Queen Mother.
Marten and Gordon deny manslaughter by gross negligence, concealment of the birth of a child, cruelty to a person under 16 and perverting the course of justice.
They also deny causing or allowing the death of a child.
The trial is set to last six weeks.
Jurors were shown police bodyworn camera footage of the moment officers first discovered the remains of Victoria inside the Lidl bag for life.
It shows the officers putting on blue medical gloves before searching through the Lidl bag for life, which was filled with rubbish.
The officers could be seen removing various pieces of rubbish, including pieces of cardboard and empty drinks cans.
At one point an officer can be seen lifting up an empty Budweiser beer can before pointing at something at the bottom of the bag, hidden beneath the rubbish.
As the officers moved the rubbish aside to reveal it, a black square was superimposed over the footage to spare jurors the sight of the dead baby.
PC Allen Ralph had been sent to Sussex to participate in the search for the missing child.
The experienced Met Police officer told the court what he found when he entered the shed on allotment 16 with a colleague.
PC Ralph said: ‘The first thing I noticed was the smell. I remember saying to [my colleahue] “either something is dead in there, or something has died.”’
He said he saw a blue and black tent and some out-of-date bread and milk on top of a makeshift table.
Beneath the table was a Lidl bag for life, which he recognised from CCTV footage of the couple while they were on the run.
He said the bag was ‘tucked right in the far corner, hidden out of the way.
‘I lifted it and it was heavy, and there was no reason for it to be heavy, from what I could see.
‘It was just a lot of rubbish, it didn’t seem there was anything other than that.’
PC Ralph added: ‘At the top was two newborn baby’s nappies. That was the first thing I could see when I brought it out.’
He said he and a colleague had carried the bag out to the decking outside the shed and donned medical gloves in order to search it.
PC Ralph said: ‘Underneath the nappies was a piece of rolled-up bloody blanket.
‘Under that was cans, bottles, a lot of leaves – there were lots of leaves in the bag – and then a few other bits and pieces.’
He said that among the items they removed was an empty Budweiser Light beer can and an empty Coke can.
After some searching he saw what looked like ‘the head of a doll’ inside the bag and put his hands inside the bag to investigate it.
PC Ralph added: ‘The head was to the left. It was concave, the top of the head, we touched the top of the head.’
He said it was wrapped ‘a few times’ in a fabric, and that ‘we unwrapped it two to three times before I could see red pooling in the top.’
PC Ralph said he continued to feel inside the bag, and that his hand ‘slipped off something, and I looked in and that’s when I saw the [baby’s] leg.’
He explained that the baby was ‘pale and lifeless, and cold to the touch’, and they decided it would have been pointless to administer CPR.
The Lidl bag for life also contained two golf scorecards, a piece of cardboard from a Mars Bar box, an egg mayonnaise and cress sandwich wrapper with a use-by date of 15 January 2023, and a bottle that was found to have contained petrol.
The bottle was matched to the container Marten was seen filling at a Texaco garage on 12 January 2023, when she was also seen buying a newspaper and a sandwich.
The bag also contained a pink baby vest and a babygrow decorated with a bear design.
Earlier Detective Constable David Kelly, who was part of the team investigating the disappearance of the couple’s baby, showed the court photographs of a series of key locations in the Newhaven area linked to their movements following their arrival on January 8.
These included photographs of the route walked by the couple after being dropped off by a taxi on 8 January, and the likely location of their tent in a copse of trees on Cantercrow Hill above Newhaven.
The court was shown photographs of allotment 16, taken on 2 March 2023, the day after the baby’s body was found.
These clearly showed a pale wooden shed next to some wooden decking at one end of the allotment.
Various items, including black bin bags and tent canvas, were visible on the decking outside the shed.
Inside the shed, amidst a clutter of objects, a red and pink bag for life was clearly visible.
Jurors were shown video footage of Marten’s police interview on the evening of 1 March following the discovery of her baby’s body at around 2.30pm that day.
At the start of the 90-minute interview she was told a baby’s body had been found, and the officer asked her: ‘Is it your baby?’
Marten replied ‘yes’, and started sobbing, before telling the officer: ‘Her name was Victoria’.
She sobbed in the dock as the interview was played to the court.
Marten said she first learned she was pregnant with Victoria in March 2022.
She said Victoria was born ‘in a house in Cumbria’ on Christmas Eve 2022.
She said she had travelled there a few days earlier, and that she had had no medical assistance with the birth.
Victoria had passed away two days after their car had caught fire on the M62 motorway on 5 January 2023, the court heard.
Marten said she had been driving from Manchester when the vehicle started smoking.
She explained: ‘I got out of the car to see what was wrong with it. We tried to get as much stuff as we could out of the car.’
They left a number of items inside the car, including £2,000 in cash, a credit card, and a bag containing the placenta from Victoria’s birth.
She explained that they left the scene as ‘I knew the police were going to come’, and she said she knew the police were searching for her.
She said she was worried that if they found her ‘the police would take Victoria away’.
She added: ‘I wanted to keep her with me. I’m her parent.’
Marten told the officer that they hitched a ride to Bolton as ‘it was the nearest town, and the police were looking for us.’
From there, she said, they took a taxi from Bolton to Liverpool, before taking a further taxi to Newhaven on the south coast of England.
She also told officers about Victoria’s death.
She explained: ‘We were staying outside in the countryside. I had her in my jacket and hadn’t slept properly in quite a few days. I fell asleep holding her sitting up, and when I woke up she wasn’t alive.
‘When I woke up she wasn’t alive, in my jacket. I believe I fell asleep on top of her.’
She said following her daughters death ‘I wanted to turn myself in at that time. I was debating it. Obviously it’s two months later now but I kept her body for a number of reasons.’
She said she wanted to have an autopsy done and give her a decent burial.
Marten said she ‘didn’t want to bury her in a forest, some random place, because I wanted her to have a proper burial, but also because I was concerned if an animal might eat her, that might affect the autopsy.’
She added: ‘I debated whether to cremate her myself and get rid of the evidence, but decided to keep her because I knew at some point in the future I was going to be asked about it.’
‘I didn’t know what to do.’
