Fugitive aristocrat Constance Marten’s baby could have died from the cold or co-sleeping, a pathologist has said.
Marten, 36, and her partner Mark Gordon, 49, are accused of the death of their newborn daughter Victoria while they were on the run from authorities last year.
They allegedly lived in a tent off-grid on the South Downs in a bid to keep Victoria, after their four other children were taken into care.
Days after they were arrested last February, Victoria was found dead inside a Lidl bag in an allotment shed in Brighton, East Sussex.
Dr Nat Cary told the Old Bailey on Thursday that baby Victoria was wearing just a nappy and had signs of “significant decomposition” when he examined her.
He told jurors that wintry temperatures slowed down the rate of decomposition but the condition of the body meant Victoria had not died recently.
Dr Cary said the post-mortem examination found the cause of death was “unascertained”.
He said there were no signs of head injury, natural disease, congenital abnormalities, or any injuries consistent with an assault or constraint of the child.
Asked to consider possible reasons for Victoria’s death in relation to the facts of the case, Dr Cary said: “A number of causes have been ruled out.
“Really when you start to take into account the circumstances, which is really a matter for the jury, hypothermia, being out in a cold environment, is a very important cause of death.
“The other would be co-sleeping – sharing facilities with another person where overheating may apply or rebreathing, breathing in expired air.
“It is fair to say none of that is provable. You cannot do a blood test.”
Another possibility was obstruction of breathing, he said: “At this stage it is very easy to impair breathing without any obvious signs in post-mortem examination.”
Cross-examining for Marten, Francis FitzGibbon KC raised a circumstance in which a child died when a mother fell asleep while feeding.
He said: “I’m not talking here about a policy, a plan of putting a baby down in a bed next to mother.
“I’m talking about mother feeding baby, drops off, exhausted, wakes up and baby has died.
