Jurors have taken a first-hand look at a tent and sleeping bags like the ones used by aristocrat Constance Marten and her partner as they fled the authorities with their newborn daughter.
Marten, 37, and Mark Gordon, 50, are accused of the manslaughter of baby Victoria who died after they went off-grid and slept in a tent on the South Downs in early 2023.
Today (Monday 17 March), a blue tent had been set up in the courtroom at the Central Criminal Court, better known as the Old Bailey, in London.
The courtroom was then cleared so the jury could inspect the items that were said to be identical to those used by the couple.
Judge Mark Lucraft said that he was clearing the courtroom so that the jury could have “privacy,” telling them: “We will all depart so you can have a look at it now.”
Marten and Gordon went “off-grid” after the birth of their fifth child, keeping it secret because their four previous children were taken into care, the Old Bailey has been told.
They were in a Peugeot on Thursday 5 January 2023, but abandoned their belongings and fled after the car burst into flames on the M61 near Bolton, Greater Manchester.
Police found a placenta in the wreckage of the car and started a search for the missing baby.
The defendants travelled across England in taxis and ended up on the South Downs where the baby died while they lived off-grid in a tent, the court was told.
The prosecution has alleged that Victoria died from hypothermia or was smothered while co-sleeping in the “flimsy” tent, despite past warnings.
The infant’s body was found with rubbish in a Lidl “bag for life” in a disused shed in Hollingdean after the defendants were arrested in the area on Monday 27 February 2023.
Earlier today, the jury heard from taxi driver Hassan Guzel who drove the couple from Haringey, north west London, to Newhaven in the early hours of Sunday 8 January 2023.
Mr Guzel dropped them off in Newhaven at 4.56am, having been booked to take them to Portsmouth before the couple asked him to change direction.
The couple did not mention they had a child with them and it was only after Mr Guzel heard what he thought was a kitten’s meow that he noticed the female passenger had a baby at her chest.
He told the court that part way through the three-hour trip he heard a faint noise. He looked and saw the zip on the woman’s jacket had been lowered and she had a baby at her chest but it was not feeding.
Mr Guzel said: “I know the noise a baby makes and this is the noise that a baby makes when it is looking for attention.”
After seeing the baby, the driver also said: “I told myself, ‘why did they not tell me about this?’”
Mr Guzel said that he was concerned about what they were going to do after he dropped them off.
He recalled it was quiet with not a single other car on the road, adding: “I thought to myself, if they had a baby, what are they doing in the middle of the night here?”
It was windy and rainy that day and, by 6.30am that morning, the couple were heading off into the countryside, the jury was told.
Joel Smith, prosecuting, said: “It appears that from that moment on they are living in the countryside in a tent.”
Sarah Hidden, of Seaford, recalled a series of incidents some time between Monday 16 January and Friday 27 January 2023.
On two nights she heard a baby crying, saw a couple on a path and twice spotted a tent as she walked her dog.
She told the court that she was woken one night by the sound of a baby crying as she slept at home.
The sound lasted for about 30 minutes and she thought it was a “younger baby” as it was “high pitched, urgent and quicker between breaths”.
Mrs Hidden said that she heard the sound two nights in a row and it was being carried on the wind from the west of where she lived from an area where there were no homes.
The witness, who did not leave her home after hearing the baby crying, rejected the idea it was the sound of foxes.
Marten and Gordon, of no fixed address, have denied the gross negligence manslaughter of their daughter and causing or allowing her death between Wednesday 4 January and Monday 27 February 2023.
Jurors have been told that the defendants were convicted at an earlier trial of concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice.
The retrial continues.
