Aristocrat Constance Marten and her convicted rapist partner are due to be sentenced for killing their newborn baby while on the run from the authorities.
Marten, 38, and Mark Gordon, 51, are facing lengthy jail terms when they return to the Central Criminal Court, better known as the Old Bailey, in London, to be sentenced over the death of their daughter Victoria in early 2023.
The couple exposed Victoria to dangerous conditions when they went into hiding to avoid her being taken into care, as four other siblings had been before.
Police embarked on a nationwide hunt after their car burst into flames on a motorway near Bolton, Greater Manchester, on Thursday 5 January 2023.
The defendants travelled across England and went off-grid, sleeping in a tent on the South Downs where baby Victoria died days later.
After seven weeks on the run, the defendants were arrested in Brighton.
After a desperate search, police found their baby dead amid rubbish inside a Lidl bag for life in a disused shed nearby.
Victoria’s remains were too badly decomposed to establish the cause of death.
The prosecution said that she had died from hypothermia in the cold and damp conditions inside the flimsy tent or was smothered.
The defendants claimed their daughter’s death was a tragic accident after Marten fell asleep on her.
A jury in their retrial found Marten and Gordon unanimously guilty of manslaughter in July.
In their first trial last year, the defendants were convicted of perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child and child cruelty.
Jurors in the first trial in 2024 were not told about Gordon’s violent past which was only partly revealed in their second trial.
In 1989, Gordon, then aged 14, held a woman against her will in Florida for more than four hours and raped her while armed with a knife and hedge clippers.
Within a month, he entered another property and carried out another offence involving aggravated battery.
Gordon, who moved with his mother from Birmingham to America at the age of 12, was sentenced to 40 years in jail and was released after 22 years.
Jurors in the retrial appeared shaken by the revelations even though Marten had accidentally blurted out Gordon’s rape conviction while giving evidence.
In 2017, Gordon was convicted of assaulting two female police officers at a maternity unit in Wales where Marten gave birth to their first child under a fake identity.
Jurors were not told that 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 that 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.
