Constance Marten ‘planned to use Gumtree to find someone to smuggle baby abroad’
Aristocrat Constance Marten has said she and her partner planned to find a nanny on Gumtree to help her and her partner smuggle their baby daughter to Europe.
Marten, 36, has appeared at the Old Bailey on trial accused of manslaughter after the badly decomposed body of her newborn daughter Victoria was found in a Lidl bag in an allotment shed in Brighton last March 1.
Constance and her partner Mark Gordon travelled across the country in a bid to keep their daughter after their four older children were taken into care.
The newborn baby died while the couple, who met in 2014, were on the run evading authorities and living ‘off grid’ in a tent.
It has been revealed that Marten, who hails from a wealth family, had access to cash and bank cards, but decided to rifle through bins and scavenge for food.
The aristocrat concealed her pregnancy and was ‘overly cautious’ in moving around the country so the authorities were not aware that a baby was in their care.
‘Anything related to the baby we would hide’, she said in court.
Marten said she was an ‘excellent mother’ and if she had ‘foreseen what was going to happen’ she ‘would rather my child be alive.’
Marten and Gordon deny charges of gross negligence manslaughter and peverting the course of justice by concealing the body, along with concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty, and allowing the death of a child.
Marten told the court the press was ‘seriously affecting witnesses’ and people were ‘exaggerating and making things up’ after disagreeing with a particular witness statement.
‘I think people think that we are really bad people. Having such media attention can affect people’s witness statements’
The Old Bailey trial continues.
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