Constance Marten and Mark Gordon guilty on two charges over baby death
Runaway aristocrat Constance Marten and her partner Mark Gordon have been found guilty of hiding the birth of their newborn daughter who was found dead in a Lidle bag for life.
Marten, 37, and Mark Gordon, 50, went off grid with baby Victoria in a bid to evade authorities after their four other children were taken into care, jurors at the Old Bailey heard.
The couple zig-zagged across the country over a period of seven weeks and slept in a tent on the South Downs as police desperately searched for the missing infant.
Two days after their arrests in Brighton last February, Victoria’s decomposed body was found in an allotment shed.
The jury found the couple guilty of concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice, it can now be reported.
The couple had also faced charged of child cruelty, manslaughter by gross negligence and causing or allowing the death of a child, all of which they denied.
Jurors began deliberating on April 30 and were discharged on June 19 after more than 72 hours of deliberation.
On Wednesday, prosecutor Tom Little KC announced the Crown would seek a retrial as Judge Mark Lucraft KC, the Recorder of London, allowed reporting of the two guilty verdicts.
The judge set a provisional six to eight-week retrial from March 3 next year.
Jurors heard that police began a search for the missing baby after a placenta was found in a burning car on the motorway near Bolton, Greater Manchester, last January 5.
The couple had fled the scene with Victoria under Marten’s jacket, leaving behind a cat in a box, about £2,000 in cash, 34 ‘burner’ phones and other belongings, the trial heard.
They travelled by taxis from the North West to Harwich in Essex, East Ham in London and on to Newhaven, East Sussex.
Victoria was briefly glimpsed on CCTV footage in London wearing a teddy bear motif babygrow.
Police body-worn camera footage captured the moment the defendants were arrested after buying supplies in Brighton last February 27.
Two days later, two officers uncovered Victoria’s badly decomposed body on a nearby allotment.
She had been wrapped in a pink sheet and hidden beneath dirt and rubbish in the Lidl bag.
Marten appeared in court today wearing a pink blouse with Gordon in a blue shirt and tie.
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