AS soon as Constance Marten and Mark Gordon’s first trial started, I knew it would be a case like no other.
I watched from the Old Bailey day in, day out through the trial and subsequent retrial as the emotionless, deluded pair tried to keep up their shameless act.
Constance Marten has been found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence[/caption]
The aristocrat’s boyfriend, Mark Gordon, was also convicted of the same charge[/caption]
The moment police found the Lidl bag for life in a disused shed which they hid baby Victoria’s body in[/caption]
The same careless, selfish approach they’d kept up for two months as they went on the run to evade police – and hide the tragic death of their helpless baby girl.
The runaway aristocrat and her rapist boyfriend attempted to derail the case at every stage – costing taxpayers more than £10million.
And it was clear from my own eyes in the courtroom that they would rather stick by each other than get justice for the tragic little girl they killed.
I watched as they hugged and kissed when they were taken into the dock on some mornings.
I saw them frequently chat to each other and pass each other notes while proceedings were ongoing.
And they even angrily shouted at the judge on some occasions.
The moment that changed everything was when Marten dropped the bombshell that Gordon had served time for “a violent rape conviction”.
This fact had been kept from the jury to prevent any prejudice.
But it was the latest, and most severe, in Marten’s brazen attempt to derail the trial. And it backfired.
The jury were asked to leave, before the judge accused Marten of bringing it up deliberately – which she denied.
Gordon rescinded an application to discharge the jury, and later sacked his legal team so he could represent himself.
A fatal move by a deluded man.
It meant he cross-examined his own lover from the dock, using a karaoke microphone to be heard.
And when Marten eventually continued giving evidence, she began attacking prosecutor Joel Smith KC.
In a string of vile outbursts, she called the prosecutor “abhorrent and patronising”, before storming out of the witness box, meaning she could not be cross-examined.
‘Deplorable behaviour’
I was stunned.
And I’m sure the jurors were just as stunned by this shameful mother who thought the prosecutor’s calm questions were worse than what she did.
Worse than her taking her newborn baby on the run through the middle of winter, to avoid social services taking her fifth child away.
Worse than taking her daughter into dangerous conditions that ended up killing her when they slept in a flimsy tent on the South Downs.
And worse than dumping her daughter’s decaying body in a Lidl bag for life, covered with leaves and rubbish, in an abandoned allotment shed.
Anyone could see it was deplorable behaviour.
Anyone, it seems, but Constance Marten.
Instead, her refusal to be questioned or face up to what she allowed to happen to her baby girl showed the jury that she was no loving mother.
The couple showed time and time again that they cared more about themselves, more about sticking together in their fight against the system, than they ever did for their newborn girl Victoria.
In their world, everyone is evil except for themselves.
They blamed nurses, police officers, the CPS, social services, the family courts, and Marten’s family, before turning on the judge himself as Marten yelled from the dock: “I’ve got no respect for you.”
Recorder of London Judge Mark Lucraft accused them of attempting to manipulate the system.
He said they were worse-behaved than teenage murderers he had sentenced, and at one point told the pair: “To say I am extremely cross is somewhat of an understatement.”
The judge had to make sure there was no hint of him treating them unfairly.
But when Gordon refused to accept his convictions for assaulting two police officers at a hospital in Wales, he told them: “You are seeking to derail this trial.”
Neither of them could accept anything that was proven to be true.
They saw it as them against the world, and that meant putting their relationship above justice for their daughter.
When they were convicted, Gordon slammed the verdicts as “unlawful” and Marten said it was a “scam”.
Had they forgotten what they put baby Victoria through?
As they return to their jail cells tonight, they can be sure they face years ahead to think about it.
Marten and Gordon slept in this flimsy tent with their daughter through the bitter winter[/caption]
Police searching for baby Victoria in Brighton, East Sussex, after the couple were arrested in February 2023[/caption]
