UK couple found guilty of killing baby daughter while on the run
The couple went to live ‘off-grid’ in 2022 when Constance Marten was pregnant after their previous children were taken into care
A British aristocrat and her partner were convicted on Monday of the manslaughter of their baby daughter through gross negligence, more than two years after their disappearance sparked a nationwide manhunt.
Constance Marten – whose father was once a page to the late Queen Elizabeth – and Mark Gordon went to live “off-grid” in late 2022 when Marten was pregnant after their previous children were taken into care, prosecutors said.
“Their selfish desire to keep their baby girl led inexorably to the death of that very baby,” prosecutor Tom Little said at the start of their trial at London’s Old Bailey Court earlier this year.
Marten, 38, and Gordon, 51, slept for several weeks in a tent in southern England during freezing winter temperatures, part of what Little described as the couple’s “arrogant and ultimately grossly negligent conduct”.
The pair pleaded not guilty to manslaughter by gross negligence, but were convicted by a jury on Monday.
A jury had been unable to reach a verdict on that charge at an earlier trial, after which Marten and Gordon were convicted of perverting the course of justice, child cruelty and concealing the birth of a child.