LONDON—A couple who went “off-grid” to hide a pregnancy from social services let their baby die after camping in freezing midwinter conditions, a trial has been told.
Constance Marten, 36, and Mark Gordon, 49, have gone on trial at the Old Bailey in London after the body of their baby daughter was found in an allotment in Brighton last winter.
The couple deny gross negligence manslaughter, concealing the birth of a child, causing or allowing the death of a child, wilful neglect of a child, and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
On Thursday, prosecutor Tom Little, KC, told the jury the case involved the “entirely avoidable” death of a young baby.”
Opening the prosecution case, he said: “A young baby girl who would still be alive if it was not for the reckless, utterly selfish, callous, cruel, arrogant and ultimately grossly negligent conduct of these two defendants, who were the parents of that young baby girl. They put their relationship and their view of life before the life of a little baby girl.”
Couple’s 4 Other Children had all Been Taken Into Care
Mr. Little said Ms. Marten and Mr. Gordon had been in a relationship since 2016 and Baby A was the couple’s fifth child.He said the other four had all been taken into care, so when she fell pregnant in the spring of 2022 the couple chose to keep the pregnancy a secret “from everybody.”
Ms. Marten did not tell a doctor, attend hospital scans or engage with midwives and the couple were essentially homeless, moving from place to place and staying “off-grid.”
Mr. Little said Ms. Marten came from a “wealthy family.”
He said: “She has not had a deprived upbringing. She had potential access to money and you may have thought whatever help she needed. All of this begs a number of important questions which she is going to have to answer in this trial.”
Mr. Little said they rented a holiday cottage in Northumberland over Christmas 2022 and left on Boxing Day. When their Suzuki car broke down on the M18 motorway, on the way to Leeds, on Dec. 28 they were rescued by a towtruck driver who could not see into the back of the car but said he did not see or hear a baby.
The couple’s car was found ablaze on the hard shoulder of the M61 motorway near Bolton, Greater Manchester, on Jan. 5, 2023.
Mr. Little said they walked away from the car before firefighters arrived and were seen on CCTV footage walking past a supermarket in the pouring rain, with Ms. Marten clearly carrying her newborn baby under her coat.
They then hailed a cab and travelled to Liverpool, before paying another taxi driver £400 to take them 270 miles to Harwich in Essex.
The prosecutor said the police discovered a placenta, hidden inside a towel, in the couple’s burnt-out car and also found nappies for newborn babies. They immediately launched a high-risk missing person’s inquiry, which meant the hunt for the couple was soon in the newspapers and on television.
Mr. Little said when they were in Harwich, “a witness asked the defendants if they were the people who had been on the news—which they denied—in other words the couple that had gone on the run with a baby. Well as you know, that is precisely who they were.”
He said Marten and Gordon then travelled by taxi to Colchester and then on to east London.
“It is clear they do not want to stay in any one location for any extended period of time, presumably in case they are recognised,” added Mr. Little.
‘They had Decided to Camp in the Middle of Winter’
Mr. Little said they then went into a shop in Whitechapel and bought a blue tent, a sleeping bag and pillows. He said, “It’s plain that they had decided to camp in the middle of winter.”After eating at a restaurant in Brick Lane, he said the couple dumped the buggy they had only just bought.
He said, “The child was transferred to a red Lidl bag-for-life where it would appear it spent much of its life before it died.”
The couple later took a taxi to Newhaven, East Sussex, arriving at 5 a.m.
The jury was shown a clip from CCTV footage showing the pair walking through a residential area.
Both were carrying bags and Mr. Little said it was clear neither was carrying the baby which, he surmised, must be in the red Lidl bag.
The couple then camped for over a month in “freezing conditions” on the South Downs.
Mr. Little said: “An expert has looked at the weather data with temperatures close to freezing and stated that newborn babies have a limited capacity to maintain their body temperature when left in such freezing conditions. They lose their body heat rapidly, especially if the body is not well covered.”
The prosecutor said a witness spotted the couple pitching a tent in countryside outside Brighton on Feb. 17, 2023 and remarked, “they must be bloody freezing or mad.”
Mr. Little said: “They would have been bloody freezing but they were not mad. This was their deliberate and dangerous obstinacy.”
Ten days later the couple were finally spotted and arrested but Mr. Little said both refused to say what had happened to the baby.
Constance Marten’s Version of Events
Mr. Little said it was only after the body was found that Ms. Marten began to give her account of what she claimed had happened, although he said it was a “lie.”She said the baby had been born on Christmas Eve, and was named Victoria, but died in early January.
The prosecutor then read out excerpts from her police interviews.
Ms. Marten told the police: “I had her in my jacket and I hadn’t slept properly in quite a few days and, er, I fell asleep holding her sitting up and she, when I woke up she wasn’t alive. When I woke she wasn’t alive, in my jacket. I believe I fell asleep on top of her.”
“I kept the body because I wanted to have, wanted to have an autopsy done, I didn’t bury her because I wanted her to have a proper burial but I couldn’t get a proper burial until I had an autopsy,” she added.
The trial is expected to last for several weeks.
