Killer couple spent time hiding in Wales

CONSTANCE Marten and Mark Gordon first came to public attention in January 2023 when police found their burnt-out car on the M61 motorway near Bolton.

- JASON EVANS Court and crime reporter [e-mail]

On the back seat was a placenta wrapped in a towel. Baby clothes were strewn on the ground. Concerned for the welfare of the baby, police launched a nationwide search.

This week Marten, aged 38, and 51-year-old Gordon were convicted at trial of the gross negligence manslaughter of their newborn daughter Victoria after the baby's decomposing body was found hidden in a shopping bag in an allotment shed in Brighton. They are expected to be sentenced in September.

But police in Wales had already encountered the couple six years earlier, thanks to a “strange” incident in a maternity unit.

The earlier Welsh incident gives an insight into the chaotic and disturbed life the couple were living.

The couple had met by chance in a shop in London in 2016 and began a relationship - a relationship, on Marten’s account, her family were wary of.

Marten was a child of privilege, the eldest daughter of Napier Marten - a page to Queen Elizabeth II - and Virginie de Selliers, and grew up in a stately home in Dorset, though she appeared to be estranged from her family. Friends called her “Toots”.