Marten and Gordon guilty over baby daughter's death

Parents were living off-grid and on the run when infant died

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN CRIME CORRESPONDENT

Aristocrat Constance Marten and her partner Mark Gordon were found guilty yesterday of killing their newborn baby after going on the run in a bid to stop the child being taken into care.

Marten, 38, and Gordon, 51, were convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence in a retrial at the Old Bailey after they went off-grid with their newborn daughter Victoria, who died while they were camping in a “thin and flimsy” tent in wintry conditions.

The parents refused to stand as the unanimous verdicts were returned after 14 hours and 32 minutes of deliberations.

Marten, wearing a blue top and dark trousers, later shouted “it’s a scam” from the dock. Gordon has previously served 22 years in a Florida prison for raping a woman armed with a knife and hedge-clippers in a 1989 home invasion when he was 14 years old, the jury was told.

The verdict comes more than a year after the parents were first tried over the infant’s untimely death.

Last summer, the couple were found guilty of concealing their daughter’s birth and perverting the course of justice by concealing her body in a rubbish-filled plastic shopping bag following a four-month trial at London’s Old Bailey.

They were further convicted of child cruelty in the original trial, it can now be revealed, but the jury was discharged after they were unable to reach a verdict on the manslaughter charge.

Marten, nicknamed Toots, had broken ties with her wealthy family after she met Gordon in 2014, who had been deported back to Britain after he was released from US prison. They married in an unofficial ceremony in Peru two years later.

Over the course of the two drawn-out trials, it emerged the couple had carefully concealed Marten’s pregnancy with Victoria - their fifth child - before going on the run to stop her from being taken into care.