UK Couple, Who Lived In Tent In Extreme Cold, Jailed Over Daughter's Death
A British woman from an aristocratic family and her convicted rapist partner face jail Monday over the manslaughter of their newborn daughter who died while they were living off-grid in freezing temperatures.
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UK couple Constance Marten (L) and Mark Gordon (R).
United Kingdom:
A woman from a British aristocratic family and her partner, a convicted rapist, have been sentenced to prison on Monday for the manslaughter of their newborn daughter who perished while they were living in freezing conditions without proper shelter.
Constance Marten, 38, and Mark Gordon, 51, were apprehended following an extensive seven-week police search in early 2023, during which time they had been living in a tent outdoors.
The couple received their guilty verdict in July at London's Old Bailey central criminal court. This was their second trial, as a previous jury had been unable to reach a conclusion on the manslaughter charge.
Marten and Gordon had fled authorities in an attempt to retain custody of their daughter Victoria after their four other children had been placed in social care.
After two months on the run, the pair were finally captured in Brighton on England's south coast.
Several days after their arrest, the severely decomposed remains of baby Victoria were discovered inside a shopping bag left on a vegetable plot.
The couple's sentencing also includes charges of perverting justice, concealing a child's birth, and child cruelty.
During police questioning, Marten claimed Victoria died when she accidentally fell asleep in the tent while holding the baby underneath her jacket.
Following the conviction, Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford of the Metropolitan Police stated that their "selfish actions" resulted in the death of a "newborn baby who should have had the rest of her life ahead of her".
He noted that the conviction validated the authorities' earlier decision to place Marten's other four children in protective care.
Marten was born into wealth and privilege, raised in a 25-room mansion on a large estate in southwest England's Dorset region.
Her aristocratic family maintained strong connections to the royal family. Her grandmother was a childhood friend of the late Queen Elizabeth II, for whom Marten's father had served as a page boy.
In stark contrast, Gordon's early life was marked by hardship and violence.
In 1989, at just 14 years old, he held a woman captive in Florida for over four hours and raped her while armed with a "knife and hedge clippers," according to prosecutors at the London court.
Within a month of that incident, he committed another offense involving aggravated battery at another property.
He received a 40-year prison sentence but was released after serving 22 years.
In 2017, Gordon was additionally convicted of assaulting two female police officers at a Welsh maternity unit where Marten had given birth to their first child under a false identity.