Runaway aristocrat Constance Marten’s first four children were taken into care amid fears for their lives – years before she killed her fifth baby, the Mail can reveal today.
Marten was convicted yesterday alongside her violent lover Mark Gordon of causing their newborn Victoria’s death after going on the run to prevent authorities removing her.
In bombshell testimony made public on Monday after a legal challenge by the Mail, Marten, 38, and her partner Gordon, 51, were deemed too violent to be parents. A family court judge had warned two years before the national manhunt to save Victoria: ‘It is much more likely than not that in the foreseeable future the children will be exposed to serious physical violence between their parents. It is quite possible that they will be injured themselves.’
Victoria’s decomposed body was found in a shopping bag in Brighton on March 1 after the pair had gone on the run and slept in a freezing tent in wintry conditions.
It is thought the child – said to have been 16 days old when she died – may have developed hypothermia or been smothered, but no cause of death has ever been determined.
But yesterday, as the callous couple were convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence at the end of a two-year prosecution, they refused to accept their culpability.
After the verdict was read out, Gordon angrily shouted from the dock of the Old Bailey: ‘I’m not surprised by the verdict. It was faulty, it was unlawful. This is not over, it has just begun.’
Marten yelled: ‘It’s a scam’, before walking out of the court in fury. The pair had already been convicted at an earlier trial of child cruelty, concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice.
Constance Marten was yesterday convicted alongside her violent lover Mark Gordon of causing their newborn Victoria’s death after going on the run to prevent authorities removing her
Constance Marten’s partner Mark Gordon, 50, was previously convicted of a ‘sadistic’ rape committed in 1989 and spent 20 years in a US jail
For a special episode of the Mail’s award-winning The Trial podcast breaking down the Constance Marten verdict, click here
Following two trials, costing taxpayers an estimated £1.6million, it can now be revealed that:
■ Gordon is a ‘sociopathic’ rapist whose sadistic crimes were compared to US serial killer Ted Bundy.
■ A national safeguarding panel is now looking at the landmark case as police have called for new laws to protect unborn children.
■ The couple were granted legal aid for their defence, hiring 19 lawyers at an estimated cost of £600,000 – yet Marten is a trust fund heiress worth £2.4million.
■ Gordon attempted to avoid trial, claiming he was more notorious than Wayne Couzens, the Scotland Yard police firearms officer who murdered Sarah Everard.
■ Marten’s father was a page to the late Queen Elizabeth II – and her grandmother was a playmate of Princess Margaret.
In an extraordinary case which gripped the country, the couple went on the run with their baby in a ‘desperately selfish’ bid to prevent her being taken into care after their four previous children were removed by social workers, who feared they would come to harm.
Hooked on violent pornography, Gordon (pictured) was just 14 when he raped a woman at knifepoint in 1989 after breaking into her home in Florida armed with knives and hedge clippers
Marten (pictured in 2012) complained that her wealthy family didn’t like Gordon, and claimed they used their wealth and influence to get social services to intervene
Police released photographs of the flimsy tent the couple were staying in while on the run with their baby
Marten, 38, and Gordon, 50, dumped their baby in a soiled nappy inside a Lidl bag for life
Scotland Yard launched a nationwide manhunt, spending more than £1.2million chasing them around the country for 53 days after discovering a placenta in their car when the vehicle was ablaze on a motorway in Greater Manchester on January 5, 2023.
More than 100 officers pursued the couple as they fled in taxis, travelling hundreds of miles across the country from Bolton to Liverpool, then to Harwich in Essex, and on to east London before finally resorting to camping on the South Downs in the freezing cold.
Five police forces joined the hunt, devoting 1,000 officer hours at a cost of £500,000 to find the child’s body after the pair refused to co-operate when they were arrested near Brighton after nearly two months on the run. Police were shocked to discover the millionaire aristocrat had hidden her child’s body in a soiled nappy inside a Lidl bag-for-life. It was found beneath an empty beer can and discarded sandwich packaging in a disused shed.
Experts have described Gordon, 51, as a sociopathic sex offender considered so dangerous that experts compared his sadistic crimes to those of Ted Bundy or Australian-American serial killer Christopher Wilder.
Hooked on violent pornography, Gordon was just 14 when he raped a woman at knifepoint in 1989 after breaking into her home armed with knives and hedge clippers, telling her: ‘Don’t scream or I’ll kill your children.’
Over the next four and a half hours, the teenage rapist tormented his victim, telling her she was going to die as he ran the blade down her body.
Marten and Gordon walking into Bolton bus interchange with their baby allegedly underneath Marten’s coat – the couple were on the run for nearly two months
More than 100 officers pursued the couple as they fled in taxis, travelling hundreds of miles across the country from Bolton to Liverpool, then to Harwich in Essex, and on to East London
A day after baby Victoria died in their flimsy freezing tent, Marten and Gordon dumped their baby in a soiled nappy inside a Lidl bag for life (pictured East Ham High Street, London)
Five police forces joined the hunt, devoting 1,000 officer hours at a cost of £500,000 to find the child’s body after the pair refused to cooperate when they were arrested near Brighton
The mother recalled: ‘I had no hope. I was told to say goodbye to my children because this was the day I was going to die.’
Franklin Nooe, treatment director of a sex assault clinic who counselled Gordon’s first victim, described him as a sociopath in the same category as Bundy: ‘That’s the 5 per cent of the rapists, that’s your Ted Bundys … that obviously enjoy it. They are a progressive kind of rapist that would … go from just raping, to raping and murdering’. Within three weeks of carrying out the attack, Gordon broke into the home of a second woman armed with a set of knives. But as he crept into her bedroom Gordon was startled to find her husband home.
Gordon battered him around the head with a shovel before fleeing.
He was jailed for 40 years, serving half of that in the US before being deported back to the UK.
He hid his appalling criminal history from Marten when they met in 2016.
It wasn’t until he assaulted two police officers in hospital after Marten gave birth under a false name that she learnt he was a violent rapist considered at ‘high risk’ of reoffending.
Gordon attacked Marten when she was pregnant with their third child, throwing her out of their flat window. She fell 18ft, hitting a car on the way.
As she lay screaming in agony with a shattered spleen and internal bleeding, Gordon tried to delay paramedics alerted by concerned neighbours.
Marten pictured during a police interview in an image released today in which she is told that her dead baby daughter has been found dead
Experts have described Gordon as a sociopathic sex offender considered so dangerous that they compared his sadistic crimes to the American serial killer Ted Bundy or Australian-American serial killer Christopher Wilder (court sketch of Gordon)
Marten was unaware of her lover’s previous crimes and his time spent in jail when they met in 2016, keeping it secret until after they had a spiritual marriage in Peru and had their first child
Marten would spend the next eight days in hospital recovering from surgery, but Gordon demanded she be discharged, despite doctors warning this would put her life at risk.
The domestic abuse was the catalyst for a family court judge to rule their four older children should be taken into care .
It was then that District Judge Madeleine Reardon warned the children were likely to be ‘exposed to serious physical violence’ adding: ‘It is quite possible that they will be injured themselves.’
During their prosecution, the couple conspired to delay, lie and obfuscate repeatedly in a bid to sabotage the case.
Marten and Gordon will be sentenced on September 15.