UK aristocrat, partner get 14 years for baby daughter’s manslaughter

Constance Marten, 38, and Mark Gordon, 51, were arrested after a seven-week police hunt in January and February 2023. Photo / Metropolitan Police, AFP

A British woman from an aristocratic family and her partner have been jailed for 14 years each for the manslaughter of their newborn daughter, who died while they were living off-grid in freezing temperatures.

Passing sentence, Judge Mark Lucraft told Constance Marten, 38, and Mark Gordon, 51, that the way they treated their baby, Victoria, had been “neglect of the gravest and most serious type”.

The pair sat separately in the glass-fronted dock at London’s Old Bailey central criminal court, but had to be reprimanded by the judge for repeatedly gesturing and passing notes to each other, showing a “complete lack of respect” to the court.

They were arrested after a seven-week police hunt in January and February 2023, during which they spent time living in a tent.

A jury found them guilty in July after a previous jury was unable to reach a verdict on the manslaughter charge.

Marten and Gordon went on the run to try to keep their daughter after authorities took their four other children into care because of the couple’s lifestyle, saying their attitude posed a “significant risk” to the youngsters, the court heard.

They were eventually arrested two months later, in Brighton on England’s southern coast.

Days afterwards, baby Victoria’s badly decomposed body was found in a shopping bag on a vegetable patch.

Marten told police Victoria died when she fell asleep on her in the tent, but the judge said he believed she died from hypothermia.

In a statement to the court, Marten’s mother, Virginie de Selliers, said she had been “horrified” at how her daughter had been characterised, adding it did not reflect “the daughter I remember”.

Her lawyer, Tom Godfrey, said Marten felt genuine “sadness and remorse” over Victoria’s death.

Philippa McAtasney, defending Gordon, said he had not been thinking “properly or rationally” when he decided to go on the run, but would have to live with the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life.

Royal ties

Born into a life of wealth and privilege, Marten grew up in a 25-room mansion on a vast estate in Dorset in southwest England.

Her aristocratic family had close links to the royal family.

Her grandmother was a childhood friend of the late Queen Elizabeth II, for whom Marten’s father also served as a page boy.

But Marten, who became estranged from her family, told the court earlier they had been prejudiced against Gordon.

“There’s a few people in my biological family who see me as an embarrassment and are scared I will speak out about them and will stop at nothing to get what they want.”

She added, without fully explaining, that a member of her family “doesn’t want me alive” after she spoke out against them.

British-born Gordon’s early life was a world away from Marten’s and marked by poverty and violence.

In 1989, at the age of 14, he held a woman against her will in Florida for more than four hours and raped her while armed with a “knife and hedge clippers”, prosecutors told the London court.

Within a month, he entered another property and carried out another offence involving aggravated battery.

He was sentenced to 40 years in jail but was released after serving 22.

In 2017, Gordon was also convicted of assaulting two female police officers at a maternity unit in Wales where Marten gave birth to their first child under a fake identity.

- Agence France-Presse