Constance Marten and her partner, Mark Gordon, have been found guilty of concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice after the body of their baby daughter was found following a high-profile search, it can now be reported.
Marten, 37, and Gordon, 50, had also faced charges of manslaughter by gross negligence and causing or allowing the death of a child, all of which they denied.
An Old Bailey jury was discharged last week after more than 72 hours of deliberation. On Wednesday, the prosecutor Tom Little KC announced the crown would seek a retrial.
The couple, of no fixed address, went off-grid with their daughter Victoria to evade authorities after four other children were taken into care, the Old Bailey had heard.
Over seven weeks, they travelled across England and slept in a tent on the South Downs.
Jurors heard that police had begun a search for the missing baby after a placenta was found in a burning car on the motorway near Bolton, Greater Manchester, on 5 January last year.
The couple travelled by taxis from the north-west to Harwich in Essex, East Ham in London and on to Newhaven, East Sussex, jurors heard.
The defendants were arrested in Brighton on 27 February last year.
Two days later, officers found Victoria’s badly decomposed body on a nearby allotment. She was found wrapped in a pink sheet in a Lidl bag.
Judge Mark Lucraft KC allowed reporting of the two verdicts after an application by the media. He set a provisional six- to eight-week retrial from 3 March next year.
The defendants sat in the dock of the Old Bailey for the hearing on Wednesday.
Det Supt Lewis Basford, from Scotland Yard, said the investigation team from the Met’s specialist crime command and the Crown Prosecution Service would prepare for a retrial in March.
He added: “We will not be making any further public statements until the conclusion of the retrial.”
