A couple whose newborn baby died after they went off-grid camping in freezing winter weather to evade authorities maintain she lived just 16 days and was kept “warm and dry” and “well nourished”, a court has heard.
Constance Marten, 36, and Mark Gordon, 49, are accused of keeping baby Victoria in a Lidl “bag for life” and dumping her body “like it was refuse” in a disused shed inside the shopping bag covered in rubbish.
But for the “reckless, utterly selfish, callous, cruel, arrogant and ultimately grossly negligent” conduct of the couple, whose four other children have previously been taken into care, their baby would still be alive, an Old Bailey jury has been told.
In a defence address to the jury, Gordon’s counsel, John Femi-Ola KC, said the defence would maintain baby Victoria was born on 24 December 2022 and died on 9 January 2023.
The circumstances “heartbreakingly described” by Marten to police after arrest were that Victoria had died inside her jacket as she fell asleep sitting up and cross-legged, and that was “entirely consistent with the findings of the pathologist”, said Femi-Ola.
He added that Marten had said she bought a petrol on 12 January 2023 “to cremate baby Victoria, but she couldn’t do it”.
The defence would question the prosecution’s assertion that Victoria was “alive for several weeks after 12 January” and the assertion that “baby Victoria was carried around in a Lidl bag for life”, he added.
Femi-Ola said Marten had told police she wanted a postmortem and that there had been an attempt to preserve the baby. “She wanted to find out why her beloved baby died, her beloved baby,” said Femi-Ola.
Turning to the accusation that the couple went off-grid to evade authorities, he said: “The crown are saying they went off-grid. As you listen to the evidence, you may ask yourself: ‘were they driven off grid?’”
Tom Little KC, prosecuting, earlier told jurors that the couple had failed to provide warmth and shelter from the cold, wind and rain by camping in mid-winter in the South Downs national park with a baby in a “babygrow and not much else”, and had failed to seek medical assistance when she was cold.
The conditions the baby was in “when sleeping rough rapidly worsened and quickly reached stages that were inhuman”, he said. It was a “clear case of cruelty by virtue of neglect and exposure”.
At the time of their arrest, the defendants were “filthy, exhausted and starving” and plainly in no position to look after a child, he said.
They had “told nobody” of the pregnancy, and made a “sustained endeavour” to conceal the birth by “hiding the body in a place where it is unlikely to be found”, Little added.
“It is difficult to see what accommodating a newborn baby in a flimsy tent, in midwinter, without proper heating, limited access to food and very little clothing creates, other than a serious and obvious risk of hypothermia and death,” said Little.
It was “no mistake”, and “no serious error of judgment” but a “paradigm example of gross negligence”, he said. He continued: “They wanted to prevent the child being taken into the care that she so dearly needed.’”
Marten, whom the jury has heard comes from a wealthy family, and Gordon, both of no fixed address, deny manslaughter by gross negligence of the girl between 4 January and 27 February last year. They are also charged with perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty, and causing or allowing the death of a child.
The court has heard the couple came to police attention when their car caught fire on the M61 on 5 January 2023. While they fled, they left most of their possessions behind, and a placenta was found in the vehicle wrapped in a towel, prompting a nationwide alert.
The couple subsequently took taxis to Liverpool, Harwich, London and New Haven before camping in the South Downs, They were arrested after being spotted in Brighton on 27 February 2023 without the baby, whose body was found in the shed after a search of countryside on 1 March 2023.
The jury heard statements from witnesses who saw the couple but saw no signs of any baby, including from a recovery driver who attended their broken down car on the M18 on 28 December, and a receptionist at the Ibis Hotel at Lymm services, in Cheshire, when Marten checked in at 4.30am looking “very tired”.
A receptionist at the AC hotel in Salford, where Marten checked in at 11pm on 4 January, did not see a baby either, but thought because of Marten’s body shape, and the way Gordon put a guiding hand on her hip, that “at this point I thought she could have been pregnant”.
A few hours after the couple checked out on 5 January, their replacement car caught fire on the M61, the court heard. Kenneth Hudson, who was driving behind them, said he pulled over on to the hard shoulder to call emergency services at 6.19pm and to offer help. He saw Marten dashing from the flames as Gordon began unloading their possessions.
Hudson said: “I could see she was carrying a bundle, and at the top of that bundle was a baby’s head.” He said he asked Marten: “Is the baby OK?’ And she replied: “She’s fine” before telling him it was OK to leave them.
He said he put his hand on the baby’s head. “It felt quite cold but it was January.” In the 10 minutes he spent on the hard shoulder he said he did not see the baby move or make any noise.
Questioned by defence counsel Tom Godfrey, who said Marten disputed that ever happened and said she would never allow someone to touch her baby’s head, Hudson replied: “I touched the baby’s head. The reason I know was because throughout the year I’ve been cut-up myself, because I believe had I stayed with that vehicle that baby might still be alive.”
Hudson’s son, Jack, who was travelling with his father, also told the court he could see the baby’s head out of the top of the blankets.
The case continues.
• This article was amended on 27 January 2024 to correct the first name of defence counsel Tom Godfrey, who we misnamed in an earlier version as “Tim”.
