Detectives fear a missing baby may have come to “serious harm” as a huge search for the infant continues across a 90 square mile (230 sq km) stretch of Sussex.
Police say Constance Marten and her partner, Mark Gordon, have not told them the location of the baby since their arrest on Monday night after two months of evading authorities.
The couple were initially arrested on suspicion of child neglect but were further arrested on suspicion of the manslaughter offence as the risk isolation posed to the infant’s life became increasingly high.
Detectives have applied to Brighton magistrates court to detain Marten and Gordon for a further 36 hours after they were located by Sussex police near Stanmer Villas in Brighton on Monday after a member of the public reported seeing them shortly before 9.30pm.
On Wednesday afternoon, Det Supt Lewis Basford, the senior investigating officer from the Metropolitan police, said officers “must consider that the baby has come to serious harm”.
Basford told reporters in Brighton: “This is a hugely difficult and painstaking search operation, covering a vast area of some 90 square miles. We’re using every resource we have at our disposal to find the baby.”
He urged the public to remain vigilant and continue providing information to the investigation team.
Officers from London’s search and rescue team could be seen in orange hi-vis jackets searching Moulsecoomb Wild Park, about a mile from where the couple were arrested. The officers, some wearing jackets indicating they were dog handlers, searched underneath sticks and logs close to where the area meets Hollingbury golf course.
A uniformed officer was seen standing guard at the entrance to the park, and dog walkers said they saw police tape cordoning off parts of the woodland. On the adjoining Golf Drive, which leads to the allotments that have been a focus of the police search, a red search dog van was seen. Marked police vehicles were stationed along Golf Drive and a uniformed officer stood guard at the bottom of the road.
Marten is from a wealthy aristocratic family with connections to the royal family and was a promising drama student before meeting Gordon in 2016. The couple have led an isolated life, cut off from family and friends. From about September last year, they began living on short lets in Airbnbs around the UK and had amassed a significant amount of cash to enable them to live off-grid and avoid the attention of the authorities.
The couple had been travelling around the UK by taxi since their car was found burning on the M61 outside Bolton, Greater Manchester, on 5 January. Evidence was found to suggest Marten had given birth in the car. Taxi drivers used by the couple in the first few days after they went missing said they had heard noises coming from a baby. It is not known whether their baby was born full-term or has any health problems.
Authorities previously believed they had been sleeping rough in a blue tent, and had avoided being traced by the police by moving around frequently and keeping their faces covered from CCTV. The couple travelled from Bolton to Liverpool, then to Harwich in Essex, to east London and to Newhaven in Sussex, where they were reportedly seen near the ferry port on 8 January.
After the arrests, Marten’s estranged father, the film and music producer Napier Marten, told the Independent: “It is an immense relief to know my beloved daughter Constance has been found, tempered by the very alarming news her baby has yet to be found.”
