How Constance Marten turned from party girl to homeless tearaway who raided bins & sparked one of UK's biggest manhunts

The Sun

a day ago

Ed Southgate
Mike Sullivan
Alex West
Published: Invalid Date,
ARISTOCRAT Constance Marten grew up in one of England's finest stately homes and ended up living in a tent foraging bins for food while on the run with convicted rapist Mark Gordon.
The 37-year-old former Tatler 'It Girl" hails from landed gentry and her family had close links to the Royals.
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But her life spiralled out of control after she and Gordon, 50, met by chance in a North London incense shop in 2014.
The couple went off the radar from her friends and family and formed their own self-styled cult living apart from society, with Constance even posing as an Irish traveller when she attended hospital while pregnant.
Their life on the edge ended in the tragic death of their fifth child, new-born baby Victoria, after their four previous children were taken into care amid allegations of domestic violence by Gordon.
Constance had an idyllic early childhood growing up with her three younger siblings at Grade II listed Crichel House, set on a 5,000-acre estate near Wimborne, Dorset.
But two key events left Constance traumatised and vulnerable before she fell for Gordon.
When Constance was nine, her father Napier, a former page boy to the late Queen, left his wife Virginie de Selliers, and children to become a nomadic hippie travelling the globe.
He spoke about an out-of-body experience while with a group of Aborigines on a cliff-top and an encounter with whales in Hawaii that made him cry 'almost non-stop' for a week.
The family estate passed on to oldest son Maximillian, who sold the house and part of the estate to an American hedge fund owner for £34 million in 2013, leaving Constance devastated.
Constance broke down as she gave evidence at her trial about a 'traumatic childhood event' and the sale of Crichel House against her grandmother's stated wishes in her will.
The second disturbing experience came when Constance was 19 and she attended a Nigerian Christian sect with her devoutly religious mother after leaving RC girls' school St Mary's Shaftesbury, in Dorset.
Harrowing moment cop find remains of Constance Marten's baby Victoria stuffed in Lidl bag filled with rubbish
Constance spent six months with the Synagogue, Church of All Nations, in Lagos, living under the dictatorial rule of televangelist Temitope Balogun 'TB' Joshua.
She and other white people at the sect's compound were humiliated by the guru, forced to eat his leftovers and placed in social exile for not being subservient enough to him or talking about their past.
Constance was forced to call cult chief TB Joshua 'Daddy' and told Cosmopolitan magazine in 2013: 'The leader looked me in the eye and said, 'Your family doesn't matter anymore. I'm your father now.''
This comes as...
Constance Marten and lover found GUILTY over death of baby daughter after living off-grid in freezing temps while on run
Chilling footage shows Marten and partner Mark Gordon after they dumped their newborn baby's pram
Gordon revealed to be an evil rapist
'Wealthy' Marten and Gordon used trust money for cabs while evading cops – but baby had no clothes before death
The harrowing moment cops find remains of baby Victoria stuffed in a Lidl bag filled with rubbish
A national safeguarding panel is now looking at the case as police have called for new laws to protect unborn children
Writer Matthew McNaught, who investigated the church and spoke to Constance about her ordeal, told The Sun: 'She struggled afterwards in the same way as all the other disciples.
'She found it a very traumatic time, especially the fact it was a very controlling environment.'
After Constance returned to the UK, she attended Leeds University, initially studying Philosophy before switching to Arabic, Middle Eastern History and Islamic Studies.
Friends at the time remember her as a vivacious, talented and charismatic globe-trotting party girl.
In 2008, aged 22, she appeared on Tatler magazine's 'Babe of the Month' page.
In an accompanying interview, she recalled her privileged childhood growing up at Crichel House with 'days of naked picnics, siestas amid hail bails and tractor scoops.'
Revealing a rebel streak, Constance said she loved drinking cider and wanted to get a tortoise tattooed on the bottom of her foot.
The best party she had ever been to, she recalled, was at the home of Viscount Cranborne in Dorset.
She said: 'There was a gambling tent and bunches of grapes hanging from the walls. It was like a debauched feast from Ancient Greece.'
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Constance also travelled the world and went to festivals including Burning Man and Wireless, saying: 'Dance is my oxygen.'
She spent her summer holidays in 2010 working for a film production company in Cairo.
One of her colleagues there described her as being 'very decent, nice and friendly' and having 'great potential'.
But she added that Constance sometimes chose the 'wrong' type of man, adding: 'She was somehow gullible.'
Constance graduated with a 2.1 in June 2012 and moved to London but struggled to establish herself in any long-term jobs.
She became a researcher for Qatar-owned news channel Al-Jazeera, and took a journalism course in 2014.
Then she met Mark Gordon at an incense shop in Tottenham, North London, in 2014.
Birmingham-born Gordon had moved to the US as a child and served a 20-year jail sentence for a brutal rape in Florida he carried out when aged 14.
He was deported back to Britain in 2010 and worked as a labourer and lived in Ilford, East London.
Timeline of baby 'killing' - how couple evaded cops
CONSTANCE Marten and Mark Gordon allegedly sparked a 54-day manhunt across the UK after vanishing with their baby Victoria.
Here's how the pair's journey began...
December 20, 2022
Marten and Gordon booked into a holiday cottage in Northumberland, with the rental due to end on Boxing Day. The owner told jurors he found the property in "something of a state" on December 28.
December 24, 2022
The couple claim their baby daughter was born this day but this has been disputed by prosecutors.
December 28, 2022
Their Suzuki broke down on the M18 motorway so a recovery driver took them to a nearby Sainsbury's. There was allegedly no sign of the baby but the back and side windows of the car had been blocked by clothing.
January 4, 2023
Marten and Gordon checked into the Ibis hotel at the Lymm Services in Cheshire then later the AC Hotel in Manchester.
January 5, 2023
The couple's Peugeot 206 catches fire on the M61 motorway in Greater Manchester. Police launch an urgent probe after finding placenta, burner phones and Marten's passport, jurors were told.
She and Gordon are taken to a Morrisons store in Bolton by a member of the public before being seen on CCTV at the nearby Bolton Interchange station.
The couple allegedly use Marten's trust for a taxi to Liverpool, then a £400 cab to Harwich in Essex.
Cab driver Ali Yaryar, who picked the couple up from Liverpool, told the court: "I think the baby had no clothes".
January 6, 2023
The couple arrive in Harwich and check into a Premier Inn at around 3am. They later move to the Fryatt Hotel, where they paid in cash, it was said.
January 7, 2023
Marten and Gordon travel by taxi to Colchester then to East Ham in London. The couple allegedly buy a buggy from Argos then grab another cab to Whitechapel.
They ate in a Brick Lane restaurant then dump the new buggy - choosing instead to keep Victoria in a Lidl bag, jurors heard.
January 8, 2023
The couple spend £475 on a taxi from Hornsey to Newhaven in East Sussex and walk to the South Downs National Park.
January 9, 2023
Both Marten and Gordon claim baby Victoria died on this day - making her 16 days old, the court was told. It is said there is no way of knowing this for sure.
January 12, 2023
Marten is captured buying snacks and petrol with cash but there was no sign of the baby. Prosecutors say she bought the fuel to cremate the baby but changed her mind.
January 16, 2023
Marten and Gordon are seen setting up a tent in Stanmer Park Nature Reserve in the South Downs despite the cold weather.
February 16/17, 2023
The couple are spotted near Hollingbury Golf Course in rural Sussex allegedly pushing a buggy with no baby. Their tent is later seen in Coldean Lane in Brighton
A driver sees the pair walking towards Stanmer Park with something under Marten's puffer jacket, the court heard.
February 19, 2023
Gordon and Marten are allegedly seen in their tent in the park with a very young baby with a "wobbly" head. Jurors told the baby had no socks, blanket or hat on.
February 27, 2023
The couple are arrested in Hollingbury Place in Brighton but do not reveal Victoria's location at first, it is said.
March 1, 2023
Tragic Victoria is found dead in a Lidl bag covered in rubbish inside a disused shed "like refuse", the court is told.
Describing the chance encounter with Gordon, Constance told jurors: 'There was a lady who left her handbag.
'The shopkeeper knew me, she said can you watch over him [Gordon]. We laughed about it. I saw him later and went to a coffee shop. We were good friends then we went travelling together.'
In 2015, Constance joined the East 15 Acting School where friends said they heard about her boyfriend but never met him. They said she became increasingly erratic before dropping out after a year.
Constance' last picture on social media showed her dancing at an electronic music event in East London in June 2016, just before she vanished.
It later emerged she had married Gordon that year in Peru, in a ceremony not legally recognised in the UK.
Her mum hired a private investigator for two weeks in October 2016 to find her, and her dad hired one in 2017 and again in 2021.
Living off her trust fund allowance of £2,500-a-month, later raised to £3,400, Constance and Gordon travelled across Britain, sleeping in tents and cheap lodgings and regularly swapping cars and burner phones in a deluded attempt to escape from her family's private detectives.
She fell pregnant with her first child in 2017 , prompting a London hospital to raise concerns as she had not received antenatal care.
In September that year, a national hospital alert was issued to find the couple.
They had fled to Wales and were sleeping in a festival-style tent, with bin bags of clothes and bottles of urine at the entrance.
Constance appeared at a Welsh hospital with Gordon in winter 2017, both using fake names.
She put on a fake Irish accent saying she was a traveller without a GP or NHS number and that she was no longer with her unborn's father.
But they were found out and social services alerted. Constance said: 'I made a pact with the devil.'
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In spring 2018, the couple turned up out of the blue at a flat in Llanelli, North Wales, with their first baby and a pram stuffed with more than £10,000 in cash.
Landlady Guiseppine Allegri told how Constance paid up front for two flats - one for her, and one for Mark across the road.
She told The Sun: 'They came from nowhere one day. She had a baby in the pram. The baby was covered in bags and bags and bags. They were hiding the baby.'
Guiseppine told them babies were not allowed but bent the rules for them after Constance insisted 'he's awfully good'.
The landlady provided an insight into the couple's relationship, saying of Gordon: 'He was very possessive and controlling of Constance. It was him who spoke all the time.
'I told her to go back to her family. I couldn't see why she was with him. He was so creepy. But she thought Mark was the best thing.
'Constance told me he was an honourable and good man. But she said he had difficulties and had been abused as a child.'
She said Gordon never worked during the six months he was in the flat, and Marten paid for everything.
Guiseppine added: 'He was very domineering. He was the boss. There was never a smile on him, never an honest smile. He had an angry smile.'
The couple left in a rush in a van with two men who said the couple went to Birmingham.
Guiseppine said they left around £350 of damage caused by candles and joss sticks, adding: 'I think they were running away.'
There is no record of Constance and Gordon in Birmingham but they later ended up in a house in Ley Street in Ilford, East London.
Their first child had a bouncy castle in his room, and Constance complained about having to find other ways to get money because she was getting less from the family trust.
Neighbours said the couple rarely left the house during daylight and that paranoid Gordon installed a CCTV camera as soon as they arrived.
One told The Sun: 'Sometimes we saw them coming and going at night but they were not neighbourly.
'Social services came at times to knock but they didn't open the door. They came again and again.'
Constance conceived their second child while at the house but in November 2019, while five weeks pregnant, Constance fell from a window rupturing her spleen after apparently being pushed by Gordon.
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Gordon initially refused to let paramedics into their home and during later care proceedings, Gordon was blamed for the incident.
Constance told police she had fallen while trying to adjust the TV aerial outside the window, but officers found the TV had a blanket over it and was not in use.
No further action was taken and Constance tried to discharge herself from the hospital.
Constance then took the children to Ireland on her own and tried to find a house to pay in cash to stay in.
Her father applied for ward of court proceedings and Constance attended a police station before the two children were taken into care.
A separation order was made when Constance refused to go into a residential unit when her third child was born.
Constance and Gordon regularly failed to attend contact sessions, claiming social workers were lying about them.
And she hid behind a door to hide her fourth pregnancy from an unplanned social worker visit in 2021.
But in February 2021, a judge ordered the four children should be adopted.
Then in early 2022, she fell pregnant with Victoria.
The couple hid the pregnancy and frequently moved between local authorities so none would have jurisdiction over her.
They moved between AirBnBs in Sheffield and Leeds weeks before going on the run.
Constance was missing when Constance' brother Max married jewellery designer Ruth Aymer in a high society wedding featured in Vogue magazine, in September that year. Their father Napier was also absent.
On January 5 2023, days after Victoria's birth, Constance and Gordon were making plans to leave the country.
They were driving along the M62 in Manchester when their Peugeot 208 caught fire and they ran, leaving £2,000 cash, her passport, her card and placenta.
Constance told the court their plan 'disintegrated' from this point, spiralling into one of Britain's biggest manhunts which ended when Victoria was found dead in a disused allotment shed.