Killer aristocrat Constance Marten's estranged mum Virginie de Selliers attended every day of her first trial and even passed her a Christmas card in court - and the runaway dad who lives in a shipping container

Daily Mail​

4 days ago

Seated in Court Five of the Old Bailey, Virginie de Selliers was present for every day of her daughter's first trial.
There, the 65-year-old heard details of how her four grandchildren had been taken in to care and a graphic description of how the fifth – baby Victoria – had died in her daughter's arms.
She also heard Marten recall how she and Gordon considered cremating the corpse before killing themselves.
Her daughter said: 'At one point Mark said, 'Why don't we jump in the fire and call it quits? Let's all have a fire and say goodbye together'.'
As she spoke, Mrs de Selliers could be seen wiping tears from her eyes – one of the few moments when emotion got the better of her.
At the start of that trial, Marten had herself wept when she saw her mother.
But from that moment on, she avoided eye contact with her mother or Tobias, one of her three younger brothers, who attended from time to time.
When her retrial began this March, eight months later, there was no sign of her mother or any other relative.
The Mail has been told that like the rest of the family, mother and daughter have been largely estranged since 2016, when Marten and Gordon began their relationship in earnest.
There was a brief reconciliation after the birth of Marten's first child in 2017.
At the time Gordon had been jailed for assaulting two female police officers in an altercation at the hospital.
But when he was back on the scene, the family was once again excluded.
'What access can you get to your daughter if their partner refuses it?' said a source close to the case. The Mail understands there have been no prison visits.
At one pre-trial hearing, Mrs de Selliers was seen asking an usher to pass her daughter, in the dock, a Christmas card.
Marten and her brothers were largely raised by Belgian-born Mrs de Selliers and her second husband, Guy de Selliers, a wealthy investment banker.
She remarried after Napier Marten left his family and Dorset estate to 'find himself' in Australia in 1996, signalling the start of a bitter matrimonial break-up.
For a special episode of the Mail's award-winning The Trial podcast breaking down the Constance Marten verdict, click here
'He was married with children and a life of responsibility,' a close friend of Mr Marten's told the Mail. 'He wanted his wife to go with him. She refused and that was the end of the line.
'He said at the time he was fed up of the falseness of the life, the estate, the social standing and all that was expected of you. He just wanted to simplify it.'
When he returned to the UK from his travels, Mr Marten trained as a tree surgeon, having been cut off financially by his parents.
After his mother died in 2010, the multi-million-pound estate was split between him and his five sisters, with Mr Marten dividing his share with his own children. The court heard that Marten was receiving sums of up to £3,400 a month from a trust fund.
Although money was provided by her family to pay for a barrister in some of the early legal hearings ahead of the trial, funding was subsequently cut off, leaving Marten to turn to legal aid to cover the cost of her defence. She now owes money to lawyers who are suing her in the civil courts for non-payment.
Marten said her family were to blame for her children being taken into care. She and Gordon accused them of hiring private detectives to follow and harass them – claiming they had tampered with their cars, hacked their phones, snooped on emails and broken into their homes.
While her parents had twice paid investigators to locate the couple, the court was told they had used 'open-source' information to trace them and had never placed trackers on their vehicles or tried to harm them.
Marten also branded her parents 'bigots', accusing them of wanting to erase her children from their bloodline and of financially favouring her three brothers over herself.
She claimed they had encouraged social services to take her children. To avoid the same thing happening to her fifth child, she decided to go on the run. 'I was trying to flee my family,' she said. 'I had spoken out about a childhood traumatic event against one of my family members and the sale of my grandmother's estate.'
But the family friend denied the existence of the 'traumatic event' or 'abuse' that Marten referred to in court, adding: 'There is no event. It just never happened.
'She is saying anything to try and save herself.'
Newly released documents from the Family Court also reveal that, in fact, both of Marten's parents had separately offered to care for their grandchildren. In 2019 Mr Marten began wardship proceedings in the High Court, offering to raise the oldest two. He did so after learning his daughter had been hospitalised with a ruptured spleen after allegedly being pushed out of a first-floor window by Gordon.
In the end the children were placed in foster care. Then, in 2022, Mrs de Selliers also put herself forward as a potential carer for the two older children, telling the Family Court that she 'felt desperately sad for her daughter and the children'.
But having been made a party to the hearing and given access to all the files, she withdrew her offer. Her lawyer said: 'She saw the relationship between the parents as an enmeshed and abusive one, and was concerned that if any of the children were placed with her she would not be able safely to care for them.'
But he added that if thecouple were to separate, Mrs de Selliers' family would be willing to support Marten 'practically, emotionally, and financially'.
Following the first trial, Mrs de Selliers declined to comment on the allegations made by her daughter. But she has privately made it known that she will always be there for her in the future. 'A mother who turns up to the trial every single day to hear what she has heard is not a mother who has abandoned her daughter,' said the source.
As for Marten's father, when his daughter vanished he was living in Mexico, returning to the UK to publicly appeal for her to hand herself in to police.
The 66-year-old owns a smallholding on the edge of Cranborne Chase, a swathe of once-ancient Royal hunting land straddling Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire.
Home is a converted shipping container. He is a tree surgeon and is said to be passionate about nature writing and photography.
The family friend added that up until 2016 Mr Marten and his daughter enjoyed a 'typical father-daughter relationship'.
'They would meet up from time to time, while she was at university and when she was trying to make her way in the world of work,' he said. 'He firmly believes he is not responsible for the behaviour that Constance has exhibited since 2016.'
Like his ex-wife, Mr Marten also hopes that one day in the future they may be reconciled.