M1 speed camera: man banned from the roads for driving at 63mph
The 54-year-old from Arundel Way, Billericay was on the northbound carriageway at the time of the incident on August 30 last year.
Macal pleaded guilty to a single count of exceeding a variable speed limit at High Wycombe Magistrates' Court on July 8.
READ MORE: Harry Potter star Emma Watson due at Wycombe Court for speeding case
The court heard how there has been a 50mph speed restriction in place at the time.
Macal was banned from driving for six months and received three penalty points.
He was also ordered to pay a £130 fine, £120 court costs and a £52 surcharge.
The money must be paid in monthly £20 instalments starting from August 5.
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Scottish Sun
14 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Constance Marten moans she's ‘treated like a killer' in jail & brands inmates and lawyers ‘Dementors' from Harry Potter
She claimed the lawyers were making 'angels look like devils' SICK RANT Constance Marten moans she's 'treated like a killer' in jail & brands inmates and lawyers 'Dementors' from Harry Potter Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Constance Marten has complained that she's "treated like a killer" in jail and brands her prosecutors like soul-sucking "Dementors." Posh prisoner Marten, 38, and Mark Gordon, 51, were convicted of gross negligence manslaughter after the death of their baby girl. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 7 Constance, 38, was convicted of the gross negligent manslaughter of her daughter Victoria today Credit: Central News 7 Her partner Mark Gordon, 51, was also convicted of gross negligent manslaughter Credit: Central News 7 The baby died while the couple lived 'off-grid' in freezing conditions Credit: Central News 7 Constance Marten told police that Victoria had died after she fell asleep while holding her Credit: Central News In a bitter rant to The View Magazine, a publication promoting reform for women in custody, Marten moaned about being 'treated like a killer' in jail. This is despite being found guilty over the death of her baby daughter. Marten and rapist boyfriend Gordon were convicted after their newborn Victoria was found dead in a Lidl shopping bag. Speaking from behind bars, Marten was very critical of her prosecutors and bizarrely told the prison magazine that they reminded her of the soul-sucking creatures in Harry Potter. She said: "It was his voice. I just couldn't bear it anymore. "Tom Little and Joel Smith remind me of Dementors from Harry Potter. "There's no empathy. I felt like I was being grilled as a serial killer." The 37-year-old aristocrat is locked up in HMP Bronzefield alongside notorious child murderers Lucy Letby and Beinash Batool following a four-month retrial at the Old Bailey. She complained about being spoken to like a child and accused legal teams of trying to 'make angels look like devils and devils appear angelic'. Marten added: "They all use this disgusting tone, like they're reprimanding a small child. Aristocrat Constance Marten and her convicted rapist partner have been found guilty of killing their newborn baby "I've heard them laugh and joke with others, but with me, it's always condescending. "I just shut down because no one wants to be spoken to like that. People say, 'Oh, they're just doing their job', but they're not. "They're paid to make angels look like devils and devils appear angelic." The mum barely mentioned her daughter, who prosecutors believe died from hypothermia or suffocation in a flimsy tent after the couple went on the run. Marten and Gordon sparked a nationwide manhunt in early 2023 after fleeing with their newborn, desperate to avoid the baby being taken into care like their previous four children. When asked about using pseudonyms while off-grid, she gave the excuse: "The police give people aliases all the time under witness protection. "That doesn't make me a liar. I was trying to protect myself and Victoria." Marten gave birth to Victoria without seeking any medical assistance in early 2022 and kept her "their little secret". The infant had hardly any clothes or "means of keeping or remaining warm". Victoria, who spent 'much of her life' in a Lidl bag for life, was tragically discovered dumped among rubbish in a shed near Brighton. A jury found the pair guilty of gross negligence manslaughter after hearing harrowing details of how they ignored warnings and lived 'off-grid'. In a police interview, Marten later said: "I had her in my jacket and I hadn't slept properly in quite a few days and erm, I fell asleep holding her sitting up and she, when I woke up, she wasn't alive." Jurors were told Marten had been warned by social workers about the risk of falling asleep with a baby lying on her and that a tent was unsuitable. Both she and Gordon lost their appeal against the child cruelty convictions and are due to be sentenced in September. This comes as... Marten was a former Tatler 'It Girl" and her family had close links to the Royals. But her life spiralled out of control after she and Gordon, 51, 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. 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.' During the trial, it was revealed that Gordon was convicted of a series of sexual offences - including rape - while living in the US. Gordon, who was 14 at the time, broke into the house of a next door neighbour wearing a nylon stocking over his face and armed with a knife and hedge clippers. He demanded the woman undress and attempted to rape her before carrying out the vile offences in the April 1989 horror. The victim of his crime told the BBC she was "floored" when she found out the man who attacked her 36 years ago was on the run from police in the UK in 2023. She said: "The four-and-a-half hours I spent with him was enough to know he is evil." On May 21 the same year, Gordon broke into another home with a shovel and battered a man inside. The fiend was sentenced in the US to 40 years in prison, of which he served 22 years. In 2017, Gordon was convicted of assaulting two female police officers at a maternity unit in Wales. Jurors were not told that Gordon was also suspected of a incident of domestic violence in 2019 which left Marten with a shattered spleen. 7 In 2021 a judge ordered her four children should be adopted, shortly before she fell pregnant with Victoria Credit: Central News 7 The couple would carry Victoria around in a Lidl bag after getting rid of their pram Credit: Central News 7 Her arrest came following a 54-day manhunt Credit: Central News
Daily Mirror
17 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Constance Marten: Warning signs on killer mum who dumped dead baby in Lidl bag
Constance Marten and her partner Mark Gordon were convicted of gross negligence manslaughter of their infant daughter. Marten had previously shown an inability to connect with others A socialite who killed her own baby by taking the newborn to live "off grid" in a tent where she died had shown early examples of her coldness to fellow human beings ahead of the chilling crime. Constance Marten had a wealthy, privileged upbringing. But her trial heard she 'never really had a strong connection' with her family and eventually became estranged from them. Now it can be revealed she displayed a similar lack of bonding with fellow students when she studied to become a journalist. The aloof personality trait could stand as a marker of how Marten descended into a mother who allowed her own helpless child to die in freezing conditions, then kept her body in a shopping bag for days or even weeks after her death. The Mirror exclusively reported how Marten had ranted about the judge and prosecutors in her case, comparing them to the Dementors characters in the Harry Potter series. In another insight into the absence of human connection, the diatribe barely referenced the death of little Victoria, but focused almost entirely on Marten complaining about her own situation. Those early signs of disconnect were there when Marten embarked on student life. She had enrolled on a intensive postgraduate journalism course in a bid to become a reporter 10 years ago having already spent some time interning with news organisation Al Jazeera after studying Arabic at Leeds university. One of her lecturers has told the Mirror, Marten was unassuming and didn't boast about her wealth to her fellow students - but was unable to form close relationships with them. Journalist and broadcaster Fiona Webster said that Marten told her fellow wannabe journalist she was from an estate, and while many thought she meant a council estate, she was in fact referring to the £100 million 5,000-acre Crichel Estate near Wimborne, Dorset. Marten had grown up with brothers Maximilian, 35, and Tobias, 32, at the 'immensely large' property, which provided the backdrop to Gwyneth Paltrow's 1996 film, Emma, boasts 25 rooms, a ballroom and a wine cellar and overlooks a crescent-shaped lake. Marten, 37, had been re-tried at the Old Bailey after her fifth child died at just a few weeks old when she and partner Mark Gordon, 49 decided to go on the run fearing their daughter would be put into care, as their four elder children had been. The both denied charges of manslaughter by gross negligence of their daughter Victoria between January 4 and February 27, last year - but were unanimously found guilty. The defendants, of no fixed address, had been convicted of child cruelty, perverting the course of justice and concealing the birth of a child at their first child at a previous trial. Marten and Gordon both lost an appeal against those first trial convictions and will be sentenced on September 15. During both trials, Marten defended her decision to live in a tent with her newborn baby, and said the baby died when she fell asleep after breastfeeding. The prosecution said Victoria died from hypothermia or was smothered while co-sleeping in a 'flimsy' tent on the South Downs. The infant's remains were found in an allotment shed inside the supermarket bag, along with a sandwich wrapper and an empty beer can. In an insight into her self-centred character, Marten claimed she hadn't reported the child's death because she feared being cast as "some evil mother, a murderess" and added: "I don't trust the police.' When prosecutor Joel Smith KC asked Marten if leaving her daughter's body in a bag of rubbish was a 'despicable thing' to do, rather than being flustered or browbeaten, she went on the attack, saying that Mr Smith was 'diabolical' and a 'heartless human being'. That mixture of confidence, together with her stand-offish nature, had been seen before. Speaking about Marten's time as a journalism student, Fiona, who was Head of Diploma Training at the Press Association, said she felt Marten was confident but never really formed a close bond with anyone. She told the Mirror: "She stood out and I remember her. During the first few days she stood up and introduced herself as Toots, so we all knew her as Toots, not Constance, it was a family nickname, and she used it as her name, like posh people do. "She was confident and smiley, she told everyone that she had been in New York taking photos and wanted to become a photojournalist. I looked at her photos and I thought they were really good, she had taken some nice stuff. "We didn't know she came from money, she never mentioned her family. She spoke well, she had a very posh accent as if she spent a lot of years in private school. "She was obviously privately educated, she had already done a bit of freelancing. Some people came to us straight from university and others had tried freelancing then realised they needed the basics, like media law and shorthand. "She was a bit off beat, she would sometimes appear a bit dishevelled. She would turn up in things that looked quite expensive but she wasn't flashy. She fit in with the others but her tops weren't from Primark, although there were no Prada handbags." During her trial, Marten told jurors: "There's a long history of issues with my family." Marten and Gordon, who met in 2014, had four previous children together taken away from them, two who lived with them and two that were removed at birth. She told the court: "I cut ties with my family two years before I met Mr Gordon." However, she said that when her first child was born in the winter of 2017 her family would send her £50 a week, but she wrote to them to complain they had a duty of care and by the time her second child was born they were sending her £2,000 a month. She added: "We had more than enough," and her children had everything they needed. When baby Victoria was born, the couple took her to live in a tent in a desperate bid to stop her being taken away by social services, the court was told. Within weeks they had been arrested and the child's dead body discovered. Marten told jurors Victoria was born on Christmas Eve 2022, and died on January 9, 2023, but prosecutors alleged she died weeks later. Fiona, who was one of the trainers at the PA offices in Victoria, London, remembered that Marten appeared a bit lost and didn't really have the drive to be a reporter, unlike most people who were on 17-week course for those who already had a degree. She added: "People on these intense courses often formed friendships very quickly, that often stick throughout their career. "She was friendly with everybody and people liked her but I wouldn't say she had a close friend. She felt a little bit like someone who could easily be taken advantage of. She was very trusting of people. She seemed a bit lost. "She wasn't as driven to be a journalist as most people on the course were. She was a little bit lost and slightly naive. She was really trying to do something and have a career and be independent it seemed." Marten lost any independence it seemed when taking up with Gordon, a convicted rapist. Jurors at their trial for Victoria's death heard that in 1989, Gordon, then aged 14, held a woman against her will in Florida for more than four hours and raped her while armed with a 'knife and hedge clippers'. In February 1994, Gordon received a sentence of 40 years' imprisonment, of which he served 22 years. His offences consisted of armed kidnapping, sexual assault and armed burglary, and a second set of armed burglary and aggravated battery while armed with a 'flat-headed shovel'. Jurors were also told Gordon had pleaded guilty to assaulting two police officers who had been called to a maternity ward in Wales in 2017 after Marten gave birth to one of Victoria's older siblings. Gordon had to be forcibly restrained during the incident and a new father had stepped in to help the two female officers before more police arrived to arrest him. Gordon, who represented himself, made no reference to his troubled past but told jurors: 'Everybody faces challenges in life.' Yet while Gordon's horrendous record was self-evident of his brutal natur e, no-one would realistically take Marten's character flaws and deduce she'd one day end up at the centre of a horrendous crime and be facing a jail sentence for manslaughter. Fiona said that although she has taught thousands of journalists over the years, there were only a very few she emailed after the course was completed to offer support in the future and to wish her all the best, adding: "Toots was one of them."
Daily Record
2 days ago
- Daily Record
Baby killer Constance Marten in Harry Potter 'Dementors' rant at prosecutors
Constance Marten has spoken from inside HMP Bronzefield where she is held alongside fellow serial baby-killing nurse Lucy Letby. An aristocrat mum-of-five who alongside her rapist boyfriend killed their newborn daughter, has issued a bitter rant from behind bars about the prosecutors who put her there. Constance Marten has spoken from inside HMP Bronzefield where she is held alongside fellow serial baby-killing nurse Lucy Letby and Beinash Batool, who tortured her 10-year-old stepdaughter Sara Sharif to death. Marten, 37, and Mark Gordon, 50, were both found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter after a four-month retrial, reports the Mirror. At an earlier trial they were also convicted of child cruelty and have already lost an appeal against that conviction. Now, in a self-pitying barrage of complaints about both her Old Bailey trial and treatment Marten - Prisoner A9624X - hurls abuse at the legal team who brought her to justice over the death of newborn Victoria. The shameless daughter of a multi-millionaire meanwhile barely mentions the infant whose dead body was found among rubbish in a Lidl shopping bag. Speaking to the The View Magazine, a publication which promotes reform for women prisoners, wannabe journalist Marten hit out at prosecutors: "They all use this disgusting tone, like they're reprimanding a small child. I've heard them laugh and joke with others, but with me, it's always condescending." The posh prisoner continued: "I just shut down because no one wants to be spoken to like that. People say, 'Oh, they're just doing their job', but they're not. They're paid to make angels look like devils and devils appear angelic." Indignant Marten was extra critical of the CPS prosecutors Tom Little and Joel Smith saying they reminded her of Dementors from Harry Potter. Tom Little KC is the First Senior Treasury Counsel and regularly prosecutes some of the country's most high-profile cases, including the murder of Jo Cox MP, the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard and Metropolitan Police officer turned serial rapist David Carrick who attacked 13 women over nearly two decades. Joel Smith was the lead counsel to prosecute Carl Cooper, who murdered two girlfriends a year apart. The serial killer is now serving life with a minimum term of 35 years. Marten and Gordon's four-month retrial heard the couple had wanted to avoid their fifth child being placed into care after their first four children were taken from them by the family courts. Living "off grid", they went on the run, sparking a high-profile manhunt for them and the missing baby. The prosecution alleged baby Victoria died from hypothermia or was smothered while co-sleeping in the 'flimsy' tent, despite past warnings. The child's body was discovered with rubbish inside a shopping bag in a disused shed near Brighton after the couple were arrested on February 27, 2023. Trust-fund recipient Marten began giving evidence on April 22 after she complained about suffering from a headache and toothache. She told the court in her evidence in chief that when Victoria died it was the 'worst nightmare that you have ever woke up from'. She claimed in court she did not report the death as she feared being called 'some evil mother, a murderess, that sort of thing'. Marten was then cross-examined by Gordon, who by this point in the trial was representing himself. In answer to his questions, she said her family saw her as an 'embarrassment' and 'will stop at nothing to get what they want'. Prosecutor Joel Smith KC put it to Marten that leaving her daughter's body in a bag of rubbish was a 'despicable thing' to do. She angrily objected to his line of questioning, saying that Mr Smith was 'diabolical' and a 'heartless human being'. She then refused to answer more of his questions. Arrogant Marten continued her backlash against the experienced prosecution team in her interview with The View, claiming Smith was trying to belittle and demean her. She said: "It was his voice. I just couldn't bear it anymore. Tom Little and Joel Smith remind me of Dementors from Harry Potter. There's no empathy. I felt like I was being grilled as a serial killer. The killer went on: "[Joel Smith] asked, 'Miss Martin, let's talk about where you gave birth. I told him it was a cottage in Cumbria. He replied 'It wasn't really a cottage, was it? But it is, it's advertised on Airbnb as Woodcutters Cottage. By questioning this, he implies everything I say is a lie. "This is dangerous, because he represents the state. The jury sees him as the paragon of truth and justice. But he's being paid to make them believe I'm lying." In the few times Marten addresses the death of her helpless baby in the hate-filled, self-pitying interview, she still manages to make the focus herself, while continuing her attack on her prosecution. Marten whined: "Talking about my daughter's death, my beautiful, healthy child who died in my arms, has been unbearable. A forensic psychiatrist warned the court that I might not be able to give evidence due to overwhelming grief. "I couldn't breathe. I couldn't stop crying. The court was filled with journalists. The judge had to excuse the jury. I told Joel Smith, I've had enough of your character assassination. I've bared my soul. I can't keep doing this." On allegations the on-the-run mum used aliases, she offers the twisted excuse: "The police give people aliases all the time under witness protection. That doesn't make me a liar. I was trying to protect myself and Victoria." Marten is also highly critical of Judge Mark Lucraft KC, the Recorder of London, saying he didn't help her. Yet numerous times during the trial he told her he had personally called the governor at HMP Bronzefield to discuss transport issues she claimed left her too tired to pay attention in court. But in another warped whine, Marten tells the View: "He doesn't travel seven hours in a metal cage." Judge Lucraft also inquired about Marten seeing a dentist and halted the trial for her to be assessed. Yet in her self-absorbed interview with the View, Marten claimed: "I begged for a dentist appointment for three weeks. I was in agony, but he let me come to court every day in pain. When he finally acted, the dentist confirmed I urgently needed a root canal or extraction." She continued her bitter broadside against the proceedings and prosecutors by descending down a Big Brother-style rabbit hole rant. Marten wailed: "The jury is told not to look me up. So it's just their word against mine. We live in a surveillance state. They know exactly what they're doing, how to make truth look like lies." Marten and Gordon were convicted of perverting the justice, concealing the birth of a child and child cruelty at a first trial and have already lost an appeal against those convictions. On Monday, they were found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter and will be sentenced on all charges on Monday, September 15. The View, which also published a previous article where Marten complained about her prison conditions, approached the judge and prosecution counsel who all declined to comment on Marten's latest rant.
