Constance Marten's life behind bars as killer aristocrat 'befriends Sara Sharif's stepmother' and moaned about treatment in prison magazine cover star interview
Aristocrat Marten, 38, was convicted yesterday alongside her violent lover Mark Gordon of causing their newborn Victoria's death after going on the run to prevent authorities taking the baby away.
During her trial Marten was an inmate at HMP Bronzefield in Ashford, Surrey, where she reportedly became close to Beinash Batool - the stepmother of 10-year-old Sara who was tortured to death at home by her father and his wife in August 2023.
The friendship developed despite Marten professing her love for children throughout her trial, and claiming she did everything she could to protect her own baby from harm.
Over the years, Sara suffered an unimaginable ordeal at the hands of Batool and her father, who bound her arms and legs while they battered her with a cricket bat, metal pole and a rolling pin, strangled her until her neck broke, burnt her with an iron and bit her.
The stepmother and her cellmate Marten once had the same legal representative, according to The Times.
Marten, who is from an aristocratic family, made headlines within jail when she featured as the cover model for a magazine selling itself as 'for women with conviction'.
Appearing on the cover of The View, Marten wore a glamorous dress and earrings in a shot said to have been taken at least 10 years ago.
In an article written during her retrial, Marten set out some of her objections about prison life, becoming a notorious irritant for staff at the prison due to her constant complaints about jail conditions.
In a bid to sway jurors midway through her prosecution, Marten's magazine interview was titled 'Surviving Serco', in which she claimed her trial was 'prejudiced' by the 'inhumane' conditions she endured behind bars.
In an accompanying podcast which proclaimed, 'this is the very foundation of a fair trial being undermined', Marten bemoaned the long journeys to court in transport provided by private contractor Serco and 'disgusting' microwave meals in her 'stone-cold' Old Bailey cell.
'I'm being made to survive these 17 to 19-hour days with little or no rest, no food,' she said.
Marten also breached a High Court anonymity order by providing photographs to the magazine, risking prosecution for contempt of court.
It was one of the many extraordinary attempts she and her partner Gordon made to derail a prosecution which has cost taxpayers around £2.8million over two trials across the last two years.
Over that period, the couple conspired to delay, lie and obfuscate, often failing to turn up to court, inventing fictitious ailments and disregarding the judge's orders, shouting across him and chatting in the dock as the evidence was outlined.
For a special episode of the Mail's award-winning The Trial podcast breaking down the Constance Marten verdict, click here
As a consequence, their first trial last year was scheduled to last six weeks but ended up taking six months – and concluded with jurors unable to agree verdicts.
Then their retrial overran by more than a month as the pair continued to manipulate proceedings.
At times, Marten was so rude to the Recorder of London, Judge Mark Lucraft, that he had to banish her to the cells.
At one point she contemptuously said of his legal directions: 'Are they going to be better than last year? I've got very little respect for you.'
The long-suffering judge declared that the defendants were behaving worse than two teenagers charged with murder with their continual 'antics' to 'deliberately sabotage the trial'.
'I've sat as a full-time judge now for 13 years and I've never had that sort of attitude by anybody,' he said.
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