Constance Marten: Warning signs on killer mum who dumped dead baby in Lidl bag

Daily Mirror

4 days ago

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.'
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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.
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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.
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"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."
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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."