Constance Marten: Baby killing mum fancied herself as a photojournalist

Daily Mirror

a day ago

Constance Marten and her partner and the father of her five children, Mark Gordon, were both convicted of the manslaughter by gross negligence of their newborn baby Victoria
The woman who killed her own baby after she went on the run with her newborn in a bid to stop social services taking her away, once had dreams of becoming a photojournalist.
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Constance Marten shared her images as she joined a postgraduate journalism course with her fellow students and tutors. She told them she had been taking shots in America and wanted to focus her reporting on imagery. Her tutor Fiona Webster who was head of Diploma Training at the Press Association in London, said her shots were "really good".
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Marten, 37, was re-tried at the Old Bailey, alongside her partner and the f ather of her five children Mark Gordon, 49, accused of the manslaughter by gross negligence of her newborn baby Victoria. The pair both denied the charge but were unanimously found guilty. They will be sentenced in September.
The defendants, of no fixed address, had already been found guilty of perverting the course of justice and concealing the birth of the child at their first trial. Marten and Gordon both lost an appeal against those convictions
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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.
Around 10 years ago, before she met Gordon, Marten enrolled herself on a journalism course, having already interned at Al Jazeera, putting her skills from her degree in Middle Eastern studies and Arabic to good use. Journalist and broadcaster Fiona Webster, who taught her, remembered her well.
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She had introduced herself to the group as Toots, a family nickname that everyone then used as her name. Ms Webster told the Mirror: "Toots 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."
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.
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"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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It was around this time that Marten started using photo sharing social media app Instagram. Her 23 posts to just 312 followers lurched between jokes, photos of her with friends and in the beginning some arty photographic shots.
Her first half a dozen posts all from her first week of joining the website appear to be shots from her travels - a palm tree, a rack of shoes, an art gallery and a peacock. There is also an arty shot of a policeman staring out into the distance from his vantage point.
In another shot of a rainbow of colours, she captioned: "Threadbare, 30,000 pieces of thread". And an almost entirely green coloured shot of a palm leaf which she didn't capture at all.
Perhaps the most odd of all her images, was her very last Instagram post - a hastily snapped, with not a lot of photography skill, captured an advert for a Baby Yoga class.
Posting the image, which gives a phone number along with a list of benefits your little one could achieve from the class, she added a comment which began with a laughing emoji and the words: "Don't learn to walk... Flex instead!"