Constance Marten and Mark Gordon: Couple convicted over daughter's death came to Doncaster during manhunt
A couple who went on the run with their newborn daughter and found guilty of her manslaughter by gross negligence visited Doncaster during a nationwide manhunt.
Constance Marten, 38, and Mark Gordon, 51, were convicted on Monday following a lengthy and chaotic retrial at the Old Bailey, which the judge accused them of trying to "sabotage" and "derail".
It comes more than two years after the decomposed body of their baby, Victoria, had been discovered in a shopping bag in Brighton.
An earlier trial at the same court found them guilty of concealing the birth of a child, perverting the course of justice by not reporting her death, and of child cruelty - the latter of which could not be reported until now.
Gordon and Marten sparked a nationwide manhunt in January 2023.
The court heard that as they travelled across the country moving from location to location, Gordon had first visited Sheffield on December 19, 2022, as he was required, to tell officers he was of “no fixed abode”.
Trips to Northumberland and Leeds followed and on December 28, the couple’s Suzuki car was recovered by a pick-up truck after breaking down on the M18 near to Doncaster.
The pick-up driver was initially asked to take them to Leeds University, but Gordon then asked him to take them to an address in King Street, Thorne instead before leaving them at a local Sainsbury's.
The pair then visited Cheshire and Manchester and on the evening of January 5, the couple’s Peugeot 206 car caught fire on the M61 between junctions 3 and 4 in Greater Manchester.
Police found a placenta wrapped in a towel, Marten’s passport and a large number of “burner” mobile telephones to stop them being tracked, the court heard.
After more movements around the London and Essex areas, the pair were eventually arrested in Brighton.
The prosecution had argued during their retrial that Marten and Gordon - who are expected to be sentenced in September - had made a conscious decision to not keep Victoria safe, and that it was clear their actions had been deliberate.
Central to the prosecution's case was that Victoria had died from hypothermia or by being smothered while co-sleeping in a small, thin tent in cold, damp and windy conditions in January 2023.
It is thought that the couple went on the run to avoid the authorities and keep Victoria, their fifth child together, with their four other children having being been previously taken into care.
During the trial, the jurors had been told of Marten's privileged upbringing in a wealthy family. They also learned that Gordon had been convicted of rape in Florida in 1989 when he was aged 14.
For legal reasons, this conviction - for which he was sentenced to 40 years in prison and deported back to the UK after serving 20 years - was not made known during the first trial, but was disclosed the second time around.
The couple became the subjects of a 53-day police manhunt in 2023 when officers found evidence of a recent birth in the burnt-out car near Bolton.
They slept outside and took steps to avoid detection, including covering their faces when in public.
They were found on 27 February 2023 and Victoria was discovered dead two days later in an allotment shed in the Hollingbury area of Brighton.
She had died in a tent in the South Downs in January that year.