Constance Marten says she was told to say baby died of cot death, court hears
Constance Marten has claimed her boyfriend Mark Gordon told her to say their baby girl had died of "cot death", a court has heard.
The pair are accused of killing their newborn, Victoria, after taking her on the run to stop her being taken away by social services last year. The baby allegedly froze to death after Marten, 36, and Gordon, 49, spent two months living out of a blue tent as temperatures plummeted in the South Downs near Brighton.
The fugitive couple, who already had four of their children taken into care, began camping after their car erupted into flames on a motorway in Manchester. Cops found the infant's placenta in the vehicle which sparked a massive police hunt. The Old Bailey heard that Victoria only had a onesie on despite Marten insisting that she had "lots of warm clothes."
In an interview at Brighton Custody Suite on March 1 last year, she told police she fell asleep with the baby in her arms and woke up and the baby was dead but prosecutors argue the baby died weeks later after being exposed to the cold weather.
Marten said: "We were staying outside in the countryside. She was in my jacket and I was keeping her warm. I was holding her and hugging her and I was extremely tired, I hadn't slept in probably two days, we'd just arrived there I fell asleep with her in my jacket."
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Constance was arrested after living out of a tent for two months (Met Police)Marten began to cry as she told the police officer what happened. "When I woke up I was like crouched over her like that, holding her and she wasn't moving when I woke up. I don't know how long I'd been asleep. I saw she wasn't moving and her lips had gone blue. And, yeah, I don't know how long we slept, and it was just so tired, I don't know.
"Erm, I tried to resuscitate her, for like, well I tried to breathe in her mouth and pump her chest. And er, there was no response. So I wrapped her in a scarf and cradled her for a few minutes. I didn't know what to do.' Crying, Marten said: "I don't know how it happened."
She added: “Initially Mark and I were talking about what to do with the situation and I think, like two weeks after it happened, I was debating whether to hand myself in. Mark advised me to say it was a cot death and I was not holding her. And he advised me to say that I lay her down and then when we woke up she was on her front and she’s passed away. But that isn’t what happened. So he may try to say that in order to protect me because he wants to protect my interests.”
Marten told officers they had been sleeping in a tent. She said: "Erm, in Brighton, we didn't want to use the credit card at all. Yeah, we were trying to find property so we weren't intending to stay in the tent for a long period of time. But obviously, it was difficult because we couldn't access, between a rock and a hard place, couldn't access the bank so erm, yeah we were trying to figure out what to do in terms of getting a house, accessing money without the authorities finding out where we were."
Constance was captured in London on CCTV (PA)She said she did not know the exact location but it was "somewhere in the forest." When asked why she fell asleep, she said: "I was just exhausted, we'd been running trying to find somewhere to pitch a tent that was remote and I hadn't slept in a long time."
When asked why she didn't get help, she said Victoria was "definitely dead". The officer asked her whether she had a phone to call for help. In response, she said: "Um, yeah I think we had one phone, but I mean she wasn't alive she was completely limp. I don't know how long she'd been dead for. There's nothing a hospital really could do."
She wept as she said: "I held onto her for a few hours, hugging her. I think Mark was telling, me that yeah, I had to let go because, because it's not good to hold her like that because it probably would be good for my state of mind, so I wrapped her up in a scarf and then I think we put her in a bag, I didn't know what to do after that.
Marten said: "We were distraught. We were both very distraught and a bit traumatised. We didn't really move from that area for a few days, and then I think we got a bus to somewhere near Brighton.
Police found a child's earmuffs during the search (PA)'I mean I've been debating what to do basically. Not knowing what to do, I don't know whether to bury her in the forest, erm, I did get a spade at one point from the allotment, I was going to bury her here but then er, I didn't have the strength to bury that far deep because I hadn't eaten for so long and also we wanted to have a proper, I knew that at some point someone was going to ask where the baby was and I wanted an autopsy done.
"So I was worried that if I was to bury her in the woods, potentially an animal could, you know, find her and potentially do something to her limbs so I didn't want that to happen. And I wanted to give her a proper burial so, we carried her with us, not knowing what to do."
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She said Gordon was the father of all her children and that they had kept Victoria's birth secret from everyone else. She said: "It got to the point where she became really heavy, the bag became too heavy to carry, I don't know why I haven't looked at the body or neither has Mark but it just became excessively heavy."
Marten took a break from the interview and on her return, she told the police that she and Mark wanted to protect each other. "Mark was present, he fell asleep also in the tent but I have told him, because I want to protect him, er to say that he wasn't there and that's because obviously, he's my husband. I told him to say that he wasn't there," she said.
Marten appeared in court today wearing a white blouse and purple scarf. Gordon was not in court today. The mum comes from a wealthy aristocratic family and her father was a page to Queen Elizabeth II. Marten and Gordon deny manslaughter by gross negligence, concealment of the birth of a child, cruelty to a person under 16 and perverting the course of justice. They also deny causing or allowing the death of a child. The trial continues.
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