How did the daughter of an aristocrat end up at the Old Bailey with her partner, charged with killing their two-week-old baby? If we believe her parents, Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, a baby girl was born on Christmas Eve, 2022, in the upstairs bedroom of Woodcutters Cottage in Haltwhistle, Northumberland. Her mother knelt against the double bed and gave birth without assistance or complication. The baby spent the first days of her life in the small stone-terraced cottage and then began her travels, mostly carried by her mother in a sling, hidden under a burgundy puffer jacket. She travelled far for a newborn, passing through bus stations and port towns, hotels and cafes, cities and fields, from north to south, west to east. We know she lived for at least two weeks, but we don’t know, and can never know, precisely how she died. She was called Victoria.
On 3 March 2025, the first day of the pre-trial hearing in the case of Marten and Gordon, neither defendant turned up to court. Among the huddle of journalists outside court six of the Old Bailey, no one seemed surprised. Last year, the couple had been tried on five counts in relation to the death of Victoria while they were camping on the South Downs in January 2023. During the original trial, Gordon and Marten’s absences had been frequent. When they were both present, they’d embrace, still demonstrably a couple despite being held in different prisons – Marten in Bronzefield, Gordon in Belmarsh.
Eventually, in late June 2024, after a trial that was supposed to last three months ended up taking six, they were found guilty of three charges: child cruelty, perverting the course of justice and concealing the birth of a child. The jury had been unable to reach a verdict on the two most serious charges of gross negligence manslaughter and causing or allowing the death of a child, and so a retrial of those charges had been ordered.
Mark Lucraft KC, the most senior judge at the Old Bailey, would once again preside. Lucraft, whose official, 13th-century title is the recorder of London, is widely revered, not least because he is also the editor of Archbold: Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice, the definitive criminal law reference book. As he entered the court this spring, stately in his wig and flowing black and red robe, we rose to our feet. “Constance Marten has refused to attend,” he said gravely. “She says she’s unwell, but has been declared fit.” Lucraft declared that he would continue with the trial whether the defendants were present or not. “Those who are genuinely ill, I have great sympathy for,” he said in a stern, cool voice we would grow to know well. “Those who do not feel like coming, I have very little sympathy for.”
And so the retrial of Gordon, 51, and Marten, 38, began as it meant to go on. Over the next four and a half months, two stories would unfold simultaneously in court six. One was the story of Gordon and Marten, their complex history and their crimes, and the other was of a battle for control between a married couple and a judge.
Marten and Gordon first came to public attention in January 2023. On the evening of 5 January, police found their burnt-out car on the side of the M61 motorway, near Bolton. Strewn nearby were bags of baby clothes, Marten’s passport and a bag of 38 mobile phones. When the police found a placenta wrapped in a towel on the back seat of the car, they launched a national search for the couple, concerned for the welfare of the baby. Quickly, the press began running stories: Marten is the daughter of Napier Marten, a former page to the queen. She had grown up at Crichel House, a vast stately home in Dorset, rebuilt after fire in the 18th century. Gordon, meanwhile, had spent 20 years in American prisons, having been charged with rape and battery at the age of 14. As the weeks passed and they weren’t found, the nation became obsessed with this couple on the run. The acceptable face of this obsession was concern for the baby. Less openly stated, but quite obvious, was the fascination with this marriage of seeming contrast: an aristocratic white woman and a Black man with a violent criminal record.
