Moment body of aristocrat’s baby was found in a Lidl bag
Police video of grim discovery on allotment shown to court
HORRIFIED police found the body of a fugitive aristocrat’s baby under leaves, Coke cans and bits of cardboard in a Lidl shopping bag inside an allotment shed, a court heard.
An Old Bailey jury was yesterday shown footage of the harrowing moment two officers discovered baby Victoria, the daughter of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, after the couple had spent two months on the run.
Stood on decking outside the shed on the plot strewn with rubbish and broken plastic furniture, PC Allen Ralph and a colleague delicately reach inside the bag for
‘I fell asleep holding her’
life, which they had pulled from under a table in the shed.
After gently removing leaves, a discarded can and some cardboard, PC Ralph stopped when he felt what he thought was a doll’s head among the detritus.
The Scotland Yard officer, sent to Brighton to help with the search, told the couple’s trial that he had smelled that something was wrong when he and another officer first opened the disused shed.
The policemen found the bag tucked into the corner of the shed under a table covered with out-ofdate milk and bread.
‘I lifted it and it was heavy and there was no reason for it to be heavy from what I could see of what was inside,’ PC Ralph said.
‘It just looked like a lot of rubbish on top. The only thing at the top of the bag that made it stand out to me was there were two newborn baby nappies.
‘There were a lot of leaves in the bag and I saw other bits and
pieces of rubbish. The head was to the left… that was what we touched.’
PC Ralph said Victoria’s body was pale and cold to the touch.
Marten, 36, and Gordon, 49, were arrested on February 27 last year after a major missing persons inquiry was launched when police found a placenta in the couple’s burnt-out car on a motorway near Bolton, Greater Manchester.
The couple criss- crossed the country before living in a tent in the South Downs in freezing conditions for seven weeks, the trial had previously heard. While in custody, the couple refused to tell
police anything about the whereabouts of the missing baby, whose body was found on March 1.
During interviews at Worthing Police Station, Gordon refused to answer questions but demanded ibuprofen for pain in his feet.
He arrived at the interview in a wheelchair but climbed out and lay on the floor, telling officers: ‘I am in pain. I can’t focus on what you are taking about. Maybe a nurse can give me something.’
In a transcript of the interview read to the court, the officer replied that Gordon had already seen the nurse and she had decided that nothing was wrong
with him. Marten cried in the dock as jurors were shown footage of her interview with police after Victoria’s body was found.
During the interview, Marten said she had given birth in Cumbria on Christmas Eve and the baby had died in the Harwich area in Essex around January 8. She said: ‘I had her in my jacket and I hadn’t slept properly in quite a few days and, erm, I fell asleep holding her sitting up and she, when I woke up, she wasn’t alive.’
Marten said she wanted to keep Victoria with her after her other four children were taken away. When the baby died, she considered
giving her a ‘ proper burial’ but did not want the child eaten by animals.
She told police: ‘There’s a bottle of petroleum in the bag because I debated whether to cremate her myself, get rid of the evidence, but I decided to keep her because I knew at some point in the future I would going to be asked about it. So that’s why we’re here really.’
The pair deny the manslaughter by gross negligence. They also deny perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty and causing or allowing the death of a child. The trial was adjourned until Monday.