Lover on run with aristocrat and their baby served 20 years in jail for rape
...and they’re living off her vast trust fund held at a private bank
THE partner of a missing aristocrat being sought by police after she gave birth in secret is a convicted rapist, it can be revealed.
Mark Gordon, 49, went on the run with Constance Marten and their baby who was barely a day old when their car burst into flames on a motorway earlier this month.
Now it can be revealed that he is a registered sex offender jailed for 40 years in America for the kidnap and rape of a young woman during a violent armed burglary committed when he was just 14.
The 49-year-old served 20 years in prison in Florida before being deported to the UK in February 2010.
In 2016, he struck up an unlikely relationship with Ms Marten, 35, who hails from one of England’s most prominent aristocratic households.
Last night Gordon’s mother Sylvia, 83, claimed the pair had secretly married ‘some time ago’ after Ms Marten became pregnant.
‘I am very concerned. I love my son. He is a good boy so I don’t know what this is all about,’ she said from her home in Florida.
‘I am worried for all of them. I am thinking, I wonder if someone kidnapped them?’
Yesterday Scotland Yard issued a fresh appeal to trace the couple amid mounting fears for the safety and wellbeing of their child who has received no medical attention. The pair are said to have built up a ‘slush fund’, withdrawing a huge sum of cash from Ms Marten’s multi-million pound trust fund held at the UK’s oldest private bank, C Hoare & Co, in order to evade the authorities following the birth.
They are said to have paid cash to stay in Airbnbs for one to two nights in cities including Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield after being evicted from their southeast London flat in September.
Police believe Ms Marten could have given birth in a car they bought six days before their disappearance.
The vehicle developed a fault on the M61 near Farnworth, Bolton, on January 5, and despite all their belongings being lost in the inferno, the couple fled.
They took a taxi to Liverpool but gave another driver a bundle of cash at 3.30am to take them more than 250 miles to Harwich, Essex, where Ms Marten was seen swaddling the infant under a large red scarf.
Police then traced the couple to Colchester where they were seen on Saturday January 7. Hours later, they took a taxi to East Ham Station, east London, where they were last seen on a platform attempting to shy away from CCTV cameras, using hats and scarves to hide their faces.
Investigators now say they could be anywhere in the UK and are using fake names.
They are treating the case as a high- profile missing persons inquiry, deploying 200 officers who have so far scoured 223 hours of CCTV footage.
Scotland Yard has also enlisted the help of the National Crime Agency, Britain’s answer to the FBI. It emerged yesterday that Ms Marten had cut off ties with her family and friends, living an isolated life since meeting Gordon as a drama student.
Their backgrounds could not be more different. Born in Birmingham, Gordon moved as a boy with his mother to America, where he spent much of his adult life in jail.
In contrast, Ms Marten enjoyed a gilded upbringing in Crichel House, a £100million 5,000-acre estate in Dorset where Gwyneth Paltrow’s 1996 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma was filmed.
Her father Napier Marten was a page at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation and her grandfather was Toby Marten, an equerry to George VI. His wife Mary Anna was a playmate of Princess Margaret.
When she was 21, Ms Marten was society magazine Tatler’s ‘Babe of the Month’. She attended private St Mary’s School in Shaftesbury and studied Arabic and Middle Eastern studies at Leeds university, and later enrolled at East 15 drama school in Essex.