A jury on Monday found a British woman from an aristocratic family and her convicted rapist partner guilty of manslaughter after their newborn daughter died while they were living off-grid in freezing temperatures.
Constance Marten, 38, and Mark Gordon, 51, were arrested after a seven-week police hunt in January and February 2023 during which they spent time living in a tent.
The pair were convicted at London’s Old Bailey court where they had faced a retrial after another jury last year failed to reach a verdict on the manslaughter charge.
Marten sighed and shook her head while the verdicts were read out, the BBC reported, while Gordon sat with his eyes closed and his head resting back against the wall.
Marten and Gordon, who had denied all the charges against them, went on the run after police found a placenta in their burnt-out car by a motorway outside Manchester in northwest England.
Despite having wealthy parents with connections to the royal family and her own trust fund, Marten rejected her privilege, according to The Associated Press. She lived at times without paying rent and while on the lam scavenged food from trash bins and camped in freezing conditions.
Metropolitan Police/AP
Marten largely cut off ties with her family when she began dating Gordon in 2016, and the couple moved around a lot, according to reports.
Marten had told the court they absconded because they wanted to keep their daughter Victoria, after their other four children were taken into care.
The couple were eventually arrested nearly two months later, in Brighton on England’s southern coast.
Days later, baby Victoria’s badly decomposed body was found in a shopping bag on a vegetable patch.
But taking the witness stand at her first trial, Marten, whose family has historic ties to the royal family, insisted she and Gordon were loving parents.
“Mark and I love our kids more than anything in the world,” she told the court. “I did nothing but show her love.”
The couple were found guilty of perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child and child cruelty at their earlier trial.
Samantha Yelland, London’s senior crown prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service, said that the couple’s “reckless actions were driven by a selfish desire to keep their baby no matter the cost – resulting in her tragic death,” the BBC reported.
“Justice… has finally been served for baby Victoria”
Marten had told police Victoria died when she fell asleep in the tent while holding her under her jacket.
Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford of the Metropolitan Police welcomed the verdict.
“Today, the justice we have long fought for… has finally been served for baby Victoria,” he said.
“The selfish actions of Mark Gordon and Constance Marten resulted in the death of a newborn baby who should have had the rest of her life ahead of her.”
Jordan Pettitt/PA Images via Getty Images 
He said the conviction was a vindication of the authorities’ decision to take Marten’s four other children into care. The pair will be sentenced on Sept. 15.
Detective Chief Inspector Joanna Yorke led the homicide investigation into Victoria’s death.
“We know today’s verdict won’t bring Victoria back, but I am pleased our investigation has resulted in the couple who caused her death finally being brought to justice,” Yorke said in a statement Monday.
Jurors at the first trial in 2024 were not told about Gordon’s violent past in the United States which was only partly revealed at their second trial.
The prosecution told the court that in 1989, Gordon, then aged 14, held a woman against her will in Florida for more than four hours and raped her while armed with a “knife and hedge clippers.”
Within a month, he entered another property and carried out another offence involving aggravated battery.
He was sentenced to 40 years in jail but was released after serving 22 years.
In 2017, Gordon was also convicted of assaulting two female police officers at a maternity unit in Wales where Marten gave birth to their first child under a fake identity.