A couple whose newborn daughter died while they were on the run from authorities and living off-grid carried her around in a Lidl “bag for life” before dumping her “as if she was refuse”, a court has heard.
The daughter of Constance Marten (36) and Mark Gordon (49) was found in the shopping bag covered in rubbish in a disused shed after the couple attempted to evade authorities and conceal the birth, an Old Bailey jury was told on Thursday in London.
Her death was the result of the couple’s “reckless, utterly selfish, callous, cruel, arrogant and ultimately grossly negligent conduct”, the prosecutor Tom Little KC said.
The court heard that the baby was the couple’s fifth child, their other children having previously been taken into care.
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The pair, of no fixed address, deny manslaughter by gross negligence of the girl. They are also charged with perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty, and causing or allowing the death of a child.
Opening the trial, Mr Little said: “Their selfish desire to keep their baby girl led inexorably to the death of that very baby.”
A major hunt began after the car the couple was travelling in caught fire on the M61 motorway on the evening of January 5th last year, the court heard. The defendants fled but Greater Manchester police found Marten’s passport in the burnt-out vehicle alongside a placenta wrapped in a towel, which “revealed the existence of a missing, newborn baby”, Mr Little said.
Other possessions, including nappies for newborns and items of baby clothing, were found in playing fields next to the motorway.
The couple spent hundreds of pounds on taxi fares as they travelled around the country, with their movements captured on CCTV, jurors heard.
In London, they bought a “flimsy tent”, two sleeping bags, pillows and a baby buggy, but dumped the buggy shortly afterwards.
“The child was transferred to a red reinforced Lidl ‘bag for life’ where it would appear it spent much of its life before it died,” Mr Little told jurors.
The couple were arrested in Brighton on February 27th, “dishevelled” and hungry, having camped in the South Downs national park for several weeks in “freezing cold, windy and wet weather”, the court heard.
There had been various sightings of them in the East Sussex area in the preceding weeks, including at a golf course where they tried to break in and were “scavenging for food from the bins”.
After an extensive search, their baby’s body was found on March 1st.
Ms Marten gave different accounts of when the baby had been born and when she had died, the jury heard. Eventually settling on January 11th, she told police: “I had her in my jacket and I hadn’t slept properly in quite a few days and I fell asleep holding her sitting up ... when I woke up she wasn’t alive.” She said she and Mr Gordon tried CPR to no avail.
Mr Gordon described it to police as “the most harrowing experience to see my child like that”, the court heard.
Ms Marten told officers she had wanted an autopsy and a proper burial, “so had been carrying her around not knowing what to do really”.
She bought petrol “because I debated whether to cremate her myself”, she told police. She said that at one point she had got a spade from an allotment “but I didn’t have the strength to bury that far deep because I hadn’t eaten for so long”, the court heard.
Mr Little told the jury that the precise date the baby was born and died was known only to the defendants but it would appear she must have been born after December 28th, 2022.
The court heard it was difficult to determine the baby’s cause of death but that the pathology was consistent with death caused by hypothermia or exposure.
Mr Little said the baby’s parents “put their relationship and their view of life before the life of a little baby girl. So that, in just a few words, is what this case is all about.
“They essentially went off-grid and lived in a tent with hardly any clothes, no means of keeping and remaining warm and dry, and with scarcely any food.
“Their selfish desire to keep their baby girl led inexorably to the death of that very baby.”
The court was told Ms Marten had given birth to a child in 2017 while living in a camper van, and had put on a fake Irish accent in hospital, pretending to be from the Traveller community.
After another birth, in 2021, she had left the child at the hospital, and on returning the following day was refused entry because of Covid restrictions and her refusal to take a test.
The case continues. – Guardian