An aristocrat and her partner carried their baby daughter around in a Lidl plastic carrier bag during freezing conditions as they went on the run to evade authorities, a court has heard.
Constance Marten, 36, and Mark Gordon, 49, lived “off-grid” in a tent on the South Downs, depriving the girl – known as Baby A – of warmth, shelter and food during her short life, jurors were told.
During the opening of the trial at the Old Bailey, prosecutor Tom Little KC told how the couple’s “reckless, utterly selfish and callous” conduct led to the “entirely avoidable” death of the little girl. Her remains were eventually found in a disued shed, hidden in a shopping bag covered in rubbish “as if she was refuse”.
Mr Little said: “The young baby girl would still – we say – be alive if it was not for the reckless, utterly selfish, callous, cruel, arrogant and ultimately grossly negligent conduct of these two defendants who are on trial.
“They were the parents of that young baby girl. They put their relationship and their view of life before the life of a little baby girl.”
The court heard that the couple concealed Ms Marten’s 2022 pregnancy from friends, family and healthcare professionals, before going on the run – fearing the child would be taken from them. Jurors heard the infant was the couple’s fifth baby, their other children having previously been taken into care.
They ended up living out of a tent in Sussex during a high profile police search for the family.
Mr Little said: “They decided that in the middle of a cold winter and in cruel obviously dangerous weather conditions that they would deprive the baby of what it needed – warmth, shelter, food and ultimately safety.
“They essentially went off-grid and lived in a tent with hardly any clothes, no means keeping and remaining warm and dry with scarcely any food.”
He added: “It was their selfish desire to keep their baby girl that led inexorably to the death of that baby girl.”
Jurors were told police only learned of the baby’s existence after they discovered a placenta in the back of a burnt out Peugeot 206 – which caught fire on the M61 motorway on the evening of 5 January last year.
Greater Manchester Police found a large number of “burner” mobile telephones upon searching the burnt-out vehicle, which are used “if you want to limit the ability of law enforcement to track you down”, the prosecutor said.
Mr Little KC said Marten‘s passport was also found in the vehicle alongside a placenta that was wrapped in a towel, which “revealed the existence of a missing, new-born baby”.
A number of other items including “new baby” nappies and items of baby clothing were found in Amblecote playing fields next to the motorway.
The court heard that, at one point while on the run – the parents dumped a buggy they had just purchased and transferred the infant to a Lidl ‘bag for life’ where it spent much of its life before she died.
“It would have been plain to the defendents, you must have thought, that this was an entirely inappropriate way to care for any child,” Mr Little added.
The parents both deny manslaughter by gross negligence of their daughter between 4 January and 27 February last year.
The pair also deny charges of perverting the course of justice by concealing the body, concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty and allowing the death of a child.
The infant’s remains were found in a plastic bag in a locked shed at an overgrown allotment in the Hollingbury area of Brighton on 1 March. The discovery came after Marten and Gordon were arrested in nearby Stanmer Villas.
The trial, scheduled to last until 8 March, continues.
