LONDON: 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 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.

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.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2025