UK couple jailed for killing baby daughter after going on the run in winter

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LONDON (Reuters) -A British aristocrat and her partner were on Monday both jailed for 14 years for the manslaughter of their baby daughter by gross negligence, as they sought to avoid detection by social services and briefly sparked a nationwide manhunt.

Constance Marten – whose father was once a page to the late Queen Elizabeth – and Mark Gordon went to live “off-grid” in late 2022 when Marten was pregnant, prosecutors said.

The couple’s four previous children had been taken into care and the pair went on the run with the “clear aim of ensuring that no local authority would have jurisdiction over you”, Judge Mark Lucraft said as he sentenced Marten and Gordon.

Marten, 38, and Gordon, 51, slept for several weeks in a tent in southern England during freezing winter temperatures, part of what prosecutors described as the couple’s “arrogant and ultimately grossly negligent conduct”.

The pair pleaded not guilty but, after a trial at London’s Old Bailey Court, were convicted in July of manslaughter by gross negligence, perverting the course of justice, child cruelty and concealing the birth of a child.

Marten and Gordon were sought by police from January 2023 after their abandoned car was found on fire with a placenta wrapped in a towel inside, near Manchester in northern England.

After a nearly two-month search, during which the couple were frequently on the front pages of British newspapers, Marten and Gordon were located in Brighton on England’s south coast.

Their child’s body was found two days later.

Lucraft told the pair that “neither of you gave much, if any, thought to the care or welfare of your baby – your focus was on yourselves”.

(Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Sharon Singleton)