Constance Marten ‘acquired £19k from belief fund’ earlier than going off grid

An aristocrat accused of killing her child acquired almost £19,000 from a household belief fund, a court docket heard yesterday.

Constance Marten, 36, is alleged to have spent 1000’s on taxis and motels across the nation as she tried to evade police earlier than resorting to tenting in a ‘skinny and flimsy’ tent the place her child woman died in freezing temperatures.

The Old Bailey heard that Marten, whose father was a web page to the late Queen, acquired £18,990 in funds from her household’s belief fund days after she disappeared along with her lover Mark Gordon in late 2022.

Yesterday Gordon, 49, revealed for the primary time that their ‘beloved’ daughter Victoria was born in hiding on Christmas Eve at an Airbnb vacation cottage the couple rented in distant a part of Northumberland for £367.

His defence lawyer John Femi-Ola, KC, denied his consumer killed Victoria, claiming the new child was ‘stored heat and dry, and was… well-nourished’.

He stated the toddler was wholesome and didn’t require medical consideration when Marten gave beginning on the terraced property.

Four days earlier Marten had rented the property for six days by Booking.com, claiming she wanted to maneuver in the identical day, regardless of being warned by the proprietor that it was ‘dusty and chilly’.

Marten is alleged to have stored her imminent beginning a secret, whereas sending messages to the homeowners inquiring in regards to the cottage inside design and thanking them for leaving prosecco and goodies.

But the Old Bailey heard that when the couple left on Boxing Day, the property was in a ‘disgusting’ state, with urine stains, left-over meals, candle wax on the carpet and stains on the bedspread.

The solely clear factor was the bedding and sheets from the main bedroom, which have been discovered laundered within the washer following the beginning, it was stated.

Mr Femi-Ola advised their child died in ‘heart-breaking’ circumstances 16 days later after the pair have been ‘pushed’ to stay ‘off-grid’.

The couple are accused of inflicting the loss of life of their child by happening the run to cease her being taken into care after their 4 different kids have been eliminated. But Mr Femi-Ola stated that not giving beginning in hospital and having antenatal care ‘doesn’t quantity to an offence any greater than not registering the beginning of a child for 40 days’.

The actual date of the toddler’s loss of life has not been established, however jurors have heard that Marten was seen on February 19 on the South Downs carrying ‘a really younger child with a wobbly head’ who was not carrying socks or a hat or have a blanket round her.

At the time, the pair had spent weeks tenting within the freezing chilly allegedly carrying their little one in a Lidl ‘bag for all times’ buying bag.

But Mr Femi-Ola stated Victoria died on January 9, only a day after they arrived on the south coast. He insisted Marten did not know what had induced her daughter’s loss of life and determined to ‘protect’ the tiny woman’s physique in a shed so a autopsy may very well be finished in some unspecified time in the future.

Marten instructed police she contemplated cremating the infant with petrol, however determined to not in order that an post-mortem may happen.

‘It’s the rivalry that the physique was not disposed of, however slightly that there was an try and protect the physique, for all the explanations that Constance Marten gave in her interview’, the lawyer stated. ‘She needed to seek out out why her beloved child died. Yes, beloved. She needed a autopsy.’

He instructed jurors: ‘Constance Marten stated that after the infant died she didn’t know what to do, and the rationale that petrol was purchased was to cremate child Victoria, however she could not do this.

‘Bearing in thoughts the acquisition of petrol on January 12, why is that the prosecution proceed to claim that child Victoria would possibly nonetheless be alive weeks after January 12?

‘Is it so a remark may be made that child Victoria was carried round in a Lidl bag for all times as late as the center of February? The defence contend that the infant was stored heat and dry and was fed such that she was properly nourished.

‘The child didn’t require medical help and died within the circumstances so heartbreakingly described by her mom in an interview with the police.

‘The physique had decomposed to an extent, however there’s pathologically no proof of any signal of violence, no signal of exterior or inner accidents. There is, we contend, no medical prognosis of loss of life being brought on by hypothermia or publicity.’

When police discovered the couple in Brighton following a two-month hunt, they refused to say the place their little one was. Her physique was discovered two days later, on March 1, in a bag lined in garbage in a disused shed.

In questioning by police, Marten claimed the kid died in her arms as she slept. ‘I consider I fell asleep on prime of her,’ she stated.

‘She did not make any crying or actions, and after I awakened she wasn’t alive. I used to be holding her in my jacket… however I believe I fell asleep crouching over her and he or she handed away.’ Yesterday prosecutor Tom Little, KC, instructed jurors the defendants have been responsible of ‘merciless’ behaviour by taking the infant tenting in temperatures of -2C with out sufficient meals, heat clothes or shelter.

The couple deny manslaughter by gross negligence, perverting the course of justice, concealing the beginning of a kid, little one cruelty and inflicting or permitting the loss of life of a kid.

The trial continues.