‘How is that an arrestable offence?’: Constance Marten's arrogant response as police catch her after seven weeks on the run
Watch the moment aristocrat Constance Marten and her partner Mark Gordon were arrested in Brighton, dishevelled and hungry and without their daughter.
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Aristocrat Constance Marten and her partner Mark Gordon have been found guilty at the Old Bailey of the manslaughter of their newborn baby.
As the couple were arrested, Marten can be heard questioning "how is that an arrestable offence?" when told they were under arrest for concealing the birth of a child.
Police asked Gordon to put the stick down multiple times, ending in a struggle to get him to drop his items.
The officers then asked the pair "Where is the child?" multiple times.
One asked Gordon "is the child alive?".
The couple fled authorities and went off grid for seven weeks following the birth of newborn Victoria in a bid to keep their baby after four siblings were taken into care.
Victoria's body was discovered inside a shopping bag in a disused shed near Brighton days after the couple were arrested on February 27 2023.
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More than 1,000 Met officers were deployed in a massive search operation to find Victoria.
Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Sarah Bishop received instructions to deploy a team to Brighton.
Among them was Pc Matthew Stewart, who helped carry out an emergency interview with Gordon.
On hearing of the arrests, Pc Stewart said his first thought was “where’s the baby?”.
He told PA news agency: “Our main concern was locating baby Victoria.
“So he didn’t tell us where baby Victoria was, he didn’t tell us if she was alive, as I say, he was emotionless.”
On February 28, Ms Bishop joined her team in Brighton to continue the search, walking around the South Downs in pairs.
The officer said: “We had the hope that she was still alive because she wasn’t with them. Obviously, that didn’t turn out to be the case.
“But we just worked out from where they were located and went to remote areas because we believed they were sleeping in a tent at that time.
”Pc Stewart added: “I was always hopeful that we were going to find her alive in my mind, hoping that someone was looking after her.
“But also there was that part of me that thought, is she in a tent somewhere miles away in the woods on her own?
“I had a newborn at the time myself so it really brought it home, to think if that was my son.”
On March 1, Ms Bishop received a call from the lead investigator to say the baby had been found dead inside a Lidl bag covered in rubbish.
After a six-month Old Bailey retrial, Marten and Gordon were found guilty of the manslaughter of their daughter on Monday.
Ms Bishop said: “I think the guilty verdict will just show that we’ve got some closure for baby Victoria, and that her parents are being brought to justice because what they did, should never be accepted by anybody.”
The pair had took numerous taxis around the country and loitered around different ports in a bid to get out of the UK.
They later made their way to East Sussex and settled in the South Downs National Park with few possessions or food in freezing conditions with the newborn baby from 8 January 2023 onward.
It is not known exactly when the baby was born, or when she died. It is believed the newborn was alive for some weeks and was forced to endure the cold outdoor conditions.
At no stage did Marten or Gordon seek help for themselves or their baby.
When spotted by witnesses and on CCTV footage, the baby was seen only in a baby grow and without adequate winter clothing for the cold outdoors.
The infant was not wearing any socks, a hat or even a blanket.
Experts have described Gordon, 50, as a sociopathic sex offender.
He was just 14 when he raped a woman at knifepoint in 1989 after breaking into her home armed with knives and hedge clippers.
He was jailed for 40 years, serving half of that in the US before being deported back to the UK.
The case is now the subject of a national child safeguarding review to consider whether new laws should be brought in to protect unborn children.