How killer aristocrat Constance Marten’s gilded life unravelled - and how she made friends behind bars
Just how did a woman from an aristocratic background whose grandmother rubbed shoulders with the Queen end up destitute before being found guilty of killing her newborn baby?
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Wealthy aristocrat Constance 'Toots' Marten, 38, spent her childhood years on the Crichel Estate in Dorset - a mansion nestled among sprawling parkland that included four villages, an ornamental lake, and a cricket club.
As the granddaughter of Mary Anna Marten, whose godmother was the late Queen Mother and friend of Princess Margaret, and the daughter of Napier Marten, who was a page to Queen Elizabeth, Constance was set up with a trust fund that gave her freedom as an adult.
When she was nine years old, her father had an 'awakening' that saw him leave the family and his inheritance behind for a new life in Australia, which deeply affected a young Constance.
She attended a strict Roman Catholic boarding school where she was popular with the other students who saw her as fun-loving if not a little rebellious.
Read more: Killer aristocrat Constance Marten had four children taken into care before death of newborn baby
One family friend, who has known Marten all her life, told The Times: “She always loathed authority of any kind — parental, school, you name it.
"And she obviously learnt very young that she could manipulate. She is very clever and that is her disadvantage. She is a very intelligent woman and uses that intelligence to manipulate."
Things changed for Constance when she travelled to Nigeria during her gap year in 2006.
She fell under the spell of the abusive pastor TB Joshua who founded The Synagogue, Church of All Nations (SCOAN) in Lagos in the late 1980s.
After visiting the church with her mother, Joshua convinced Constance to stay in Lagos to run the ministry, where she spent three months before she was able to escape.
During her time there, she was forced to live in a dormitory with 50 women who were watched by armed guards, starved, and woken at night for biblical readings. The white followers were disciplined for not standing up when Joshua entered the room and forced to eat his leftover food.
Friends and family have said that when Constance returned to the UK, she was a different person.
A source close to the family said: "Constance was badly traumatised by the whole thing. Everyone talks about two Constances: the person she was before she went to Nigeria and the person who came home. She was profoundly and fundamentally changed."
Her father said while she was on the run: "These experiences appear to have been a trigger in so much of what has happened to harm Constance in recent years, setting up a pattern of behaviour exposing her to easy manipulation."
It took a while for her to find her footing after her experiences; she spent time travelling and working in various jobs until 2008, when she started studying Arabic and Middle East studies at Leeds University.
Her third year was spent in Cairo which was bubbling over with unrest as the Arab Spring protests swept the region.
She was perfectly placed to get a taste of journalism as she took photos of the mass protests in Tahrir Square that led to her winning an award.
Constance took up a role as a senior researcher at Al Jazeera, based in London, when she graduated but was unreliable, frequently turning up whenever she pleased.
She went on to study on an NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists) course with the Press Association where, again, she struggled to maintain a presence.
There were other attempts to kickstart a career, but none of them wound up sticking for Constance, which led to her meeting Mark Gordon in an incense shop, and the rest is history.
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 couple's first four children were put up for adoption after a family court judge ruled she was the victim of domestic violence at the hands of Gordon.
Read more: Shocking moment runaway aristocrat Constance Marten's baby was discovered amid rubbish in Lidl bag
The court intervened in January 2022, after years of protracted legal argument, amid concerns that Marten was a victim of domestic abuse and that the children were at risk.
Her Honour Judge Reardon ruled that "nothing else will do for these children."
She found the parents had failed to provide adequate healthcare and had prioritised their own desire for privacy and secrecy over the wellbeing of their children.
It was also revealed that when Marten was pregnant, Gordon had "either pushed her out of a first-floor window or caused her to fall during an argument."
As a result, "the mother suffered serious injuries and the father failed to seek medical assistance."
The couple fled authorities and went off-grid following the birth of newborn Victoria in a bid to keep their baby after her 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.
As an inmate at HMP Bronzefield, Constance has featured as the cover model for a magazine touting itself as "for women with conviction."
In the article, she levelled criticism at Serco, the company which transports prisoners between jail and court, for the two-hour trip and being accompanied by minimum wage guards.
But, she is known at the prison for challenging procedures, inciting dissent among fellow inmates, and has even formed a friendship with Beinash Batool, the stepmother convicted last year of murdering Sara Sharif.