Lucy Clarke-Billings
BBC News
PA Media
The jury has retired to consider its verdicts in the retrial of Constance Marten and Mark Gorden, who are both accused of the manslaughter by gross negligence of their newborn baby.
The couple became the subjects of a police manhunt in 2023 when officers found evidence of a recent birth in a burnt-out car near Bolton.
They were found on 27 February 2023 and the newborn – who they had called Victoria – was discovered dead two days later in a shopping bag in an allotment shed in the Hollingbury area of Brighton. She had died in a tent in the South Downs in January 2023.
Gordon, 51, and Marten, 38, both deny manslaughter by gross negligence and causing or allowing the death of a child.
Gordon and Marten were found guilty at an earlier trial of concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice by not reporting her death.
The jury in that case could not come to a verdict on the outstanding charges.
A retrial at the Old Bailey in London began in March.
