A MUM whose baby was found dead in a Lidl bag considered “cremating” her daughter after she died in Harwich, a court heard.
On-the-run mother Constance Marten wept in court as she denied endangering her baby, saying: “I did nothing but show her love.”
The aristocrat, 36, and her partner Mark Gordon, 49, are on trial over the death of baby Victoria while living off-grid in a tent on the South Downs in wintry conditions last year.
Victoria was found dead in a Lidl bag on March 1 last year after the couple had been on the run for seven weeks in a bid to prevent her being taken into care as four siblings had been.
On Thursday, Marten went into the witness box at the Old Bailey to give evidence in her defence.
She told jurors Victoria died on January 9 last year, saying: “I do not think it is anything I will ever move on from.
“I feel guilty because she was in my arms. I feel like it’s not an easy thing to live with. I think initially it was disbelief, shock, intense grief.”
Asked by her barrister, Francis FitzGibbon KC, what happened to Victoria, she replied: “I had her in my jacket and when I woke up my head was on the floor. And when I was sitting up and when I woke up she was not alive.”
She told jurors she considered cremating Victoria after placing her inside the supermarket bag.
She said: “I had a thousand different thoughts going on in my head. I immediately panicked.
“I just didn’t know what to do. They are going to have a field day out of this – the media and press and social services, everyone.
“She was in my care and the next thing she died. I thought, ‘How am I going to get my kids back now Victoria has passed away’?”
Marten said that in the end she could not bring herself to burn Victoria’s body.
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Greater Manchester Police launched a nationwide search after a placenta was also found in the burnt-out vehicle.
Marten described travelling from the north west to Essex, where she first learned of the media alert from a member of the public.
She said: “I think Mark and I were in a state of panic with all the media attention and not knowing what to do. I was hyper vigilant.”
Earlier in the trial, the court heard a police interview where Marten said Victoria was born in Cumbria on December 24, 2022 and died in the Harwich area around January 8, 2023.
The defendants, of no fixed address, deny manslaughter by gross negligence, perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty and causing or allowing the death of a child.
The Old Bailey trial was adjourned until Friday.
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