Mark Gordon previously convicted of rape in US, Old Bailey retrial told
Mark Gordon was convicted of a series of sexual offences, including rape, which took place in Florida in 1989 when he was aged 14, a jury heard on Thursday. The details of his previous convictions were read to the jury at a retrial of separate charges at the Old Bailey in London.Gordon and his partner Constance Marten are standing trial on charges of the manslaughter by gross negligence of their newborn baby Victoria and of causing or allowing the death of a child.Victoria's decomposing body was found in a shopping bag in a shed in a Brighton allotment in March 2023.
The jury were told of the details of Gordon's prior offences in the United States when he was 14 years old.On 29 April 1989, he broke into the house of a next door neighbour wearing a nylon stocking over his face, armed with a knife and hedge clippers, the court heard. He demanded that the woman inside the house undress and attempted to rape her, before orally raping her and committing other sexual assaults. Gordon then held her for four-and-a-half hours against her will.On 21 May of the same year, he broke into another property carrying a flat-headed shovel and beat a male occupant about the head with the shovel.He was sentenced in the US to 40 years in prison, of which he served 22 years.In questions to Det Sgt Ian Valentine, who was giving evidence about the convictions, Mark Gordon, who is now representing himself, suggested that he had been "manipulated" in his police interviews in Florida, saying he had been a 14-year-old child without adult supervision.Det Sgt Valentine said: "I am not aware of the circumstances of the case. I am just aware of the outcome."The jury also heard that on three occasions Marten's family commissioned private investigators to conduct surveillance on the couple.A company called LSG was hired by Marten's mother, Virginie de Selliers, in 2016 to trace her daughter. LSG was successful and managed to take some photos of the couple.LSG was then hired by Marten's father, Napier Marten, to engineer a meeting in a café.Mrs de Selliers hired a second company, Blackstone Consultancy, in 2021 to investigate the couple's "pattern of life". The resulting investigation, dubbed "Operation Lynx", lasted two months, and more photographs were taken.The retrial will continue on Monday.
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