Mark Gordon: The rapist who went on the run with his aristocrat partner and their newborn baby

Independent

a day ago

More than 30 years ago, Mark Gordon was jailed for the horrific rape of a neighbour, terrorising his victim in her own home after climbing through her bedroom window, armed with garden shears.
After serving 22 years in a US jail, Gordon is now back behind bars in the UK, having today been convicted alongside his aristocrat partner Constance Marten of gross negligence manslaughter of their newborn baby Victoria.
The couple were the subject of a high-profile nationwide manhunt in early 2023 before they were eventually caught by police two months later. Tiny Victoria's body was discovered in a Lidl shopping bag, lying among a sandwich wrapper and an empty beer can, having been discarded in an allotment shed before the couple fled in a bid to evade police.
At the heart of the tragedy is the relationship between Gordon and Marten, whose backgrounds could not have been more different.
Marten, some 13 years his junior, was once a society 'It girl' who graced the pages of Tatler magazine. But she broke ties with her affluent family and embarked on an off-the-grid life once her courtship with Gordon took hold.
Throughout their eight-year relationship, the couple had four children removed from their care, with the convicted felon and Marten eventually landing in the dock of the Old Bailey to face manslaughter charges over the death of their fifth child.
For Gordon, it was yet another episode in what had become a life of crime. Born in Birmingham in 1974, Gordon and his family moved to Florida when he was a child, where they lived at several addresses in Miami, including Broward and Miami-Dade County.
On 29 April 1989, then aged 14 and armed with a kitchen knife and garden shears, he attacked his neighbour, holding her hostage for over four hours as he raped her.
US court documents detail how the woman found him lurking outside her bedroom with a nylon stocking covering his face after she came out of her room to investigate why her dogs were barking.
The documents say that while two young children were sleeping next door, Gordon ordered her back into the bedroom and demanded she undress. There he raped her and held her against her will in the property, before fleeing.
Less than a month later, on 21 May, he broke into a different home just six doors away from his first victim while armed with a flat-headed shovel in an attempted robbery.
After forcing his way in, he picked up knives in the home and found a man lying in bed. Court documents reveal that, when the man woke up, Gordon beat him about his head and body with the shovel.
Arrested less than a month later on 13 June, Gordon was charged with one count of armed kidnapping, four separate counts of armed sexual battery and one count of burglary with a deadly weapon.
He was sentenced to 40 years and served 22 years in a Florida prison before being deported back to the UK in 2010.
Little is known about his life over the next four years, until he met Marten at an incense shop in London in 2014, while she was studying acting at East 15 drama school following a short career in journalism.
Two years later, the pair had a marriage ceremony in Peru, although it was not legally binding.
Over the coming years, the two distanced themselves from society, with Marten's friends questioning on social media where their beloved 'Toots' had gone.
It is understood that the couple moved to Ilford, east London, but were evicted and spent time living in a campervan and a festival-style tent while welcoming their first child together.
But concerns were raised by social services, particularly after the couple gave false names to a hospital and posed with a 'fake Irish accent' while Marten was in labour.
Jurors heard that Gordon had pleaded guilty to assaulting two police officers who had been called to a maternity ward in Wales in 2017 after Marten gave birth to one of Victoria's older siblings.
Gordon had to be forcibly restrained during the incident, and a new father had stepped in to help the two female officers before more police arrived to arrest him.
Giving evidence in court, Gordon, who represented himself, did not refer to his troubled past but told jurors: 'Everybody faces challenges in life.'
Eventually, after an incident of domestic violence in 2019, a judge found a 'risk of harm to the children by being exposed to physical violence between the parents', and all four of the couple's children were removed from their care in 2022.
Given their decision to avoid living a 'mainstream' life, they did their utmost to stay below the radar. In August 2022, they were evicted from their home in the Coldharbour Estate, in Greenwich, for failing to pay rent, leaving smoke damage and a partially collapsed ceiling in their wake.
Yet Gordon once again caught the attention of the police on 5 January 2023, after he and Marten abandoned their burning car on the hard shoulder of the M61, with several burner phones and placenta discovered inside.
The discovery came shortly after the couple had welcomed a fifth child over the Christmas period, with media appeals tracing their movements to Bolton, Liverpool, Essex, East Ham and eventually the South Downs near Brighton.
On 27 February, they were arrested after a nationwide manhunt, with both refusing to reveal their child's locations despite pleas from officers.
Upon arriving at Worthing police station, a seemingly injured Gordon proceeded to clamber from the wheelchair where he was sitting on the floor, complaining that his legs were hurting, when invited to tell his 'side of the story'.
Grumbling that he was receiving sub-par treatment, he insisted he had committed no crimes and was entitled to respect before asking for pills to help with pain in his feet.
In a rant caught on police camera, he said: 'I feel like I'm scum. I feel like I'm scumbag actually. I feel like I'm a piece of s***. I feel like that's how I've been treated.'
Taking the witness stand, he claimed Victoria would still be alive had the police not pursued them after their car burst into flames on a motorway near Bolton.
'We had become deranged a little bit. We were off our heads,' he said. 'You have got two people being harassed by forces.
Weeping, he said: 'At one point, I remarked to my wife we should all go together on a pyre with the baby.
'It's a horrible thing to be seen like we are being seen, like monsters. It's a horrible thing to see your life destroyed before your very eyes.
'It's our baby. She died. She's gone. We have to live with this. Our names have been dragged through the mud like we are scum.'