3 days ago
Lover of aristocrat Constance Marten who is accused of killing baby served 22 years in a US jail for rape
An aristocrat's lover accused of killing their baby is a convicted rapist, a court heard yesterday.
Mark Gordon, 50, also committed an 'armed kidnapping' when he was just 14.
He served 22 years in a US jail for a series of sexual and violent offences when he was a teenager, including a knife-point rape.
Gordon, who stands accused with Constance Marten, 37, of killing their daughter by gross negligence, had previously been convicted of armed kidnapping, four sexual assaults, armed burglary and aggravated battery.
Yesterday the Old Bailey heard Gordon broke into a woman's house in Florida with a knife and hedge clippers on April 29, 1989.
He ordered the victim to undress before holding her captive for more than four and a half hours while he carried out a series of rapes and sexual assaults.
Three weeks later Gordon committed an armed burglary, breaking into a family's home and battering a man over the head with a flat-headed shovel.
He was sentenced to 40 years in prison on February 11, 1994 and served 22 years of the term.
Following his release, Gordon came to the UK where he was later convicted of assaulting two police officers at a hospital where Marten gave birth to their first child under a false name in 2017.
Marten is a member of the aristocratic Sturt/Marten family, from which she is estranged. Her father was a page to Queen Elizabeth in the 1970s.
After Gordon's assault and their four children were taken into care, the couple decided to go on the run with their fifth child, Victoria, in December 2022 to stop her being taken away by social services.
The baby died after they decided to camp in a tent on the South Downs, East Sussex, in freezing temperatures. On March 1, 2023, the infant was found buried under rubbish in a shopping bag that had been discarded in a shed.
Experts have been unable to determine whether Victoria died of hypothermia or if she was smothered by her sleeping mother in a cramped tent.
Last week when Gordon gave evidence about his earlier life he failed to mention his convictions. He said to jurors he had a 'reasonably decent background' and that he had been taught 'empathy' at an early age by his mother.
He told the court: 'I have a great respect for the law', adding 'I like to follow the rules'.
Yesterday he claimed he had been subjected to an 'unfair and unlawful' prosecution when he was a teenager. Gordon, who is representing himself after his lawyers quit, said America had a history of racism and 'framing innocent people'.
But the court was then told that Gordon had pleaded guilty to armed burglary and aggravated battery and had been convicted by a jury of the kidnapping, sexual assaults and burglary in 1994, discrediting his claim.
Marten and Gordon deny manslaughter by gross negligence and an alternative charge of causing or allowing the death of a child.
At an earlier trial the couple were convicted of concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice by hiding Victoria's body. The trial continues.
