Claire Ellison and Daniel Sandford
Reporting at the Old Bailey

Gordon's barrister is asking Judge Mark Lucraft KC if she can have half an hour to further prepare.

He allows her some time, but says he is "not going to give much more time because Mr Gordon seems more interested in speaking to Ms Marten in the back of the court rather than listening."

The judge adds that he would like to hear from the prosecution before the hearing is adjourned for more legal advice.

As we mentioned a little earlier, Gordon previously said he'd had trouble finding representation.

Helena Wilkinson and Daniel Sandford
Reporting from the Old Bailey

Judge Lucraft has come into the court and taken his seat.

Marten and Gordon, who had been chatting, are asked to confirm their names.

The two defendants are sitting just three metres apart from each other in the large dock in the Old Bailey's Court 8.

Marten just put her hands together in the shape of a heart while looking at Gordon.

Helena Wilkinson
Reporting from the Old Bailey

Gordon wasn’t represented by any lawyers towards the end of his retrial earlier this year. He ended up representing himself.

Everything became hugely complicated as a result, leading to lengthy delays. We wondered if he would have a barrister at his sentencing hearing today and he does - Philippa McAtasney KC. But for some time he struggled to find one.

At a hearing in August Gordon told the judge that “potentially owing to the negative publicity of this case people are reluctant to take this case on.

“I am not up to the challenge of representing myself,” he said. “I am not competent to do this. It is too much pressure on me."

Daniel Sandford
Reporting from the Old Bailey

Constance Marten's mother Virginie de Selliers has taken a seat in the courtroom in front of the news media.

Helena Wilkinson
Reporting from the Old Bailey

Constance Marten has just entered the dock with two dock officers. She is wearing a black suit jacket and a blue scarf.

Moments later, Mark Gordon also walked into the dock.

The pair are chatting.

Daniel Sandford
Reporting from the Old Bailey

We understand around half a dozen jurors have returned to watch the sentencing of the defendants they convicted after the five-month trial.

Helena Wilkinson
Reporting from the Old Bailey

The issues raised by baby Victoria’s death are the focus of a national child safeguarding practice review which started in November 2023.

A panel spokesperson says it will consider "what happened to her [Victoria], together with evidence from other situations where children have been seriously harmed or died".

"The review aims to identify national learning to support public agencies in their work to safeguard children at risk of abuse and neglect," the spokesperson says, adding that findings will be published "in due course".

Helena Wilkinson
Reporting from the Old Bailey

We are now in the courtroom among more than 20 members of the press. Court staff have had to bring in extra seats to accommodate everyone.

The jury bench and the press bench have been reserved for any jurors who wish to return for the sentencing hearing.

There are two sets of jurors. One from the first trial in 2024. The other jury from the retrial earlier this year.

After Marten and Gordon were found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter at their retrial in July, the Judge told the jury that they would be welcome back at the sentencing hearing.

Judge Mark Lucraft KC also said they’d been “quite remarkable” and excused them from doing jury service again.

Daniel Sandford
Reporting from the Old Bailey

Slightly inevitably given the history of this case, the sentencing hearing will start late.

Constance Marten has only just arrived at the court building from HMP Bronzefield, and needs to see her legal team.

We may not start before 11:00 now.

The backgrounds and actions of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, as well as their relationship, are all explored in a BBC documentary called The Big Cases - The Aristocrat, the Convict and the Missing Baby.

It includes interviews with family, friends and witnesses - as well as extensive research on the case.

You can watch the documentary on BBC iPlayer - it will also be airing on BBC Two at 23:00 tonight.

Helena Wilkinson
Reporting from the Old Bailey

In August, the Court of Appeal confirmed to the BBC it had received an application on behalf of Marten seeking permission to appeal against her conviction for gross negligence manslaughter.

She previously applied to appeal against her child cruelty conviction from her first trial, but that was rejected by appeal judges.

A missing persons manhunt was launched for Marten and Mark Gordon in January 2023, after a car they had been travelling in was discovered on fire on the M61 near Bolton.

BBC correspondent Helena Wilkinson recounts the hunt for baby Victoria and her parents in the video below.

Helena Wilkinson
Reporting from the Old Bailey

We are outside Court 8 at the Old Bailey, waiting for the doors to open - we're part of a big queue of journalists here today.

Many are the same ones who have been covering Marten and Gordon’s case.

The sentencing hearing is expected to get under way at 10:30.

The disappearance of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, the birth of their child outside medical care and her subsequent death came after years of interactions between the couple and social services.

Baby Victoria, whose death was at the centre of this trial, was their fifth child. All four of their other children were taken into care over concerns Marten and Gordon could not look after them.

Family court documents reveal the chaotic lives the pair led together and lengths they went to in an attempt to evade authorities. Those proceedings heard how Marten fled to Ireland to avoid social services and how a judge ruled that "on the balance of probabilities", Gordon had caused Marten to fall from a first-floor window while she was pregnant in 2019.

The circumstances around their other children being taken into care help explain why police were so concerned for Victoria that a nationwide search was launched to find the couple when they vanished from the radar.

We have the full story of the pair's history in our article.

Helena Wilkinson
Reporting from the Old Bailey

Image source, Metropolitan Police

Victoria’s short life was spent crisscrossing the country with her parents who were on the run from the authorities.

Marten and Gordon said they feared their baby daughter would be taken from them and placed into care like their four older children.

The couple together with their newborn ended up in a flimsy tent on the South Downs in East Sussex in the middle of cold and windy winter in January 2023. It was inside the tent where Victoria died.

Victoria’s body was found weeks later in a disused shed in Brighton. She was inside a shopping bag covered in rubbish.

Helena Wilkinson
Reporting from the Old Bailey

Image source, Metropolitan Police

Marten and Gordon were found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter at their retrial in July so they'll both be sentenced for that crime.

They were also convicted of child cruelty, concealing the birth of Victoria and perverting the course of justice by not reporting her death at their first trial in 2024.

They’ll be sentenced for those offences too.

Daniel Sandford
Reporting from the Old Bailey

Constance Marten’s mother, Virginie de Selliers, has arrived at court for the sentencing.

She attended almost all of the first trial but did not come to the second.

Image source, Florida Department of Law Enforcement

It wasn’t until the jury had delivered its verdict that we could report Mark Gordon was convicted of a violent rape he committed in 1989 when he was 14.

Gordon, now 51, was living in the US when he broke into his neighbour’s home and subjected her to a sustained attack.

His victim - who we are not naming - told BBC News she believes Gordon to be a “psychopath”, adding: "The four-and-a-half hours I spent with him was enough to know he is evil.”

He was sentenced to 40 years in prison and, after serving 20 years, was deported back to the UK, where he would go on to meet Marten in London.

You can read more about Gordon’s past, but keep in mind that it includes some distressing details.

Helena Wilkinson
Reporting from the Old Bailey

I've reported on many criminal cases, but nothing like Constance Marten and Mark Gordon's.

Their trials were extraordinary. A couple who were twice in the dock over the death of their newborn baby, they appeared to be completely in love and still fiercely united. And yet they had utter contempt for the court process.

They caused chaos across their two trials, which both overran by months. At one point, the Old Bailey's most senior judge accused them of trying to "sabotage" and "manipulate" their retrial. It nearly collapsed a number of times.

Their behaviour - from refusing to turn up to court and claiming to be ill, to sacking countless barristers and Gordon's trousers even being misplaced one day - left His Honour Judge Mark Lucraft KC exasperated on many occasions.

Now their case is over, we can report some of the remarkable moments when jurors were not in court. At times what happened across the trials was jaw-dropping.

Read Helena Wilkinson’s full reflections here.

• 5 January 2023 - Greater Manchester Police launches an investigation after Mark Gordon and Constance Marten’s car is found on fire and abandoned on the hard shoulder of the M61 in Bolton. A placenta wrapped in a towel was found inside
• 7 January - They are seen by a member of the public in Harwich at around 09:00 having taken a taxi from Liverpool the night before. They are later caught on CCTV near London's East Ham station and then take a taxi to Whitechapel
• 8 January - At 01:25 the couple take another taxi from Haringey to Newhaven ferry port in east Sussex, where they are dropped off at 04:56. They are seen with bags sheltering from the rain under an overpass at the A259 at around 06:00
• 18 January – A public appeal is made by the Metropolitan Police after the couple is spotted in London and officers reveal Gordon is a convicted sex offender
• 24 January - Police say they are concerned for the safety of their baby, saying they believe the couple have been sleeping rough in freezing temperatures
• 27 February – At 21:30 the couple are arrested in Brighton on suspicion of child neglect after a tip-off from a member of the public. Baby Victoria is not with them
• 1 March - Baby Victoria's body was found in a shed in Brighton in a Lidl bag
• 25 January 2024 – Marten and Gordon go on trial at the Old Bailey
• 26 June – The couple are found guilty of concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice. Jurors were discharged and a retrial was ordered on other charges that the jury could not reach a verdict on
• 26 June 2025 – Following a retrial at the Old Bailey and after a long-drawn out court case in which Gordon sacked his legal team multiple times; Marten and Gordon are both convicted of gross negligence manslaughter