A man on trial with his partner over the death of their newborn baby has described the prosecution case against him as “like a script from a movie”.
Mark Gordon said in his closing speech that the prosecution had “just made things up” during his retrial with Constance Marten at the Old Bailey in London.
He rejected the prosecution’s central allegation that their baby, Victoria, had died of hypothermia after they had negligently taken her camping in January 2023, telling the jury: “We are experienced campers.”
Gordon, 51, and Marten, 38, both deny manslaughter by gross negligence and causing or allowing the death of a child.
Victoria’s decomposed body was found in a shopping bag in an allotment shed in Brighton in March 2023. She had died in a tent in the South Downs in January 2023.
Gordon made his own closing speech because his lawyers had withdrawn.
During their evidence in the retrial, the couple both said their baby died on the second day of camping, with Marten having woken up to find she had slumped over Victoria, who was no longer breathing.
“We didn’t move from the body for three whole days,” Gordon said, adding that the couple had considered suicide after their daughter’s death.
In his closing speech last week, prosecutor Tom Little KC said Victoria had been exposed to “cold, damp and windy conditions with wholly inadequate clothing inside that tent”.
“It was simply too cold, she could not maintain her temperature and death was inevitable,” he told the jury.
But Gordon said on Monday that the prosecution’s case that Victoria had died of hypothermia was a “hypothesis”.
He reminded the jury that Marten had told the court they had erected their tent in a “sheltered area with a fallen tree”.
They wore several layers of clothing and the tent was well ventilated so there was no condensation, he added.
“The whole prosecution in this case is like a script from a movie, indeed a fictional novel,” he told jurors.
“The prosecution has just made things up and filled in the blanks in support of the plot, the narrative, the theme of the story.
“Despite all the barking, all the theatrics, it is just a show, an act.”
Marten and Gordon were found guilty at an earlier trial of concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice by not reporting her death.
The jury in that case could not come to a verdict on the outstanding charges. A retrial began in March.
The trial continues.
Additional reporting by James Gregory.
