Constance Marten: The former Tatler It-girl who became estranged from her aristocratic family

When Constance Marten was made Tatler’s ‘It’ girl in 2008, there was little to suggest that 15 years later she would be on the run with Mark Gordon and their newborn baby.

Ms Marten, 36, was born into an aristocratic family in the palatial settings of Crichel House, a sprawling country estate in Dorset.

The estate belonged to her father, Napier Marten, who was a former page to Queen Elizabeth II and heir to the family’s £115 million fortune.

Ms Marten’s paternal grandmother, Mary Anna Marten, was goddaughter to the late Queen Mother, while her great grandfather, Captain Napier Sturt, was the third and final Baron Alington.

Ms Marten grew up at Crichel with her family, including her mother, Virginie De Selliers, 63, a psychotherapist, and two brothers Maximilian, 34, and Tobias, 31.

She attended St Mary’s Shaftesbury, an independent Roman Catholic boarding school for girls which charged boarders annual fees of more than £30,000.

In 1996, when Ms Marten was nine years old, her father had an awakening which prompted him to pursue a drastic change in lifestyle.

Realising that “everything in my life materially was a completely empty shell”, Napier Marten acted on a voice which told him to leave his inheritance and fly to Australia.

He shaved his head, joined a group of indigenous people and had an out-of-body experience.

Ms Marten, like her father, had a strong bohemian streak.

She would recount how she enjoyed “naked picnics, siestas amid [hay bales], and tractor scoops” at her childhood home in a post on Facebook.

In 2008, she went to Leeds University and obtained a 2:1 in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies. As a student she appeared as Tatler magazine’s "Babe of the Month" in which she described cider as “one of my five a day”.

After university, she moved to London where she worked as a researcher for the Arabic TV network Al Jazeera and gained an NCTJ qualification in journalism.

She enjoyed summers in the Swiss Alps, volunteered to help impoverished children in Nepal and was in Tahrir Square during the 2011 Egyptian uprising.

'Easy manipulation'

Ms Marten is also thought to have lived with a cult in Lagos, Nigeria, for a period that her father believes was a significant turning point in her life.

Napier Marten urged the police to investigate his daughter’s time at the Synagogue, Church of All Nations, in Lagos, following claims reported by The Independent that she was “brainwashed” during her time there.

Ms Marten is thought to have lived for six months under TB Joshua, the church’s leader, who Mr Marten described as a “phoney prophet”.

The leader of the Christian megachurch has been accused of abusing its adherents, according to The Independent, with Ms Marten reportedly having been forced to eat his leftover food.

Mr Marten told the newspaper: “These experiences appear to have been a trigger in so much of what has happened to harm Constance in recent years, setting up a pattern of behaviour exposing her to easy manipulation.”

In 2016, shortly after Ms Marten enrolled on an acting course at East 15 drama school in Essex, she met Mark Gordon.

Ms Marten and Gordon are believed to have lived an increasingly isolated existence since they met. Their relationship saw her drop out of acting school and cut ties with much of her family. It is believed they kept her pregnancy secret.

Napier Marten, a film and music producer, told The Independent that although he was estranged from his “darling daughter” he was “deeply concerned” for her wellbeing.

After Ms Marten and Gordon went on the run in early January, police found evidence that she gave birth in the back of their car, which was discovered on Jan 5 abandoned and on fire on the M61 near Bolton.

Shortly afterwards, Ms Marten was caught on CCTV carrying the baby who was only a few days old, as they made their way to Liverpool, Harwich, Colchester and then East Ham, in east London.

The couple used cash to pay for taxis and stayed under fake names in hotels as they travelled to Liverpool, Harwich and Colchester, before being seen purchasing camping equipment in east London.

They were found without their baby in Brighton on Monday night. The newborn baby is feared to have died, police have said as the couple were arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.

The police search for the infant, born in secret in the back of a car two months ago, now spans 90 square miles across Brighton and the Sussex Downs.