Moment aristocrat Constance Marten and her lover's car was ablaze on the side of the motorway before they went on the run - as van driver who saw vehicle catch fire tells court he saw aristocrat with baby as he left the scene

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The moment that aristocrat Constance Marten and her lover’s car burned at the side of a motorway as they went on the run with a baby has been played to a court as the pair face a trial over the infant’s death.

Ken Hudson, a van driver who witnessed Marten and her partner Mark Gordon’s Peugeot 206 go up in flames, told jurors at the Old Bailey he stopped to help on the M61 in Greater Manchester on January 5 2023.

Marten, 36, and Gordon, 49, who are charged with causing or allowing the death of a baby girl, were seen to get out of the car and empty it as it caught fire, throwing items over the crash barrier, Mr Hudson told the court.

He added that he still wondered whether the baby, which was to be named Victoria, would still be alive if he had ignored their wishes to leave the scene – as he revealed he gently touched the infant’s head and said: ‘God bless.’

He told jurors he had spent the last year being ‘been cut up…because I believe that if I’d have stayed with that vehicle and the people that baby may be still alive.’

Video footage taken by Ken Hudson of a car used by Constance Marten and Mark Gordon burning on the M61

Constance Marten (left) and Mark Gordon both deny manslaughter by gross negligence

Aristocrat Constance Marten is said to have given birth in secret and decided to go ‘off-grid’

Mr Hudson, who was travelling with his son, told jurors: ‘I saw dark smoke travelling forwards, lots of smoke. The smoke became a flame so I tried to alert the car in front.’

As the car pulled into the hard shoulder, he said he stopped in front of them and phoned 999, asking for the police and the fire service.

He continued: ‘As I’m on the phone one person was getting out of the car on the right and one person was getting out on the left on the driver’s side and the flames were getting bigger.

‘On the passenger side a person got out and ran past me on my right as I was on the phone.

‘They ran towards me and to my right and probably stopped about five paces to the back of me.

‘As the female ran towards me the person who got out of the driver’s side went to the rear of the vehicle, opened the boot of the car and was frantically trying to get things out of the car.

‘The fire was getting bigger. The person who got out of driver’s side was throwing things over to the barrier that runs parallel with the hard shoulder.

‘I was shouting to the person to get away from the vehicle because I could see the flames were getting bigger and bigger.

‘The person eventually did move away and into the oncoming traffic on the motorway. I told them to come back into the hard shoulder.

‘The person then came towards me and stood to my right as I was looking at the car.

‘I then started to record the fire on my mobile phone, and the first response from the gentleman was to ask me: am I filming that?’

Mr Hudson said Gordon then offered to pay him if he gave them a lift to the nearest services, as he asked Marten whether the baby was okay.

He added: ‘When the lady ran past me she (the baby) was bundled up in a blanket, and once I stopped filming and turned to look I could see that she was carrying a bundle and at the top was a baby’s head – the top of the skull was protruding out slightly.

‘The lady said: “She’s fine”. She said: “You don’t need to wait, you can go, we’ll be fine now.

‘I put my hand on the baby’s head and said “God bless, keep safe” and then we got into the van.’

Asked by prosecutor Tom Little KC if the baby had been warm to the touch, he said it seemed cool, ‘but it was winter’, he added.

Asked if he had heard any noise from the baby or seen any movement, he replied: ‘None whatsoever.’

Marten’s barrister Tom Godfrey said the only thing Marten disputes is that she would not have let a stranger touch her baby’s head.

Mr Hudson said: ‘I know I touched the baby’s head – the reason that I know is because throughout the year I’ve been cut up myself because I believe that if I’d have stayed with that vehicle and the people that baby may be still alive.’

His son Jack Hudson said he heard Marten shouting ‘Mark’ and telling him to get back from the burning vehicle.

The court heard that Marten’s passport, burner phones, nappies, babygrows and a placenta wrapped in a towel were discarded in the wreckage of the car.

A high-risk missing persons inquiry was launched after the car caught fire and the couple became front-page news, the court was told.

The defendants were picked up by a member of the public and taken to a Morrisons store in Bolton, where they arrived just before 8pm.

Marten later told officers she and Gordon ran away with the baby after their car ‘exploded’ assuming that police would take their daughter away, after a number of their other children had been removed by social services.

She said the pair then decided to ‘remove ourselves from society’ when people started to recognise them on the streets.

Before their car caught fire, the couple moved across the Pennines and checked into the Ibis hotel at the Lymm Services in Cheshire in the early hours of the morning, the court heard.

Later that same day, they also checked into the AC Hotel in Manchester.

In a statement read to the court, a receptionist from the Ibis hotel said Marten had been ‘very well spoken’ when they met, and had introduced herself as a ‘freelance journalist’.

Jurors heard that both Marten and Gordon ‘looked absolutely exhausted’, with Gordon seen ferrying bags from the car to both hotel rooms.

A member of staff from the Manchester hotel said Gordon reminded her of ‘someone who is homeless and is carrying all their things around with them’.

The couple spent nearly two months camping in a blue tent in the bitterly cold South Downs near Brighton before the baby, wearing only a onesie, allegedly froze to death.

Victoria was later found dead in a Lidl bag for life, where prosecutors say she had spent most of her life – but Marten and Gordon claim they took care of her before she suddenly died.

The couple, of no fixed address, deny manslaughter by gross negligence, perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty and causing or allowing the death of a child.

The trial continues.