The sightings of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon – from Liverpool to Brighton

Published

2 years ago

February 28, 2023

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A couple who went missing with their newborn child have been found and arrested, although their baby is still missing.

Constance Marten, 35, and her partner Mark Gordon, 48, were first reported missing after their car broke down and was found burning on the M61 near Bolton, Greater Manchester, on Thursday 5 January.

Sussex Police said they were spotted in Brighton by a member of the public just before 9.30pm on Monday before they were arrested and taken into police custody – an urgent search operation has been launched to find their baby.

Here, Sky News looks at what we know so far about the search.

First reported missing

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) released an appeal on Friday 6 January for information on the whereabouts of the couple and their baby.

They said the couple were last seen the day before, on Thursday 5 January, after breaking down by junction four of the M61 near Bolton.

The force said they had evidence suggesting Ms Marten, who comes from a wealthy family, had “very recently given birth, and neither her or the baby have been assessed by medical professionals”.

The couple left the car and walked towards Anchor Lane bridge, which links the Highfield and Little Hulton areas, at around 6.30pm.

They are believed to have paid in cash to travel first to Liverpool and then to Essex, possibly by taxi, according to the Manchester Evening News.

Police appealed directly to Ms Marten, saying their “number one priority” is to keep her “beautiful newborn safe”.

GMP also insisted officers “do not wish to interrupt their family life”.

Sightings in Essex

Police reported there had been a “number of sightings” of the couple in Essex.

GMP, working alongside Essex Police, released CCTV showing someone they believed to be Ms Marten in a red shawl outside Harwich Port at 9am on Saturday 7 January.

The couple were also believed to have been spotted in Colchester.

“Our concern is to make sure Constance, Mark and baby are safe and well,” GMP said.

Couple seen in east London

The Metropolitan Police reported a sighting of the couple in east London.

The force shared CCTV showing Ms Marten, with a red shawl around her head, and Mr Gordon, with his head lowered and apparently wearing a beanie hat, at East Ham station in Newham, east London, on Saturday 7 January.

Police believe the couple, who were at the station at some point between 10.30am and 12.30pm, took a taxi from Essex.

The couple were also seen buying camping gear on 7 January. Mr Gordon went into Argos in Whitechapel at 6.19pm, and bought a blue two-man tent, sleeping bags and two pillows.

The family was last seen walking along Brick Lane, towards Bethnal Green Road, at about 10pm that day. At 11.46pm they went to Flower and Dean Walk, where they dumped a number of items, including a pushchair.

Taxi to East Sussex

After being spotted on CCTV entering Flower and Dean Walk on Saturday evening, the pair got into a taxi to Haringey, north London.

At 1.24am on Sunday 8 January, they travelled from Haringey to Newhaven, East Sussex, where they were dropped off just outside the port at 4.56am.

They then walked to an overpass where the A259 crosses over the B2109 where they were seen sheltering from the rain.

The pair were spotted again on Sunday 8 January at 5.18am on Avis Road, Newhaven, from a petrol station forecourt CCTV. Around an hour later at 6.25am, they were seen from a house camera on Cantercrow Hill, Newhaven.

They were carrying a number of bags and their blue tent.

‘You’re putting the baby at risk’

Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford, who is leading the investigation, said in the Met’s original appeal: “We are growing increasingly concerned not only for their welfare, but for the welfare of their newborn child.

“Constance and Mark, I appeal directly to you, please think of your baby’s health and wellbeing and get in touch with us so we can ensure your child is medically well and has no underlying issues.”

In the latest appeal on 21 February, DS Basford said officers had been “working around the clock behind the scenes,” and have viewed more than “660 hours of CCTV” as part of their efforts.

Director of midwifery for Barts Health NHS Trust, Shereen Nimmo, also issued an appeal directly to Ms Marten, urging her to get medical checks done on her child.

She stressed that it was “not too late” for the child to have these checks done, but the longer the couple do not access medical care, the more they are “putting [their] baby at risk”.

Arrest in Brighton

Ms Marten and Mr Gordon were spotted in Brighton by a member of the public just before 9.30pm on Monday 28 February, Sussex Police said.

They were arrested on suspicion of child neglect and gross negligence manslaughter.

Their baby remains missing, and an urgent search operation is underway in the area, police said.

UK

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Published

59 mins ago

July 5, 2025

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.

MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.

In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.

“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.

“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.

“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.

The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.

It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.

“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.

“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

UK

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva’s funeral in pictures

Published

2 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Diogo Jota and Andre Silva's funeral in pictures

The family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva have been joined by Liverpool stars past and present and other Portuguese players at the pair’s funeral near Porto.

The Liverpool forward, 28, and his brother died in a car crash in Spain on Thursday.

Pictures below show the funeral at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in the town of Gondomar near Porto. Click here for our liveblog coverage of the day’s events.

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Miguell Rocha played with Jota for around ten years with Gondomar Sport Clube in Portugal.

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The former captain was seen wiping away tears as he read messages and laid his tribute down.

UK

How Britain’s most notorious gangster turned up at a charity lunch to fact-check a retired detective’s talk

Published

7 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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How Britain's most notorious gangster turned up at a charity lunch to fact-check a retired detective's talk

Britain’s most notorious gangster and the detective who pursued him have been involved in a bizarre confrontation…at a charity lunch.

Former Detective Superintendent Ian Brown was at a Kent golf club and about to give a talk on the infamous £26m Brink’s-Mat gold robbery when he was summoned from the stage by officials.

Mr Brown, who appeared on the award-winning Sky News StoryCast podcast The Hunt For The Brink’s-Mat Gold in 2019, said: “I go outside and they say ‘he’s here’ and I say ‘who’s here’ and they say that table over there in the corner, that’s Kenny Noye with a baseball cap pulled down over his head.”

Noye stabbed to death an undercover policeman during the Brink’s-Mat investigation, but was acquitted of murder, though he was jailed for handling the stolen gold.

After his release, he used a knife again in the M25 road-rage murder of motorist Stephen Cameron.

“They said what are we going to do?” said Mr Brown.

“I said are you serving food? Well, just use plastic knives.”

Although Mr Brown had not personally arrested Noye over Brink’s-Mat he had identified him as a suspect months after the robbery.

Years later he met him during an ill-fated TV interview in which he quizzed him about his role in the robbery.

He said: “He told me everything I wanted to know except the truth. He still insists he had nothing to do with it.”

The interview was never broadcast after the prison authorities threatened to send Noye back to jail for a breach of his parole.

Mr Brown, 86, said: “I went over to him and said ‘thanks for coming, nice of you to pop in’, but I don’t believe you’ve turned up with your sons and grandkids to listen to me telling how you killed a police officer.

“And he said ‘I want to make sure you don’t say I’ve been dealing drugs’ and I said ‘I’ve never said that Kenny’.”

The retired detective told Noye he wasn’t going to change his presentation just because he was there.

“He said ‘mate, I wouldn’t expect you to and I’ll come up [on stage] if you want me to’.

“Can you think how he’s turned up with his family to listen to somebody talking about you killing the police? Now, you put logic on that.”

The bizarre story emerged when I rang Mr Brown after I’d been told about the meeting.

I also wanted to ask him about the recent BBC hit drama series The Gold which retold the story of the Brink’s-Mat heist at Heathrow Airport in 1983.

“It was an absolute shambles, far too much dramatic licence and the real story was so much better,” said the ex-detective, whose job had been to follow the trail of the 6,800 gold bars to the US and the Caribbean.

He said he chatted to one of the show’s writers for a long time in a phone call but then heard no more.

“They invented people, changed a bit here and there and made it politically correct in so many ways. I’m just very sad that that is what people will believe.

“And I couldn’t work out who my character was supposed to be. I could have been one of the female cops.”

He also criticised the portrayal of Noye, now 78, as a likeable jack-the-lad character when the truth about the double killer with a volatile temper was quite different.