Carol Morgan murder: How one key teenage witness cracked case of shopkeeper's murder in 1981

It was the corner shop murder that shocked a close-knit community more than 40 years ago.

Mum-of-two Carol Morgan, 36, was found stabbed to death that August at the convenience shop she ran with her husband Allen.

At the time, it seemed the brutal attack on Mrs Morgan at the couple's corner shop in Linslade near Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire was a random attack by a stranger.

But the court heard that Allen Morgan had plotted to kill his wife so he could be with his lover Margaret Spooner - who would later become his third wife - with whom he was having a “passionate but forbidden and adulterous affair”.

On 19 June, after a trial lasting nine weeks, Allen Morgan was found guilty of conspiracy to murder. Margaret Morgan was cleared of the same charge.

How did police finally crack the case?

Cold case leader Det Supt Carl Foster said when his team began to review the investigation in 2018, they revisited every single witness spoken to in 1981 who was still alive.

One proved vital in bringing the case to a close.

"When we went to visit her, we knocked on the door and she said 'I've been waiting for you to visit me for 40 years', Det Supt Foster told ITV News Anglia.

She was then able to share with police evidence that showed she had been in a conversation with Allen Morgan, in which he discussed "having Carol Morgan murdered", he said.

Det Supt Foster said Morgan had met up with the witness, called Jane Bunting, who was 17 at the time, in a pub and openly discussed ways of killing Carol and whether they were viable or not.

He said Jane Bunting was asked if her boyfriend, who had been in prison, could help them.

In court it was said that Ms Bunting was “shocked and appalled and she left the pub”.

The prosecution barrister said Ms Bunting “kept silent about what she heard that night” until 2021.

The prosecution claimed in court that her evidence supported their case that the defendants together wanted Carol Morgan dead and had begun to plan for the recruitment of a man to kill her.

Police also recorded conversations between Allen and Margaret Morgan when they were left alone in police vehicles.

However, the jury rejected the prosecution's claim that Margaret Morgan had been involved, clearing her of all charges.

Why did it take police more than 40 years?

Police probing the attack at the time treated the case as a stranger attack and lines of inquiry focused on the identity of the killer and tracking him down.

The murder happened at around 7pm on 13 August 1981 when Carol Morgan's killer, who remains unidentified, “used an axe or heavy knife or machete to hack into her body and skull causing horrifying injuries from which she died”.

Det Supt Foster said there were concerns about Allen Morgan's possible involvement at the time but that, on the night of the murder, he had a "concrete alibi".

He had taken Carol Morgan's two children to see a film at a cinema in Luton and they did not return home until 11pm.

The investigator, who was just 12 when the crime took place, took over the cold case unit in 2018, and read a review of the inquiry which prompted police to reopen their investigations.

Det Supt Foster said the breakthrough came when police began looking not only at who may have killed Carol Morgan, but who would have benefited from her being "out of the picture".

"If you go back to 1981, people in the community were telling us from minute one, that Allen Morgan wasn't particularly well-liked, that he was conducting an affair, that it wasn't his first affair and that everybody locally felt that he was involved," he said.

"But the original investigation was very much focused on identifying a murderer and of course, Allen Morgan had a concrete alibi and couldn't have been the murderer.

"But what we did was look beyond that and think, ok, he couldn't physically have been present to commit the murder - but did he instruct it? Orchestrate it? And that's where our investigation was focused."

He and several of his team, including himself, had retired during the six-year investigation but had come back as civilian employees to carry on the work and "get justice for Carol."

What happened after Carol Morgan's death?

Allen Morgan was just 31 when his wife Carol was murdered.

After her death, his lover Margaret Morgan – who was then called Margaret Spooner – left her husband and moved in with him.

The couple married and, now in their 70s, have been together ever since.

Allen Morgan and Margaret Morgan were not actually arrested in 1981 but were taken into custody three times during the cold case investigation after it resumed in 2019.

In police interview, Allen Morgan admitted that, after Carol's funeral, he had never visited her grave in the cemetery.

Det Supt Foster said he felt for the wider family and Carol Morgan's children.

Will the actual killer ever be caught?

The brutality of the attack on Carol Morgan shocked the small community in Linslade.

Det Supt Fisher said the case had upset many at the time, and that lots of those people were still living in the area 40 years on.

"It had a massive effect on the local community and people would have been scared, particularly as the main line of inquiry was that this was a stranger who had entered the shop as a trespasser," he said.

Police at the time concentrated their efforts on the search for a man in a dark green estate car.

Det Supt Fisher said the identity of the man who wielded the murder weapon might never be known, but that police would continue to search for him.

"We have been investigating this for six years, [and] we have got no closer to identifying the actual killer.

"That will remain open."

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