Cheating husband guilty of plotting wife's murder in 1981

Allen Morgan was found guilty of conspiring to murder Carol Morgan, who was battered to death by an unknown killer on the evening of 13 August 1981.

The couple had previously lived together in Swindon, where Morgan worked as a truck driver and was a football coach.

He found the body of the 36-year-old in the storeroom of Morgan’s Food Fare in Finch Crescent, Linslade, Leighton Buzzard when he returned from the cinema in Luton, 14 miles away, with her two children Dean, 14, and Jane, 12.

The brother and sister, now in their 50s, have to come to terms with the fact that Allen, who they called Dad, hatched a plan to kill their mother.

The prosecution at Luton Crown Court said the trip gave Allen an “cast-iron” alibi and allowed a paid hitman to murder and rob Carol.

Allen Morgan (Image: Bedfordshire Police)

Allen Morgan, a 73-year-old, who walks with a stick, from Stanstead Crescent, Woodingdean, Brighton was remanded in custody by Mr Justice Martin Spencer. He will be sentenced on July 31.

His wife and then lover Margaret Morgan, 75, was found not guilty of the same charge and was told she was free to go.

At the time detectives believed Carol had been the victim of a burglary that had gone wrong, but a cold case investigation which began in 2018 uncovered a star witness who revealed that Allen had wanted to find a hitman to kill Carol.

Jane Bunting, now aged 60,  met the couple in the Dolphin pub in Linslade a few months before the murder. She told the jury she was aged 17 at the time and was “appalled” and “horrified” when Allen asked if her ex-boyfriend knew anyone who could kill.

She said: “He'd say, 'I hate Carol', 'I don't want to be married to her', 'I wish she'd die', 'wouldn't an accident be nice?'"

She said they had discussed insulin poisoning, a car accident and Allen said: “You can always pay someone.”

"He turned to me directly and addressed me and said, 'What about that Danny Mayhew you went out with? He's a bit of a criminal, wouldn't he know someone?'" She said she got up and left.

Carol and Allen Morgan (Image: Bedfordshire Police)

Carol and Allen met at a single parents’ group in Swindon called Gingerbread. They married in March 1977 and moved to the shop in December 1979. About a year before the murder Allen and mother-of-two Margaret Spooner, as she was then known, began an affair.

Allen visited Margaret at her home while her husband Michael was at work. Once a neighbour walked in as Margaret came down the stairs with no tights on, followed by Allen. Margaret said Allen had been trying on a Father Christmas outfit for the playgroup party.

Carol’s first husband Richard Curtis, now 78, said the money to buy the shop came from Carol’s share of their matrimonial home in Covingham, Swindon. He paid maintenance for the children. By 1981 Allen and Carole were living hand to mouth and had spiralling debts. She had made a will leaving her entire estate to Allen. The shop had been purchased on an unsecured £6,000 loan that had a life insurance policy linked to it.

Prosecutor Pavlos Panayi KC said : “The two defendants wanted to be together, but could not be together while Allen remained married to Carol Morgan. He could not divorce his wife.

“These two individuals were involved in a passionate, but forbidden and adulterous love affair.”

Carol, who had closed the shop at 6pm, was battered with an axe or machete. There was no sign of a break in at the shop and the family’s Labrador-Collie that normally had the run of the premises, had been shut in one of the bedrooms in the flat above the shop.

£400 cash was taken from a desk that had “a secret mechanism”. It would not open unless another, middle drawer, was moved into an exact position.  £35 was also snatched from the till, along with 1,400 cigarettes.

Mr Panayi said: “The killer had some inside information before entering premises. The obvious conclusion was that the killer was told by Allen Morgan where he would find the cash which may well have constituted part-payment for the murder.”

Unexplained cash withdrawls had been made in the days leading up to the murder. On the day of the killing Allen Morgan had told the police he was asleep when he was seen at a branch of Nationwide withdrawing £250.

Carol’s cousin Pamela Smith, now 83, said when the couple moved to Linslade Allen asked her to pay the removal men. “Allen did not have any money. I thought it was strange, but I did pay them,” she said.

Ms Smith said: “On the day of Princess Diana’s wedding (July 1981)  Carol rang me and told me Allen was having an affair with a neighbour. She couldn’t believe it. She said it had been going on for a long time.”

In a statement Carol’s uncle George Wilkins, who died in February 2000 aged 84, said Carol told him she was “fighting a losing battle” and “Allen was never in the shop and was always making excuses for being out at night.”

Margaret Morgan’s ex-husband Michael Spooner, now 75, said he confronted Allen when he learned of the affair.” I went round to his shop and told him in no uncertain circumstances that he was not to see my wife anymore,” he said.

But before Christmas 1981, around four months after the murder, Margaret left Michael and moved in with Allen. Mr Spooner had custody of their two sons, who he said had not seen their mother for over 30 years. He was granted a divorce from Margaret on the grounds of adultery.

A neighbour Shelia Bernarde said that in November 1980 she walked into Margaret’s home in Camberton Road, Linslade to see her walking down the stairs with Allen Morgan behind her. “Margaret did not have any tights on. It was a bit cold. She said: ‘We have been upstairs. Allen has been trying on the Father Christmas outfit for the play school.’”

In a statement made in August 1981 she said: “For some time I had my own suspicions about an affair between Allen Morgan and Margaret Spooner. This was confirmed in late July 1981 when Margaret told me herself.”

She said Margaret told her: “It started off as a causal thing, but it became serious. “

In the days before the killing Margaret and her children took Sheila and her children on a boat trip along the Grand Union Canal to London. Each night Allen would come to the boat. “Some nights they went off on their own,” she said.

On the morning after the killing, Allen Morgan knocked on her door and said: “She’s dead and I have been robbed - all for £500. She has been murdered. They smashed the side of her head in. I didn’t want it this way.”

Dean Morgan said he and his sister Jane were taken by Allen to the Odeon in Luton on the evening of the killing. They paid £4 to go to Screen 3 to see Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger and The Super Snooper, which was about a policeman with special powers.

The 57-year-old told the jury it was a “real shock” when the police told him in 2019 that his step-parents had been arrested on suspicion of being involved in the murder. He said he flew home from a holiday.

After Allen and Margaret were charged in 2023 he said his step-father called him. “He told me it was all a mix up and I told him I had no idea about what happened.

“The argument became heated and he put the phone down on me. We have not spoken since.”

In a statement he said: “My memories of Allen were of him being a good stepdad. He ran a football team in Swindon which I played for. Allen cared about Jane and me. We always called him dad. Allen could be a bit blunt. He said things how he sees them.”

Once they moved to Leighton Buzzard he said he suspected Allen was having an affair with Margaret. The telephone at the shop would ring a couple of times before being cut off. He said he assumed it was a way of Margaret communicating with Allen.

After Carol the murder Margaret helped them redecorate the shop and she moved in. At first it was awkward trying to call Margaret “mum”.

The next year all four went on holiday to Malta where there was a photograph of the couple embracing while sitting on a rock.

In 1982 the family moved Doncaster where had Allen had relatives. They moved on to Sheffield where they had a corner shop and the couple married there in the December quarter of 1982.

Allen and Margaret moved to Brighton when Dean was doing his A levels and Jane her O levels. The children remained in Sheffield for that year, living on their own, until they finished their studies and joined them on the south coast. Margaret worked in Brighton as a teacher while Allen worked as a caretaker at a block of flats.

Jane Scales, Carol’s daughter, told the court she had an "excellent" relationship with Margaret, who later became her stepmother. In a statement she made when she was 12 she said her mother sometimes said they could not have treats as they were short of money.

Senior Investigating Officer Detective Superintendent Carl Foster said: “Carol was killed in a frenzied and sustained attack, suffering horrific injuries which cruelly cut short her life.

“Over the last four decades methods of gathering evidence have changed and improved, but the key in this case has been a change in people’s allegiances and loyalties. As a result, the re-investigation relied on good old-fashioned detective work, retracing the evidence obtained in 1981 and revisiting numerous witnesses.”

Detective Superintendent Foster continued: “Carol was effectively erased from all memory, including those of her own two children, who have grown up without their mother, being raised by the man responsible for her death. This trial has had a significant impact on them, as well as the numerous witnesses who have given evidence, and I am grateful for their bravery and support following what was a truly traumatic period of their lives.

“Bringing this case to justice has been the right thing to do. Anyone capable of committing such a brutal crime should not be allowed to live freely among our society.

“Allen Morgan has had more than 40 years of freedom that Carol will never have. He has today finally faced justice for the role he played in her murder.

“In the absence of a confession, we may never know who carried out the physical act of murdering Carol. However, we will do all in our power to secure new evidence and bring them to justice.”

Retired Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Prickett, who led the original investigation for Bedfordshire Police between 1981 and 1983, said: “Carol Morgan’s murder was vicious and the image of the scene will remain etched in my memory forever.

“The fact this case remained undetected for over four decades has remained a thorn in the side of all the officers who worked on the case. The original investigation spanned two years and even after this time was frequently reviewed. It was a meticulously run operation, with multiple lines of enquiry even before DNA science and other technological advances that we know in policing today.

“I am grateful to the Cold Case Investigation Unit for resurrecting the investigation and bringing Carol’s murder before a jury, and I have given the proceedings my full support.

“I hope that the result will bring some closure to those who knew and loved Carol.”