For more than four decades, the brutal murder of a 36-year-old mother of two has baffled authorities.
On Aug. 13, 1981, Carol Morgan was found bludgeoned inside the Bedfordshire, England, shop she ran with her husband, Allen Morgan, according to a statement from the Crown Prosecution Service. Carol was initially believed to be the victim of a burglary gone wrong, the BBC reports, citing authorities.
At the time, there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone in the case. Authorities ruled Allen out as a suspect because he had an alibi for the night his wife was slain.
According to the BBC, Allen told authorities he had taken Carol’s two children to a movie theater before he found his wife’s body in the storeroom of the shop.
The shop where Carol Morgan was murdered.
Bedfordshire Police
In 2018, a police cold case team re-examined the unsolved murder. With crucial help from a witness, authorities soon learned Allen was closer to the case than they initially believed.
The witness, Jane Bunting, said that when she was a teenager, around the time of the killing, Allen had asked her if she knew anyone he could hire to kill his wife, per the statement. Allen was later taken into custody on allegations that he conspired to kill his wife and paid a hitman to carry out the murder.
Prosecutors argued at trial that Allen, who was having an extramarital affair at the time of Carol’s killing, would not only be free to start a new life with his lover if Carol died, but he would also benefit financially from her death, per the statement.
“[Mr Morgan would] say, ‘I hate Carol’, ‘I don’t want to be married to her’, ‘I wish she’d die’, ‘Wouldn’t an accident be nice?,’” Bunting said in court, per the BBC.
In July 2024, Allen, now 74, was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 22 years after being convicted of conspiracy to murder in Luton Crown Court.
“This has been a complex and unusual case, not least because it dates back over 40 years,” Senior Crown Prosecutor Shan Saunders said in the statement. “Modern day lines of enquiry, including forensic analysis, CCTV and phone data were not available then, so the case we built against Allen Morgan relied primarily on the accounts of witnesses.”
However, despite Allen’s conviction, one piece of the puzzle remained missing. Who carried out the killing of Carol? That’s what authorities are still trying to figure out.
Justice Martin Spencer said at Allen’s sentencing that Allen himself is the only person who knows who killed Carol, calling him a “wicked person,” the BBC reports.
Allen Morgan.
Bedfordshire Police
“That is the secret you have harboured for the last 40 years,” Spencer said, per the outlet. “The law has now caught up with you but the murderer remains at large, if indeed he is still alive.”
Authorities now investigating the case have even appeared on the BBC’s Crimewatch Live, a crime documentary TV series about cold cases, to re-appeal to the public for information about Carol’s killer.
“Although we refer to a ‘contract killer’ employed by Allen, Carol’s death was far from professional — it was a gruesome and frenzied attack,” Detective Inspector Richard Stott, who is now leading the investigation, said in a Bedfordshire police statement shared in 2024.
Stott added, “No murder case is ever left undetected, and we will pursue any leads – no matter how seemingly small – to ensure that Carol’s killer is apprehended.”
Anyone with information on the case is asked to contact the Bedfordshire police’s Major Incident Public Portal (MIPP).
