ITV’s The Real Unforgotten examines the cold murder case of Carol Morgan, who was hacked to death in the storeroom of the convenience store she owned with her husband. Her killer still walks free
Four decades on from the horrific murder of Carol Morgan, police finally unearthed the crucial evidence needed to convict her wicked husband who masterminded her tragic death.
On 13 August 1981, the 36-year-old was brutally butchered in the Bedfordshire shop she owned with her spouse, Allen Morgan, who paid a hitman to kill his wife, it later transpired. After years of believing he had evaded justice, his once-solid alibi crumbled when a team of detectives reopened the case in 2018.
It required the tireless efforts of over 80 officers working non-stop for six years to uncover the truth. And following a pivotal witness statement, Morgan, now 74, was sentenced last summer to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 22 years.
Within the major crime unit, cold cases are reviewed by a dedicated team every few years and when a detective came across Carol’s harrowing case, he “knew it was a runner,” DC Denise Brown said. She added: “We could see from Allen’s timeline that there were holes and that it just didn’t make sense. It needed to be explored. We needed contradictions that went against what Allen said.”
As examined in ITV’s The Real Unforgotten, DC Brown, who features in the new documentary, led the interview strategy, which saw them question both Morgan and his new wife Margaret Morgan, 75. It’s believed the two were having an affair for a year before Carol’s death, and just two weeks after the murder, his lover had moved in.
The force had returned to every house they originally door-knocked during the 1981 investigation in the hope of new evidence. And they found what they were looking for when they landed at Jane Bunting’s home.
While she no longer lived there, her mum did, and as she answered the door, simply said: “My Jane’s been waiting 40 years for you to speak to her.” Margaret had been a teacher for expelled students and had mentored Jane, but they soon formed a friendship—so much so that when Margaret’s affair with Morgan came to light, she briefly moved in with the Bunting family.
Jane, 60, had been harbouring a secret for all these years, with police suspecting she was too afraid to speak out as a then-17-year-old woman in such a tight-knit community. A few months before the fatal night, she overheard an “appalling” conversation in the pub between Morgan and her ex-boyfriend that stayed with her.
He’d asked if he knew anyone who could kill, with Morgan saying: “’I hate Carol’, ‘I don’t want to be married to her’, ‘I wish she’d die’, ‘Wouldn’t an accident be nice?’.” The Morgans had spiralling debts, and Carol had left everything to her husband in her will.
Meanwhile, the shop had a life insurance policy linked to it. “There wasn’t hard evidence, there wasn’t CCTV, we’d been slowly building a circumstantial case and so when Jane came along, that was the final thing for us. It put that piece of the jigsaw in place,” DC Brown explained.
Following a trial at Luton Crown Court, Morgan was found guilty of conspiring to murder, but Margaret Morgan was found not guilty of the same offence.
“It’s the truth that gets revealed in these investigations and allowing loved ones to hear that and find some measure of peace and healing in that,” DC Brown, who revealed the team keeps Carol’s photo on a board in their office, said. “It’s easy to remember him, and easy to forget Carol. Our focus is always on her.”
*The Real Unforgotten airs 18th February, 9pm on ITV1 & ITVX. Both episodes will drop on ITVX on February 18th. The second episode will air on ITV1, 25th February.
If you have information on the murder of Carol Morgan, you can call 101 and quote in relation to ‘Operation Markdown.’