It was a crime scene so gruesome that even experienced police officers were shaken.
And even decades later, cold case detectives were disturbed by the photos showing the shop storeroom where Carol Morgan was bludgeoned to death. Carol, 36, was found hacked to death in the shop she ran with her husband Allen in Linsale, Beds, in August 1981.
But the case remained unsolved for over four decades until developments led to her husband’s conviction. Allen Morgan, now 75 years old, was found guilty of conspiracy to murder his wife last June. However the hitman still runs free.
Despite suspicions, Morgan thought he had got away with orchestrating his wife’s death, thanks to a seemingly cast-iron alibi, claiming he discovered his wife’s bloodied body after returning from the cinema with her two children.
He immediately raised the alarm, reporting that £500 in cash and £120 worth of cigarettes were missing from the shop. But the story collapsed in 2018 after the case was reopened, which saw 80 officers working on the case find a breakthrough witness who revealed he had indeed hired someone to kill her.
The six-year investigation is retold in a new ITV documentary, The Real Unforgotten, starting tonight. A year after her butchered body was discovered, and with detectives no nearer to finding her killer, fresh details were released about the brutal murder.
One report, from the local paper, stated: “In a bid to shock the public into action, police have revealed how the killer rained blows down from a razor sharp cleaver onto his victim’s head, splitting her skull in two in a frenzy.
“They turned over her body and carefully sliced five long cuts across her face.” Her skull was shattered by 10 to 15 blows in an attack so savage that detectives would later describe it as “overkill.”
When the case was reopened, investigators reviewed the shocking images of Carol’s body. Detective Constable Denise Brown described the gruesome scene in the documentary. She said: “You can see huge lacerations. You can see the skull, and the second one shows the tissue that’s exposed as a result of the attack. What you don’t see is how Carol had a load of hair in her hand from where she had obviously put her hand to her head to protect her head.”
DC Brown also told the Mirror: “Those pictures are imprinted in my memory. There were so many lacerations that her whole head of hair had pretty much been in her hands, it was it was honestly the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
“She was still wearing her slip-on Scholl shoes, which suggests she had been hit and gone straight down. The telephone wires were cut downstairs and the footprints stopped, they didn’t travel through the shop, which suggests the person who killed her was very forensically aware.
“The hypothesis back then was that whoever killed Carol must have known her, just because of the way the crime scene was found. It looked like she was making a cup of tea. They had locked the dog away in the bedroom, where normally that dog would have been roaming free. We know the footprints were a size 7 Dunlop trainer and a young man across the road had seen someone leave the shop in a red car.”
DC Brown, 49, doesn’t believe they were a professional hitman, but that they were potentially known to Morgan. “He took out two lots of money from the cash point leading up to this, and our hypothesis is that that money was used to pay the hitman off.”
Carol’s finger was also slashed in a defensive wound, her cheek was grotesquely damaged, and her skull was exposed. Morgan, at first playing the role of devastated husband, also described the scene as he pleaded in TV interviews for the killer’s family and friends to turn him in.
He said: “If he’s done it once, he’s going to do it again, and it was terrible. You’ve got no idea what it was like when I walked in. No idea at all what she looked like.”
In fact Morgan was having an affair with Margaret Spooner, a married woman who was found in his bed the morning after Carol’s murder. The pair had been lovers for months, meeting every night in the days leading to the murder.
During last year’s trial, the jury was played secret police recordings of conversations between Allen and Margaret when they were being taken in for questioning in 2019. Margaret was heard to say “Shush”, indicating she thought they were being taped, the trial was told. He said “I am sorry” and “I don’t want to say anything because they might have….”
Two years later in July 2021 he was recorded asking her: “Do you still love me?” and “I trust you forever.” Then, in July 2023 as they were travelling again to the police station, he said: “I am sorry. I haven’t done anything.”
Margaret said: “Stop going over it. They are probably listening in.” Alan said: “I ain’t done nothing. Neither of us have. I don’t know what they have got.” On July 29 last year Morgan was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 22 years for conspiring to murder Carol. Margaret, 75, was found not guilty of the same charge of conspiring to murder and told she was told to go free.
*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.’