'He could reveal his wife's killer' - ex detective

A retired detective remains hopeful that Allen Morgan will one day reveal who he hired to kill his wife Carol Morgan in 1981.

The 36-year-old was murdered in the shop she ran with her husband in Linslade, Bedfordshire, in August of that year.

Mr Morgan was jailed for life in July with a minimum of 22 years after a witness, Jane Bunting, who was 17 at the time, told detectives he had once asked if her ex-boyfriend knew anybody who could kill.

Former Det Supt Carl Foster, who was the senior investigating officer before he retired at the conclusion of the case in 2024, said investigators will "leave no stone unturned".

Morgan was found guilty of conspiring to murder following a trial at Luton Crown Court.

"We won't give up. We won't say we got one person convicted and that's it," Mr Foster said.

"One of those lines of inquiry will be Alan Morgan himself, if he wants to talk to us and tell us who he hired and who killed Carol."

Carol Morgan had suffered between 10 and 15 blows during the attack and investigators initially believed she had been the victim of a burglary gone wrong.

When the case was reopened in 2018, Mr Foster and his team re-examined all existing evidence.

He recalled: "There were no forensic opportunities, nothing like that was going to break the case. It came down to old-fashioned detective work, knocking on doors, re-interviewing people and seeing what changed.

"We always had a really strong circumstantial case, but you need direct evidence. Jane's account was that evidence... That blew the case wide open."

Mr Foster said that over time "people's allegiances can change", leading to witnesses feeling more comfortable coming forward with new information.

"Being a copper is about the ability to talk to people... If you don't ask you don't get," he added.

When detectives visited Ms Bunting she told them she had "been waiting for you to come see me for 40 years".

She later told the court: "[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?'."

The case has been featured in a new two-part ITV documentary called The Real Unforgotten.

Mr Foster, who had an opportunity to retire before it went to court but wanted to see the case through until conclusion, described the investigation as a career highlight.

"It's the longest running, most challenging investigation that I ever ran," he said.

"I feel hugely proud of what the team achieved just through their tenacity and that old-fashioned police work. We just kept grinding away and eventually we got there.

"What was in my thoughts were Carol's biological children, who have to come to terms with the fact that the man they called dad murdered their mother... Where do they start putting their lives back together?"

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