Murder case 'like Hollywood, not English suburbs'

Allen and Margaret Morgan (pictured) were having an affair in 1981 when Allen's wife Carol was murdered in Lindslade, Bedfordshire

Defence lawyers for a man accused of plotting to murder his former wife said the prosecution’s case is the stuff of "Hollywood screenplays, not the Bedfordshire suburbs".

Allen Morgan and his current wife Margaret Morgan both deny plotting to hire a hitman to kill his then wife Carol more than 40 years ago.

Carol’s body was found in the shop she ran in Linslade with Allen Morgan, on 13 August 1981.

Her killer has never been caught.

Carol Morgan was 36 when she was attacked with an axe or machete

The prosecution alleges that Allen and Margaret Morgan were having an affair and conspired to murder Carol so that they could be together.

Much of their case relies on the testimony of Jane Bunting, a friend of Margaret Morgan who was 17 at the time.

She told Luton Crown Court that she was with Margaret and Allen Morgan at the pub when they discussed plans to kill Carol and asked her for help finding a hitman.

But in his closing speech, Allen Morgan’s defence lawyer Colin Aylott KC said the prosecution’s case was "just theories based on the flimsiest and most tenuous of evidence".

He accused prosecutors of pedalling conspiracy theories.

“We submit it was the prosecution's desire to get a conviction, to have something to show for the decades-long investigation into this [trial], that they have to rely upon a threadbare patchwork of theories.

"And a star witness who is utterly discredited and incapable of belief.”

Carol Morgan's body was found at Morgan's Store, now The Corner Shop, on Finch Crescent

Previously, prosecutor Pavlos Panayi KC told the jury the couple made a plan with "an unknown killer".

He said: “The murder of Carol Morgan was no random attack. It was planned and paid for by the two defendants in the dock.

"Had she not been murdered and had she lived these past 43 years, she would be 80 years old.

“She was killed on the evening of 13 August 1981 in a brutal attack by someone who has never been identified."

Mr and Mrs Morgan, of Stanstead Crescent in Woodingdean, Brighton and Hove, have not appeared in the witness box at their trial, and both deny conspiracy to murder.

Margaret and Allen Morgan, pictured at Luton Crown Court, have not appeared in the witness stand