Carol Morgan: Son 'shocked' after step-dad's arrest for conspiracy to murder

Allen and Margaret Morgan deny conspiracy to murder

The son of a woman killed in 1981 said it was a "real shock" when police told him his step-father had been arrested on conspiracy to murder her.

Carol Morgan, 36, was killed at a shop she ran with her husband Allen Morgan in Leighton Buzzard on 13 August 1981.

Her son Dean Morgan was at the cinema with his sister and Mr Morgan, their step-father, when she died.

Allen Morgan, now 73, later re-married Margaret Morgan, now 75, and the pair deny conspiracy to murder.

A killer, who has never been caught, used an axe or machete to attack Carol Morgan before escaping with £435 in cash and 1,400 cigarettes.

A few months after the killing, Allen's lover Margaret Spooner left her husband and two sons and moved in with him and his two step-children.

They were arrested in 2019 and are on trial at Luton Crown Court.

Carol Morgan was found dead at her shop in Linslade, Bedfordshire, in 1981

Giving evidence via video link, Dean Morgan - who was 14 at the time of his mother's death and is now 57 - said he had left Luton's Odeon cinema after watching a double bill of films with Mr Morgan and his sister Jane Morgan, who was 12 at the time of the murder.

He said that when they arrived home at the family's corner shop - Morgan's Food Fare - at about 22:30, Mr Morgan told him to "go upstairs and make a cup of coffee".

"He didn't call out for mum. Jane went through the hall to get the keys to put her bicycle away in the shed in the rear garden.

"As I went into kitchen I heard our dog Simon whimpering in Jane's bedroom.

"The door was closed and he couldn't get out. Simon usually had the run of the flat and shop. I let Simon out. I made dad a cup of coffee."

He said he heard his step-dad on the phone downstairs before he came back upstairs, where he rang a friend to come and collect the children.

After they were charged last year, he said Mr Morgan called him and said "it was all a mix up and I told him I had no idea about what happened.

"The argument became heated and he put the phone down on me. We have not spoken since."

Prosecutor Pavlov Panayi KC earlier told the jury the defendants had been in a year-long "passionate, but forbidden and adulterous love affair" and hatched a plan to murder Carol.

It is alleged the killing was carried out by a hitman, hired by Mr and Mrs Morgan, of Stanstead Crescent, Woodingdean, Brighton.

The case continues.