Pavlos Panayi KC, beginning the prosecution case at Luton Crown Court on Wednesday, told jurors that on August 13, 1981, Carol – then aged 36 – was attacked and killed at the Wavy Line Food Fare newsagent she ran with husband Allen – then aged 31 – in Linslade near Leighton Buzzard.

The murderer, who is still at large, “used an axe or heavy knife or machete to hack into her body and skull, causing horrifying injuries from which she died,” according to the barrister.

“In the summer of 1981, Allen Morgan was having an affair,” he continued. The second defendant, now known as Margaret Morgan, was his sweetheart.

Mr Panayi said that at the time, the affair had been going on for more than a year but Allen Morgan “couldn’t divorce his wife” because “Carol Morgan had brought the money into the marriage and as a result of that fact and because of spiralling debts, a divorce was financially out of the question.”

Following Carol’s passing, Margaret Spooner moved in with Allen and left her husband. Afterwards, they tied the knot and have remained together ever since.

The prosecution said that the defendants, of Stanstead Crescent in Brighton, were “engaged in a passionate but forbidden and adulterous love affair” and that they are “alleged to have arranged and paid for” the death.

When Allen and Carol Morgan first got together in the late 1970s, they had already been married. Allen’s children lived full-time with his ex-wife, while Carol Morgan had sole custody of the two children who lived with them in the apartment above their corner store.

The Finch Crescent corner shop was bought in 1979 with Carol Morgan’s half of the sale of her previous marital home.

The prosecutor said that on the day Carol Morgan was killed, Allen Morgan took her two children to the cinema in Luton to see a double bill and they were not due back until almost 11pm, leaving her alone in the shop.

The barrister said Allen “didn’t have a strong relationship with his step-children”, adding: “He had never before taken them out without their mother, and after Carol closed the shop, “an attacker or attackers entered the premises and struck” at around 7pm, and Carol Morgan was killed inside the store room.

Mr Panayi said that Allen Morgan told police in a witness statement that he was “shocked by this discovery, had played no part in the murder, and said cash and a large quantity of cigarettes had been stolen and were missing from the shop”.

The barrister said police found “no sign of any forced entry” and the family’s dog, who would “ordinarily… have the run of the premises”, had been shut in one of the bedrooms.

“The prosecution say the motivation of this crime was never just cigarettes or cash – this was a planned murder,” the prosecutor stated, adding that Carol Morgan was “hardly likely to resist a man wielding a machete or axe.”

According to Mr. Panayi, in March 2021, Jane Bunting—now sixty years old—came forward to police after learning that the police were renewing their investigation. Bunting was seventeen at the time.

He claimed that Ms. Bunting, who is now known as Jane Robinson, had a known criminal named Danny Mayhew as her boyfriend at the time.

The attorney stated that in the months preceding Carol Morgan’s passing, Margaret Morgan had taken Ms. Bunting to a pub, where Allen Morgan had been present and had conjectured as to whether Ms. Bunting knew someone who could assist him in killing his wife.

Ms. Bunting was “shocked and appalled and she left the pub,” according to the attorney, but she “kept silent about what she heard that night” until 2021.

The prosecution claims that her evidence lends more credence to their allegation that the defendants planned to employ a man to kill Carol Morgan because they all wanted her dead, he continued.

“We don’t know who they ultimately identified as the murderer, and it’s possible that man will never face justice.”