Speaker 1: School of Humans. Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold
Speaker 1: case murders in an effort to raise public awareness invite
Speaker 1: witnesses to come forward and present evidence that could potentially
Speaker 1: be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights
Speaker 1: from family and community members, their statements should not be
Speaker 1: considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts
Speaker 1: inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone has
Speaker 1: presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Speaker 1: Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply
Speaker 1: that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime
Speaker 1: is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: It was around seven pm on August thirteenth, nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: and thirty six year old Carol Morgan was working the
Speaker 2: till at her corner shop at sixteen Finch Crescent in
Speaker 2: a town called Leyton Buzzard in the County of Bedfordshire, England.
Speaker 3: This was a close knit community.
Speaker 2: Carol owned and ran the shop with her husband, thirty
Speaker 2: one year old Alan Morgan, and everybody knew them. Everyone
Speaker 2: in town knew and loved Carol, who was described by
Speaker 2: friends and family as warm, caring, genuine and friendly. Carol
Speaker 2: loved the shop and the other lights of her life
Speaker 2: were her two children from a previous marriage, fourteen year
Speaker 2: old Dean and twelve year old Jane. On that night,
Speaker 2: Carol was working at the shop alone. She was getting
Speaker 2: ready for closing, which was at six pm. Her husband, Allan,
Speaker 2: was at the movie theater in Lwton with his two
Speaker 2: step children, Dean and Jane, but at some point someone
Speaker 2: surprised Carol. Alan and the children got home at around
Speaker 2: ten ten pm. Shortly after arriving at the house, Carroll's husband,
Speaker 2: Alan raced to a neighbor's house and asked him to
Speaker 2: come to the shop. The neighbor followed Alan into the
Speaker 2: storeroom and saw Carol in a pool of blood. Her
Speaker 2: body was found in the storeroom of the store. Forensic
Speaker 2: testing revealed that Carol had been brutally beaten and stabbed
Speaker 2: with a weapon, something like an axe or a machete,
Speaker 2: something heavy but very sharp. She had been hit so
Speaker 2: hard that pieces of her skull and brain matter were
Speaker 2: on the floor. The police had no way of knowing
Speaker 2: it back in nineteen eighty one, but this police investigation
Speaker 2: would last forty three years and take a lot of
Speaker 2: strange twists and turns, and in the end there was justice,
Speaker 2: but it's questionable whether full justice will ever be served.
Speaker 2: Who came into the store that night and hacked Carol
Speaker 2: Morgan to death. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past seven
Speaker 2: years of making my true crime podcast, Helling Gone, I've
Speaker 2: learned that there is no such thing as a small
Speaker 2: town where murder never happens. I've received hundreds of messages
Speaker 2: from people all around the country asking for help with
Speaker 2: an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities.
Speaker 2: If you have a case you'd like me and my
Speaker 2: team to look into, you can reach out to us
Speaker 2: at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight
Speaker 2: seven four four six one four five. That's six seven
Speaker 2: eight seven four four six one four five, or you
Speaker 2: can send us a message on Instagram at Helen gonepod.
Speaker 2: This is Helen Gone Murder Line. After police got to
Speaker 2: the scene, they found evidence that some money four hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty five pounds to be exact, had been stolen,
Speaker 2: along with fourteen hundred cigarettes, but police did not have
Speaker 2: a ton of information to go on. The attack had
Speaker 2: been extremely brutal and horrific and there were some signs
Speaker 2: of defensive wounds on Carol's hands, so it seemed like
Speaker 2: whatever happened had taken her completely by surprise and that
Speaker 2: she had fought for her life. The UK channel ITV
Speaker 2: made a documentary about the case called The Real Unforgotten.
Speaker 2: This documentary followed the decades long investigation into Carroll's murder.
Speaker 2: I highly recommend checking it out because it really is
Speaker 2: an excellent analysis of what the police did and the
Speaker 2: excellent detective work that was done years later. In the documentary,
Speaker 2: they explained that the police back in nineteen eighty one
Speaker 2: believed that the motive for the killing had been robbery,
Speaker 2: and they focused on that theory pretty much exclusively. On
Speaker 2: the ITV program, they showed images of diagrams of Carol's injuries.
Speaker 2: She had been beaten to death and she had huge
Speaker 2: cuts on her head. Whoever beat her beat her so
Speaker 2: badly that her skull was cracked. So police theorized the
Speaker 2: weapon had been something like an axe or a machete,
Speaker 2: but they never found the murder weapon. They did have
Speaker 2: one early lead. There was a man driving a green
Speaker 2: car who had been spotted at a payphone box near
Speaker 2: the shop shortly after seven pm. On the ITV documentary,
Speaker 2: they stated when police started canvassing the area, they found
Speaker 2: witnesses who saw this man at the phone box. One
Speaker 2: of the witnesses worked with a police sketch artist. They
Speaker 2: made a poster and they put them out everywhere. In
Speaker 2: the documentary, they showed old footage of Brian Picket, the
Speaker 2: senior investigating officer from nineteen eighty one. He was talking
Speaker 2: about this stranger. He said the man was seen driving
Speaker 2: away from the corner shop and was described as being
Speaker 2: aged between seventeen and twenty one years old, around five
Speaker 2: foot seven to five foot eight inches tall, with a
Speaker 2: slim belld brown mousey hair and piggish style nostrils. Brian
Speaker 2: Pickett stated that the witness saw this man holding white
Speaker 2: plastic bags to his chest, bags that police believed at
Speaker 2: the time were used to carry the stolen money and
Speaker 2: cigarettes from the corner shop. So police believed the killer
Speaker 2: had come in to rob the store and that Carol
Speaker 2: was basically just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Speaker 2: Police focused their investigation almost solely on that stranger at
Speaker 2: the phone box and the green car he was driving,
Speaker 2: but they never found the man and they never found
Speaker 2: the car. After that, the investigation seemed to hit a
Speaker 2: dead end.
Speaker 3: This case terrified the.
Speaker 2: Local community because the thought that someone could go in
Speaker 2: and murder someone with an axe over such a small
Speaker 2: amount of money and a few cigarettes was truly scary.
Speaker 3: But there were also some local rumors spreading.
Speaker 2: Witnesses spoke to police to voice their suspicions about someone
Speaker 2: much closer to home, Carol's husband, Alan Morgan. So what
Speaker 2: was going on in Carol and Allen's marriage and why
Speaker 2: would he have any reason to hurt her? Carol Morgan
Speaker 2: was born on December twenty sixth, nineteen forty four. She
Speaker 2: grew up in Highbury, North London. Carol was married before Alan.
Speaker 2: She met her husband when he was sixteen, she was
Speaker 2: a year older. Her husband later testified that they met
Speaker 2: while he was on vacation with a friend. Carol and Richard,
Speaker 2: her first husband, were both from London. He was from
Speaker 2: Wimbledon in West London. She was from North London, so
Speaker 2: the relationship continued after that holiday ended. They got married
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty five and they settled down together in Swindon.
Speaker 2: They had two children, Jane and Ian, but like a
Speaker 2: lot of couples, they drifted apart and started having problems
Speaker 2: in their relationship. Richard later testified in court that he
Speaker 2: met someone else and that that was kind of the
Speaker 2: final straw for their marriage. He testified he left Carol
Speaker 2: to be with this other person, but after the split,
Speaker 2: he said he and Carol remained close. He said, quote,
Speaker 2: Carol was upset I was leaving, but there was no
Speaker 2: animosity end quote. In nineteen seventy eight, Carol was trying
Speaker 2: to meet new people. She went to a singles group
Speaker 2: called the Gingerbread Group, and that's where she met Allan.
Speaker 2: Allan was also divorced and had two children from a
Speaker 2: previous marriage, but those children lived with his ex partner.
Speaker 2: Shortly after meeting and falling in love, Carol and Allan
Speaker 2: made plans to buy and run this corner shop together.
Speaker 2: Carol financed the shop. They were able to buy it
Speaker 2: because Carol had sold her house in her divorce, so
Speaker 2: they used the share of the house money to invest
Speaker 2: in the shop. Carol and Allan got me married in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine. It's interesting because you never know what's
Speaker 2: going on behind closed doors in these relationships. But years later,
Speaker 2: some members of Carroll's family, including her sister and her niece,
Speaker 2: talked to the ITV program about how these horrific events
Speaker 2: had changed their family forever. They said that after Carol
Speaker 2: met Allan, she went from being this outgoing and loving
Speaker 2: person to being pretty much completely isolated. Her niece told
Speaker 2: ITV she believed that Alan was trying to control Carol
Speaker 2: and manipulate her, but at the time they had no
Speaker 2: idea how bad things were getting at home behind closed doors.
Speaker 2: Local gossips said there might have been another reason why
Speaker 2: Alan wanted Carol out of the way, because Alan was
Speaker 2: having an affair with a woman named Margaret Spooner, who
Speaker 2: was also married, But when it came to Carroll's murder,
Speaker 2: Alan had this apparently airtight albi. The night of the murder,
Speaker 2: he was at the movies with his two step children.
Speaker 2: Carol's sun Dean told police that on the day of
Speaker 2: the murder that Alan came home shortly after lunch and
Speaker 2: told them they were going to the movies that night,
Speaker 2: so he, Jane, and Allan ended up driving to the
Speaker 2: town of Lowton to see a double feature. Jane told
Speaker 2: police that they got to the theater got their tickets
Speaker 2: at six twenty five pm and that they saw Sinbad,
Speaker 2: the Eye of the Tiger and Super Snooper and came
Speaker 2: out at ten ten pm. Police were trying to figure
Speaker 2: out what happened while Carol was working alone that night.
Speaker 3: They knew that the shop closed at six.
Speaker 2: Pm, but apparently some potential customers, according to the ITV show,
Speaker 2: tried the doors at five point fifty five pm and
Speaker 2: couldn't open them, so it seems as though Carol might
Speaker 2: have shut the shop a little bit early. The detectives
Speaker 2: went back and re examined everything they thought they knew
Speaker 2: about this case. First of all, they needed to look
Speaker 2: into the man with the white bags, the one who
Speaker 2: was seen near the phone box.
Speaker 3: They went back through.
Speaker 2: Old witness days and found that a witness saw the
Speaker 2: man drop the bags, pick up some coins, get into
Speaker 2: the car and drive away. Then there were two more
Speaker 2: witnesses at around seven ten pm, two women who were
Speaker 2: walking to Bingo saw that man in the green car.
Speaker 2: Presumably that would mean that if that man was the killer,
Speaker 2: the man murdered Carol and what they saw was him
Speaker 2: driving away.
Speaker 3: From the scene.
Speaker 2: But there were some other witnesses who had conflicting information.
Speaker 2: There were witnesses who said they saw Carol. Later after closing,
Speaker 2: two kids who knew Carol well were sitting on a
Speaker 2: wall talking They saw Carol walking back toward the shop
Speaker 2: with her dog.
Speaker 3: They said this happened between eight thirty and nine pm.
Speaker 2: So the officer interviewed in the ITV documentary pointed out
Speaker 2: if Carol was alive between eight thirty and nine pm,
Speaker 2: that appeared to point to the man in the green
Speaker 2: car not being the killer. In twenty eighteen, Detective Superintendent
Speaker 2: Carl Foster was put in charge of the cold case.
Speaker 2: Based on what he saw in that case file, he
Speaker 2: decided to reopen the investigation.
Speaker 3: He was convinced that.
Speaker 2: Even if Allen had an alibi and had been elsewhere,
Speaker 2: the evidence suggested that he may have been behind the killing.
Speaker 2: The Major Crime Unit reopened the investigation into Carol's murder
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen, but they had a lot of problems.
Speaker 2: For one thing, as we see in so many of
Speaker 2: our cases, mistakes were made, a lot of evidence was
Speaker 2: destroyed and there was no way to get it back.
Speaker 2: Police had very little to go on except for witness
Speaker 2: statements and some very old photos of the crime scene.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why I wanted to cover this
Speaker 2: case in particular is because I was so inspired by
Speaker 2: the work that these cold case detectives did.
Speaker 3: How they took a case like.
Speaker 2: So many of the ones that we see every day,
Speaker 2: where evidence was destroyed, and yet they managed to turn
Speaker 2: things around. I wanted to see what we could all
Speaker 2: learn from this case. The detectives taking over in twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen did not believe that robbery was the motive. One
Speaker 2: of the reasons they said they believed that was because
Speaker 2: of the brutal way that Carroll was killed. Police referred
Speaker 2: to that beating as overkill. They believe this was personal,
Speaker 2: not random. There were some other oddities. Most of the
Speaker 2: money that had been stolen was stolen from a desk
Speaker 2: drawer in the shop. This drawer had what Alan described
Speaker 2: to police as a secret mechanism.
Speaker 3: It was like a trick drawer.
Speaker 2: You had to move another drawer into position to get
Speaker 2: it to work. Alan told the police it was like
Speaker 2: a Chinese puzzle. He said, only he and maybe Carol
Speaker 2: knew how that drawer worked. So how would a robber
Speaker 2: have known how to open that drawer or to force
Speaker 2: Carol to open it? How would the robber have even
Speaker 2: known where the drawer was at all. Much later in court,
Speaker 2: a prosecutor would state that the killer had inside information
Speaker 2: before the killer came into the shop. And one of
Speaker 2: the detectives in the ITV documentary noticed something else from
Speaker 2: the photos, a flash of gold. Carol was wearing her
Speaker 2: wedding ring, So the detective wondered, if robbery was really
Speaker 2: the only motive, why was her wedding ring not pulled
Speaker 2: off and stolen.
Speaker 3: Police began to lean more.
Speaker 2: And more into the theory this had not been a robbery,
Speaker 2: this had been a staged robbery, and that the real
Speaker 2: primary motive here was to kill Carol. The police had
Speaker 2: a massive number of witness statements to go through, thousands
Speaker 2: of pages, but as one of the investigators pointed out,
Speaker 2: they had to go back to the beginning and reread everything.
Speaker 2: One of the first people they talked to was Allan's neighbor.
Speaker 2: He was the first person who Allan told about finding
Speaker 2: Carroll's body, the one who first saw Carroll's body along
Speaker 2: with Alan. The neighbor told police that Alan ran across
Speaker 2: the street to his place and asked him to use
Speaker 2: the phone. He said Alan seemed to be in shock
Speaker 2: that he heard Allan tell police his address and explained
Speaker 2: that his wife was in a pool of blood. The
Speaker 2: neighbor went with Alan back to the shop and down
Speaker 2: to the stock room and found Carroll there. He said
Speaker 2: blood was spattered everywhere and it was immediately obvious that
Speaker 2: she was dead. The neighbor said he ran out of
Speaker 2: there and that Alan followed him. He said Alan was crying,
Speaker 2: but that as the neighbor tried to comfort him, the
Speaker 2: neighbor told police he noticed Alan seemed very composed.
Speaker 3: Now, the detectives in the ITV.
Speaker 2: Series point out this could have been a natural reaction.
Speaker 2: People process things in different ways, but the detective did
Speaker 2: ask why did Alan walk across the street to use
Speaker 2: someone else's phone instead of just calling from the store.
Speaker 2: This officer stated it made him believe Alan had a
Speaker 2: reason for doing that, something that indicated maybe he didn't
Speaker 2: want to be the one to discover that body alone.
Speaker 2: Another piece of evidence that detectives had was the post
Speaker 2: mortem report that was made in nineteen eighty one. So
Speaker 2: they took that report and went to outside experts, including
Speaker 2: a forensic pathologist. The pathologist said Carol was killed by
Speaker 2: multiple blunt forest blows by a very heavy object that
Speaker 2: was also sharp, heavy enough to shatter the skull, but
Speaker 2: also sharp enough to slice. The pathologist agreed with the
Speaker 2: investigator's theory that the wounds were indicative of overkill, that
Speaker 2: the intention was to kill Carol. This was a hit
Speaker 2: and Carol was the target. The pathologist also said something else.
Speaker 2: There were stab wounds on Carol's midsection that made them
Speaker 2: believe one of two things happened. Either there was more
Speaker 2: than one killer, or maybe the killer changed weapons midway
Speaker 2: through the attack. The pathologist also stated that Carol had
Speaker 2: wounds on her face, wounds that the pathologists said happened
Speaker 2: after the initial attack, either around the time of death
Speaker 2: or after the time of death. They described these as
Speaker 2: disrespect to the individual and mutilation injuries. So police used
Speaker 2: that information to move more and more away from the
Speaker 2: original theory. This was personal, it was all about Carol,
Speaker 2: and the crime scene was staged. But who would have
Speaker 2: wanted to hurt Carol because everyone in the community seemed
Speaker 2: to love Carol. When police went back through the witness statements,
Speaker 2: they found that a lot of people were talking about Alan,
Speaker 2: and specifically Alan's behavior before.
Speaker 3: And after the murder.
Speaker 2: A few weeks after Carroll's death, Alan sold the shot.
Speaker 2: He took his step kids and moved away from the area,
Speaker 2: but he also made several comments to reporters. He told
Speaker 2: them he was being accused of killing Carroll, that people
Speaker 2: believed he had killed his wife, but he said it
Speaker 2: couldn't have been him because he was in Luton at
Speaker 2: the movies. When the reporter asked Alan why he thought
Speaker 2: people believed that, Alan said, in his opinion, it could
Speaker 2: be because he was, in his words, happy go lucky
Speaker 2: and a womanizer. And when Alan left town, he didn't
Speaker 2: just take his stepchildren. Margaret, his lover, also went with him.
Speaker 2: Police knew about Margaret and the affair back in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one, a few months after Carol's murder, Margaret's husband,
Speaker 2: Neil Spooner, called police. He said that his wife had
Speaker 2: confessed to him that she had been having an affair,
Speaker 2: and she said she had been having an affair with
Speaker 2: Alan Morgan. Police confirmed this with other witnesses, including a
Speaker 2: friend of Margaret's named Sheila Forest. Sheila told police she
Speaker 2: was on a barge trip with Margaret. She said Margaret
Speaker 2: kept sneaking away to meet Alan. Sheila said Margaret and
Speaker 2: Alan were seeing each other every day at the time
Speaker 2: of the murder.
Speaker 3: She said.
Speaker 2: Right after the murder, she saw Alan and Margaret together.
Speaker 2: She said they were holding hands and Alan made the
Speaker 2: comment it won't be long now, Darling, which Sheila said
Speaker 2: made her feel sick. Police said in the ITV documentary
Speaker 2: that they had evidence that Margaret and Alan were in
Speaker 2: bed together the morning after the murder, and then just
Speaker 2: a few weeks later, Margaret had left her husband she
Speaker 2: moved in with Alan and his children. Now, obviously this
Speaker 2: is all circumstantial, but it had police in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: one and in twenty nineteen wondering how much.
Speaker 3: Did Margaret Spooner know and when did she know it.
Speaker 2: In twenty nineteen, police went back to interview people in
Speaker 2: the community, and even though it had been over forty years,
Speaker 2: a lot of people who lived in this area had
Speaker 2: heard about this case. The murder had been so brutal
Speaker 2: people still talked about it. Forty years later. Carl Foster,
Speaker 2: the senior investigating officer, did something else that was interesting.
Speaker 2: He went back and looked at all of the media
Speaker 2: reports from that time and kind of used Allan's own
Speaker 2: words against him. Police looked back at these interviews that
Speaker 2: Alan gave to media, and they saw how he contradicted himself.
Speaker 2: For example, when he went to Malta with Margaret and
Speaker 2: was asked about going away with his lovers so soon
Speaker 2: after his wife's death, he made comments saying my marriage
Speaker 2: was as good as over and that he couldn't go
Speaker 2: on mourning forever. A news channel asked Alan in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two how the murder had affected him, and he
Speaker 2: gave this very cold answer. He talked about how he
Speaker 2: had to shut down the shop for weeks so the
Speaker 2: police could do their investigation. He talked about how this
Speaker 2: had ruined his business, how he had to sell the
Speaker 2: shop at a loss. But he said nothing in that
Speaker 2: interview that I saw about any grief for Carol or
Speaker 2: the two children who she left behind.
Speaker 3: In fact, he said.
Speaker 2: The kids are all right, but he said it would
Speaker 2: be better for the kids if he moved away. So
Speaker 2: Alan seemed to be blaming the police investigation for ruining
Speaker 2: the shop's business, But investigators found evidence that Alan and
Speaker 2: Carol's show was having problems before she was brutally murdered.
Speaker 2: Police in nineteen eighty one interviewed two accountants, who said
Speaker 2: the shop had been losing a lot of money and
Speaker 2: that actually, at the time of the murder, Allan and
Speaker 2: Carol were trying to sell the shop. The accountant said
Speaker 2: when he talked to Carol about the losses, Carrol started
Speaker 2: crying and said that they were unhappy that they had
Speaker 2: had big dreams for that shop. Police found another contradiction
Speaker 2: because while Allan had given an interview to the Observer
Speaker 2: newspaper stating that quote my wife wasn't insured, I had
Speaker 2: nothing to gain end quote, police said that wasn't true
Speaker 2: because Alan had taken out a loan before the murder
Speaker 2: to help pay the shop's debt, and after Carroll's death
Speaker 2: that loan was paid off completely. Alan and Margaret disappeared.
Speaker 2: They moved away from the area and from the corner shop,
Speaker 2: and eventually Alan and Margaret got married. They actually ended
Speaker 2: up buying their own corner shop together in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 2: Looking at the case again in twenty nineteen, police had
Speaker 2: a new theory. They had a lot of circumstantial evidence,
Speaker 2: but they still had zero physical evidence.
Speaker 3: But they didn't give up. They kept talking to outside experts.
Speaker 2: They made a bunch of new posters and handed them
Speaker 2: out all over town. And I found this part really
Speaker 2: interesting because the posters said did you know Carrol? Which
Speaker 2: I think is a great way of bringing people out. Eventually,
Speaker 2: police said they were ready to bring Margaret and Allen
Speaker 2: in for questioning. They found them together, still married, now
Speaker 2: in their seventies. They were living in Brighton, and police
Speaker 2: took them in for interviews. Both of them completely denied
Speaker 2: any knowledge of or involvement in Carroll's murder. Margaret said
Speaker 2: she had been horrified when she heard about Carroll's death.
Speaker 2: She said after the murder, she didn't see Allen for
Speaker 2: several days. She said she out of town that week,
Speaker 2: but police knew that wasn't true because they had witnesses
Speaker 2: saying otherwise. Police went back and they kept knocking on doors.
Speaker 2: Eventually they figured out what they believed was the murder weapon.
Speaker 2: They had talked to several witnesses who said there was
Speaker 2: a machete in Alan's shop, and a machete in a
Speaker 2: corner shop is the kind of thing that you tend
Speaker 2: to notice. But Alan told police there wasn't a machete
Speaker 2: in there. He said he couldn't remember the type of weapon.
Speaker 3: That was in there.
Speaker 2: So again police don't have anything concrete, but they do
Speaker 2: have this contradictory information between what Alan's telling them and
Speaker 2: what witnesses at the time were telling them. They also
Speaker 2: questioned Alan about some dodgy financial stuff in his background,
Speaker 2: including convictions for insurance fraud, but when police asked Alan
Speaker 2: about that, he denied any knowledge of those convictions. Police
Speaker 2: also spoke to witnesses who said that Alan had a
Speaker 2: violent temper. A friend of Carol's name Sheila, told police
Speaker 2: that at one point Carol told her she was pregnant
Speaker 2: with twins and that Alan punched her in the stomach
Speaker 2: and that later she lost her babies.
Speaker 3: The friends said Alan would.
Speaker 2: Regularly physically abuse Carol, which again Alan completely denied. Police
Speaker 2: talked to Alan's daughter from his first marriage. She said
Speaker 2: her dad would sometimes tie her to a chair when
Speaker 2: she did something wrong. She said sometimes he would hit
Speaker 2: her with a belt. She said she was terrified of
Speaker 2: her father. Still, police did not have enough to charge
Speaker 2: Alan and Margaret, so Alan and Margaret were released from
Speaker 2: police custody. This investigation dragged on for a long time,
Speaker 2: six years total, and finally the public appeals the police
Speaker 2: were making seemed to pay off because in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: new witnesses came forward, people who had never talked to
Speaker 2: law enforcement in the past. One was a guy named
Speaker 2: Michael Marrin. Michael was eighteen years old at the time
Speaker 2: of Carroll's murder. He said he knew Alan from the shop.
Speaker 2: He also knew Alan's car. On August thirteenth, the night
Speaker 2: of Carroll's murder, he said he was driving home from
Speaker 2: the train station with his mom when he saw Alan
Speaker 2: in his car driving in the opposite direction. He said
Speaker 2: Alan passed him on the road and that this was
Speaker 2: at around six forty five pm. Police said they couldn't
Speaker 2: find Michael Marin's witness statements, but ITV interviewed him, and
Speaker 2: over forty years later, he said he was still absolutely
Speaker 2: certain that he saw Alan Morgan on the night of
Speaker 2: Carroll's murder.
Speaker 3: This would have been after Alan claimed he was at
Speaker 3: the movies.
Speaker 2: Because remember Alan's daughter said they bought the tickets at
Speaker 2: six twenty five pm. But police's biggest break was in
Speaker 2: March of twenty twenty one. That's when Jane Foster, a
Speaker 2: woman who was a teenager at the time of Carroll's murder,
Speaker 2: contacted police. The investigating officer told ITV News Anglia.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: When we went to visit her, we knocked on the
Speaker 2: door and she said, I've been waiting for you to
Speaker 2: visit me for forty.
Speaker 3: Years end quote. Jane said she was very friendly with
Speaker 3: Margaret Spooner.
Speaker 2: Back in nineteen eighty one because she was a troubled
Speaker 2: teen Back then, at age fourteen, Jane said she got
Speaker 2: expelled from school.
Speaker 3: Margaret was one of her tutors.
Speaker 2: She said that Margaret took an interest in her and
Speaker 2: that Margaret had saved her life. They confided in each
Speaker 2: other and got very close. Three years later, when she
Speaker 2: was seventeen, One night, Margaret invited her to a local
Speaker 2: pub called the Dolphin. Jane said Margaret picked her up
Speaker 2: and drove her to the pub. Jane said that when
Speaker 2: they got there, Alan was there, and Jane said Alan
Speaker 2: made statements about hating Carroll and that Alan said, well,
Speaker 2: I'd quite like Carol dead. Jane said she sat there
Speaker 2: in shock while Alan and Margaret openly.
Speaker 3: Discussed how to get rid of Carrol.
Speaker 2: How they talked about doing it with insulin, but ruled
Speaker 2: it out because they didn't really have medical training. Then,
Speaker 2: Jane said they talked about rigging Carol's car, but then
Speaker 2: they said no, they couldn't do that because neither of
Speaker 2: them knew anything about car mechanics. And they talked about
Speaker 2: how something could go wrong, What if someone else took
Speaker 2: the car, what if one of the kids was in
Speaker 2: the car. Jane said she freaked out with all this
Speaker 2: talk and ran out of the pub. She said Margaret
Speaker 2: ran after her and told her Alan was just kidding,
Speaker 2: but Jane said while she was there, Alan also made
Speaker 2: some comments about hiring someone else to kill Carol. Much later,
Speaker 2: Jane would tell police she wondered if they were trying
Speaker 2: to introduce the idea that perhaps Jane would be involved
Speaker 2: with the killing. Police asked Jane why it took so
Speaker 2: long for her to come forward. She said she was
Speaker 2: seventeen years old at the time. She adored and idolized Margaret,
Speaker 2: and she said that later Margaret told her not to
Speaker 2: talk to anyone about that pub conversation, and she said
Speaker 2: Margaret tried to reassure her Alan didn't do it. Jane
Speaker 2: said she always believed Alan was capable of murder, but
Speaker 2: she said now years later, she was considering another horrific possibility.
Speaker 2: What if Margaret not only knew about it, but was
Speaker 2: somehow involved.
Speaker 3: Could Margaret have been the person who killed Carol?
Speaker 2: When police interviewed Alan and Margaret, Allan denied, ever, saying
Speaker 2: that he wished Carol was dead. Margaret years later said
Speaker 2: she had no memory of ever having a conversation like
Speaker 2: the one Jane was talking about now. Of course, Margaret
Speaker 2: has never been charged with Carroll's murder and has always
Speaker 2: completely denied any knowledge of it or participation in it.
Speaker 2: So again, police had no concrete evidence Alan had been
Speaker 2: at the crime scene, but they believed he had orchestrated
Speaker 2: Carroll's murder. They believed there might be a hit man involved,
Speaker 2: that Alan may have paid someone to have Carol killed.
Speaker 2: But once again they didn't have enough evidence to go
Speaker 2: forward with a case. So again Alan and Margaret were released.
Speaker 2: Police went back through the investigation material again, They went
Speaker 2: through thousands of documents.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 2: This time, they changed their strategies slightly. They realized they
Speaker 2: might not have enough to charge Alan with murder. That
Speaker 2: they felt they did have enough to charge him and
Speaker 2: Margaret with conspiracy to murder. For that, the ITV documentary explained,
Speaker 2: they only needed to prove that Alan and Margaret paid
Speaker 2: someone to kill Carroll. They didn't need to figure out
Speaker 2: who the actual hip man or hit woman was. During
Speaker 2: this time, police were recording conversations between Alan and Margaret.
Speaker 2: In the documentary, police pointed out Alan and Margaret didn't
Speaker 2: confess to anything, it was more what they didn't say
Speaker 2: that made them believe they were.
Speaker 3: Still hiding things.
Speaker 2: For example, when they were talking about being arrested, Alan said, quote,
Speaker 2: I don't want to say anything because they might have
Speaker 2: end quote, and then he trailed off and got quiet.
Speaker 2: And it was also picked up on tape that Margaret
Speaker 2: told him multiple times to keep his mouth shut. Finally,
Speaker 2: Alan and Margaret were arrested and charged with conspiracy to
Speaker 2: murder Carol. Alan and Margaret both pleaded not guilty, and
Speaker 2: they both went to trial. Allan and Margaret's trials started
Speaker 2: in summer of twenty twenty four in Luton Crown Court.
Speaker 2: The prosecution focused on Alan and Margaret's love affair and
Speaker 2: the motives financial and otherwise for why they said Alan
Speaker 2: and Margaret needed Carol out of the way. The prosecution
Speaker 2: said the killing was a result of Alan and Margaret's
Speaker 2: quote passionate but forbidden An adulterous affair end quote. Carol's son,
Speaker 2: Dean Morgan, testified about what happened on the day of
Speaker 2: his mother's murder. He said when they got back to
Speaker 2: the shop at ten thirty pm after the movies, Alan
Speaker 2: had told him to go upstairs and make a cup
Speaker 2: of coffee. He said that as he went through the
Speaker 2: kitchen to get the coffee, he heard the family dog, Simon,
Speaker 2: in Jane's bedroom whining to get out. He said, quote
Speaker 2: the door was closed and he couldn't get out. Simon
Speaker 2: usually had the run of the flat and the shop.
Speaker 2: I let Simon out. I made Dad a cup of
Speaker 2: coffee end quote, which brings up another question. If the
Speaker 2: two witnesses who said they saw Carol at around eight
Speaker 2: thirty pm were right and Carol was walking the dog,
Speaker 2: then presumably the dog.
Speaker 3: Was with Carol.
Speaker 2: So how did the dog end up locked in the bedroom.
Speaker 2: Dean talked about his shock after the arrests. He said
Speaker 2: Alan had assured him that it was all just a
Speaker 2: mix up, but Dean said they got into an argument
Speaker 2: after that, and that he and Alan had not spoken since.
Speaker 2: Side note here, I cannot imagine what those children must
Speaker 2: have gone through first to lose their mother in such
Speaker 2: a brutal way, then to live with Margaret and Allen
Speaker 2: for all those years. I find myself wondering what the
Speaker 2: relationship was like, and if they ever talked about that night,
Speaker 2: and how they are feeling now wherever they are.
Speaker 3: I hope that they have found some peace.
Speaker 2: On June nineteenth, twenty twenty four, Alan Morgan was convicted
Speaker 2: of conspiracy to murder Carol, but Margaret was acquitted.
Speaker 3: She walked out of court a free woman.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Allan was sentenced to life in prison with a
Speaker 2: minimum term of twenty two years, which means at his
Speaker 2: age he will almost certainly die behind bars. Finally, Carroll's
Speaker 2: family had some justice. Carl Foster said he was happy
Speaker 2: that Alan had been brought to justice, but he said
Speaker 2: police would continue looking for the higher assassin and anyone
Speaker 2: else who was involved in the conspiracy.
Speaker 3: To kill Carroll.
Speaker 2: The prosecuting attorney stated they believe the Chinese puzzle box
Speaker 2: drawer was evidence that Alan had told the killer how
Speaker 2: that drawer.
Speaker 3: Could be opened.
Speaker 2: The prosecution said they believe Allan had promised the hit
Speaker 2: man money from that drawer and from the register.
Speaker 3: As partial payment for the murder.
Speaker 2: The prosecution said the motive for the murder was money,
Speaker 2: but not the money from the shop, Allan's bigger financial problems.
Speaker 2: The prosecution said Allan was facing financial ruin and that
Speaker 2: he wanted the life insurance payout if Carol died.
Speaker 3: They said that insurance.
Speaker 2: Payout allowed him to pay off the loan from the
Speaker 2: shop and start fresh with his lover, Margaret. The Justice
Speaker 2: Martin Spencer said, quote, it is apparent that divorce was
Speaker 2: not a viable option. On the jury's verdict, you decided
Speaker 2: on the alternative option, which was to get rid of
Speaker 2: Carol by having her murdered. Her life insurance would clear
Speaker 2: the debt of the business. It further meant you were
Speaker 2: free to continue your affair with and eventually marry Margaret
Speaker 2: Spinner end quote. The judge also talked about Carroll and
Speaker 2: what a good person she was, saying that Carol was
Speaker 2: a thoroughly admirable person and adding quote she did not
Speaker 2: deserve to die, and I have no doubt that if
Speaker 2: she met her death, her final thoughts would have been
Speaker 2: with her two children, then aged fourteen and twelve end quote.
Speaker 2: Police say they've accepted the fact they may never find
Speaker 2: out who the actual killer was, but they've also said
Speaker 2: they won't stop looking. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen
Speaker 2: Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production
Speaker 2: of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and
Speaker 2: narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts.
Speaker 3: Special thanks to Amy.
Speaker 2: Tubbs for her research assistance and to James Wheaton for
Speaker 2: legal review. Noah Kamer mixed and scored this episode. Our
Speaker 2: theme song is by Ben s Lee. Executive producers are
Speaker 2: Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and l. C.
Speaker 3: Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone.
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Speaker 2: channel on Apple Podcasts. If you were interested in seeing
Speaker 2: documents and materials from the case, you can follow the
Speaker 2: show on Instagram at Helen gonpod. If you have a
Speaker 2: case you'd like me and my team to look into,
Speaker 2: you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
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