The night before she was murdered outside her Dordogne home, Karen Carter appeared to have much on her mind.
The mother of four was in the process of walking away from her 30-year marriage and starting a new life in this idyllic corner of south-west France. Plans were already in motion.
There was the sweet puppy she’d collected five days earlier, a new French bank account she’d set up and a one-bedroom cottage she was negotiating to buy and where she planned to live alone. That future, as we now know, is one the former teacher will tragically never get to live.
For just 24 hours after confiding in a close friend about the dramatic new direction her life was taking, she was stabbed eight times in a frenzied late-night attack outside the 250-year-old holiday home she owned with her South African husband, Alan.
Fatally injured by the savage blows, including one which penetrated her aorta, Karen was dead by the time emergency services reached her.
She had just arrived home from a small wine-tasting evening at the hilltop property of Jean-François Guerrier – a local French man she had grown close to – a day after telling her friend she had asked her husband for a divorce.
More, in a moment, of what prosecutors and neighbours say was a new relationship and how, after locking up his converted farmhouse and driving to join her at her home 10 minutes away, Guerrier, 74, found Karen dying in a pool of blood.
Her killer, who had been lying in wait, hidden by the greenery which surrounds the property, had struck so fast and so furiously that Karen’s handbag – and her traumatised cross-breed puppy, Haku – were still in her Dacia Duster car.
Karen Carter, a 65-year-old married mother, was found outside a property she ran in the village of Trémolat last Tuesday evening after going for drinks at the Cafe Village
Jean-François Guerrier, pictured on May 7, paid tribute to a ‘lovely lady’ as he broke his silence
Mrs Carter and husband Alan Carter spent their time between their homes in France and South Africa
Karen’s brutal murder on the evening of Tuesday, April 29 – just two days after her 65th birthday – has sent shockwaves through Trémolat, a charming village with a population of just 600 in an area so popular with British expats that a ‘Dordogne Chippy’ fish-and-chip van visits every Wednesday.
Given that the killer is still at large, a deep-seated unease has settled across this usually tranquil community, one which will not lift until he – or she – is caught.
Who, then, might have wanted to hurt Karen, a woman described by locals this week as ‘classy and charismatic’, ‘friendly’ and ‘great fun to be with’.
Was she killed by a jealous love rival? Or, as some are speculating, was her death ‘un meurtre commandité’ – a contract killing?
This week the Mail spoke to those closest to the case including Karen’s best friend as well as the brother of a local woman, Marie-Laure Autefort, who was said to hold feelings for Guerrier and was briefly interviewed by police before being released.
Police have spoken of the ‘exceptional violence’ used to kill Karen and a British woman who lives nearby told me: ‘What is very obvious from her injuries is that whoever did this knew how to kill.’
According to results of a preliminary autopsy, one of the eight blows Karen suffered pierced her aorta, their location demonstrating ‘the desire to kill’. Inflicted by a sharp object – the weapon has not been recovered – one penetrated her liver; another her kidney and spine. Yet another almost severed her right arm.
‘We are absolutely shocked at the brutality of Karen’s death,’ said the British woman. ‘This is a gorgeous part of the world where people come to live in peace. It’s terrifying to think that whoever did this is still out there.’
Mr Guerrier is understood to have been involved in a romantic affair with Mrs Carter, who was killed outside her home in Tremolat last Tuesday
Ms Autefort was arrested and later released without charge after giving police an alibi
Mr and Mrs Carter owned three French holiday homes, let and managed by Karen, and in recent years had largely lived separately
Until the horrific events of last week, crime in Trémolat was almost unheard of. What need for door-bell cameras in a close-knit community where people don’t bother to lock their cars or, often, even their front doors?
At night, the streets are left in darkness, the only noises the cries of the tawny owls and foxes which hunt in the orchards and walnut groves.
At the time Karen was murdered outside her home, her closest neighbour, who was watching the UEFA Champions League match between Arsenal and Paris St Germain on TV, heard nothing.
‘There was no scream or cry for help. Nothing at all,’ Christophe Pultier told me when we met at the entrance to Karen’s driveway.
Flowers have been left just a couple of metres from the vast bloodstain which still marks the spot on the gravel where she fell.
‘The first I realised something was wrong was when I saw blue flashing lights outside my window not long after 10pm,’ he said. ‘I opened my door and went out to see what was going on. Then I heard someone saying: “Her name is Karen.”‘
The case, not surprisingly, is the talk of the village, particularly among shocked British expats – many of whom knew Karen from Cafe Village, a community hub in Trémolat where she volunteered behind the bar with Guerrier.
In a bizarre twist, a poster for cult horror film Le Boucher – The Butcher – hangs on the wall. The 1969 Claude Chabrol film, which tells the story of a serial killer stabbing women in the area, was shot in Trémolat.
The Carters’ quaint 250-year-old farmhouse became the scene of a grisly murder mystery
The sunlit village of Tremolat, a commune in the Dordogne department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in south west France
With no suspect in custody for Karen’s murder – there is frustration at the apparent lack of progress in the case. Investigators have interviewed and released only two people: Guerrier, a retired Fujitsu executive who battled in vain to resuscitate her while waiting for emergency services and Marie-Laure Autefort, 69, a divorced mother-of-two who lived nearby and made no secret of her own love for Guerrier.
Investigators say they have no reason to suspect Guerrier, who lived for several years in Camberley in Surrey while working in London. Madame Autefort, who was held in custody for 48 hours, has provided an alibi.
But amid talk of a ‘triangle d’amour’, Sylvie Martins-Guedes the prosecutor leading the case has said investigators were focusing ‘on people likely to have had something against the victim, or against the couple she had formed’.
Investigators also confirmed the killing was pre-meditated. That announcement is highly unusual given that in France, investigations are usually closely guarded until any trial.
Marie-Laure Autefort fled to Paris after being released by police and has not been seen at her home in Trémolat since.
Adamant that his sister, a carer, could not have killed Karen even if she’d wanted to, Philippe Monribot told me: ‘She’s physically weak. She’s even scared of the dark. Could someone like that slit a woman’s throat? It’s impossible. It had to be a man and I don’t think it’s random.’
Monsieur Monribot said it was no secret his sister was in love with Guerrier and claimed that she was dazzled by the wealthy retired businessman.
‘He took her to visit chateaux in the Loire and to fancy Paris restaurants. She didn’t have much money and she fell for him. She definitely loved him. She’d have done anything for him. But his interest seemed to move on to Karen.’
Mr and Mrs Carter spent their time between their homes in France and South Africa
Mrs Carter had been dating retired businessman Mr Guerrier (pictured) who has a farmhouse close to the Carters’ holiday home
Marie-Laure was born in the village and raised her children there. Recently divorced, she was, said her brother, devastated by Karen’s death.
‘She liked her very much. She is in shock about what has happened. She can barely speak. She’s staying away from the village because the atmosphere is so bad. She doesn’t want people pointing the finger at her. They arrested her because she was an easy target having made her feelings clear for him.’
The real killer said Monsieur Monribot, himself a former emergency worker, would have been drenched in blood. ‘My own belief is that the killer isn’t far away,’ he said.
Speaking to the Mail this week, however, Karen’s friend and neighbour Beverley Needham, another British ex-pat, said she didn’t believe there was anything romantic between Guerrier and Marie-Laure. ‘As far as I’m aware, he had no interest in her, but he was gentle with her because she seemed vulnerable.’
Beverley, who cooked dinner for Karen just 24 hours before her death, was also unaware of the depth of her relationship with Guerrier. She attempted to play down talk of a ‘love triangle’, describing widowed Guerrier rather more delicately as Karen’s ‘confidant’.
He had helped her, she said, with the paperwork for her bank account and the purchase of the new cottage. ‘If there was love, they were very discreet. She never ever told me they were lovers.’
She added: ‘He’s a charming man who likes the company of women but not necessarily in a relationship way. He’s had a lot of women friends visiting him over the years that I’ve seen, mainly from Belgium because he worked there at some point as well as in the US and the UK.’
As for Karen, Beverley said: ‘They appreciated each other’s company. She never told me: “We’re shacking up together” or “He’s sleeping at my house.”‘
Mrs Carter managed properties in the French village of Tremolat
But she admitted Karen was sensitive to gossip in the village. ‘She said: “Don’t say to everybody that I’m seeing Jean-Francois all the time.”‘
Did Karen lie about their relationship because she was worried about a love rival? Or was she concerned about news reaching her husband, 65-year-old marine biologist Dr Alan Carter, who still lives at the couple’s home in East London in South Africa?
He said this week that ‘what has come out of this investigation has confirmed a relationship I did not want to believe and that had been denied to me repeatedly by my wife’. He said he’d been left with ‘a feeling of complete betrayal’.
Dr Carter said he had challenged his wife, whose parents came from Lancashire and emigrated to South Africa in the 1950s, about the time she was spending with Guerrier, a man he knew well. ‘I told her that the gossip was tarnishing her reputation but she batted it away and said there was nothing in it. She told our friends the same.’
Dr Carter arrived in Trémolat on Tuesday. Hours after visiting the spot where his wife was killed, he told the Mail: ‘It’s been very difficult coming back to the village. We are still struggling with everything. I just want to focus on the investigation.’
The last time he saw Karen was last month when she toured South Africa with Trémolat’s over-50s women’s football team. He only found out about her death when a cousin in Yorkshire saw a post on Facebook and called him in South Africa.
The couple owned three French holiday homes, let and managed by Karen, and in recent years had largely lived separately although they regularly spoke on the phone. Their four adult children live in Australia, Britain and the US.
Dr Carter preferred to be at their home in South Africa where he runs an environmental agency and would visit Trémolat for holidays. Karen adored the Gallic lifestyle and after buying their first house there 15 years ago after successful breast cancer treatment, spent increasing amounts of time in the Dordogne.
Her husband said she ‘loved the village’ which nestles on the banks of the Dordogne river and has a 12th century church. Friend Beverley insists that the night before she died, Karen told her she had served her husband with divorce papers and he didn’t want to sign them.
Karen’s neighbour Christophe Pultier said that a week or so before her murder he saw her walking into her home with Guerrier late at night. But he added: ‘Whatever was going on, she didn’t deserve to die like that.’
Speaking at his farmhouse, Monsieur Guerrier declined to answer my questions about their relationship, saying only that ‘Karen was a lovely woman’.
Said by friends to be still in shock, he is caring for Haku, the puppy they collected together from a breeder recommended by one of his daughters.
The simpler existence Karen hoped to embark on with that puppy – and perhaps her lover – has now been cruelly and brutally cut short by someone who is possibly still lurking behind the shuttered windows of Trémolat’s Perigordian stone houses.
