SerpApi.Org
A 70-year-old woman has been charged in connection with the alleged murder of a British expatriate in a Dordogne village.
Karen Carter, a 65-year-old mother of four, was killed outside her guest house in Trémolat last year. French prosecutors have now revealed that a woman from the village is being investigated for murder.
Prosecutors said the suspect had been taken into custody the day after Mrs Carter’s body had been found with eight stab wounds to her “chest, groin, arm and leg”, then released without charge.
However, Jacques-Édouard Andrault, the prosecutor in Périgueux responsible for leading the inquiry, confirmed on Wednesday afternoon that the suspect was under “formal investigation for murder”.
The attack in a commune of 600 people, which has seen no serious crime in almost half a century, shocked Mrs Carter’s friends, family and neighbours.
Police had initially treated Mrs Carter’s death as a “grudge killing” and a crime of passion that may have been connected to her relationship with Jean-François Guerrier, 74, a businessman from the village, who discovered her body.
Mrs Carter, who held dual British and South African nationality, was divorcing Alan Carter, who lives in East London, and had planned to settle in Trémolat, The Telegraph has previously revealed.
The night before her death on April 29 last year, Mrs Carter had told neighbour and fellow expat Beverley Needham over dinner that she was formalising her separation from Mr Carter.
The next evening, she was found with several stab wounds on the drive of her home, 10 minutes after returning from a wine-tasting event at Mr Guerrier’s home.
Ms Needham, who helped broker the sale of Mrs Carter’s £135,000 cottage, said: “I asked her, ‘Have you served the papers?’ and she said, ‘Yes, I gave him the papers’. She told me the relationship was over and said, ‘I’m done’ ... that was her words. She said, ‘I’m done’.”
She said Mrs Carter and her husband had seen each other only periodically in the past couple of years.
Mr Carter was said to have denied they were divorcing but said the news of his wife’s relationship with Mr Guerrier, which prosecutors confirmed, had left him “feeling a sense of betrayal”.
Ms Needham described Mr Guerrier, a former executive at the IT corporation Fujitsu, as a “confidant” of Mrs Carter and said any romantic relationship would have been “very discreet”.
