Was a hitman hired to kill Dordogne expat? Days before Karen Carter's brutal stabbing a mysterious man was seen outside her house. Now locals believe her murder could be the work of an assassin

Daily Mail​

5 days ago

Two days before her murder, on her 65th birthday, Karen Carter posed for what is believed to be her last ever photograph while out for lunch with friends.
Smiling at the camera and cuddling her new puppy, Haku, the mother-of-four was on the brink of a new life having decided to divorce her South African husband and set up home permanently in this charming corner of south-west France.
As we now know, the Gallic idyll she longed for was tragically never to be.
Karen was stabbed to death on April 29 in a frenzied attack outside the 250-year-old holiday property she owned with her estranged husband.
The former teacher had just arrived home from a wine-tasting event at the hilltop farmhouse of a 'charming' Frenchman to whom she had grown close as she negotiated her divorce.
Her attacker, who police say was lying in wait, struck so fast as she got out of her Dacia Duster car that her handbag, and Haku, were still inside.
In an area of the Dordogne where crime is virtually unheard of, Karen's friends in the village of Tremolat hoped this terrible crime would quickly be solved.
But three months on, and with British tourists now arriving in droves to spend their summer holiday in the region, the killer is still at large.
Amid news that French police have now summoned a group of villagers for DNA tests, I returned to Tremolat this week to speak to those involved in the case.
Shockingly, I can reveal that Karen's friends in the village are now convinced that her murder was not a 'crime of passion', as was previously speculated, but a cold-blooded professional hit –what is known in France as a 'meurtre commandite '.
If the idea of a contract killer operating in this tranquil and bucolic corner of rural France seems outlandish, then it is a theory being given credence by French detectives, not least because of the sighting of a suspicious man spotted by Karen's home just three days before she was killed.
The Daily Mail is the first newspaper to be told of this potential suspect, who was reported to police in the immediate aftermath of Karen's death but has never been traced.
One of Karen's French neighbours, the eyewitness who saw him, spoke exclusively to the Mail this week out of frustration at the apparent lack of progress being made on the case.
'We made eye contact and he looked away very quickly and didn't say 'Bonjour' which is very unusual around here,' he recalled, noting that the man, who he says was black and someone he had never seen in the village, was walking along the road at the front of Karen's house but had no bag with him, or anything that might have suggested he was a hiker wandering through the area.
'He was a bit taller than me and thin and muscular with sculpted arms,' added the neighbour, who says he has now spoken to police four times about the sighting.
'I thought it was odd at the time but I was in a hurry and so I didn't think any more about it. I wish now that I'd challenged him. After Karen was murdered, I told the police straight away.'
French detectives are notoriously tight-lipped about ongoing cases, but this week an investigating source agreed that 'the circumstances of the murder certainly point to a targeted assassination'. The source added: 'He lay in wait, carried out the attack out of sight of anyone else and then made sure the victim was dead before escaping.'
No murder weapon has ever been found and beyond the sighting of the suspicious man outside Karen's home, there are few leads for detectives to go on.
There is no CCTV in Tremolat. Residents, who in the past thought nothing of leaving their doors unlocked, have never seen the need for doorbell cameras in an area often referred to as Dordogneshire because of its popularity with Brits who love its old-fashioned rural charm.
Police initially focused their attention on tyre tracks left by a car parked at the edge of a wood, a six-minute walk from the murder scene through walnut groves and a barley field – but for now, that trail also appears to have gone cold.
Reports last month of an attack on another woman initially sparked fears that the killer had struck again.
The 28-year-old woman was said to have been 'stalked from behind and knocked unconscious' while out walking her dog in the village on May 26.
But according to a source in the prosecutor's office in Bergerac, 'no connection has been established between the two crimes'.
The discovery of a 31-year-old woman's body in a village five miles away appears to be yet another red herring. That death is said to have been a suicide.
This week, French gendarmes were seen returning to Karen's home on the outskirts of Tremolat, with their attention focused on the outside of the honey-coloured property, which is still cordoned off with yellow police tape.
The once pristine home is a sorrowful sight. Weeds have sprung up across the gravel driveway.
A cellophane-wrapped dead bunch of flowers lies on the verge outside.
The gendarmes' visit comes three weeks after senior investigating judge Clara Verger, who has been placed in charge of the case, ordered the DNA testing of 15 villagers who came into contact with Karen in the hours before her killing.
The appointment of Ms Verger may yet be further evidence that police are leaning towards the possibility that the killing was the work of an outsider rather than a local. As president of the tribunal judiciaire in the nearby town of Perigueux, she has powers to liaise with overseas authorities.
Those asked to give mouth swabs at the gendarmerie in the nearby town of Lalinde include a small group of friends as well as around a dozen guests who attended the wine-tasting with Karen on the evening of her murder.
Among them was Tremolat's 61-year-old mayor, Eric Chassagne, who said this week that Karen was 'beaming' and 'radiant' on the night she died. 'I think everyone who may have met Karen during the day and evening of April 29 was sampled,' said Mr Chassagne, adding that he had been told the exercise was a 'process of elimination'.
'They want to close certain lines of inquiry,' he said. 'From what I understand, they would like to compare the DNA with that found in the victim's vehicle.'
Another woman, who was also asked to provide a mouth swab, said she had been told police wanted to eliminate anyone who might have come into contact with Karen's car.
She added: 'I was happy to go to Lalinde and give DNA,' she said. 'I'd do anything if I thought it would help get justice for Karen.'
Still overwhelmed by the unthinkable horror of her death, Karen's friends in Tremolat endlessly go over the terrible events that led up to it, trying to work out how her killer knew she would be returning home alone that Tuesday night and how on earth he managed to strike and then flee without being caught.
Karen had spent the evening at a wine-tasting hosted by Jean-Francois Guerrier, a former managing director of Fujitsu who lived for several years in Camberley in Surrey.
One guest who was there has reportedly claimed that he felt they were 'being watched'.
Karen left the event at around 10pm, telling fellow guests she needed to take her puppy home to settle him. She set off by car back to Les Chouettes, the holiday home she bought 15 years ago with her husband Alan, a ten-minute drive away.
Her killer would easily have been hidden from view among the dense greenery that surrounds her property on the outskirts of the village.
Her assailant lunged at her as she got out of her car, stabbing her eight times in her chest, groin, arm and leg and severing her aorta.
In yet another tragic twist to this brutal crime, she was found in a pool of her own blood by Guerrier who, after waving off the last of his guests, had driven to join Karen at her home before stumbling across a scene of almost unimaginable horror.
A friend told the Daily Mail this week that while it was clear that she was beyond saving, Guerrier tried to resuscitate her after summoning the emergency services.
'He doesn't talk about it much but it was very traumatic for him,' said the friend. 'He said what he saw was just gore.'
Guerrier was quizzed by police but swiftly eliminated from inquiries. A second arrest followed, that of 69-year-old divorcee Marie-Laure Autefort who lived nearby and had made no secret of her own love for Guerrier.
She was held in custody for 48 hours amid suspicions that she might have had a grudge against the couple but was also released after providing a concrete alibi.
Karen's close friend told me that she was 'very discreet' about her relationship with her 'confidant' Guerrier but it is clear that the pair had become close in recent months.
In a poignant text message sent to a friend after the murder, he wrote: 'We were happy being happy. This has left a big black hole.' A month before her death, Guerrier accompanied Karen on an overseas trip to South Africa with a local women's over-50s football team, Les Reines du Foot, in which she played.
Karen's husband Alan, who visited Tremolat a week after her murder, has spoken of 'a feeling of complete betrayal' upon hearing that his wife had formed this new relationship.
He organised his wife's funeral, which took place in the nearby town of Bergerac early last month before returning to South Africa.
The Daily Mail understands that Karen told 65-year-old Alan, a keen surfer who runs his own environmental agency, that she wanted a divorce in January this year. She had already consulted a family lawyer in South Africa asking for assistance in separating their assets.
The couple have four adult children who live in Australia, Britain and the US.
A source has told me she didn't want her husband to retain a share in their French holiday property because of her fears that things would get messy if he ever remarried.
In return for 'Les Chouettes' she was prepared to hand over her financial interest in their marital home, 7,000 miles away, in the coastal city of East London in South Africa. She was also in the process of buying a one-bedroom cottage in Tremolat, planning to live there while earning a rental income from Les Chouettes.
'She saw her future in France not South Africa,' says the source who spoke to the Daily Mail. 'Karen wanted a fresh start.'
Speaking on the phone from South Africa this week, Alan Carter said that while the slow progress of the case was frustrating, French police had assured him they were 'vigorously pursuing' Karen's killer.
'It's such a small village, you think someone would know something,' he said.
He said that although there was talk of a divorce, it 'wasn't definite'.
'I still hoped that we would find a way to save our marriage. I didn't want it to end in divorce,' he told me. 'We were still talking.'
The last time he saw Karen was in South Africa in May after she finished her tour with the French women's football team and came to East London.
'I've learned since that this other man accompanied her on the tour but she said nothing about it when she came to stay with me and the family.
'I have to accept that she had some kind of relationship with this chap but she said nothing to me or her friends here to suggest that something was going on.'
He said that he and his family and Karen's friends in South Africa were still grieving for her. 'We are still hurting,' he said.
Compounding the family's agony, he said that Karen's Lancashire-born mother, who was left devastated by her daughter's brutal death, passed away three weeks ago.
There is no doubt the murder is still the talk of Tremolat, above all at Cafe Village, a community-run social club in Tremolat popular with expats, where Karen and Guerrier both volunteered behind the bar.
The cafe was 'shut indefinitely' in the wake of Karen's murder but reopened on May 28. As well as music events, it hosts French conversation classes, quiz nights and knitting sessions. Membership costs just €15 a year.
A week earlier, an invitation-only memorial service was held at the cafe, with photographs of Karen displayed alongside bouquets of flowers and the performance of a song written for the occasion by one of the club's regular musicians called 'We'll remember you well' which left those gathered in tears.
On Wednesday evening, the cafe was bustling with locals and visiting tourists who filled the outdoor trestle tables, drinking local wine and eating food from the visiting 'Dordogne Chippy' fish and chip van while listening to live music including covers of songs by The Police and The Beach Boys. It was exactly the kind of evening that Karen loved.
Among those present was Jean-Francois Guerrier who is now caring for Karen's cross-breed puppy.
He has declined to speak about Karen's murder, saying only that she was 'a lovely lady'.
'He doesn't talk about what happened. He's just trying to keep busy,' said a source at the cafe. 'We all miss Karen terribly but life has to go on.'
The birthday photograph taken of Karen two days before her murder now hangs on the wall by the bar in her memory.
She spent that happy day having lunch with girlfriends and visiting a flower market in the nearby town of Le Bugue.
'Karen wanted to put the past behind her,' her close friend said this week. 'She was excited about the future and turning over a new leaf. She thought she was embarking on a new chapter of her life,never realising what was lying in wait for her.'