Women’s football team quizzed over murder of British mum-of-four in France

Detectives have interviewed members of a women’s football team who toured South Africa with a British mother-of-four days before she was stabbed to death in France.

Karen Carter, 65, was murdered in the Dordogne village of Trémolat, east of Bordeaux, in April last year.

She lived alone in a renovated farmhouse, while preparing to divorce her husband, Alan Carter, also 65, who was based 10,000 miles away, in South Africa.

At the time, the Carters were focused on dividing properties they owned, including a portfolio in south west France, where Ms Carter managed a rental business worth at least £1million.

Another friend of Ms Carter tells the latest edition of France’s Sud Ouest (South West) newspaper: ‘For her [Ms Carter], it had been over with her husband for a long time. But he didn’t want to hear it.’

Karen Carter, a 65-year-old married mother of four, smiling.

Neighbours of Ms Carter in Trémolat have been arrested and then released without charge in the 10 months since the crime, and the investigation is now increasingly focused on suspects Ms Carter may have met abroad.

She had joined a tour by her over-50s French football team, the Queens of Football (Les Reines du Foot) to South Africa, and may have met ‘people who wanted to harm her’ there, said an investigating source.

He added: ‘Women who were on the football tour have now been questioned by detectives.

‘The aim is to work out whom Karen Carter met in South Africa when she was not playing football, and if these people might be connected to her killing.’

Ms Carter’s French lover, retired business executive Jean-François Guerrier, 75, was among supporters who joined the South Africa tour as a spectator.

He was originally arrested over the killing after police found Ms Carter’s body, but has since been released without charge.

In a further twist, the source said French detectives have expressed ‘extreme frustration’ that they have not been able to access key financial documents in South Africa, including Ms Carter’s bank account records.

The football team began the tour on March 30th, and was eliminated from an international competition on April 4th.

Ms Carter then spent time with her family, including her husband, in East London, their home city on South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast.

Her corpse had eight major wounds, in the chest, groin, an arm and a leg, when it was found in France on April 29th.

The source said: ‘The football tour was very high profile, but there is a lot of work to be done on the South Africa side of the investigation. It is of increasing interest, and the currrent focus of the enquiry.’

DNA tests have found no link with any local suspects in France, leading to another senior investigator saying: ‘This appears to point to an outsider visiting the village and carrying out this brutal crime’.

The theory of a professional hit has been strengthened by the sighting of a ‘suspicious man’ close to Ms Carter’s Trémolat home, just three days before she was killed, and he has never been traced.

Mr Carter has expressed his surprise that his wife was seeing Mr Guerrier, and insisted the divorce was ‘not a fait accompli’.

This was despite Ms Carter, who had dual British and South African nationality, spending most of her time in France, in the lead up to her death.

In an interview last month, Mr Carter expressed ‘frustration’ at the lack of progress in the investigation, saying: ‘It’s such a small village. Surely there must be prime suspects.’

He was aware of the ‘contract killer’ theory, and believed it was fuelled by gossip about his 30-year marriage.

The couple had four adult children together – two daughters and two sons – and they live in the UK, America, Australia and South Africa.

Paying tribute to her, one friend described Karen as ‘a strong businesswoman who had an air of authority about her’, while another said she ‘didn’t have any enemies.’

A Trémolat resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said last year: ‘Everyone is in total shock – she was a delightful, energetic person who got on with everybody.’

A source working with Périgueux prosecutors, who are leading the investigation into Karen Carter’s death, said: ‘The enquiry is ongoing, and all leads are being explored.’