Detectives have interviewed members of a women’s football team who toured South Africa with a British mother-of-four days before she was savagely stabbed to death in France.
Karen Carter, 65, was murdered within the Dordogne village of Trémolat, east of Bordeaux, in April last 12 months.
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.
On 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 price at the least £1million.
One other friend of Ms Carter tells the newest edition of France’s Sud Ouest (South West) newspaper: ‘For her [Ms Carter], it had been over along with her husband for a very long time. But he didn’t wish to hear it.’
Sud Ouest asks if the ‘key to the mystery’ might lie in South Africa.
Neighbours of Ms Carter in Trémolat have been arrested after which released at no cost within the 10 months because the crime, and the investigation is now increasingly focused on suspects Ms Carter can 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 can have met ‘individuals who desired 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 is perhaps connected to her killing.’
Ms Carter’s French lover, retired business executive Jean-François Guerrier, 75, was amongst 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 at no cost.
In an additional twist, the source said French detectives have expressed ‘extreme frustration’ that they’ve not been in a position to access key financial documents in South Africa, including Ms Carter’s checking account records.
The football team began the tour on March thirtieth, and was eliminated from a global competition on April 4th.
Ms Carter then hung out along 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, within the chest, groin, an arm and a leg, when it was present in France on April twenty ninth.
A documentary called ‘The Queens of Football’ has just been released by France TV, and it focuses on the South Africa tour, within the context of ‘the empowerment of girls’.
The source said: ‘The football tour was very high profile, but there’s quite a lot of work to be done on the South Africa side of the investigation. It’s of accelerating interest, and the currrent focus of the enquiry.’
DNA tests have found no link with any local suspects in France, leading to a different senior investigator saying: ‘This appears to point to an outsider visiting the village and carrying out this brutal crime’.
The idea of knowledgeable hit has been strengthened by the sighting of a ‘suspicious man’ near 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, within the lead as much as her death.
In an interview last month, Mr Carter expressed ‘frustration’ at the shortage of progress within the investigation, saying: ‘It’s such a small village. Surely there have to 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 4 adult children together – two daughters and two sons – and so they live within the UK, America, Australia and South Africa.
Paying tribute to her, one friend described Karen as ‘a powerful businesswoman who had an air of authority about her’, while one other said she ‘didn’t have any enemies.’
A Trémolat resident, who wished to stay anonymous, said last 12 months: ‘Everyone seems to be in total shock – she was a pleasant, energetic one who got on with everybody.’
A source working with Périgueux prosecutors, who’re leading the investigation into Karen Carter’s death, said: ‘The enquiry is ongoing, and all leads are being explored.’
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