FEARS are growing that Brit mum Karen Carter was killed in a professional hit – as the unsolved killing continues to stump police.
Her children have finally spoken out for the first time following her tragic stabbing death in a “frenzied attack” two months ago outside her residence in France.
Police investigating her death in the sleepy village of Trémolat, Dordogne, said her brutal murder was “planned and exceptionally violent”.
Police hypothesize that Karen’s killer, who was married, might have held a grudge against her or disapproved of her clandestine relationship with a local villager named Jean-Francois Guerrier, aged 74.
They also identified a love triangle including another local named Marie Laure Autefort – who was reportedly “madly in love” with Guerrier.
Guerrier and Autefort were previously arrested by police and questioned – but both of them were released without charge.
Karen had been married to Alan Carter, 65, for 30 years but the couple had been estranged and Alan was living in South Africa at the time her death.
Autefort’s brother, Philippe Monribot, acknowledged that his sister had fallen for Guerrier, whom she affectionately referred to as “the tall one,” but he maintained her innocence.
He is convinced the murder was a “professional hit”, and said that police were “wasting their time” by interrogating him for four hours last week, The Times reported.
Karen was found by Guerrier dying from multiple stab wounds in her driveway at 10pm on April 29.
She was a beloved member of the local community and a married mum-of-four.
Guerrier had followed Karen home at a discreet distance after hosting a wine-tasting at his Trémolat farmhouse – just a 10 minute drive from the Brit mum’s property.
He then found Karen on the floor by her car and desperately tried to save her – but it was too late.
After prosecutors confirmed that Karen’s affair was the focus of the investigation, her husband Alan said his shock was compounded with a sense of betrayal.
Karen’s daughter Liz, an engineering student in the US, said: “I keep thinking about what her last moments would have been like.
“The colour in my life has washed away.”
She added that her mum’s killer was clearly a “deeply disturbed individual who had nothing going for them”.
“They saw my mother’s beautiful life and, for whatever reason, chose to extinguish her light,” she said.
Karen’s other daughter Katy, 30, who lives in the UK, said her mum had been “so excited about her life in France and growing old in Trémolat”.
Meanwhile, her son from her first marriage Nick Sachs said of his mum’s death: “It’s a hole in our lives that we can’t fill.”
And his brother Jonathan, who works in Australia, said he felt “aimless” since his mum’s murder and even prepared for the prospect that the killer would never be found.
He said: “I’ve come to realise that there is a possibility that the culprit may never be identified and we as a family will need to learn and accept that.”
The mayor of Trémolat Éric Chassagne was one of the last people to see Karen alive, as he had also been at the small gathering at Guerrier’s property.
Chassagne, who has been mayor for 30 years, feared that suspicion was “weighing on the village” of around 600 residents.
He suggested the killer might still be in town.
He said: “The most probable [lines of inquiry] involve people we know. It’s the most obvious.”
Since his release after questioning, Guerrier, originally from Paris, has kept a low profile.
He previously spent some years working in England as an IT executive.
The woman who had fallen in love with him, 69-year-old retired carer Autefort, has not been seen in Trémolat since her two days of questioning.
Cops are said to have taken statements from over 200 people and scoured fields and woods near the Carter home for clues as well as the murder weapon.
Karen also reportedly told fellow ex-pat pal Beverley Needham she was sealing a divorce from Alan – just one day before her murder.
Beverley told The Telegraph that, over dinner the night before the murder, she asked Karen: “Have you served the papers?”, to which she replied: “Yes, I gave him the papers.”
The friend continued: “[Karen] told me the relationship was over and said: ‘I’m done’ […] That was her words. She said: ‘I’m done.’”
Beverley, who was brokering the sale of a cottage to Karen, said the estranged couple saw each other only occasionally, but that the toll of the divorce seemed to weigh heavily on her friend.
Alan was said to have denied that he and Karen were divorcing, but said his wife’s secret romance with Guerrier left him with “a sense of betrayal”.
Karen was found in her driveway dying from eight injuries to her “chest, groin, arm and leg”.
An autopsy revealed the mum was killed “as she tried to defend herself from a frenzied attack”.
Another theory amongst the village is that an escaped inmate from a prison 7.5 miles away, which houses mentally ill patients, could have randomly ambushed Karen.
The cold-blooded murder has rocked the tight-knit village community – who all appear dumbfounded.
Emma Rathbone, 45, said: “She was absolutely lovely. She was at the centre of the village. Everybody knew her.
“If you were new to the village she would be the first who would make you feel welcome.
“You can see how beautiful the village is. It’s like heaven. You don’t expect something like that to happen to somebody so lovely.”
Charity worker Adrian Carter, who has had a house in the village for a decade, said: “She was really, really lovely. She was bubbly and a friendly to everyone – both French and English and any other nationalities who were here.
“I was shocked, really really shocked. Genuinely, you would say it’s safe.
“Knowing that someone has now been arrested make me feel a little bit safer.
“It’s such a sleepy place. It’s not like a Midsomer Murders sort of place.”
Karen’s husband Alan, who remains at the couple’s home in East London, South Africa, expressed shock and surprise at revelations that his wife had “started a relationship” with another man.
Karen and Alan had owned their holiday home in Trémolat for 15 years, splitting time between France and South Africa, where Alan still works.
Speaking from their home in South Africa, Carter said he learned of his wife’s death via a Facebook post read by a cousin who also lives in Trémolat.
“She phoned me […] to say she’s sorry to tell me and that she thinks Karen has died. That was the first I heard about it,” he said.
“No one had got in touch with me at all to let me know what had happened. I found out through my cousin who happened to see it on a Facebook page.”
The former London Stock Exchange worker, 65, described her as “such a decent, lovely person”, and told of the family’s shock.
He said his wife of 30 years was an outgoing, friendly person who “wouldn’t hurt a fly”, and said her death has been “traumatic” for his family.
Karen had lived in Trémolat for more than a decade, where she ran two holiday rental homes.
She volunteered at Village Café alongside Guerrier and Autefort, which now hangs a photograph of the late mum and wife while her killer remains at large.
