70-year-old woman charged with murder of British expat in France

A 70-year-old woman has been charged with the murder of Karen Carter, the British expat found dead in south-western France last year.

The woman was charged on 2 July with Carter’s murder in Trémolat, in the Dordogne, and is “under judicial supervision”.

Jacques-Édouard Andrault, the public prosecutor for the region, is quoted as confirming the charge, adding the suspect had been arrested shortly after the murder on 29 April last year, but was released without charge at the time.

Andrault said: “On July 2nd, the investigating judge in Périgueux formally charged a woman with murder.”

He added that “this 70-year-old woman, originally from Trémolat, was taken into custody on April 30, 2025, during a preliminary investigation, before being released”.

“Since then, the investigations conducted as part of the judicial inquiry opened on May 7, 2025, have led the investigating judge to indict her,” he said, adding “this woman has been placed under judicial supervision”.

Carter, a 65-year-old British-South African national, ran two gites (holiday rental homes) in the village of Trémolat, a beautifully renovated 250-year-old farmhouse and neighbouring 18th-century stone barn collectively called Les Chouettes.

She was said to divide her time between the Dordogne and the home she shared with her husband, Alan Carter, in KuGompo City, South Africa.

An autopsy revealed that Carter died from severe blood loss after being stabbed multiple times, collapsing and dying next to her car.

Eight serious wounds were noted in total, including to the “chest, abdomen and forearm”, as well as “superficial ones on the thigh, shoulder and thumbs”.

Carter had been at a wine-tasting party at Cafe Village Trémolat, described on Facebook as “an association that wants to offer the people of Trémolat and the surrounding area a meeting place”, with about 15 other guests, including Eric Chassagne, the village’s mayor.

A few days after the attack a then 69-year-old local woman was arrested. She was released without charge shortly after.

It later emerged that Carter was discovered by a 75-year-old businessman, Jean-François Guerrier, with whom she was in a relationship. The nature of their relationship was seized upon and speculated over by tabloids.

Carter’s husband, a former London Stock Exchange worker who was in South Africa at the time of the murder, expressed his shock at the revelations that his wife had “started a relationship” with another man, saying he understood Guerrier was “just a friend of hers”.