A SLEEPY town in southwest France has twice been the setting of bloody murder.
In two separate sagas, Trémolat has seen horrific violence entwine with forbidden love and fervent suspicion. The difference? One tale is fictionthe other only too real.
In the 1970 French cult film The Butcher, a woman’s corpse is discovered with multiple stab wounds around her corpse, and suspicion falls over everybody in the village.
Sexual intrigue mounts, as broken love affairs and bitter grudges between neighbours are all cited as possible motives.
Fast forward to the closing days of 2025, and real life is imitating movie fiction.
Back in April, Karen Carter – a 65-year-old British expat with a zest for life – was found horrifically slashed to death in exactly the same village, east of Bordeaux.
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Police described the frenzied attack in the driveway of her own home after returning from a wine tasting evening in the village as “planned and exceptionally violent”.
Just this month, investigators revealed their belief she had parked on the gravel, opened the front door, then returned outside to collect her dog, Haku, when the attacker lunged.
A host of characters have fallen under suspicion amid theories ranging from a bitter love rival to a professional hit or an escaped lunatic – but still no charges have been laid.
A full eight months on from the murder, The Sun returns to investigate the horror film set village – and can reveal that sex, money and intense jealousy all feature in the real-life script.
At the time of her death, Ms Carter was in the throes of a passionate affair with a prominent community man – retired business executive Jean-François Guerrier, 74 – which lies at the heart of the mystery.
“It is certainly still a major focal point of the investigation,” said a senior enquiry source.
“There is no doubt that the relationship caused a significant stir in Trémolet, and this may have been enough to provoke serious criminality.”
The affair was one part of a complicated love web – as another local resident, Marie-Laure Autefort, 69, was herself madly in love with Mr Guerrier, and Ms Carter was married to another man.
This provided major leads early on, and within days of the murder, Mr Guerrier – a Frenchman who lives alone – was formally arrested.
He had hosted a wine tasting party at his home on the night of the killing and – despite his duties as host – followed Ms Carter home after she left.
Mr Guerrier first said he was concerned that she had not telephoned him on reaching her house, which was just 10 minutes away from his.
Then, Mr Guerrier admitted to police he “had come to spend the night at Karen’s,” leaked interview notes reveal.
It was Mr Guerrier who told detectives to investigate Ms Autefort.
The police record states: “During his brief custody period, Jean-François Guerrier directed them to Marie-Laure Autefort, a resident of Trémolat who lives only about a ten-minute walk from the victim’s home, cutting across the fields.
“He described her as a woman who had fallen madly in love with him the previous year, to the point of divorcing the father of her children after several decades of marriage.
“She was then terribly frustrated when she realised that this budding passion was not reciprocated.
“This disappointment, several months old, could have led to a fit of rage if the rumour of a romantic relationship between Jean-François and Karen had reached her ears.”
The words guaranteed Ms Autefort’s arrest, but she too was released after apparently providing a watertight alibi.
She said she had been working part-time at a care home on the night of the murder, and others could vouch for her.
Ms Autefort’s house and car were searched, along with a large cave on land that she owns, but nothing incriminating was found.
Both Ms Autefort and Mr Guerrier have vehemently denied any wrongdoing, while otherwise refusing to discuss the case.
They remain the only two individuals to be detained in relation to the investigation.
The two were later made to give DNA samples to police – along with some 15 guests at Mr Guerrier’s wine tasting party.
Just last month, detectives revealed that none of the samples they collected matched forensic evidence found at the crime scene.
Police said this points to “an outsider” being responsible – and they renewed their calls for witnesses to come forward.
Criminologist Adam Lynes said: “If the investigators are saying it was an outsider, then they are probably quite confident of that.
“It’s likely they will have exhausted a lot of lines of enquiry to get to that point.
“But it doesn’t necessarily mean there is a complete lack of progress. It could be that they’re being cautious.
“And this appeal for witnesses is not at all unusual. Key pieces of information often come from the public.
“But if it was an outsider, then that compounds the challenge. It’s usually more difficult to link a stranger to the victim.”
Given their ages, their relatively slight frames, and Ms Carter’s fitness, the sheer savagery of the crime might well have been beyond Ms Autefort and Mr Guerrier in any case.
Instead, the frenzied knife attack pointed to “a ruthless attempt to make sure Ms Carter died, and wasn’t just left severely wounded” according to another investigating source.
This has raised the prospect of a hired killer working to the orders of somebody who knew Ms Carter well.
And that person could easily be somebody who lived in Trémolat, or was otherwise very close to Ms Carter.
Guns are very hard to get hold of in France nowadays, and of course they make a loud noise, meaning a knife would be a natural choice for an assassin.
The Sun can reveal that no murder weapon has been found, meaning the killer could have got in and out of Trémolat very quickly, perhaps on a motorbike.
“Hit men often use bikes, because they can travel a long way very quickly, and then be burnt and the remains hidden miles from the crime scene, along with a weapon,” said the same investigating source.
As theories and counter-theories mount, discussion is at its most frenzied in the Café Village, the community leisure centre where Ms Carter worked behind the bar, and which Mr Guerrier helped manage.
Gossip about their relationship reached fever pitch at the bar when the pair were filmed dancing to Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive a few months before the killing.
“The Café Village was a hotbed of affairs,” said a regular.
“People were focused on pleasure there, and – as in any small village – they become very close.”
One man who claimed to know nothing about the coupling of Mr Guerrier and Ms Carter was her husband, Alan Carter, 65.
He was at their home in East LondonSouth Africa, at the time of the murder, and originally appeared to be in denial about the fact that his wife had found someone else.
The plot thickened when it came to light that the Carters were in fact involved in a “contentious divorce” all along, a legal source with knowledge of the case – something Mr Carter had initially tried to bury.
Written correspondence between the couple even suggests that the division of their properties in both France and South Africa had become a bone of contention, as the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of pounds was at stake.
In another impasse, investigating magistrates have “struggled to access the victim’s bank accounts” in South Africa, The Sun can also reveal.
In the case of the 1970 film, Popaul, the village butcher, is finally unmasked as the murderer by a lover who ends up stabbing him to death.
Such melodrama is unlikely to be repeated in Trémolat today, but the eerie parallels between Karen Carter’s death and a fictional movie plot cannot be ignored.
The only thing certain is that everyone will remain under suspicion – including those who loved her most.
Lynes said: “The chances of a murder being solved do decrease over time.
“This can be because time makes it harder for people to remember details, and they become less sure of themselves.”
He also explained that people often assume rural crimes are easier to solve, because there is a perception of safety in the countryside – especially in idyllic settings like this.
On the contrary – “the lack of CCTV and witnesses which are present in cities can make it much more difficult to gather evidence”, Lynes explained.
As the months tick by, Ms Carter’s family remains trapped in an agonising limbo – but will hold onto hope of nailing her violent assassin.