ANOTHER death has rocked the rural French neighbourhood where British mum Karen Carter was brutally murdered just weeks ago.
The body of Floriane Roux, 31, has been found in Paunat, south-west France, exactly a week after she was reported missing.
Peter AllenThe body of Floriane Roux, 31, has been discovered a week after she went missing[/caption]
Karen Carter was murdered less than three miles away in a neighbouring village
Doug SeeburgKaren was murdered outside her some in Trémolat[/caption]
Her body was discovered less than three miles from Trémolot, where Karen was stabbed.
The 65-year-old Brit mum-of-four was subjected to a frenzied knife attack outside her home on April 29, in a crime that is yet to be solved.
Her mysterious murder sparked a range of theories – including that it was a professional hit ordered by someone with a grudge against her.
Florian, who was French, had been planning a night out with friends when she disappeared.
Her body was found close to her Vauxhall Corsa.
Both deaths are now being investigated by local prosecutors, supported by judicial police and gendarmes.
An investigating source said on Wednesday: “The body of Floriane Roux was found on Monday, at 4pm.
“It was in a small shelter, hidden by tall grass and plants and not far from her vehicle, next to the Dordogne River.”
The body was found by a dog, who was one of seven involved in a search organised by gendarmes from Bergerac, they added.
A doctor pronounced Florian dead at the scene, before police removed her body.
Neither the circumstances nor cause of Floriane’s death are yet known, and no theory – including the possibility of suicide – is being ruled out, said the source.
According to her her family, Floriane was supposed to meet a friend for the evening on July 23, but the friend claims not to have seen her.
An investigation was opened last week by the Bergerac prosecutor’s office into a “‘disturbing disappearance.”
Those questioned by police included Florian’s boyfriend, whom she lived with in Montanceix, near Saint-Astier.
Cops suspect that married Karen’s killer may have harboured a grudge against her, or taken issue with the secret affair she had struck up with local villager Jean-Francois Guerrier, 75.
She had attended a wine tasting hosted by Jean-François in the hours before her death.
Both he and Marie-Laure Autefort, another Trémolat resident said to be madly in love with him, were originally arrested, but then released without charge.
Karen left the party at 10pm, and had promised to phone Jean-François when she got home.
Concerned when he heard nothing, Jean-François, a former managing director of Fujitsu Services, drove to check on her – and found her body sprawled on the driveway of the property she ran as a rental business.
Despite attempts to save her, Karen died from severe blood loss, after being stabbed in the chest, groin, arm and leg, according to an autopsy.
Karen was found in a pool of blood outside her home in Trémolat