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Stalker who murdered grandmother in frenzied knife attack gets 20 years
A SEX-CRAZED stalker who murdered a Yorkshire grandmother in a frenzied knife attack at her home on the French Riviera has been jailed for 20 years.
Frenchman Franck Delacourt, 46, had become “infatuated” with his 65-year-old neighbour Carol Hagues, originally from Market Weighton, after she rejected his advances, the court heard.
He bombarded Mrs Hagues with up to 14 phone calls a day -– despite living just 100 yards away with his elderly mother in the exclusive Mediterranean resort of Cagnes-sur-Mer.
Delacourt stabbed her five times through the throat, chest and heart with a kitchen knife after she let him into her apartment, a £300,000 converted artists’ studio, last February.
Mrs Hagues’s Spanish boyfriend was initially arrested for the murder after he arrived later the same day to find her body, and mistakenly picked up the blood-stained knife used to kill her.
However, he was later cleared by DNA tests, and Delacourt was tracked down by the repeated phone calls he had made to Mrs Hagues.
A psychologist who examined Delacourt told the court in Nice: “He was driven to this crime through jealousy and rejection after becoming sexually obsessed with Mrs Hagues.”
The supermarket maintenance man pleaded guilty to killing her, but said he had “trouble remembering the details”. He told the court how he arrived to speak to Mrs Hagues at her apartment.
He said: “She wanted to hit me. I was afraid. Then it came the blows with a kitchen knife. I don’t remember anything more.”
Mrs Hagues’s daughter Karen Larbi, who also lives in Cagnes with her four daughters, said the family were “devastated” at her mother’s death.
She added: “She was a kind, hard-working, lovely woman.
“We may well have had justice today, but we will never stop missing her.”
Mrs Hagues, who once ran a successful secretarial services business in Market Weighton, left the UK more than a decade ago.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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