By KAREN JEFFREY
kjeffrey@capecodonline.com
July 11, 2010 12:00 AM
BOURNE — Thirty years after Frances Carriere was found stabbed to death, her husband, now 75, has been charged with the slaying.
Edmond T. Carriere was arrested by Bourne and state police around 9 p.m. Friday at 9 Head of the Bay Road, the home where Frances Carriere, 44, was slain on Jan. 3, 1980.
The arrest comes as a second man, Steven Stewart, 55 — also charged in the 1980 killing — is scheduled to go to trial for his role in the alleged murder-for-hire plot.
Stewart's retrial is scheduled to begin Tuesday in Barnstable Superior Court. Stewart was convicted of Frances Carriere's murder in 2005, but the state Supreme Judicial Court overturned the verdict last year.
Edmond Carriere is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow in Falmouth District Court and is being held at the Barnstable County Correctional Facility in Bourne pending arraignment.
Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe confirmed Carriere's arrest. "Carriere was arrested as a result of information developed over the past few years," he said.
O'Keefe said the investigation has been ongoing throughout the indictments and arrests of the past few years. He singled out state police Lt. Chris Mason and First Assistant District Attorney Brian Glenny for their hard work and tenacity.
"I'm very hesitant to discuss the evidence at this point, but we have a witness who has come forward and I'll leave it at that," O'Keefe said.
A woman who answered the telephone at Carriere's home this morning said she had no comment. She declined to identify herself.
"This has been a long time in coming," said Linda McCraney of Florida, one of the Carriere's four children, in a telephone interview yesterday.
"I got the call late Friday night ... and let out a gasp," she said. "I can't tell you how happy this makes me. None of us — my sisters, my brother, my aunt or me, would be in this position now if not for what my father did to my mother 30 years ago. Our lives were changed in ways that no one could have expected. Our lives were altered in ways that were not good for any of us."
Carriere and his wife had four children — three daughters and a son. The children ranged in age from 14 to their early 20s at the time of her death. The youngest, a girl, was living with her mother at the time of the slaying, but was away. Frances Carriere is also survived by a younger sister. Her mother and step-father, who attended Stewart's first trial, have since died.
Edmond Carriere has long been a suspect in the case, which went unsolved for decades and was re-opened in 1999 by state police as a cold-case investigation.
Edmond and Frances Carriere were separated at the time of her death, following a marriage that their now adult children said included years of physical and emotional abuse. Carriere was never charged with abusing his late wife.
Carriere has always denied having anything to do with his wife's death. He was in Florida the night she was slain — a fact no one has ever disputed over the course of three decades.
However, investigators allege Carriere paid two other men to murder his wife. During Stewart's first trial in 2005, witnesses testified that during a card game, Carriere offered them money to kill his wife. There was also testimony that Carriere allegedly paid $10,000 to his friend Richard Grebauski of Wareham for the killing. Grebauski is alleged to have convinced Stewart to become involved. Grebauski died in 2004 from injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident in Florida.
Frances Carriere was stabbed multiple times, at least once through the heart. Her body was discovered by a male friend who has since died.
In previous interviews with the Cape Cod Times, the children maintained their father believed his estranged wife would get the house as part of a divorce settlement. They said their father was convinced that the home would substantially increase in value because of plans in the 1980s to extend Route 25 directly to the Bourne Bridge and to develop a new rotary near the exit ramp in Buzzards Bay.
Previously, traffic headed for the Bourne Bridge had to pass through Wareham and the center of Buzzards Bay.
After Frances Carriere's death, Edmond Carriere returned to the house, where he and a girlfriend have lived since.
Having their mother's slaying go unsolved for so many years was "torturous for us," said Linda McCraney. "For a long time we felt that nobody cared but us."
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