“This heartbreaking news was feared”: following the discovery of “bones” of Emile, their two and a half year old son, nine months following his disappearance in the hamlet of Haut-Vernet (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), his parents are now awaiting explanations on the circumstances of this tragedy.
On Saturday, the national gendarmerie was informed of the discovery of bones corresponding to those of the child Emile Soleil, near the hamlet of Vernet, Aix-en-Provence prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon said in a short press release on Sunday.
It was in the only street of this hamlet of 25 inhabitants, attached to the village of Vernet, between Digne-les-Bains and Gap, that the boy was seen for the last time on July 8.
If this heartbreaking news was feared, the time has come for mourning, contemplation and prayer, explained Marie and Colomban Soleil, through a press release sent to AFP by their lawyer, Me Jrme Triomphe, specifying that ‘there will be no further statements from them.
They now want the investigators to continue their work in the necessary secrecy of the investigation, so that the causes of Emile’s disappearance and death can be discovered.
For this, the hamlet was once once more cut off from the world on Sunday, as it has already been several times for nine months, for the purposes of the investigation. And it will remain so until Sunday, as decided by a municipal decree signed by Mayor François Balique.
A police roadblock placed at the exit of Vernet, just following the village church, blocked the only road to Haut-Vernet, located two kilometers upstream, noted an AFP journalist.
In Pontoise, in the Paris suburbs, the Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie (IRCGN) will continue criminalistic analyzes of the bones, explained the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor’s office. On the ground, around thirty gendarmes, including investigators from the Marseille research section, were deployed, the gendarmerie said.
Part of the mystery was therefore resolved on Sunday following a hiker discovered bones the day before, including the child’s skull, as confirmed by the Minister of the Interior Grald Darmanin on LCI. This discovery took place in an area surrounded by nature, steep and not always easy to access, said gendarmerie spokesperson Marie-Laure Pezant on BFMTV.
DJ inspects area
However, this had already been inspected several times by a citizen search and gendarmerie investigators, helped in particular by a helicopter equipped with thermal cameras, she said.
The circumstances of the death remain to be clarified and all avenues are still open, insisted Ms. Pezant, according to whom there is the possibility that these bones were brought by a person, by an animal, or by weather conditions which might have modified The area .
When he disappeared, Emile had just arrived for the summer vacation at his maternal grandparents’ second home. Two neighbors claim to have seen him on the main street of the hamlet, but with conflicting accounts.
The little boy was seen there around 5:15 p.m. wearing a yellow top, white shorts and hiking shoes. His parents, very religious Catholics living in La Bouilladisse, in Bouches-du-Rhne, were not present that day.
This discovery of bones is an important step in an investigation which had not ruled out any leads, even if the theory of a fatal fall had seemed to fade away following multiple unsuccessful searches around the hamlet, located at an altitude of 1,200 metres. on the slopes of the Trois-Evchs massif.
First opened for disturbing disappearance, Digne-les-Bains, the investigation was quickly entrusted to two investigating judges from Aix-en-Provence then reclassified as criminal grounds for kidnapping and sequestration. A scenario, a sort of reconstruction of the facts, took place for the first time on Thursday in Haut-Vernet, with 17 people summoned, including all those present on the day of Emile’s disappearance. But for the moment, no element appears between this research and the situation, affirmed Marie-Laure Pezant.
Until now, much attention had focused on Emile’s maternal grandfather, Philippe V., who had custody of the child that day. This avenue had always been studied, at the same level as the others, however, a source close to the file assured.
Now in his fifties, he had been placed under the status of assisted witness in an investigation into alleged sexual violence and assault in the early 1990s within a private religious school in Pas-de-Calais.
