The bones of Émile, missing since July 8, 2023, were discovered this Saturday, March 30, thus relaunching an investigation which had until then only aroused suspicion in the hamlet of Haut-Vernet.
His death remains unexplained. Nearly nine months following Émile’s disappearance, bones belonging to this two and a half year old boy were found on Saturday March 30, near the hamlet of Haut-Vernet, where he was last seen. a summer followingnoon.
His grandparents called for help on July 8, 2023 following losing sight of him while he was playing in their garden. Despite a major search effort and the mobilization of 800 volunteers for searches, Émile had not been found.
Over the past nine months, the small hamlet of Haut-Vernet and its 130 inhabitants have been plunged into a more than special atmosphere, where the shock of the loss of a child quickly gave way to suspicion and tensions.
A village square spirit
On the day of his disappearance, two witnesses saw Émile, shortly before his grandparents sounded the alert. Why didn’t they act? The hamlet has only around fifteen homes. A village square spirit reigns there. It is not uncommon for children to play together in the street of this cul-de-sac where any external threat would have been immediately reported.
The map of Haut-Vernet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence where the bones of little Émile were found on Saturday March 30, 2024 © BFMTV
One of the witnesses claims that Émile went back to the heart of the village where there is a cabin that the little boy built with his aunts and uncles. “That day, I saw the little one going down to the wash house,” another witness told BFM DICI in September 2023. Stories which are therefore contradictory.
One thing is certain: the boy was seen, with a yellow top, white shorts and hiking shoes in the only street of this town, shortly following 5 p.m., on July 8, 2023. According to the second witness, he did not There was nothing to worry regarding since “the grandfather was cutting wood regarding ten meters from the child”.
A cabin installed in Vernet (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence) fascinated little Emile, who disappeared on July 8, 2023. © BFMTV
“We denounced a lot of people”
Despite a search organized the same evening and searches all weekend, the boy was not found. All hypotheses are then considered by the investigators: the prowling sex offender, the car or tractor accident…
In a mountainous region, the trail of the kidnapping by a bird also surfaces, but it is quickly dismissed, because golden eagles, for example, cannot lift the weight of a child of that age.
All eyes quickly turn towards the village. In the days following Émile’s disappearance, the gendarmes interviewed the residents. Some are heard several times. Timetables are checked, cross-referenced and the atmosphere becomes tense.
“There are a lot of people who, we don’t know why, have said things when there was nothing to say. We must not blame the neighbor. We have denounced a lot of people, it feels like we were for the war”, Gilles, a resident of the village, testified to BFM DICI.
Émile’s family at the heart of suspicion
In this life-size Cluedo, the silence of Émile’s family raises questions. The little boy’s parents were not in Le Vernet on July 8: they stayed in La Bouilladisse, near Marseille.
It was only two days later that his mother spoke on Facebook. She does not relay the call for witnesses, but publishes a call to prayer. Very religious Catholics, Émile’s parents did not communicate with the press and became the object of all kinds of rumors. Some even consider them suspicious.
We will have to wait until the end of August for Émile’s father and mother to respond in an interview given to our colleagues at Famille Chrétienne. “Some claim that we go to mass several times a day, others that we quietly went to church to pray during the hunts, with the aim of making us appear as enlightened people who rely solely on prayer, neglecting action. However, we gave our all on both fronts according to our strengths”, they affirm.
In this long interview, they denounce in particular the “untruths” surrounding the investigation and the publication of “false details (…) which hurt us”.
In recent days, the name of Émile’s grandfather, who had custody of the child that day, has also come out in the press, because he was cited in a case of violence within a religious community for children in the 1990s. The family and their neighbors also suffered an arson attack in 2019. Several fires were discovered in the ruins of the child’s great-grandparents’ properties. Would Émile have been the collateral victim of a settling of scores?
No custody
On August 21, the investigation was extended to the criminal acts of “kidnapping” and “sequestration”. This change in legal framework, decided in July by the Aix-en-Provence public prosecutor’s office, is not due to progress in the investigation, but makes it possible in particular to take custody measures and possible removals. , which was not possible in the initial framework.
Except that since the beginning of the investigation, no police custody has been taken. The house of a 16-year-old young man, located in the hamlet of Roussimal a few kilometers from Le Vernet, was certainly searched several times, but no conclusive evidence was found.
“The climate of suspicion is certainly there. There is a relentlessness towards this little one,” one of his relatives lamented on BFMTV in October.
In November, searches were carried out in six departments. In Haut-Vernet, all the houses had already been searched. But still the same mystery: no new elements are provided and the investigators remain at an impasse.
“Understand our distress, tell us where Émile is,” said the boy’s mother on the occasion of the little one’s third birthday. Nothing works. The hamlet remains undermined by suspicion: the “Émile case” is on everyone’s minds.
Emile, a little boy aged 2 and a half, disappeared on July 8, 2023 in Le Vernet (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), following escaping the vigilance of his grandparents. © Family
“It would be a moral fault not to keep hope”
Since July, nearly 900 reports have been processed or dismissed by investigators. Systematic technical and scientific police operations of any useful trace led to the production of nearly 300 seals, according to a source close to the file. Since the start of the case, more than 100 hearings have also taken place. Impressive figures.
Even if the gendarmes find nothing, the file “is alive, very alive”, Jean-Luc Blachon, prosecutor of Aix-en-Provence, confided to BFMTV in January. “We know what we’re looking for […] There are still many things to do,” said the investigator on the front line.
“My concern is that we will not be able to bring this matter to fruition […] It would be a moral fault not to keep hope,” said the prosecutor.
A few weeks later, on Thursday March 28, a “scenario” was carried out in Haut-Vernet. The objective for the investigators is to retrace the hours which preceded Émile’s disappearance, in order to highlight possible contradictions, inconsistencies or, on the contrary, to make cross-checks. But no new information was communicated by the authorities at the end of the day.
Access to the hamlet of Haut-Vernet is prohibited to any person not summoned for the “situation”. © CHRISTOPHE SIMON / AFP
A discovery in an area that had already been searched
Saturday March 30, a woman made a discovery which will help relaunch the investigation: bones were found less than two kilometers from the hamlet of Haut-Vernet. This is the little boy’s skull. According to information from BFMTV, this hiker took it in her hands and dropped it off at the Seyne-les-Alpes gendarmerie.
The gendarmes then came to the site so that the hiker might indicate where the bones were. Teeth were also found. During the night from Saturday to Sunday, DNA analyzes made it possible to formally identify the bones as belonging to Émile, matching the initial findings.
Announced to the press this Easter Sunday by the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor, this discovery caused sadness and relief, explains the mayor of Vernet, François Balique. “The investigators will now be able to know if the intervention of an adult took place,” he told BFMTV.
Questions that remain unanswered
But this discovery raises questions: it took place in an area which had already been searched during citizen raids and gendarmerie operations carried out last summer.
“This is a place where hunters and their dogs and residents pass daily and where forestry work was carried out in the fall,” according to the councilor.
“It’s interesting to know if this is the first time that [la randonneuse] passes here”, explains police commander Alain Vasquez to BFMTV. “If she passes here regularly, does [les ossements] were brought to light, or did she find out regarding it when she moved away?”
Did the gendarmes and volunteers pass “by” Emile’s body? Were the child’s skull and teeth recently left on the hiking trail? Or have they been moved by the elements? A source close to the investigation does not rule out anything.
The discovery of the young boy’s bones did not close the case, but opened a new chapter in the investigations. Their analysis can also make it possible to refute or confirm certain hypotheses: it is now necessary to establish whether the death is the result of human or animal action, or an accident.
