“The search will last as long as necessary,” Colonel Pierre-Yves Bardy, commander of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence gendarmerie group, said on Monday. Because all eyes are once again focused on the French village of Haut-Vernet, a hamlet of 25 inhabitants located at an altitude of 1,200 meters. There, 2-year-old toddler Émile disappeared on July 8, 2023, while he was playing in the front yard of his grandparents’ holiday home. For nine months there was no trace. Until last Saturday. A female walker then entered the Seyne police station with a small skull. She had found it a kilometer as the crow flies from where Émile was last seen.
Since the woman had no telephone service in the woods, she decided to take the skull and drive to the police station, about 20 minutes away. Although the boy’s skull is a huge breakthrough in the file, the police would have preferred a different approach to the walker. By taking the skull, she manipulated a potential crime scene. It could be possible, French media write, that a piece of skin and therefore DNA, for example, has been lost. The woman was questioned, but she was not taken into custody.
Overlooked
The fact that the bones were found just a kilometer from Émile’s grandparents’ home raises many questions. Was the body overlooked during the searches? According to Marie-Laure Pezant, spokeswoman for the Gendarmerie, that chance is “very small”. In the first days and weeks after the boy’s disappearance, hundreds of volunteers were called in to comb an area of 97 hectares. Drones, helicopters, thermal cameras and sniffer dogs were used, but nothing turned up a trace. “We have deployed a lot of resources, but the abundant vegetation in July has made the investigation more difficult. We may have missed it. It is a hypothesis that exists.”
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Émile disappeared in the French village of Haut-Vernet on July 8, 2023. — © AFP
The local mayor, François Balique, on the other hand, is convinced that there is no chance. According to him, the site is located near a path that is frequently visited by hunters with their dogs, hikers, but also by local residents who, for example, go looking for mushrooms. According to Balique, work was also carried out in the forest in the autumn and workers should certainly have brought the body to light.
Incomplete
But, according to the police spokesperson, there is also a chance that someone put the bones there at a later date. No complete skeleton was found. Just a skull and a few bones. A forensic pathologist, François Paraf, told French newspaper Le Figaro that nine months is not enough time to reduce a body to a skeleton. He is therefore convinced that rot is not the only cause and that external intervention was carried out.
For that reason, it is now all hands on deck in Haut-Vernet. Two days before the find, a major reconstruction took place in the hope of finding a new trail. That did not yield anything at the time, but due to the discovery of the bones, the village was completely cordoned off again and there are numerous experts present in the small village.
They must find out whether the bones were placed there, how long they had been there and possibly also determine a cause of death. There are also several sniffer dogs on site in the hope of possibly completing the skeleton or, for example, finding the boy’s clothing.
© AFP