“Heartbreaking” and “feared” news
“This heartbreaking news was feared,” reacted the parents of little Emile on Sunday, via a press release from their lawyer, after the discovery and identification of their son’s bones. “The time has come for mourning, contemplation and prayer,” explained Marie and Colomban Soleil, through a press release from their lawyer, Jérôme Triomphe, specifying that “there will be no ‘other declarations’ from them.
“Marie and Colomban now know on this Resurrection Sunday that Emile watches over them in the light and tenderness of God,” it is written there. “But the pain and sorrow remain,” they added in this press release, asking journalists to “respect their mourning by not showing up at their homes and not trying to contact them.”
No information on cause of death
The Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie (IRCGN) of Pontoise (Paris suburb) “continues the forensic analyzes on the bones and the national gendarmerie is dedicated to deploying means to undertake additional research on the geographical area where they were found. found,” said Aix-en-Provence prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon, without giving any information on the cause of the child’s death. These few bones would have been found by a walker, a source close to the case explained to AFP, without further details on the circumstances, the investigation continuing its course.
When he disappeared on July 8, Emile had just arrived for the summer holidays at his maternal grandparents’ second home, and two neighbors claim to have seen him in the main street of the hamlet, but with conflicting accounts. .
The little boy was seen around 5:15 p.m., in the only street of this tiny town. The boy was wearing a yellow top, white shorts and hiking shoes. His parents, very religious Catholics living in La Bouilladisse, in Bouches-du-Rhône, were not present that day.
A “scenario”
This discovery of bones is an important step in the investigation into his disappearance. No lead had been put aside, even if the theory of a fatal fall had seemed to fade following the multiple hunts organized in the surroundings of the hamlet, located at an altitude of 1,200 meters, on the slopes of the Massif des Trois-Evêchés, at the end of which no body had been found.
First opened for a worrying disappearance in 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”.
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A role-play, a sort of reconstruction of the facts, took place for the first time on Thursday in Haut-Vernet, a hamlet of 25 inhabitants attached to the village of Vernet located between Digne-les-Bains and Gap, with 17 people, including all those present on the day the toddler disappeared. Access to the hamlet had been blocked for three days, the day before and the day after the situation.
However, the mystery remained unsolved after this act of investigation after which no information had filtered out. It is also too early to know whether or not the discovery of the child’s remains on Saturday is linked to this event organized two days earlier.
Until now, much attention had focused on Emile’s maternal grandfather, Philippe V., who had custody of the child that day.
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, this avenue has always been studied, “at the same level” than the others, according to a source close to the matter interviewed a few days ago.
In November, on the eve of Emile’s third birthday, his parents broadcast a vibrant appeal via the weekly Famille Chrétienne. “Understand our distress, tell us where Emile is,” asked the message spoken by the child’s mother.
Some disappearances of children had taken years to find an epilogue, such as that of Lucas Tronche, a 15-year-old teenager who disappeared in 2015 in the Gard and whose bones were only found in 2021 along the wall of a cliff, six years later, not far from the family home. Justice has never been able to explain the reasons for his death.