Little Emile disappeared on July 8, 2023 at the Haut-Vernet hamlet. His funeral took place 19 months later, when the investigation continues. We still don’t know the causes of the little boy’s death.
Everyone knows little Emile, but what happened to him? 19 months to the day after his disappearance, his parents and his family will be able to say goodbye to the little boy of 2 and a half years on the occasion of his funeral, Saturday February 8. His family hoped that these be public and asked that people going to Basilica in Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume (Var) wear white, not traditional black. The little boy’s burial will be in family intimacy, at La Bouilladisse.
It has been 19 months since the little boy was lost by his grandparents, who had custody of it for the holidays in July 2023, in their Haut-Vernet house. Dressed in a yellow tie, white shorts and hiking shoes, as recalled The Parisian, He is seen for the last time around 5.15 p.m. by a neighbor. An hour later, the little boy’s grandmother contacted the gendarmerie to report her disappearance.
An investigation is first open for “worrying disappearance” and is quickly transformed into a judicial information for “removal, arrest, detention and arbitrary sequestration”, in order to give the gendarmes every chance to find the blond. But no trace is found for months. The investigation then refocused on the little boy’s family. Very pious, she turned to faith to live this ordeal. But the profile of Emile’s maternal grandfather interests the investigators. Philippe V., 58, is the figure of the patriarch in this family. He had been placed under the status of witness assisted in the 1990s in an investigation for violence and sexual assault in a boarding school where he was a supervisor, but the track gave nothing.
Bones found
Spring 2024, just under a year after his disappearance and while all hope of finding him alive have almost disappeared, a hiker falls on a small skull on a 2-kilometer path as the crow flies from the Haut-Vernet. For her, no doubt, it is the skull of Emile. Not having a mobile phone on oneself and to be sure that the skull will not be moved by animals before it has time to warn the gendarmes, it takes the skull with it, with all possible precautions, Like the use of a plastic bag so as not to touch the bones. Driving that is not advised for people who would find human bones. Nothing is asked to be touched or moved.
After analyzes of IRCGN (the Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie), we have confirmation that it is indeed the bones of the little boy. A few days later, clothes and other bones were discovered in the same sector.
Accidental or criminal death?
The discovery of these bones gives hope to finally understand what happened. Was it attacked by an animal? Although traces of bites have been discovered on the bones, it is not yet known if they were made before or after his death. Is his death criminal? Nothing allows you to assert it. Two traces of DNA foreign to his family were found in November, but this could be due to poor manipulation of evidence.
The Aix-en-Provence prosecutor, Jean-Luc-Blachon, assured also last September that expertise was still underway, both in the direction of the criminal track and that of the accidental track.