French toddler Emile Soleil’s remains found but his death is still a mystery
Nearly nine months after the disappearance of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy in a small village nestled in the French Alps, his remains were stumbled upon by a hiker in an area extensively combed through in previous searches.
Detectives are now tasked with determining whether Emile Soleil’s demise was a tragic accident or the result of foul play.
The abrupt vanishing of Emile in Haut-Vernet sent shockwaves across France last July, leaving the community reeling. His remains were discovered over a kilometer away from the initial disappearance site, emerging just days following a police re-enactment of the events leading up to his disappearance.
Expressing profound sadness at the discovery, local Mayor François Balique extended his heartfelt sympathies to Emile’s grieving parents, acknowledging the prolonged process of healing ahead. “Recovering from this disappearance and subsequent loss will be an arduous journey,” he conveyed in a statement to French radio.
Emile had recently been dropped off at his grandparents’ holiday residence before he went missing in the Alpine enclave situated on the slopes of the Massif des Trois-Evêchés mountain range.
Haut-Vernet, perched at an altitude of 1,200m (4,000ft), is home to a mere 25 inhabitants, with Emile’s parents absent at the time of his disappearance.
The last sighting of the child, wearing a yellow t-shirt and white shorts, was at 17:15 local time on 8 July by two neighbors who saw him walking by himself but then said they had “lost sight of him”.
Police were alerted by his grandmother shortly afterward. Hundreds of people joined police with sniffer dogs in a search the following day and two investigating judges were quickly appointed to the case, which was by now a major national story.
Emile’s disappearance soon became a criminal inquiry into a potential abduction, although detectives had no further leads into what had happened.
The boy’s parents, who are religious Catholics, said they feared the worst but still held out hope that he was alive.
His mother made a public appeal in November, marking what would have been Emile’s third birthday. If he was still alive, she appealed for his safe return, but if he was dead, she asked that he be handed back for burial.
Last Thursday investigators returned to Haut-Venet, summoning 17 people including members of Emile’s family, neighbors,, and witnesses, to reconstruct the last sightings of the boy.
French reports have focused on the boy’s 58-year-old maternal grandfather, but his lawyer said she hoped investigators would not “waste too much time on him to the detriment of other lines of inquiry”.
Then, on Saturday, a woman found bones in an area that police said had been searched several times by local residents, police and helicopter with thermal cameras. Forensic scientists announced on Sunday that the DNA matched Emile’s.
“This heart-breaking news was feared, and the time has come for mourning, contemplation and prayer,” the child’s parents said in a statement.
Police are investigating why the bones appeared after so long. The latest reports suggest the woman found a skull in a a steep area that was not easy to access and handed it over to local gendarmes (military police).
Marie-Laure Pezant, a spokeswoman for the gendarmerie told French TV that the bones could have been placed there by a person or even an animal, or they could even have been shifted by changing weather conditions.
“Is that where he disappeared? Is that where he took his last breath, nobody knows,” said Mayor François Balique. “In any case I have no idea, but the judicial inquiry will no doubt be able to find that out.”
Sniffer-dogs have been searching the area for more remains and dozens of police are guarding the site to prevent it being overrun by visitors.
