The investigation is progressing. On March 30, 2024, the dreaded news finally came: Emile had indeed died. It was a walker who discovered bones and brought them to the police. Nearly nine months after the disappearance of the two and a half year old little boy, a skull and teeth, as well as clothes belonging to him were found barely a kilometer from Haut-Vernet, where he was last seen on July 8, 2023. Since this macabre discovery, the small hamlet of Alpes-de-Haute- Provence had once again been stormed by investigators, with the aim of carrying out new research and getting their hands on the rest of Emile’s remains. Ultimately, these investigations proved fruitful: according to the information of our colleagues from Parisianunveiled Monday April 8, 2024, other bones of the child were found “the last days”. It was the gendarmes from the Marseille research section, in charge of the investigation from the start, who made this important new discovery.
Legionnaires deployed to Haut-Vernet to continue research
While a unit of the second foreign engineering regiment of Saint-Christol (Vaucluse), made up of around ten legionnaires specialized in operational excavations, was deployed to the area this Monday April 8 at the start of the day, The Parisian indicates that it was the gendarmes from the Marseille research section, in charge of the investigation from the start, who made this important new discovery. It is still unknown whether the child’s entire skeleton has been found to date.. This new unit dispatched to the site could therefore help find the rest of the bones, in order to completely reconstruct the body of little Emile, and perhaps finally understand what happened to him.
As a reminder, no hypothesis is yet favored in this case. We already know that small fractures and post-mortem cracks, as well as bite marks, had been detected on the child’s skull, suggesting that it could have been moved by animals. “No ante-mortem trauma was observed”indicated Jean-Luc Blachon, the public prosecutor of Aix-en-Provence, during a press conference held on April 2, 2024. For the moment, investigators were unable to determine the cause, nor even the precise dateof the death of Emile.