The sudden disappearance of a two-year-old from a rural hamlet in southern France has sparked theories that he was murdered – and that the circumstances of his death closely resemble the plot of an acclaimed BBC drama.
Emile, who usually lives near Marseilles with his parents, was last seen by two people three days ago leaving his grandparents’ house. He was on holiday with the elderly couple in rural Haut Vernet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.
After days of thorough searches involving 800 gendarmes, firefighters, volunteers, helicopters, drones with thermal cameras and sniffer dogs, a spokesman for the gendarmerie said bluntly yesterday: “Either the body was hidden after an accident, or it was disposed of.”
His comments sparked wild speculation – and one prevailing theory draws a dark comparison to the popular BBC drama The Missing, starring James Nesbitt and Frances O’Connor, in which a young boy disappears while on holiday with his family in France.
The child is believed to be kidnapped, but turns out to have been run over and thrown unconscious in the trunk of a car by a driver who believes him dead.
Some have speculated that Emile may have been hit by a car on the small, unseen country lanes of Haut Vernet, and that his panicked killer may have taken his body away after accidentally hitting him.
French gendarmes are briefed before joining a search for two-and-a-half-year-old Emile who has been missing since July 8
This handout photo, obtained on July 9, 2023 from France’s ‘Gendarmerie Nationale’ Twitter account, shows a call for witnesses for Emile, a missing boy, who disappeared on July 8, 2023 in Le Vernet, southeastern France.
A prevailing theory about Emile’s disappearance draws dark comparisons to the popular BBC drama The Missing, starring James Nesbitt (left) and Frances O’Connor, in which young boy Oliver (played by Oliver Hunt) disappears during a holiday with his family in France.
James Nesbitt in The Missing, 2014
Nesbitt and O’Connor starred in the show’s first series (2014) as a couple struggling to come to terms eight years after their son’s kidnapping during the 2006 World Cup.
In a shocking twist, it was revealed that missing boy Ollie had not been kidnapped, but was bundled “lifeless” into a car by a hit-and-run driver who believed he had killed the child.
The boy’s mother accepts that he is dead, but the father relentlessly continues his search for Ollie as no body is ever found.
He becomes an obsessed man and is drawn into a years-long search for his missing son, leaving his marriage on the rocks and him on the brink of self-destruction.
The theory is fueled by French police’s admission that they have “no clues” as to how the boy disappeared, and by reports that officials are indeed investigating whether Emile may have been “hit by a car or a tractor” and his body taken away . .
“If he was alive and hidden, we would have found him with the resources that were deployed,” says a spokesman.
The gendarme added that an area of several square kilometers had been combed around Emile’s grandparents’ house, saying that the boy must have been removed from the area as sniffer dogs would now have found a body in the region.
“Obviously, after 48 hours, we switched to another dimension. Hearings are underway,” said the gendarmerie spokesperson, referring to interviews with “residents and potential witnesses.”
Emile was last seen by two witnesses on Saturday afternoon walking down the street from his grandparents’ home – located in a remote mountain outpost with only two dozen residents.
Police and gendarmes have entered every building in the settlement. Some 500 volunteers also assisted in the search, looking for Emile in the woods and fields surrounding the village, the local prefectural office said on Twitter.
“At the moment we have no leads that would allow us to follow any particular theory (about his whereabouts),” the local prosecutor told franceinfo radio.
French authorities opened a telephone hotline last weekend and released a photo of the boy, a yellow flower behind his ear.
Portrait of a dejected gendarme during the search for little Emile
On Tuesday morning, airborne searchers obtained a recording of the mother’s voice playing “as loud as possible” from speakers on the plane.
“Their hope is that Emile hides in the countryside and comes out when he hears his mother’s voice coming from a helicopter,” said an emergency services source.
“Emile was always chasing butterflies and could have gotten a long way before hiding somewhere for a nap,” the source added.
Hoping to uncover possible clues, police are also speaking to Emile’s devout Catholic mother, who has called for prayer for her son and his safe return.
The police are also investigating another hypothesis Emile could have been kidnapped – despite ruling out any suggestion that he had been kidnapped just 24 hours ago.
‘He’s two and a half years old, he could walk quite a distance. But all the hunts we’ve carried out over the past two days should have allowed us to locate him,” said Marc Chappuis, the police officer in charge of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region where Emile went missing on Saturday afternoon.
As for treating the disappearance as a kidnapping, District Attorney Avon said at the same press conference, “All hypotheses remain valid, none favored or excluded.”
“We are committed to conducting investigations at all levels.”
After three days, the two-year-old is still nowhere to be found after police searched the 20 or so houses in the small Alpine hamlet.
As fears grow, the prosecutor stressed that so far “no element is characteristic of a criminal offense that is likely to be at the root of this disappearance.”
“From the moment there is no violation, no person is involved anymore,” he repeated.