The solo hiker who found the skull of missing French boy Émile Soleil has spoken of her shock and fear when she became the prime suspect in the mysterious case.
In her first interview since the two-year-old’s remains were discovered in the Alps, the woman said she “didn’t expect” police to search her home.
They initially spoke to her nine hours after her fateful walk and subsequently confiscated all her electronic devices.
Called Manon by the BFM TV news channel, a woman in her sixties, she recalled setting off on Wednesday, March 30, on a mountain path near the isolated hamlet of Haut-Vernet, near Grenoble.
She knew that Émile had gone missing from the remote hamlet where he had stayed with his grandparents eight months earlier, in July.
“It was a time to stay under the duvet because there was a lot of wind,” she remembers, but instead she went for a walk without a phone or watch.
The skull of Émile Soleil (pictured) was found by a hiker on March 30 ‘on a path between the church and the chapel’ of the rural mountain village of Haut Vernet in south-eastern France. The woman who found it has said she was shocked when she became the prime suspect
An entrance to the French village of Le Vernet in the Southern Alps, near the Haut-Vernet, where two-year-old Emile went missing while staying with his grandparents
She couldn’t remember how long she had been walking when she came across the macabre remains she now calls “the thing.”
She expressed her “surprise” that police investigators with sniffer dogs had not spotted it sooner, saying: “I found it in the middle of the path.
‘It was white and very clean. There were only the top teeth… I cried, and then I calmed down.”
With no one to call, Manon decided to put the skull in one of the two plastic bags she normally used to cover her feet when it was wet.
“I could have left (the skull) behind, but by the time I went back it wouldn’t have been there,” she said.
‘That’s why I picked him up. I know that on days with this weather, if you wait, the mountain won’t be the same.”
Manon said she was careful not to touch the skull with her bare hands, but that she “didn’t know” whether her DNA had been transferred to the remains.
Knowing she would have to return to the site, she said, “I said to myself, I need a landmark.
‘Then I saw a huge pine tree collapse on its side. I said to myself, “This is the pine tree that will serve as a landmark.”’
Convinced that someone may have been involved in Émile’s death, Manon said: ‘I was running, I wanted to hurry up.
‘I said to myself: ‘quick, quick, I have to bring the thing back and the police will find the perpetrator, the investigation will finally move forward.’
Recalling her terrifying walk home, Manon said: ‘The whole journey I carried the thing at arm’s length because I was terrified when I felt the shape touching my body.’
She arrived home at 2pm and left the skull on the terrace before calling the police and saying: ‘It was unthinkable to bring it into the house.’
This photo shows a general view of the Alpine hamlet of Le Haut-Vernet on March 31, 2024
French gendarmes on their way to the French Southern Alps discuss the small village of Le Haut-Vernet, in Le Vernet on March 31, 2024, after French investigators found the ‘bones’ of a toddler who went missing last summer
Detectives arrived at 3pm and interrogated Manon for nine hours without formally arresting her.
“They did their job, I answered their questions, and that was it,” she said, adding, “The next day I didn’t expect it – search!”
Manon said police confiscated her electronic devices before returning them a week later, saying she was free to continue her normal life.
Manon cried as she remembered speaking to BFM about her ordeal without her words being recorded on camera.
Manon said she was very religious and said her main thoughts were with Émile’s parents: “May they find peace… May God grant them peace,” Manon said.
Jean-Luc Blachon, the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor leading the criminal investigation into Émile’s death, said the site where Manon found the skull had been extensively searched by gendarmes before its discovery.
He said wild animals “may have scattered” Émile’s remains and could also have been responsible for “small fractures and bite marks” on his skull, as well as the missing teeth.
Mr Blachon said Manon was ruled out as a suspect after her interrogation and search, suggesting she only wanted to “do the right thing”.
But he admitted police were still no closer to solving the mystery, saying manslaughter and murder were still considered possibilities.
Émile was officially in the care of his grandfather, Philippe Vedovini, 58, on the day of his disappearance while his parents took a break.