New clue uncovered by police investigating little Emile’s death: Remains found in remote site after two-year-old’s skull discovered in French Alpine village

The mystery surrounding little Émile’s death has deepened after a new bone fragment was found near where the two-year-old’s skull was discovered in a French Alpine village.

Émile Soleil’s skull 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 southeastern France.

The spot, less than a mile from where Émile disappeared last July while staying with his grandfather, had already been combed by gendarmes with a “tooth comb,” the mayor told Le Figaro.

The prosecutor in the Émile Soleil case, Jean-Luc Blachon, said wild animals may have scattered Émile’s remains and could also have been responsible for “small fractures” and “bite marks” on his skull.

Researchers have now found another bone fragment in the search area and completed their excavations in Haut Vernet this weekend, confident they had achieved all they could. Le Parisien reports.

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

It is not known whether researchers have been able to recover the rest of Émile’s skeleton or whether the bone fragment found could help determine whether the toddler’s death was an accident or homicide.

A source close to the investigation told Le Parisien: “The investigation is progressing well and continues.”

Mr Blachon previously said that while a fall could have damaged Émile’s skull, other theories, including “murder or manslaughter”, had not been ruled out.

A hiker discovered the remains on March 30, about eight months after Émile apparently left the family home on July 8 last year.

Authorities were able to identify the bones as Émile’s, but were frustrated that they had been moved.

Blachon said the hiker was not a suspect, suggesting she only wanted to “do the right thing” by taking the remains to police and leading them back to the site.

But Blachon also admitted that police were no closer to solving the mystery.

“Between the fall of the child, the manslaughter and the murder, we still cannot choose one hypothesis over the other,” he told a news conference earlier.

Mayor Balique said on April 1 that he could not understand why the remains had not been found earlier.

‘There are people who regularly use the path in the area. I used it last week. The volunteer searchers have been there, I’m sure.

‘I was there during the beating (on the ground by those looking for Émile) and the gendarmes could not have missed him with the dogs.

‘There was even felling there in the autumn. The woodcutters saw nothing either. It’s incomprehensible.’

This photo shows a general view of the Alpine hamlet of Le Haut-Vernet on March 31, 2024

Saturday’s macabre discovery was today described as a major breakthrough in a criminal investigation that has baffled detectives

Gendarmes painstakingly searched the outskirts of the village of Vernet last July

“I can’t help but believe there is an adult involved in this case. Émile would never have gone alone to where he was found,” he added.

Gilles Thézan, a resident of Haut-Vernet, told Le Parisien: ‘There is a trick going on. The body was found only one or two kilometers (0.5 to 1 mile) from Haut-Vernet, in a place that had already been searched and searched again, mainly with dogs.

‘Everything was raked from top to bottom. There’s no way anyone wouldn’t have seen it before.”

Marie-Laure Pezant, a spokeswoman for the gendarmerie, said the bones may have been placed there by a person or animal, or moved by changing weather patterns.

But a source close to the investigation insisted that “animals are unlikely to bring human remains back to the village where someone has gone missing.”

Until two weeks ago, there was no trace of the toddler since he went missing, and investigators refused to rule out any theory for the tragedy, including kidnapping and murder.

Émile was officially in the care of his grandfather, Philippe Vedovini, on the day of his disappearance while his parents took a break.

A witness saw Mr Vedovini, a physiotherapist-osteopath, chopping wood outside his home around the time Émile is said to have wandered off.

Volunteers joined authorities last July to help search the area in the small hamlet. population 25but no clues have been found.

On April 4, researchers returned to the hamlet to reconstruct the last sighting involving 17 people, including members of the family.