After a phase of relative calm, field investigations are resuming with a vengeance in the investigation into the enigmatic disappearance of little Émile, two and a half years old, on July 8 in the village of Haut-Vernet (Alpes-de- Haute-Provence), where he was looked after by his grandparents. According to our information, gendarmes from the Marseille research section and the local gendarmerie group have been carrying out a search of a house in the area since Tuesday. The occupant of the premises would present an “interesting” profile for the investigation following testimonies collected designating him as a potential suspect.
The man is known to the courts for minor offenses and would, according to a source close to the investigation, “talk about him because he does not correspond to local codes”. No police custody has been issued at this time. Contacted, the public prosecutor of Aix-en-Provence, Jean-Luc Blachon, confirmed the operation and mentioned “a deepening of investigations in progress or already carried out”.
The last active operation dates back to the beginning of September, when the gendarmes checked the slab located in the second home of a man in Haut-Vernet. An inspection triggered following the detection, thanks to the passage of a georadar during the summer, of a suspicious stain under the surface of the terrace. Once checked, it was ultimately just a layer of placo which did not hide anything notable.
A persistent mystery
Accident, kidnapping, murder? The very worrying disappearance of little Émile has turned into a large-scale criminal investigation since the opening of a judicial investigation by the Aix-en-Provence public prosecutor’s office for “kidnapping and sequestration”. The little boy, whose parents live in the village of Bouilladisse (Bouches-du-Rhône), had just woken up from a nap and was playing in the garden of his grandparents’ secondary house when he suddenly disappeared. , without warning.
Two witnesses say they saw him going down the slope of the village late in the afternoon, alone. When he disappeared, his parents were not present. On the other hand, in addition to the grandparents, there were several of their own children in the house, all minors. Émile’s mother is in fact the eldest of a large family of
ten children. The little boy’s family, which maintains total silence apart from two interviews with Famille Chrétienne, is reputed to be particularly pious.
The gendarmes, who admit to being confronted with a particularly tenacious mystery due to the lack of traces of the child, are not ruling out any leads for the moment. But as the weeks go by, they seriously consider the possibility of intervention by a third party. Numerous searches were carried out in the kilometers around the place of the disappearance, quickly after the alert given by Émile’s grandmother, without any body being found.
A spiral investigation method
Faithful to a spiral investigation method, the gendarmes of the Marseille research section endeavor to identify all potentially suspicious people, from the family environment closest to the little boy to tourists passing through the region. . In September, they asked several municipalities located up to twenty kilometers from Le Vernet to provide them with the list of people registered in the registers of hotels, campsites and rental residences. This painstaking work, systematic and laborious, aims to identify in particular the presence of any person registered in the FIJAIS (file of sexual or violent offenses) or more widely known to the police and gendarmerie services.
Apart from this wide range of verifications carried out for weeks in continuous flow and in an increasing radius, many other hypotheses continue to be analyzed and weighed. The investigators are obliged, in particular, to identify possible conflicts, more or less old, which could have opposed Émile’s family, in particular the maternal branch, to individuals still motivated by bad intentions today.