Four months after the disappearance of little Émile, on July 8 in the hamlet of Haut-Vernet (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), a new legal operation is being carried out this week by investigators. And it is on an unprecedented scale. According to our information, nearly thirty searches began this Tuesday morning and are taking place, mainly, in the houses in Haut-Vernet which were inhabited at the time of the child’s disappearance. Houses unoccupied on July 8 are not affected by this operation. Conversely, several homes located in Digne-les-Bains (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence) were also searched because one or other of their inhabitants was passing through that day in the immediate vicinity of the places of disappearance. Other operations of the same type were carried out for the same reasons in Bouches-du-Rhône and in four other departments, some located outside the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur region. This list of around thirty homes was drawn up following digital and telephone investigations based in particular on geolocation data of their owners or occupants.
Among the houses searched in Haut-Vernet, one of them is located in the immediate vicinity of the home of the little boy’s maternal grandparents. It is inhabited by the family of one of the last two witnesses to have seen Emile. According to his statements, the boy was walking alone on the asphalt road which passes alongside the family house. “I saw the little one going down towards the wash house,” this witness explained to our colleagues at BFM DICI. I was outside in front of my stairs, a little after 4:45 p.m. (…) The grandfather was chopping wood about ten meters from the child. »
For the moment, no convincing evidence has been discovered during this wave of searches. “These are checks on individuals targeted by the investigation. There is nothing to confirm at this stage that the perpetrator is among them, but the searches may perhaps make it possible to identify a suspect,” explains a source close to the investigations. During these operations carried out under rogatory commission from the two investigating judges in charge of the “Emile” file, the investigators can carry out a complete search of the home and vehicles with the possible passage of bluestar (this chemical product revealing traces of blood) and genetic samples. Depending on the situation, they also carry out telephone searches (siphoning data from the device) or seizures of equipment. In these cases, the objective is to precisely check the schedules of the people concerned or detect possible suspicious relationships or messages.
After four months of investigation, investigating magistrates and gendarmes from the Marseille research section are therefore casting a very wide net in the hope of finally bringing to light a piece of evidence likely to shed light on the circumstances of the child’s disappearance. In recent weeks, search operations had focused in a targeted manner on a few objectives such as a pond located in Bas-Vernet or a house in Haut-Vernet whose concrete slab had been inspected at the beginning of September. In mid-October, investigators had already carried out a search around a farm located in Vernet. It targeted a young farmer present in the hamlet of Haut-Vernet during the day of July 8 and renowned for his very risky way of driving his tractors. But this search operation and the multiple samples taken on this occasion did not provide any decisive results.
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 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.