Despite the scenarios, the means deployed after his disappearance, the search of the premises by dogs and the police, Emile remained untraceable for eight months. One thing is certain now: the two and a half year old child is dead. His bones were found by a walker on Saturday and formally identified by the IRCGN (Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie), according to a press release from the prosecutor published this Sunday.
This is the only certainty in this investigation first opened for a worrying disappearance then extended to the criminal acts of “kidnapping” and “sequestration” in August, a month after the disappearance of the boy residing in the hamlet of Haut-Vernet ( Alpes de Haute Provence). Many questions remain to be clarified after this macabre discovery because the causes of his disappearance and death are still unclear.
How did the child die?
This is the main question that investigators will have to answer. The discovery of part of Emile’s bones will put them on leads, particularly if they find traces of blows or bites. No possibility was ruled out during the entire investigation. Is this a criminal act? From an accident? From the attack of a wild animal?
Only part of the child’s remains were discovered, according to a source close to the investigation cited by The Parisian. This would be his skull and teeth. Which raises this other mystery: where is the rest of the body?
Was the body moved?
If Emile’s corpse was not found earlier, it may not have been where the bones were discovered, in the immediate vicinity of the village. An area nevertheless searched by investigators, specifies a source close to the investigation quoted by BFMTV.
So, was the body moved? This is the theory retained by Jacques-Charles Fombonne, former commander of the national training center for the judicial police of the gendarmerie, interviewed by France Info. “This rather supports the hypothesis of a body which would have been moved and which would have been put precisely in this place, knowing that we said that we would not return there,” he argues. It is difficult to imagine, even if the body was buried quite deeply, that they would have missed it.”
This is also what the mayor of Vernet, François Balique, seems to think, according to whom the area had “been thoroughly searched by the gendarmes”, he indicates to the Figaro. “It’s a place where hunters and their dogs and residents pass daily and where forestry work was carried out in the fall,” he said.
Why didn’t the dogs find him?
How is it that dogs mobilized to find the trace of Emile last summer did not feel the body of the child when his bones were discovered by a walker? On several occasions, dogs specialized in detecting bodies have been deployed in the field. But if their sense of smell is effective, it is not infallible.
Furthermore, it makes it possible to determine a track but not to date it precisely. Thus, it is not impossible that the dogs marked a path taken by the child the day before his disappearance.
Why didn’t the searches provide a trace?
Another problem, this time due to seasonal circumstances. Despite the investigators’ excavations, “the summer vegetation, especially in the region, is very dense and can hide a small fault or an unexplored corner”, explained to 20 minutes François Daoust, former director of the Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie (IRCGN), last January.
And according to the former gendarme, this scenario happens frequently: “We have regularly found bodies of missing walkers in the pre-winter period or at the end of winter, when the vegetation is less thick. And this, even though we had put in great resources when reporting it. »
Is there a link with the scenario organized two days earlier?
Simple coincidence or real correlation? A role-play, a sort of reconstruction of the facts, took place for the first time on Thursday in Haut-Vernet with 17 people, including all those present on the day of the toddler’s disappearance. Access to the hamlet had been blocked for three days, the day before and the day after the situation.
However, the mystery remained unsolved after this act of investigation after which no information had filtered out. It is therefore too early to know whether or not the discovery of the child’s remains on Saturday is linked to this event organized two days earlier.