Her little face, her laughing eyes, her wheat-blonde hair and her flower tucked tightly behind her left ear. Six months after the disappearance of little Emile, the toddler’s face entered the collective memory. The child was last seen on July 8, 2023 in Haut-Vernet, a small hamlet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. Two passers-by claim to have seen him walking down a village street around 5 p.m. Since then, nothing. Emile seems to have vanished. “If he is alive, do not let us live without him; if he is dead, tell us where he is,” his parents begged on November 24, his 3rd birthday, in a message broadcast on Christian Family. Because despite the opening of a judicial investigation, the permanent mobilization of 25 gendarmes, no leads have really emerged, no suspect has been placed in police custody.
“It’s not because we have the impression that nothing is happening that nothing is happening,” insists a source close to the matter. And François Daoust, former director of the Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie (IRCGN), clarified: “The investigation is not stalling at all but we are in the long term. In this type of case, either there is a common thread that leads to an unavoidable hypothesis and things go quickly, or you have to work on a multitude of elements, which can be very long, especially when there is no body. »
The accidental trail still relevant
In this case, extraordinary means have been deployed. The first elements of the investigation suggested the possibility of a loss after Emile escaped the vigilance of his grandparents. As soon as he disappeared, 800 volunteers combed the area, the region was flown over by a helicopter and drones, the sixteen houses of the village and the cars were searched. Not the slightest clue. Specialized dogs marked the presence of the child less than fifty meters from his grandparents’ house, before losing track of him.
However, according to François Daoust, it is impossible to rule out the possibility of a mistake. “The summer vegetation, especially in the region, is very dense and can hide a small fault or an unexplored corner. » The former gendarme, who was once stationed in Savoie, assures him that 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. » What about dogs? If their sense of smell is unanimously recognized, 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.
The criminal hypothesis
The possibility of a collision with a vehicle followed by the hiding of the body, or that of a purely criminal kidnapping, are also the subject of intense research. For six months, several operations have been carried out, in particular to “close doors”. In “investigator” language, this means verifying hypotheses, removing doubts. A concrete slab under which a radar had noted a cavity was thus opened. A pond was inspected at length. The house of a local teenager, known for driving fast – sometimes too much – with his tractor was searched, the barn and the surrounding fields carefully inspected, the minor interviewed at length, but once again, nothing conclusive.
Latest major operation to date: November 7. Thirty-six houses were searched, including that of the child’s grandparents. Because as in all criminal investigations, relatives were the subject of investigations. In addition to the grandparents, there were nine aunts and uncles of the child – some of whom were teenagers – in the house on the day he disappeared. No significant element was discovered.
Technical investigations at the heart of the investigation
From now on, most of the investigations continue far from the field, in the laboratory. This involves analyzing all the elements collected. During the search at the beginning of November, the gendarmes recorded the contents of all the mobile phones and computers of people present in the village. It is now a matter of analyzing it. Above all, colossal work on telephony is underway. 1,600 lines were limited in the sector on the day of the incident. For each of them, it is necessary to check who owns the line, when it is demarcated, and on what route. “The difficulty is that the operators provide the raw data, so you have to dissect it to know if it is a person worthy of interest, then check their schedule, their background,” explains François Daoust. A titanic job that can take several months.
If there are no cameras in the village, the nearest video surveillance images – particularly those from nearby ATMs and toll booths – are also scrutinized. All the data collected is then reported in the Anacrim software. Used during complex criminal investigations, it not only allows all the elements to be compiled, but also to cross-reference and compare them. The objective is to bring out contradictions, to highlight elements of the file which have not been verified.