They tried to find the words in the face of the tragedy that struck them. “Understand our distress, tell us where Emile is,” pleaded the parents of a two and a half year old child missing since July in an Alpine hamlet, in a vibrant message spoken by his mother and broadcast Thursday by the ‘weekly Christian family.
“Please, if he’s alive, don’t let us live without him, give him back to us!” Please, if he is dead, tell us where he is, give him back to us, don’t leave us without a grave to remember! », Declares the little boy’s mother in this message broadcast on the eve of Emile’s birthday on November 24. “You can do all this in a thousand ways, even anonymously, without having to denounce yourself, but do not let us and our families live the rest of our lives with this terrible anguish that crushes our hearts,” adds -she.
Several houses searched this month
On July 8, 2023, at 5:15 p.m., Emile was seen for the last time by two neighbors in an alley in Haut-Vernet, a hamlet of 25 inhabitants at an altitude of 1,200 meters, on the slopes of the Trois-Évêchés massif (Alps- de-Haute-Provence), where he had just arrived for the summer holidays at the second home of his maternal grandparents.
His parents, a very religious Catholic family, live in La Bouilladisse (Bouches-du-Rhône) and were not present that day. Despite numerous searches launched to find him, his disappearance has still not been clarified.
At the end of July, the investigation, first entrusted to the Digne-les-Bains public prosecutor’s office then transferred to investigating judges in Aix-en-Provence, shifted to a criminal classification of “kidnapping” and “sequestration” . A purely technical decision which is not linked to any particular progress, insists the prosecution, but which allows “more flexibility” in the investigations which have continued unabated since. In November, several homes were searched as part of the investigation.