Death of little Emile: a new bone fragment discovered

Europe 1 with AFP 6:32 a.m., April 9, 2024

A new fragment of bone from Emile, this boy who disappeared at the beginning of July in the hamlet of Haut-Vernet (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), was discovered near the place where his skull and then his clothes were found there. around ten days ago, the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor confirmed to AFP. “A small piece of bone belonging to Emile was actually found in the same area as the clothes, below the skull,” said Monday the public prosecutor of Aix-en-Provence, Jean-Luc Blachon, confirming information from Le Parisien.

The circumstances of death not yet clarified

This discovery, however, does not allow us to move forward on the cause of the child's death, added the magistrate, stressing that the bone fragment was identified by the Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie (IRCGN) as belonging to the two and a half year old child. Nearly nine months after he disappeared, on July 8, when he had just arrived at his maternal grandparents' house for the summer, in Haut-Vernet, the child's skull and teeth then the clothes he was wearing on the day of his disappearance were found at the end of March and beginning of April, approximately 1.7 km from this town of 25 inhabitants, a 25-minute walk for an adult.

None of these discoveries has yet allowed investigators to elucidate the circumstances of the boy's death. “Between the fall, manslaughter and murder, we still cannot favor one hypothesis over another,” insisted Jean-Luc Blachon on April 2 during his first intervention to the press in a case of 'where nothing concrete had emerged until Saturday March 30 and the discovery, by a hiker, of the child's skull and teeth.

Discoveries near a stream

Two days later, 150 meters below the path where Emile's bones had been seen, the gendarmes found, "scattered over a few dozen meters", the child's t-shirt, shoes and pants, the magistrate explained. But, Jean-Luc Blachon specified, the path where the first bones were discovered is located near a stream which descends from the mountain, with a "very steep slope" at this point, of around 30 %.

In other words, no one can say that Emile's skull and his clothes were in this place since July 8. They could have been "brought back by a human person, an animal, or the weather conditions", as the gendarmerie spokesperson, Marie-Laure Pezant, explained on April 1. The area had in fact been searched, with tracking dogs and helicopters equipped with thermal cameras, during searches organized just after the child's disappearance.