Clothes and shoes belonging to a little French boy who died mysteriously in the Alps were found almost 500ft from his slightly fractured and mauled skull, it emerged tonight.
Jean-Luc Blachon, the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor, on Tuesday revealed disturbing new details in the case of two-year-old Émile Soleil. He was confirmed dead after his skull and bones were on Saturday found in isolated countryside close to the isolated family home from where he went missing in July last year.
Mr Blachon told a press conference that gendarmes "also discovered Emile’s clothes 150meters [492ft] away". The "T-shirt, pants and shoes" were "not gathered in the same place, but scattered over a few meters", said the prosecutor, who is leading a criminal investigation into Émile’s death.
Mr Blachon said wild animals may have dispersed Émile’s remains and could also have been responsible for "small fractures" and "bite marks" on his skull. A fall might have damaged Émile’s skull, but Mr Blachon said other theories including "murder or manslaughter" had not been ruled out. A tooth was also missing but, said Mr Blachon, "examination of the bones does not allow us to give the cause of Émile’s death.".
A female rambler out walking over the Easter weekend found the remains in an extremely steep area, about ‘25 minutes walk’ from the hamlet of Haut-Vernet, near Grenoble.
Émile was staying at his family’s holiday home there, and was officially in the care of his grandfather, 58-year-old Philippe Vedovini, on the day of his disappearance, as his parents took a break. Asked if the area where Émile’s remains had been searched previously, Mr Blachon said ‘yes, but not using drones or specialised dogs.’
He added: “At this time, we cannot say whether Emile’s body was already in the searched area. I cannot say that every square meter was searched. The topography there is difficult with steep slopes making observation and excavation difficult. It was also very hot in July 2023, with temperatures of more than 30°C in the shade. which could have affected the effectiveness of the tracking dogs and infrared cameras".
Mr Blachon said an unnamed woman found the skull and bones ‘between noon and 2 p.m., during a walk on a path that she remembers having walked a month before”. He added: "She was disturbed by this discovery, and placed [the skull and bones] in a plastic bag. She went home and called the police. She was able to pinpoint exactly where she found it [the skull]" There has been no comment about the discovery of Émile's remain by his family, who were all at Easter Sunday mass when told.
Mr Vedovini is a devout Catholic who gave up a vocation to become a monk, in order to marry his wife, Anne Vedovini. Earlier this month it emerged that Mr Vedovini was investigated as part of an active criminal enquiry into historic child abuse. Mr Vedovini – who denies any wrong doing – was training to be a monk when he worked at a school linked with sexual abuse, including rape, in the early 1990s. Mr Vedovini, who was known as Brother Philippe when he worked at the school, was implicated in the active enquiry as an ‘assisted witness’.
Interviewed by police in April 2018, he admitted to administering "somewhat harsh" physical discipline, but said he had never broken the law, according to a source close to the ongoing enquiry. Mr and Mrs Vedovini brought up 10 children, including Émile's mother, who is now known by her married name of Marie Soleil after she married Émile's father, Colomban Soleil, 26. The extreme-right wing political background of the family has also been examined by police.
Émile's father was arrested for "an attack on foreigners" in 2018, and released from custody after pledging to maintain the peace. At the time, Mr Soleil was an activist linked to Action Francaise, the far-Right nationalist and royalist group, as well as the neofascist Bastion Social.
Three years later, in 2021, both Mr Soleil and his wife stood as local election candidates in the Marseille area, supporting the Reconquest party of Éric Zemmour, the convicted racist and Islamophobe who tried to become president of France.
Lead prosecutor Rémy Avon, who is heading the judicial inquiry into Émile's disappearance said the possibilities that Émile had been murdered, kidnapped, or got involved in an accident were all being looked at. He confirmed that Émile's parents' home, in the southern town of La Bouilladisse, near Marseille, was searched back in July, while the grandparents homes nearby, and in the Alps, were also raided.
The saga evokes the BBC fictional series, The Missing , in which a young boy vanishes whilst on holiday with his family in France, only to be killed in a hit-and-run accident after chasing a fox.
Residents of Vernet have meanwhile referred to the place as a cursed "village of the damned" because of its links with disaster. In March 2015, Vernet was also cordoned off following a horrific air crash in which 150 people died, including two babies. Germanwings Airbus A320 was deliberately brought down by co-pilot Andres Lubitz, who had previously been treated for suicidal tendencies.
The inhabitants of Vernet were also shaken by the murder of a local café manager in the village 16 years ago. Jeannette Grosos, who ran the Café du Moulin, was brutally killed by a customer in 2008. One resident of Vernat said: "Everybody is saying it – Vernet feels like a village of the damned."