Hiker finds remains of missing French toddler in the Alps
THE remains of a little boy who mysteriously disappeared in the south of France last summer have been discovered by a hiker.
The story of two-year-old Emile Solei’s sudden vanishing from a hamlet near Haut-vernet in the Alpes-de-Haute-provence has gripped the country since it happened in July.
Emile was in the care of his grandfather at the time, having arrived to spend the summer with his grandparents.
He was last seen by two neighbours on July 8 in the late afternoon, walking alone on a street in Le Vernet in the French Alps.
Through genetic testing, police confirmed that bones and a skull discovered by a woman on a trail about a mile from where the boy was staying belonged to him. A forensic analysis of the bones will continue, with the cause of death yet to be disclosed.
“If this heartbreaking news was feared, the time has come for mourning, contemplation and prayer,” the boy’s parents, Marie and Colomban Soleil, said through their lawyer.
The couple, who are Catholics, said the discovery of the remains came at a moment of religious significance. The statement said: “Marie and Colomban now know on this Resurrection Sunday that Émile watches over them in the light and tenderness of God.”
According to Francois Balique, mayor of Vernet, the area where the boy’s bones were found had already been “thoroughly” searched by France’s gendarmerie, raising the possibility that the remains had been moved there after the searches were conducted.
“It’s a place where hunters and their dogs and residents pass daily and where forestry work was carried out in the fall,” he told Le Figaro.
During a four-day search after the disappearance, dogs, drones and some 800 people searched about 100 hectares. Emile’s mother and father were absent on the day of his disappearance.
The lack of leads in the investigation since then led to theories including that he had been kidnapped, eaten by a wild animal, run over by a combine harvester, or wandered off and got lost.
The media also focused on the boy’s parents and grandfather. In the 1990s, Philippe Vedovini abandoned his career as a physiotherapist to become a monk.
He began working at a Catholic school for troubled youth in the village of Riaumont in northern France
The school had become mired in scandal after former students came forward in 2014 with complaints accusing staff of physical abuse and rape. Investigative newspaper Le Canard
Enchainé first reported that Mr Vedovini made a court appearance as an assisted witness in the school case last week. Mr Vedovini is not a defendant in the case, which is ongoing, and denies any wrongdoing.
A source close to the case said his possible involvement in the disappearance had always been examined to “the same degree” as other hypotheses.
Mr Soleil, Emile’s father, also had his character questioned after it emerged he was a member of the far-right groups Action Française and Bastion Social, a radical neo-fascist movement that was dissolved by the government in 2019.
In 2018, Mr Soleil appeared in court on charges of attacking people of foreign origin, after a young Muslim couple was targeted in Aix-en-provence and threatened with racist insults. Mr Soleil claimed that he was at the scene to intervene, and released on benefit of the doubt.
In 2021, both he and his wife Marie ran in local elections in the Marseille area as candidates for the far-right, anti-immigrant party Reconquest led by a convicted racist and Islamophobe Éric Zemmour.