The appearance of the skull bones of the child found on Saturday “does not allow us to say what is the cause of his death”, the magistrate said on Tuesday. Jean-Luc Blachon clarified that “no ante-mortem trauma was observed”.
The press conference of the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor, Jean-Luc Blachon, was eagerly awaited, Tuesday April 2, three days after the discovery of the skull of little Emile, near the hamlet of Haut-Vernet (Alpes-de -Haute-Provence). But the hopes of finally having answers to what could have happened to the little 2 and a half year old boy, whose family had not heard from since July 8, quickly disappeared. “These bones alone do not allow us to say what is the cause of Emile’s death”, affirmed the magistrate. The investigation continues, while“between the fall, manslaughter and murder, we cannot favor any hypothesis.”
Jean-Luc Blachon, however, made an important revelation: the clothes that Emile was wearing when he disappeared were found “near the skull” : “a t-shirt, his shoes and panties, scattered over a few dozen meters“. Despite this notable discovery, several questions remain unanswered. Franceinfo returns to four of them.
Why was the skull not found during the searches?
While the spokesperson for the gendarmerie, Marie-Laure Pezant, explained on Monday on franceinfo that there was only one “tiny chance” that the investigators missed the body during the searches carried out immediately after the disappearance of the child, this is not what the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor assured the next day during his press conference. “If the location of the discovery of Emile’s skull is well located within the scope of the research in the first days, I cannot say today that every square meter was trodden by a member of the research team,” said the magistrate.
“During the second phase of research, between July 23 and 25, 2023, drones and corpse search dogs were used, which I can say with certainty that they did not cover the area in which the bones of Emile were found on March 30″, Jean-Luc Blachon also recognized. The magistrate recalled that it was a perimeter “very vegetated” in summer.
This is a “small body”, underlines for his part Laurent Fanton, director of the Lyon medicolegal institute, interviewed by franceinfo. THEs “small bony pieces can mix with plants, especially in summer, when the vegetation is dense”he observes.
Could the body have been moved?
The objective for investigators is to determine whether the remains of the child’s remains which were found were indeed in this location at the time of his disappearance. “We cannot say whether Emile’s body was already present in the discovery area,” underlined the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor.
Investigators are trying to see if “these bones could have been brought back later, either by a person or by an animal, which would have taken a bone and brought it to the site, or perhaps by an upheaval of the ground, due to bad weather.detailed the spokesperson for the national gendarmerie on Monday.
“We must analyze the way in which the bones were dispersed in the place where they were found,” adds for his part the forensic doctor Laurent Fanton, assuring that it will be a “very important element” to find out whether or not the remains could have been moved. It will be anyway “impossible to specify the exact cause of death”, from these bones, he warns.
An important element was provided by the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor: “No ante-mortem trauma was observed” on the child’s skull. However, this presents “small post-mortem fractures and cracks”, according to initial analyzes by gendarmes from the Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie of Pontoise, in the Paris region.
Jean-Luc Blachon also noted the absence of a maxilla “without being able to know whether it came off naturally or under the force of traction”. In addition, the appearance of the bones allows us to affirm “that they were not buried but exposed for a long time to weather variations”.
Was Emile able to reach the place where the bones were found alone?
At this stage, the hypothesis has not been ruled out by the investigators. “Emile could have gotten lost”, the gendarmerie spokesperson declared on Saturday. The bones were found on a steep path, southeast of the hamlet of Haut-Vernet, near a hiking trail.
The place where the little boy’s skull was found “can be reached from the bottom of the village, on foot, in 25 minutes on foot. It does not present any major difficulty, except that in the undergrowth the land is on both sides other very steep”detailed the prosecutor.
In answering questions from journalists, Jean-Luc Blachon clarified that the discovery had taken place at “1.6 kilometers, as the crow flies” from the home of Emile’s grandparents, either “a little over 2 kilometers on foot”. From a purely physical point of view, it does not seem impossible that a child of Emile’s age could walk a kilometer alone. But all other tracks remain “still to be explored”, wanted to remind Marie-Laure Pezant on Monday.
What do we know about the circumstances of the discovery of the bones by the hiker?
The hiker picked up the skull and teeth of little Emile, “between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m.” Saturday, before dropping them off at the Seyne-les-Alpes gendarmerie, located twenty minutes from the area, the prosecutor said. The lack of network prevented her from notifying the authorities by telephone. Colonel Marie-Laure Pezant spoke in recent days about a discovery “fortuitous”.
The walker’s actions do not appear to have contaminated the scene or interfered with the work of the investigators. For Christian Doutremepuich, a biologist specializing in identification by genetic fingerprints, it is enough to practice discrimination: “The investigator will recover the DNA profile of the walker by taking a mouth swab and establish a comparison between the results obtained on the object and the lady”. So, “this DNA is protected”, it will not be a source of contamination. Moreover, it is not the surface of the bone, but the interior of the bone that is studied, again according to Christian Doutremepuich.
The investigation will be “long” And “complex”, the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor warned on Sunday in an interview with AFP. She “will continue with the same intensity, on the ground, and on a forensic level because the elements found have not finished being analyzed”he added Tuesday, recognizing that “it is not satisfactory for anyone: neither for the family, nor for the investigators, nor for the investigating judges”.