Four months after the disappearance of little Émile, in the hamlet of Haut-Vernet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, more than thirty searches were carried out on Tuesday. According to the gendarmes, they did not give rise to any particular discoveries, but it is an important step, according to General Jacques-Charles Fombonne.
In the case of the disappearance of little Émile, a new series of searches took place on Tuesday November 7. These 36 searches were carried out in six departments, including Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, and in particular in Haut-Vernet where Émile, two and a half years old, disappeared on July 8 while he was on vacation with his Grand parents.
A flagrant investigation was opened on July 9 to “search for the causes of the worrying disappearance”. At the end of August, she was then transferred to a preliminary investigation for “abduction, arrest, arbitrary detention and sequestration”. It therefore continues with its searches, at the homes of people who were in the hamlet of Haut-Vernet on the day of Emile’s disappearance. These are now completed and have not given rise to any particular discovery.
“The investigators now know better the people who were there”
This does not mean at all that they were useless, on the contrary, it is an important step in the investigation, according to General Jacques-Charles Fombonne, former commander of the research section of the center of Orléans and former commander of the national training center for the judicial police of the gendarmerie. First there was the time of emergency, that of research. Then, the investigations began with the collection of elements, and a new phase now follows.
“We are entering a phase of using the elements that we have previously collected”
Jacques-Charles Fombonne, former commander of the national training center for the judicial police of the gendarmerie.at franceinfo
“We collected as much data as possible without necessarily knowing at the start whether we would need it or not, explains Jacques-Charles Fombonne. And we are now starting to exploit them cross-functionally and rationally. With, for example, the use of telephone data or with chronological cross-references, that is to say we cross-reference the information of a person who says they have been in a place at a given time with that of a witness who would have seen him in another place, and perhaps in a time incompatible with travel. The investigators now know better the people who were there, hence these searches in places very far from Haut-Vernet.”.
Even if they did not bring any new element to the investigation, the former research section commander recalls that this should allow “to close the doors as we go”. They are not “never definitely” closed “because we can hope to have new information which gives a new direction or which, on the contrary, brings the investigators back to a suspect”.
Jacques-Charles Fombonne specifies that obviously, carrying out these searches four months after Émile’s disappearance can give possible suspects time to make evidence disappear: “I think that’s why the gendarmes ‘tapped’ their searches at the same time to avoid that if someone has something to hide, they are not alerted by the first acts of a new wave of searches “It’s the common rule in criminal investigations anyway, that the passage of time is always the enemy of the investigators.”.