The discovery of the body of French boy Émile Soleil near his grandparents’ house in a French Alpine village last week has done little to answer the many outstanding questions surrounding the two-year-old’s disappearance.
Mystery has surrounded the case for months, sparking a number of theories about what may have happened to the little boy – with the reason for his disappearance still unclear.
Many have noticed chilling parallels between the case and the hit drama The Missing, starring James Nesbitt and Frances O’Connor, in which a young boy disappears while on holiday with his family in France – as noted by says Emile.
The BBC series sees a young boy called Ollie disappear, with his disappearance unexplained and speculation over his whereabouts for years before he is finally confirmed dead.
But questions remain about what happened to the child’s body at the end of the series, and as speculation continues to swirl about what really happened to Émile, comparisons between the two mysteries have resurfaced.
Émile Soleil’s body was discovered last week near his grandparents’ home in a French Alpine village.
Many have noticed chilling parallels between this case and the hit BBC drama The Missing, in which a young boy disappears while on holiday with his family in France.
The road to Haut-Vernet is blocked by a gendarmerie checkpoint at the village of Le Vernet, France, pictured on Sunday
Émile, who lived with his parents near Marseille but was on vacation with his grandparents in rural Haut Vernet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, disappeared last July.
In The Missing, Tony loses sight of his son during a visit to a crowded beer garden while on holiday in the French countryside – in a chilling echo of the real-life case, which saw Émile disappear from under our noses from his family.
Comparisons have been drawn to the series throughout the real-life case after French police previously admitted they had “no idea” little Emile was missing.
The first series of The Missing (2014), starring Nesbitt and O’Connor, sees a couple struggle to come to terms with the apparent unsolved abduction of their son, with no answers eight years after his disappearance.
In a shocking twist, it is revealed that their son was not kidnapped, but taken “lifeless” into a car by a hit-and-run driver – a theory that French police say could having arrived at Émile.
At one point, reports said authorities were investigating whether Emile could have been “hit by a car or tractor” and his body taken away.
The theory was fueled after blood was found on the front of a car – but it later turned out to be that of an animal.
When the little boy went missing, a massive search operation was launched, involving hundreds of local police officers, which tragically resulted in the discovery of the two-year-old’s remains.
As in the gripping BBC drama, Emile’s death was confirmed after a prolonged search, punctuated by hopes that he might still be alive.
Tragically, prosecutors confirmed this week that the boy’s skull and bones were found on Saturday, and later revealed that his clothes were discovered nearly 500 feet from his slightly fractured and mutilated remains.
His clothes could provide valuable evidence of what happened to the little boy – as Ollie’s scarf does in The Missing – although police have so far revealed no potential clues.
The prosecutor in the Émile Soleil case, Jean-Luc Blachon, said wild animals may have scattered Emile Soleil’s remains and could also be responsible for “small fractures” and “bite marks” on his skull.
A fall could have damaged Émile’s skull, but Mr Blachon said other hypotheses, including “murder or manslaughter”, had not been ruled out.
Until now, there had been no trace of the little child since his disappearance eight months ago, with investigators refusing to rule out any possibility of the tragedy, including kidnapping and murder.
The police conducted an “extensive search” – as was the case in The Missing, where a massive search operation is launched and covered by international media.
But despite the efforts of the police and volunteers, it was ultimately hikers who found Emile’s bones on Saturday in the idyllic Alpine hamlet of Vernet, before handing them over to the police.
A source close to the investigation told MailOnline that only part of the body had been found, with some bones and the skull recovered.
Forensic investigators were continuing to analyze the skull and bones found, but have not yet given a cause of death.
Nesbitt and O’Connor starred in the first series of the show as a couple struggling to reconcile eight years after their son was kidnapped.
The mayor of Vernet, François Balique, declared Le Figaro newspaper last week that Emile’s remains were “on a path between the church and the chapel” of the village – an area which he said had previously “been searched thoroughly by the gendarmes” with a “tooth comb”.
He said it was “absolutely incomprehensible” that Emile got into trouble on his own.
“I can’t help but believe that an adult is involved in this. Émile would never have gone alone to where he was found,” said Mr. Balique.
This adds an extremely worrying element to the progress of the investigation, indicated the source, suggesting that the remains would have been deposited there some time after Émile’s disappearance.
“It is unlikely that animals would bring human remains back to the village where someone went missing.
“This leads to the hypothesis that a person would have brought back Émile’s remains, and potentially very recently,” specifies the source.
As the investigation continues this week, national gendarmerie spokesperson Marie-Laure Pezant said anthropologists, also “specialists in soil analysis,” were studying the site where his partial remains were found.
“We have experts from the gendarmerie criminal research institute who traveled to Haut-Vernet to be able to analyze the discovery area,” she indicated during a press briefing today, according to Radio France. “This research will begin with them today.”
Volunteers participate in the search operation for Emile on July 10, 2023
According to her, the anthropologists hope to “identify whether these bones were on site or not or whether they could have been brought back by different means: a human person, an animal which would have transported them or the weather conditions which would have modified the ground and what would have pushed them so far.
Pezant acknowledged there was “a tiny chance” that investigators had missed the body during their previous searches.
She added: “We had committed a lot of resources but given the configuration of the place with the abundant vegetation in July, this could have complicated the search and we could perhaps have missed it. This is a hypothesis that exists. Then, it is also possible that these bones were brought back to the region later.
When Emile disappeared last year, his grandparents were spending the summer in their vacation home that they had bought in 2000 in the small village in the heart of the Trois-Évêchés massif.
French gendarmes participate in the search operation for two-year-old Emile in July 2023
That day, eight of the grandparents’ ten grandchildren were at home. Besides Émile, two years old, they were aged between seven and 18.
That morning, Émile’s uncles and aunts, who were also present at the house, were busy building a cabin nearby for the children to play.
In the afternoon, from the point of view of the adults in the house, Émile was happily playing in the garden of his grandparents’ house.
However, when it was 5 p.m., the family was preparing to leave the house for a walk when Émile took advantage of the inattention, authorities have since said. His grandparents went to put him in the car, but found that he was no longer in the garden.
Now that their son’s body has finally been discovered, Émile’s parents, Marie and Colomban Soleil, expressed their “pain and sorrow” in a statement released to the press on Easter Sunday through their lawyer. Jerome Triumph.
“This heartbreaking news was feared… (They) know on this Resurrection Sunday that Emile watches over them in the light and tenderness of God.
“Marie and Colomban would like to thank all those who helped and supported them as well as the investigating judges and investigators for their work, their professionalism, their personal commitment and their humanity which were of great comfort to them, the latter months and especially that day… But the pain and the sorrow remain.”
“The time has come for mourning, contemplation and prayer.”