The lone hiker who found the skull of missing French boy Émile Soleil has spoken of her shock and anguish at becoming the prime suspect in the mysterious case.
In her first interview since the two-year-old’s remains were discovered in the Alps, the woman said she “didn’t expect” police to search her home.
They initially spoke to her for nine hours after her fateful walk and then confiscated all of her electronic devices.
Called Manon by the BFM television channel, a woman in her 60s, recalled that on Wednesday, March 30, she took a mountain path near the isolated village of Haut-Vernet, near Grenoble.
He knew that Émile had disappeared from the isolated village where he was staying with his grandparents, eight months earlier, in July.
“It was a time to stay under the duvet, because it was very windy,” he remembers, but instead he set off on a walk without a phone or watch.
The skull of Émile Soleil (pictured) was found by a walker on March 30 “on a path between the Church and the Chapel” in the rural Alpine village of Haut Vernet, in southeastern France. The woman who found him has spoken of his surprise at becoming the main suspect.
An entrance to the village of Le Vernet, in the southern French Alps, near Haut-Vernet, where two-year-old Emile disappeared while with his grandparents.
He couldn’t remember how long he had been walking when he came across the macabre remains he now calls ‘the thing’.
Expressing his “astonishment” that police search teams with sniffer dogs had not spotted him earlier, he said: “I found him in the middle of the road.”
“It was white and very clean. Only the upper teeth were there… I cried and then I calmed down.”
Unable to call anyone, Manon decided to put the skull inside one of the two plastic bags she normally used to cover her feet when it was wet.
‘I could have left [the skull] but then when I came back, it wouldn’t be there anymore,” he said.
“That’s why I took it, I know that on days with weather like that, if you wait, the mountain is no longer the same.”
Manon said she was careful not to touch the skull with her bare hands, but she “didn’t know” if her DNA had been transferred to the remains.
Knowing she would have to return to the location, she said: ‘I said to myself: I need a reference point.
‘Then I saw a huge fir tree collapsed on its side. I said to myself: “this is the fir tree that will serve as my landmark.”
Convinced that someone could have been involved in Émile’s death, Manon said: “I was running, I wanted to hurry.
‘I said to myself ‘quickly, quickly, I have to bring the thing back and the police will find the culprit, the investigation will finally move forward.’
Recalling her terrifying walk home, Manon said: “The whole trip, I carried the thing at arm’s length, because feeling the shape touching my body terrified me.”
He arrived home at 2pm and left the skull on the terrace before calling the police and saying: “Bringing it into the house was inconceivable.”
This photograph shows a general view of the alpine village of Le Haut-Vernet on March 31, 2024.
French gendarmes argue on the road to the small village of Le Haut-Vernet, in the southern French Alps, in Le Vernet on March 31, 2024, after French investigators found the “bones” of a little boy who He disappeared last summer.
Detectives arrived at 3 p.m. and questioned Manon for nine hours without formally arresting her.
“They were doing their job, I answered their questions and that’s it,” he said, adding: “The next day I didn’t expect it: look it up!”
Manon said the police took her electronic devices, returned them to her a week later and said she was free to go about her normal life.
Manon cried as she recalled talking about her ordeal with BFM, without any of her words being recorded on camera.
Manon said she was very religious and that her main thoughts were with Émile’s parents: “May they find peace… May God give them peace,” Manon said.
Jean-Luc Blachon, the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor leading the criminal investigation into Émile’s death, said the location where Manon found the skull had been searched extensively by gendarmes before its discovery.
He said wild animals “may have scattered” Émile’s remains and could also have been responsible for “small fractures and bite marks” on his skull, as well as missing teeth.
Blachon said Manon was ruled out as a suspect after her interview and the search of her home, suggesting she just “wanted to do the right thing.”
But he admitted police were no closer to solving the mystery and said homicide and murder were still considered possibilities.
Émile was officially in the care of his grandfather, Philippe Vedovini, 58, on the day of his disappearance, while his parents took a break.