Excavations continue this Monday to analyze the area where the bones of little Emile were discovered, near Haut-Vernet. Dogs, investigators, experts and drones are mobilized on site.
Nine months after his disappearance, the bones of little Emile were discovered on Saturday March 30, 2024, near the hamlet of Vernet (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor’s office announced this Sunday. It was a walker who discovered the skull to the south of the hamlet, “just like teeth” indicates Le Parisien. The investigators will “deploy means to undertake additional research in the geographical area where (the bones) were found” specifies the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor’s office. François Balique, mayor of Vernet, has banned access to people from outside the hamlet until next Sunday, April 7, at noon. A municipal decree taken this Sunday.
This Monday, April 1, 2024, the hamlet of Haut-Vernet (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence) is cordoned off by the police. New excavations and investigations begin to try to determine the circumstances of the death of little Emile. In total, around a hundred gendarmes have been hired to resume the search, said the spokesperson for the National Gendarmerie, Marie-Laure Pezant, on Monday. Experts from the gendarmerie’s criminal institute go to the site of the discovery of the boy’s bones to “be able to analyze the discovery area”, she specifies. Mobile police officers are also present to secure the premises and prohibit access to the hamlet following the order taken by the mayor of the town this Sunday. The latter are deployed alongside the department’s gendarmes and research investigators and experts.
The scientific gendarmerie is continuing its analyzes and around thirty investigators are deployed in the area. In addition, a crime scene coordinator will also be dispatched, we read in the columns of Le Parisien this Monday, in order to organize different levels of research and “proceed by method” explains Marie-Laure Pezant at the microphone of France Info. “When you have a body that is placed on the ground, you have elements of the ground which allow you to know whether the body has been there for a certain time,” she continues, before indicating that the analyzes “can be long”. “We continue to exploit all the avenues” she concludes.
