The grandparents of a little French boy found dead in the Alps were today arrested under suspicion of murdering him and then hiding his corpse.
Philippe and Anne Vedovini, who are both 59 years old, were arrested on Tuesday, along with two of their adult children, in connection with the suspected murder of Émile Soleil.
The two-year-old boy disappeared in July 2023 while he was at the Vedovinis’ remote vacation home located in the Alpine village of Haut-Vernet, situated to the south of Grenoble.
His remains, including a fractured skull, were found nearby nine months later, following daily searches.
At dawn today, police raided the family’s permanent home, near Marseille, and arrested them.
Simultaneous swoops by police nearby led to the arrests of the other two suspects, who have not been identified by name.
All are under suspicion of ‘intentional homicide’ and ‘concealing a corpse’, said a statement released by Aix-en-Provence prosecutors.
Emile, who disappeared in Le Vernet, southeastern France on July 8, 2023
French gendarmes take part in the search operation for two-year-old Emile in July 2023
According to reports, the statement said: ‘This morning, Philippe Vedovini and his wife, who are the grandparents of Émile Soleil, were taken into custody, along with two of their adult children’ by detectives from the Marseille gendarmerie’s investigation unit.
‘These police custody placements are part of a phase of verification and comparison of the evidence and information gathered during the investigations carried out in recent months.’
The statement adds: ‘Investigators are also conducting forensic operations in various locations across the country’ .
Isabelle Colombani, the grandparents’ lawyer, confirmed the arrest to AFP, France’s national news agency, but said she had no further comment to make.
The arrests took place at 6.30am at La Bouilladisse, just north of Marseille, in France’s Bouches-du-Rhône department.
Émile was staying at Haut-Vernet at the time of his disappearance, and vanished while under the supervision of his grandfather, who later admitted ‘fifteen minutes of inattention.’
The search for the child finally ended when Emile’s bones were found in March 2024 by a rambler.
Émile’s skull – which contained fractures and a bite mark – was found by a walker on March 30, 2024 on a path between the Church and Chapel of the rural Alpine village
A witness saw Mr Vedovini, a physiotherapist-osteopath, cutting wood outside his house around the time Émile is thought to have wandered off from the property in Haut-Vernet.
Last year, multiple French news outlets including Le Parisien and the highly respected investigative newspaper Le Canard enchaîné [The Chained Duck] reported disturbing new information about Mr Vedovini.
‘It is above all his past that raises questions,’ wrote Le Parisien, as it outlined details of a sex abuse scandal at a Roman Catholic school in the 1990s.
It also confirmed that Mr Vedovini – who denied any wrongdoing – ‘has attracted the attention of gendarmes and constitutes one of their many lines of enquiry.’
Mr Vedovini was training to be a monk when he worked at Riaumont, a Catholic community that includes a boarding school for troubled youngsters in Northern France.
Situated at Liévin, in the Pas-de-Calais, it was run by Benedictine monks who received multiple complaints from former pupils between 2014 and 2017.
They said they had suffered sexual abuse, including rape, in the early 1990s, as well as regular physical beatings.
Mr Vedovini, who was known as Brother Philippe when he worked at the school between 1991 and 1994, was implicated in the enquiry as an ‘assisted witness’.
Interviewed by police in April 2018, he admitted to administering ‘somewhat harsh’ physical discipline, but said he had never broken the law, according to a source close to the enquiry.
French Gendarmes near the village last March after investigators found what they believed to be the ‘bones’ of little Emile in the first major breakthrough in the case
Gendarmes meticulously search the outskirts of the village of Vernet in July 2023
Eleven former colleagues – seven religious and four lay staff – ended up being indicted on various charges.
The public prosecutor in Béthune confirmed that the criminal investigation was ‘still in progress’ and ‘should soon be completed’.
There was no comment about the revelations from Mr Vedovini, nor his legal counsel, who were all approached.
Mr Vedovini gave up his vocation to become a monk, in order to marry his wife, Anne Vedovini.
Both remain devout Roman Catholics who brought up 10 children, including Émile’s mother, who is now known by her married name of Marie Soleil.
The extreme-right wing political background of the family has also been examined by police.
Émile’s father, Colomban Soleil, 27, was arrested for ‘an attack on foreigners’ in 2018.
He appeared before judges in Aix-en-Provence, and was released from custody after pledging to maintain the peace.
Volunteers take part in a search operation for two-and-a-half-year-old Emile in July 2023
At the time, Mr Soleil was an activist linked to Action Francaise, the far-Right nationalist and royalist group, as well as the neofascist Bastion Social.
Three years later, in 2021, both Mr Soleil and his wife stood as local election candidates in the Marseille area, supporting the Reconquest party of Éric Zemmour, the convicted racist and Islamophobe who tried to become president of France in 2023.
Their election slogans at the time identified them as ‘friends of Éric Zemmour’ who wanted to ‘clean out the system’.
Emile’s parents are not believed to be the two adult children arrested alonsgide their parents today.
