SEVERAL unanswered questions still remain over Emile Soleil’s death after his body was found 266 days after he first vanished in France.
Investigations are continuing into the two year old’s mysterious passing with several crucial lines of inquiry ongoing.
Emile was found dead in the French Alps over eight months after he first disappeared on July 8, 2023.
The tot was staying at his grandparent’s isolated holiday home in the Alpine hamlet of Haut-Vernet, south of Grenoble.
His remains, including a fractured skull, were found nearby in March 2024 following desperate daily searches.
Investigations on Emile found he suffered “violent facial trauma”, according to prosecutors.
They also said his remains were moved just before officials found the body.
Public prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon revealed at a press conference today officials are now looking into a potential third party being involved.
Ever since the tragic discovery, police have been looking into if Emile was possibly murdered and who may be responsible for his death.
In the year since Emile’s disappearance, troubling details have emerged. His grandfather admitted to a lapse in attention lasting fifteen minutes before the child went missing.
Philippe Vedovini, the grandparent, is also currently being investigated in a separate case involving allegations of sexual abuse at a Catholic school in the 1990s.
He has always denied the claims and soon transformed his life into being a monk.
Philippe was also one of four of Emile’s family members to be arrested in recent weeks in connection to his death.
Adding to the complexity of the situation, Father Claude Gilliot, who performed Emile’s baptism, reportedly committed suicide and left behind a disturbing suicide note.
Why were his grandparents, aunt and uncle arrested?
Emile’s grandparents Philippe and Anne Vedovini, both 59, were quizzed by cops for 17 hours after Emile was found dead.
The Vedovinsis were arrested in dawn raids along with two of their adult children, identified as Émile’s aunt and uncle.
All faced charges of ‘intentional homicide’ and ‘concealing a corpse’, a statement released by Aix-en-Provence prosecutors said.
But all four have since been released from custody.
Lead prosecutor Jean-Luc Bachon said the charges were “not sufficient to warrant an indictment”.
He added that all four family members had answered all the questions “put to them” before their release.
Enquiry sources confirmed the grandparents, who were looking after Émile when he went missing, were detained following months of police wire taps.
Conversations between them and other family members were all secretly listened to, while enquiries were conducted around their lives.
Priest’s ‘suicide’
Father Claude Gilliot, who baptised the two-year-old, allegedly died by suicide in recent weeks.
Gilliot, 85, reportedly left a suicide note when he was found after “a massive overdose”, according to an investigation source.
The priest was close to Emile’s grandparents but the trio had fallen out in recent years, it is believed.
Father Gilliot provided a photo of Emile to the media when he was missing in an attempt to find him – only to be condemned by the toddler’s family.
The Vedovini family boycotted the priest’s chapel, despite at one point relying on Father Gilliot for their spiritual guidance, including celebrating Mass and hearing Confessions.
The priest’s death is particularly shocking as it is rare for Catholic priests to take their own lives.
Under their religion, suicide is viewed as a mortal sin on par with murder.
Granddad’s 15mins of ‘inattention’
When cops first launched a frantic search for Emile back in 2023, the boy’s last known whereabouts were a key part of the search.
Emile was last seen with his grandfather who was looking after Emile for his parents who were not in the village at the time.
In the months since, Philippe admitted he had left his grandson alone in the garden during what he called “fifteen minutes of inattention”.
Two people later claimed they saw Emile wandering around by himself as Philippe chopped wood in his garden.
A source close to the investigation told La Depeche the two witnesses who “confirmed that they saw the child walking alone at the time of his disappearance” are “reliable people” who they “trust completely”.
The day he disappeared he was wearing a yellow top, white shorts with a green pattern, and hiking shoes.
Police launched a major search to find the boy after his grandparents reported him missing.
Cops, soldiers, sniffer dogs, scores of volunteers, a helicopter and drones all took part in the hunt but failed to find any sign of him.
The remains were found about a 25-minute away from the French hamlet of Haut-Vernet where Emile was last seen.
The family’s dark past
Some of Emile’s family are said to be from an extreme-Right-wing political background.
This has reportedly caught the eye of police who are still examining any possible link between the family and the boy’s death.
In 2018, Emile’s 27-year-old father, Colomban, was arrested for an alleged “attack on foreigners”.
He appeared before judges in Aix-en-Provence before being released from custody after agreeing to maintain the peace.
Colomban was said to have links to Action Francaise, a far-Right nationalist and royalist group, as well as the neofascist Bastion Social, according to reports.
Three years later, Colomban and his wife – also Emile’s mum – stood in their local election.
They were said to have been supporting Éric Zemmour – a convicted racist and Islamophobe.
Emile’s heartbreaking case took another shocking turn when disturbing details about granddad Philippe’s past emerged last year.
Appalling details of a sexual abuse scandal at the Roman Catholic school where the granddad worked were revealed by multiple French news outlets including Le Parisien and Le Canard enchaîné.
Philippe was training to be a monk when he worked at the school around the time of the alleged abuse.
The Riaumont boarding school in Pas-de-Calais received multiple complaints from former pupils between 2014 and 2017.
They claimed they had suffered sexual abuse, including rape, in the early 1990s, as well as regular physical beatings.
Philippe was implicated in the enquiry as an “assisted witness”.
In an interview with the police in April 2018, Philippe admitted to administering “somewhat harsh” physical discipline.
But he has always insisted he had never broken the law and did nothing wrong, according to a source close to the enquiry.
Eleven of his former colleagues ended up being indicted on various charges.
Why did it take so long to find remains?
Investigators are still probing how it took 266 days to uncover Emile’s remains.
His body was finally found by a rambler which marked a major breakthrough in the case but also opened up questions about how they were never found earlier.
Today it was revealed that his remains were actually moved just before officials found them, prosecutors confirmed.
Public prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon also said Emile’s body didn’t decompose in the clothes he was found in.
Blachon said: “These elements allow us to consider that the body did not remain in the same place and in the same biotope during the decomposition process.”
Several theories emerged over how the body was missed for so long with many claiming it must have been moved.
But some believed it may have been due to animals with locals convinced Emile was killed by wolves.
One person told Le Parisien at the time: “The little one must have been the victim of an animal. And I only see the wolf as the culprit.
“They say wolves are afraid of people, but with a little boy like that, a big boy, the wolf would have seen him as another prey.”
François Balique, the mayor of Vernet where Emile lived, also seemed to believe the horrifying theory.
