Émile was two years old when he vanished in July, while playing at his grandparents' house in Le Vernet, a district of just over a hundred inhabitants in Haute Provence. On March 30, 2024, the national gendarmerie was informed of the discovery of bones near the village of Vernet.
Two witnesses saw him going down the street, but they did not consider it strange nor were there any details that alerted them. On Thursday, investigators summoned more than a dozen people in the district to try to reconstruct the events.