Police searched the grandparents’ home on Tuesday morning and removed a van from the premises, according to French media.
The death of Emile Soleil, the two-and-a-half-year-old boy who went missing on July 8, 2023 in the alpine village of Le Haut-Vernet, has remained unexplained despite the discovery of his skull and teeth by a walker just under 2km from the settlement nine months after his disappearance.
Prosecutors at the time said the cause of Emile’s death could have been “a fall, manslaughter or murder”. Police later found more bones and items of the boy’s clothing but thought these could have been moved by a wild animal.
Emile had just arrived at the summer home of his maternal grandparents when he disappeared. The parents had left him with the grandparents and eight of the mother’s nine brothers and sisters who were staying with their children in the Catholic family’s country home.
‘15 minutes of inattention’
When he vanished, the toddler was officially in the care of his grandfather, a physiotherapist-osteopath, who later admitted to “15 minutes of inattention” as he was loading his car with metal stakes to build a fence for his horses.
Two neighbours last saw Emile walking alone on a street in Le Vernet, 1200m up in the French Alps.
François Balique, Le Vernet’s mayor, told French media at the time that the remains were found “on a path between the church and chapel” in the village – just over 100m from his home.
But Balique said the hamlet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence had been “thoroughly searched by gendarmes” after Emile’s disappearance, suggesting that the bones could have been moved back to Vernet.
A source close to the investigation told French media that detectives were convinced a human was involved in his disappearance.
They said: “There’s virtually no doubt now that there was a perpetrator. Did he deliberately harm the child or did he do it unintentionally? It’s impossible to say at the moment. But that there may have been human intervention is now highly probable.”
Some media had focused on the boy’s grandfather, who had been questioned in the 1990s over alleged violence and sexual assault at a private Roman Catholic school where he worked.
Vedovini was an “assisted witness” in the inquiry – one step short of being charged.
In an interview with the police in April 2018, he reportedly admitted to administering “somewhat harsh” physical discipline. However, Vedovini denied any wrongdoing and was not charged with any offence following the child abuse investigation.
Tuesday’s arrests were the result of fact-finding “over recent months”, the prosecutor told reporters, adding that forensic police were examining “several spots in the area”.
A funeral mass for the toddler was held in February of this year in the presence of several hundred mourners.
Within hours of the ceremony, the grandparents published a statement saying “the period of silence must yield to the period of truth”, adding: “We need to understand, we need to know.”
