The maternal grandparents, an uncle and an aunt of Émile Soleil have been arrested on suspicion of "intentional homicide" and "concealment of a corpse" of the boy who disappeared in July 2023.
The maternal grandparents, uncle and aunt of Émile - the two-and-a-half-year-old boy who disappeared in July 2023 in the French Alps - will remain in police custody after being arrested on Tuesday morning on suspicion of "intentional homicide" and "concealment of a corpse".
According to the French television station BFMTV, this Wednesday, the preventive detention of the four detainees was extended for a period of at least 24 hours.
On Tuesday morning, the public prosecutor of Aix-en-Provence, Jean-Luc Blanchon, announced that "Philippe Vedovini and his wife, Émile Soleil's grandparents, as well as two of their children, have been arrested on charges of voluntary manslaughter and concealment of a corpse".
The arrests, the magistrate explained, "are part of a phase of verification and comparison of the elements and information gathered during the investigations carried out in recent months".
The arrests are believed to have been due to telephone taps made to the family, which revealed the existence of family conflicts.
From the disappearance to the arrest of the relatives. What is known about the case?
Émile Soleil disappeared on 8 July 2023, when he was just two and a half years old, a few hours after his mother, Marie, left him at his grandparents' house in Haut-Vernet, in the French Alps, to spend the summer holidays.
Initially, investigators had only the testimony of two neighbors who said they had seen the child from a distance, leaving their home and walking alone down a steep street.
At the time of his disappearance, 97 hectares of forest were searched and around 30 homes in the village were also searched, with residents being questioned by the authorities.
Ten days later, on 18 July 2023, a "judicial investigation" was opened, which began an investigation lasting several months. No hypothesis was ruled out, although from the outset the authorities warned that it would be very difficult to find him alive if he had disappeared on his own after the first few days.
Émile's remains were discovered 9 months later, on 30 March 2024, when a hiker found some bones on a trail two kilometers from Haut-Vernet, in an area where searches had already been carried out.
Days later, Émile's parents, Marie and Colomban, issued a statement "thanking all those who helped and supported" the search and stressed that it was "time to mourn".
"Marie and Colomban would like to thank all those who helped and supported them, as well as the examining magistrates and investigators, for their work, their professionalism, their personal commitment and their humanity, which have given them great comfort in these last months and, in particular, on this day", read a statement released by their lawyers.
The boy's funeral was not held until February 8th at the Basilica of Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. According to the French press, the ceremony was attended by the entire family, including Émile's sister, who is now almost three years old, and his brother, who was born in October 2024.
On that day, Émile's maternal grandparents spoke out for the first time, stating that they could no longer "live without answers".
"We cannot continue to live without answers. The justice system has been called, expert reports have been produced and yet we still do not know what happened to Émile since his disappearance on July 8, 2023. 19 months have passed, 19 months without the slightest certainty. We need to understand, we need to know", they lamented.
A little over a month after the boy's funeral, on March 15, the priest who baptized him, Claude Gilliot, was found dead, having taken his own life.
The priest and the family were very close, but that changed after the disappearance, when Gilliot shared a photograph of the boy with the press.
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