<\/p>\n
A months-long investigation into the mysterious death of a French toddler took a surprise turn on Tuesday when police arrested four people, including the boy’s grandparents, on suspicion of murder and concealment of a body.<\/p>\n
The death of Emile Soleil, a boy of two-and-a-half who went missing in a French Alpine village in July 2023, had remained unexplained even after some of his remains were discovered nine months later.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Prosecutors at the time said the cause of his death could have been “a fall, manslaughter or murder”.<\/p>\n
Emile had been staying at the summer home of his maternal grandparents in the tiny hamlet of Le Haut-Vernet when he vanished. Emile’s mother and father were absent on the day he disappeared.<\/p>\n
In a sharp turn of events on Tuesday, the boy’s 59-year-old grandfather, Philippe Vedovini, and his wife were arrested on suspicion of voluntary homicide and concealment of a corpse, said Aix-en-Provence public prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon.<\/p>\n
Two adult children of the couple were also arrested, Blachon added.<\/p>\n
Tuesday’s arrests were the result of fact-finding “over recent months”, the prosecutor told reporters.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month investigators had returned to the village, sparking talk of a development in the case.<\/p>\n
A large flowerpot with traces of blood had been seized by the investigators in front of a local church, a source close to the case told AFP.<\/p>\n
Several years ago the boy’s grandfather had been questioned over alleged violence and sexual assault at a private school in the 1990s where he was a scout leader.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Police had initially considered his possible involvement in Emile’s death as only one of many hypotheses.<\/p>\n
“Perhaps what is happening is not what we had expected,” said Philippe Vedovini’s lawyer, Isabelle Colombani, when questioned by police in Marseille.<\/p>\n
But she added that “being placed in police custody means nothing.”<\/p>\n
Julien Pinelli, who represents Emile’s grandmother, Anne Vedovini, said that she wanted nothing more than to learn “the truth about this tragedy.”<\/p>\n
“And if this measure is necessary to find the truth, of course she will submit to it,” he said.<\/p>\n
In the southern village of La Bouilladisse, an AFP reporter saw police conduct a search of the couple’s main home, an affluent farmhouse. They have seized an SUV and a horse trailer.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
One of the neighbours, who did not wish to give his name, saw the police detain Vedovini, who is an osteopath, and his wife at 7 am in the morning.<\/p>\n
“For me, they’re quiet neighbours,” he said. “They’ve been under pressure for the past two years, that’s for sure. They have lived in a reclusive manner.”<\/p>\n
Emile was last seen walking alone on a street in Le Vernet, 1,200 metres (4,000 feet) up in the French Alps, in the late afternoon of July 8, 2023. He was wearing a yellow T-shirt, white shorts and tiny hiking shoes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A massive search failed to find any sign of the boy.<\/p>\n
Nine months later, a walker discovered his skull and teeth 1.7 kilometres (1.1 miles) from the village.<\/p>\n
Police later found more bones and items of the boy’s clothing.<\/p>\n
In February, a traditional Catholic funeral mass for the toddler was held in the Basilica of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, a UNESCO-listed medieval Gothic cathedral said to house relics of Mary Magdalene, a follower of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n
Several hundred mourners were in attendance.<\/p>\n
Emile’s grandparents and parents are devout Catholics.<\/p>\n
Within hours of the ceremony, the grandparents published a statement saying “the period of silence must yield to the period of truth.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“We need to understand. We need to know,” they said\u00a0<\/p>\n
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n
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Marseille: A months-long investigation into the mysterious death of a French toddler took a surprise turn on Tuesday when police arrested four people, including the boy’s grandparents, on suspicion of murder and concealment of a body. The death of Emile Soleil, a boy of two-and-a-half who went missing in a French Alpine village in July […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":879,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877\/revisions\/879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}