EXCLUSIVEHow mystery that has gripped France became a real-life The Missing: Little Emile vanished, sparking manhunt that left every villager a suspect, before latest bombshell twist - just like plot of BBC drama
As dawn broke on Tuesday, French gendarmes swooped on homes near Marseille to arrest four on suspicion of the murder of a child who vanished from his grandparents' care nearly two years ago.
In a shock development, they said the grandparents of missing Émile Soleil, aged just two when he disappeared, were among those arrested on suspicion of killing him and concealing the corpse.
Also taken into custody were two of their adult children, prosecutors said. The other pair were not named. The grandparents have ten children, one of whom is missing Émile's own mother.
Prosecutors stated that they were verifying evidence gathered in recent months amid wide forensic work across the country.
Émile had been staying with his grandparents, Philippe and Anne Vedovini, both 59, when he went missing from the sleepy Alpine hamlet of Haut-Vernet on July 8, 2023.
For weeks, authorities and volunteers searched in vain, eventually recovering what they believed to be some of his remains in March of last year.
Many noticed chilling parallels between the case and hit drama The Missing, starring James Nesbitt and Frances O'Connor, in which a young boy vanishes while on holiday with his family in France.
Émile's grandparents, who were hauled out of their home in La Bouilladisse early Tuesday, maintained that Émile had likely wandered off from the garden while they were getting ready for a walk. There was maybe a fifteen minute window, they said.
But the desperate search for the missing infant took a dark turn when the investigation was upgraded to reflect fears of the possibility of wrongdoing.
Now, fact-finding missions carried out over the last few months have led authorities to probe the explanation further.
Emile Soleil went missing from a sleepy Alpine village in France in 2023
Grandfather Philippe Vedovini at the funeral of little Emile in Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume on February 8, 2025
A gendarme stands outside the house of the grandparents of Emile Soleil on March 25, 2025
Many have noticed chilling parallels between the case and hit BBC drama The Missing, in which a young boy vanishes while on holiday with his family in France
In the days after the disappearance, hundreds of volunteers, as well as drones, helicopters and sniffer dogs, turned out in a huge manhunt for missing Emile.
Thirty houses in the area were searched and residents questioned.
Helicopters broadcast the voice of Émile's desperate mother across the region in an attempt to find him.
The hamlet was barricaded by police, preventing anyone new coming in. Phones were confiscated.
Time was precious. With no discernable leads, various theories emerged.
Had the youngster got lost and taken a fall away from view?
Had he been hit by a vehicle and taken away?
In the first few days, gendarmes assured: 'Of course, we still have hope of finding him alive, but elsewhere.
'If he was dead in the perimeter the dogs would have smelled him.'
There was no cause yet for suspicion.
As far as they knew, Emile had woken up from a long nap at around 4:30pm on July 8, per his grandparents.
He then wandered out into the garden and, while they were not looking, left the holiday home.
He was seen again at 5:15pm near a washhouse in the lower part of the hamlet, and then nothing.
Comparisons were soon drawn to the 2014 show The Missing, starring Nesbitt and O'Connor, in which a couple struggles to come to terms with their son's unsolved apparent abduction.
In The Missing, Tony loses sight of his son during a visit to a crowded outdoor bar while on holiday in rural France – in a chilling echo of the real life case.
In a shock twist it is later revealed that their son was not abducted, but had been bundled 'lifeless' into a car by a hit-and-run driver - a theory that French police considered may have happened to Émile.
In the days that followed, new revelations emerged about the background of Emile's family, and circumstances leading up to his disappearance.
Investigators, leaving no stone unturned, looked into the far-right political affiliations of Emile's father, Colomban Soleil.
He had been arrested for 'an attack on foreigners' in 2018, it emerged.
At the time, Mr Soleil was an activist linked to Action Francaise, a notorious far-Right nationalist and royalist group, as well as the neofascist Bastion Social.
Three years later, in 2021, both Mr Soleil and his wife, Marie Soleil stood as local election candidates in the Marseille area.
They were supporting the Reconquest party of Éric Zemmour, the convicted racist and Islamophobe who tried to become president of France last year.
Their election slogans at the time identified them as 'friends of Éric Zemmour' who wanted to 'clean out the system'.
A source involved in the search for Émile said at the time: 'You make a lot of enemies when you're an ally of Eric Zemmour and groups like Action Francaise and Bastion Social.'
No theory had been ruled out, investigators said repeatedly in those first weeks. Was the disappearance a tragic accident, or was there something more sinister behind it?
The focus moved.
Émile's parents' home, a two-hour drive away in the southern town of La Bouilladisse, was searched by police within days of the disappearance.
An investigating source described them as a 'very traditional family' of high Catholics.
Police revealed there were at least 10 other family members staying in the Vernet house at the time of the disappearance, opening up many more lines of enquiry.
'A family reunion was taking place, with several uncles and aunts of the child, of all ages, including some minors. Émile was seen on Saturday morning, along with other children,' police said.
The story took a turn when the investigation was upgraded to reflect fears of the possibility of wrongdoing.
Marie and Colomban Soleil, parents of Emile, arrive at the funeral ceremony in Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, southern France, on February 8, 2025
Emile (pictured) was last seen wearing a yellow T-shirt and white shorts, investigators said at the time
Gendarme stand outside the house of the grandparents of Emile Soleil on Tuesday
Jacques-Charles Fombonne, General of Gendarmerie, said sniffer dogs had picked up the boy's scent in two places within 20 metres around the house, and then nothing more, 'which may mean that at that moment the child got into a vehicle'.
It was then reported that two witnesses had seen the boy on the sloping street. They said it was common in the village to see children playing alone in the hamlet.
But again, nothing was confirmed. Nothing was ruled out.
'We don't have any clue to this,' the prosecutor said on July 9.
Days passed with more huge searches. Still, no progress.
'No scenario is more likely, no scenario is excluded,' prosecutor Remy Avon reiterated on July 11.
It would be another eight and a half months before the next major development.
With progress slowing, police summoned 17 people, including members of the family, to reconstruct the final moments before the disappearance in 2024.
Despite the huge efforts of police and volunteers, it was a rambler who found the first remains - part of a skull and teeth - days later while walking in late March.
Authorities were able to identify the bones belonged to Émile - but were frustrated they had been moved.
In the final days of March 2024, French media turned its attention to an historic probe involving Émile's grandfather.
Mr Vedovini, it re-emerged, was investigated as part of an active criminal enquiry into child abuse in the 1990s.
‘It is above all his past that raises questions,’ writes Le Parisien, as it outlined details of a sex abuse scandal at a Roman Catholic school.
It also confirmed that Mr Vedovini – who denies any wrongdoing and was not charged with any offence following the child abuse investigation – ‘has attracted the attention of gendarmes and constitutes one of their many lines of enquiry.’
Mr Vedovini, who was known as Brother Philippe when he worked at the school between 1991 and 1994, was implicated in the enquiry as an ‘assisted witness’.
Interviewed by police in April 2018, he admitted to administering ‘somewhat harsh’ physical discipline, but said he had never broken the law, according to a source close to the enquiry.
French gendarmes take part in the search operation for two-year-old Emile in July 2023
French gendarmes take part in a search operation for two-and-a-half-year-old Émile who is reporting missing
A general view of the Alpine hamlet of Le Haut-Vernet on March 31, 2024, after French investigators said they had found Emile's 'bones' nearby
As searches resumed in April 2024, prosecutors announced the discovery of clothes: a T-shirt, a pair of shoes and some underwear.
They were found 150m (490ft) from where the skull was said to have been found.
Days later, more remains were found nearby. Forensic investigators reviewed the evidence, but there was still no clear lead to report.
Locals soon began to speculate that little Emile may have been attacked by wolves.
One resident told Le Parisien: '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.'
The site where the remains were found had already been scoured by gendarmes with a 'tooth comb', the mayor told Le Figaro at the time.
The new theory was that wild animals could have dispersed the bones in different places nearby, and would have been responsible for what appeared to be small fractures and 'bite marks' on the skull.
Had the body been moved by an animal or a person? Still it was unclear. Analyses were said to be ongoing.
A funeral was finally held for Emile in February 2025, with no real progress made in nearly a year.
Several hundred mourners turned out to pay their respects. The story had become highly publicised in French media.
His maternal grandparents said at the time that 'silence had made space for truth'.
They could no longer 'live without answers'.
'We have had 19 months without a single certainty,' they said in a statement.
'We need to understand. We need to know.'
It would be another two months before the next breakthrough came.
A gendarme enters a vehicle outside the house of the grandparents of Emile Soleil
Investigators haul off a horse trailer from the property of the grandparents of Emile Soleil
The trailer was seized as part of the investigation into the boy's death
In a shock twist, it was the grandparents who were arrested on suspicion of 'voluntary homicide', along with two of their children, unnamed, on March 25, 2025.
Their identity was not revealed but Blachon said they were 'adult children' of the Vedovinis.
Tuesday's arrests were the result of fact-finding 'over recent months', Aix-en-Provence chief prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon told reporters.
He said forensic police were still examining 'several spots in the area'.
In France, people can be placed under arrest for questioning while police investigate. It does not mean that legal proceedings will necessarily be brought against them.
Details on what will happen next remain scarce.
But the arrests mark the most significant development in the story for months.
They come just a week after investigators said they had found blood on a planter near the Saint Martin chapel in the tiny hamlet of Haut-Vernet.
The task now would be to determine whether the blood is human, and whether it might shed light on Emile's story.
Young Emile's disappearance horrified the world in 2023, and then, tragically, seemed to vanish.
But the steadfast efforts of prosecutors, police and volunteers to solve the mystery breathes new life into the pursuit of justice.
