Hunt for missing boy, 2, from French hamlet focuses on motorway toll

Investigations into the disappearance of Emile, 2, from a mountain village in south-east France in July 2023 are now focusing on CCTV footage from a péage toll booth on the A51 motorway.

Read more: Boy, 2, missing in French hamlet: Where is inquiry six months on?

The prosecutor in Aix-en-Provence is analysing around 50,000 surveillance images from the scene, six months after the child’s disappearance from the hamlet of Le Haut-Vernet in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, on July 8.

#Prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon told BFMTV: “The case is still very much under investigation. We are using long-term analysis techniques.”

He said that the investigation was “not petering out” and that some of the new information coming to light is quite precise. This includes further investigation into the A51 toll.

The A51 is a motorway in southeast France that connects Marseille and Aix-en-Provence, with 128 km of toll road between Aix-en-Provence, and Saulce. The péage booth in question is around 50 km from Le Vernet.

The aim is to cross-reference images from vehicles passing through the péage with any profiles of interest in the investigation, including by using records of the 1,600 phones identified as being in a 50km radius of the hamlet on the day that Émile disappeared.

Not all police are convinced that studying the péage records will be useful, however. One anonymous police source told Le Figaro: “The péage is over 50 kilometres away...We have to be serious. How do you expect us to discover anything with that?”

But General François Daoust, former Director of the Institut de Recherche Criminelle de la Gendarmerie Nationale (IRCGN), explained: “If we have a pertinent boundary marker at Le Vernet, and a vehicle ends up 50 kilometres down the road, at the toll booth, it would be worth looking at the driver and asking them what they were doing at the time.”

Other investigations are also ongoing, including analysis on 300 forensic traces collected in the area. The data collected will also be entered into a piece of software called Anacrim, which aims to cross-reference details to help investigators pick up on any potential new leads.

Mysterious disappearance

Émile disappeared on July 8 from the hamlet of le Haut-Vernet - above the village of Le Vernet - while his extended family were packing the car for a trip.

He was seen by at least three witnesses walking away from the property, but this was not considered a concern at the time as children frequently walk and play freely in the hamlet.

He later disappeared and has not been seen since. All searches and leads have so far not led to any public announcements of findings or suspects. Searches by drones and sniffer dogs three weeks after Émile vanished did not present any findings. Phone records have also been reviewed, and properties of interest have been searched.

An initial investigation into “the causes of a worrying disappearance”, opened on July 8, was later turned into an inquiry into possible “kidnapping, arbitrary arrest, detention and sequestration”.

No kidnapping alert was ever issued, but the mayor of Le Vernet - François Balique - has suggested that the boy’s disappearance must have involved another person.

There has been speculation that he could have been killed accidentally by farming equipment or a car, and later hidden.

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