Region | Disappearance of Emile: from Vernet to Ganagobie and Peyroules, the mystery of 3 missing children in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence

The search continues in the village of Vernet (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence) in order to find little Emile, who has been missing since Saturday July 8, around 5 p.m., while he was playing in the garden of the residence. family of his grandparents. The little boy, aged two and a half, was last seen alone by two witnesses on Saturday in the hamlet of Haut-Vernet which is almost 2 km above the entrance to the village, still cordoned off , this Wednesday, July 12, by the gendarmerie for the purposes of the investigation, “to find the causes of the disappearance ” entrusted to the Research Section (SR) of the Marseille Gendarmerie.

“As I speak to you, the operations have not brought any useful elements to the investigation. (…) Emile was not found“, admitted, on Tuesday July 11, the public prosecutor of Digne-les-Bains, Rémy Avon, during a press briefing. “We have no clue, no information, no element that can help us understand this disappearance.“, had then underlined the magistrate. The mystery remains despite the mobilization of nearly 800 people, gendarmes, firefighters and volunteers.

May 1989: the unexplained disappearance of little Yannis in Ganagobie

“It reminds us of a lot of things. I sent a little message of support to the mayor of Vernet, François Balique“, testifies the mayor since 2020 of Ganagobie, Sylvie Belmonte, 67 years old. 34 years ago, “I was town clerk and I participated in the search to try to find little Yannis“. The recent disappearance of little Émile in Vernet unfortunately echoes that of Yannis Moré, then 3 years old, on May 2, 1989 in Ganagobie, a calm and peaceful village of 90 inhabitants in this same department of Alpes-de-Haute -Provence.

That day, around 10 a.m., Yannis mysteriously disappeared while having fun with three of his brothers, then aged between 5 and 9, in a small cabin a few meters from the family home, surrounded by trees. a vast forest, located in the hamlet of Belvédère which overlooks the Durance river. A hundred gendarmes, soldiers, firefighters and volunteers will then take part in the rescue operations. No witnesses, no clues. No suspect, no ransom.

“We had been settled in Ganagobie for 18 months… I saw them having fun from the window. It was the first time they asked me to go above the house. I told the eldest to watch out for his little brother. They told me that Yannis was going to see the puppies of a neighbor next door“, explained Yannis’ mother, Pascaline Moré, in an interview with La Provence, May 2, 2016. Is Yannis still alive? “I want to know ! Finally ?“, she hesitated. “Why not… You never know. We will probably never know. We give each other hope“, she confided then.

Filed as “out of regret”, the kidnapping is beyond doubt

Sixteen months after the disappearance of Yannis, a hunter discovered, on October 1, 1990, directly above the priory of Ganagobie (600 meters as the crow flies from the house) two shoes “in a wooded area that had been excavated“, recalled in Provence, May 2, 2016, Gérard Puig.

The former major of the Research Brigade (BR) of the Digne-les-Bains gendarmerie, retired in 2009, worked from 1989 to 1999 on the disappearance of Yannis Moré. “The two leather shoes are placed side by side and the laces are undone. I remain convinced that someone left them, perhaps out of regret and to be found, he confided then. I then discover, on a tuft of thyme, a gold medal and a chain at the edge of a dry stream. A few meters away are the wet clothes: briefs, a sock, tracksuit and anorak“At the time, biological analyzes did not reveal any traces of blood.”Other certainties, in the spring, the clothes were not there, the iron rod of the zipper is broken, and the elastic of the bottom of the tracksuit is cut with something sharp“, explained the former policeman.

“The most plausible scenario”

“The most plausible scenario is that the person who kidnapped the little one knew the place and even knew that the children were there. He acted when Yannis found himself alone. Above the cabin, there is a footpath with the possibility of parking a vehicle nearby and starting again, avoiding the village, from above. We thought for a while that the body could have been hidden during the construction of the highway… I have always been convinced that the little one had been removed. But by whom, how and why?“, estimated Gérard Puig in the columns of La Provence.

The DNA samples taken in the years 1991-1992 did not make it possible to advance the investigation. The investigation was closed in 2001. The analyzes ruled out fabricators. In 2014, an individual residing in Ganagobie claimed to know where the child was buried. It was a neighborhood dispute. Checks have been carried out in the Var and even in the United Kingdom, Algeria and Belgium. Four investigating judges were seized between 1989 and 2001. Borrowed from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (United States), the aging of portraits of missing children was used for the first time in France in 1992. Yannis was the first child aged at the age of 6 years.

A child reported missing in 2022 every 12 minutes

In a latest report published in May 2023, “116,000 Disappeared Children”, an official emergency number coordinated and managed by the Fondation Droit d’Enfance, indicates that 43,202 disappearances of minors were reported to the police in France in 2022. and gendarmes according to the Ministry of the Interior. “A slight decrease (-1.5%) compared to the previous year but which remains very high: a child was reported missing every 12 minutes“, notes the report.

These authors note 41,158 fugues”whose scope is often minimized even though they represent a real place of danger for the child. Added to this figure are 544 parental abductions, 43% of which concern a move to a foreign country. Finally, 1,140 worrying disappearances were reported. The latter cover various situations but are most often similar to long escapes during which contact with the child ends up being broken.“.

The disappearance of Mathieu Haulbert entrusted to the national pole “cold cases”

A third unexplained disappearance of a child haunts the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department. That of Mathieu Haulbert, then 10 years old, who disappeared on June 25, 1983 in Peyroules, near Castellane. He was never found.

Last February, the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal ordered that the file be examined by the Judicial Center dedicated to unsolved cases and serial crimes, located in Nanterre in the Hauts-de-Seine. On the day of his disappearance, Mathieu Haulbert had just left, alone and on a bicycle, his parents’ farm to join that of a shepherd, three kilometers away, from where a mini-transhumance started to Castellane.

The gendarmes of Digne-les-Bains, the Parisian police officers of the central office for the repression of human trafficking, then the Research Section (SR) of Aix-en-Provence had not managed to find the trace of Mathieu, vanished a few minutes after having left his bicycle at the edge of the main road to cover the rest of the journey on foot. The portraits of Mathieu, aged at 25 and 40, widely distributed, came to nothing. The creation, in March 2022, of the unit specializing in serial and unsolved crimes revived the hope of Mathieu’s parents to snatch the truth from the past.