The case of toddler Emile Soleil has taken a new eerie turn, with locals now convinced he was killed by a wandering group of wolves.
Two-year-old Emile’s disappearance in the isolated French hamlet of Haut-Vernet, near Grenoble, last July shocked the country and what happened to him is still a mystery.
His remains, including his skull which had a bite mark, were found in the Auches Ravine, just over a mile from where he was last seen playing.
Detectives are trying to figure out whether he was the victim of some kind of accident or something more sinister.
Jean-Luc Blachon, the prosecutor leading the criminal investigation, said his clothing was ‘not gathered in the same place, but scattered over a few metres’.
Some locals have now settled on a new theory – that the tragic youngster was killed in an attack by wolves.
One 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.’
François Balique, mayor of Vernet where Emile lived, also appeared to subscribe to the wolf theory.
He said: ‘There are some wolves here, especially in the summer with the sheep flocks.
‘A wolf can very well grab a child at the village well and run for half an hour without stopping and without shedding blood.’
Stéphane Chevrier, president of the Vernet hunters’ association, told Le Figaro: ‘Our department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence is one of the largest recorded wolf populations.
‘Last September there were several attacks on cows and sheep near Vernet.’
But Chevrier remarked that a wolf attack ‘seems out of the question for me’, but added that ‘it is possible for a wolf to feed on a corpse and move it’.