The solo rambler who found the skull of missing French boy Émile Soleil has spoken of her shock and anguish at becoming a prime suspect in the mysterious case.
In her first interview since the remains of the two-year-old were discovered in the Alps, the woman said she ‘did not expect’ police to search her home after she reported the grim discovery.
She ended up being quizzed for nine hours following the fateful walk and had all her electronic devices seized as part of the investigation.
Referred to by the BFM TV news channel as Manon, a woman in her 60s, she recalled on Wednesday setting off on a mountain path close to the isolated hamlet of Haut-Vernet, near Grenoble, on March 30th.
She knew that Émile had gone missing from the isolated hamlet, where he had been staying with his grandpartents, eight months before, in July,
‘It was a time to stay under the duvet, because there was a lot of wind,’ she recalled, but instead she set off on a hike without a phone or a watch.
She could not recall how long she has been walking when she came across the macabre remains that she now calls ‘the thing’.
Expressing ‘amazement’ that police search parties using sniffer dogs had not seen it earlier, she said: ‘I found it in the middle of the path.
‘It was white, and very clean, There were only the top teeth…I cried, and then I calmed down.’
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