Deadly plane crash, cafe murder and now missing toddler in the French village ‘cursed’ by tragedy

The French village of Le Vernet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence has dominated headlines following the disappearance of a young boy this weekend.

Émile, aged two-and-a-half, was playing in the garden of his grandparent's house when he vanished on Saturday afternoon. A desperate hunt –involving helicopters, drones, and sniffer dogs – has been taking place to try and find the missing toddler.

A dedicated hotline number has received over 1,200 phone calls, but police still have “no clue” about Émile’s whereabouts as fears for his safety intensify on the fifth day since he went missing.

While hope for Émile remains, this isn't the first time the sleepy village has been rocked by heart-wrenching events.

Locals speaking to the media said they are worried their village may be "cursed" while recalling it was the site of a gruesome murder and a devastating plane crash that left 149 people dead.

Speaking to La Montagne, Christian Mollet said: "The village has been hit by this type of tragedy three times.

“There was the murder of Jeannette in 2008, the manager of the Moulin café killed by a customer in 2008; the crash of the company Germanwings, a subsidiary of Lufthansa in 2015 with 150 people on board; and then there is this disappearance...”

Here’s what we know about the history of in Le Vernet:

Cafe owner killing in 2008

In 2008, the peace of the village was shattered when Jeanette Grosos, the owner of Café du Moulin, was murdered by a customer.

At the time of her death, the mayor at the time François Balique told Provence that "the village will have a hard time recovering from it".

Ms Grosos was regarded as a "local institution", locals said. She came to a tragic end after a customer, who was well-known in the village, savagely beat her to death.

Airwing disaster in 2015

Seven years later in March 2015, another tragedy struck when Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 crashed into the Alps killing everyone on board.

Evidence obtained from the cockpit flight record and other information showed how co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, 28, brought down the Airbus intentionally.

The flight took off from Barcelona Airport and was heading for Duesseldorf, Germany, with 149 people on board - which is also around the same size as the population of Le Vernet.

At one point, the captain told the co-pilot he was leaving the cockpit and asked him to take over radio communications.

As soon as he left, Lubitz altered the flight monitoring system to send the aircraft into descent and within 10 minutes the plane had plummeted into a mountain at 430mph - killing everybody onboard instantly.

In the last few minutes of the black box recording, there is the sound of banging on the door as staff tried to enter the cockpit and also the sound of the terrified passengers screaming. It was revealed later that the suicidal co-pilot was asked to seek psychiatric treatment just two weeks before the disaster.

Examination of his computer showed that he had researched suicide methods in the months before the disaster.

The co-pilot was allowed to fly because of a "waiver” following a previous episode of depression in 2008-9.

A report said he knew that this waiver would be revoked – removing his licence – if he reported his psychiatric problems to his employer.

A commemorative plaque remains in Le Vernet for the tragedy.

Émile’s disappearance in 2023

The toddler's grandparents were getting him ready for the day on Saturday, 8 July, when they suddenly noticed he had vanished. Five days later, and search teams have yet to find a trace of the young boy.

The two-year-old’s disappearance has sent shockwaves through the community.

“It’s a quiet little hamlet, you feel safe there, much more than in the city”, one resident told La Provence of the search.

“We all know each other here, I don’t think that a foreign person who would have gone up to the top of the village would have gone unnoticed”, another added.

On Monday, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence prefect Marc Chappuis announced that from Tuesday morning, the village would be closed to non-residents.

“Nearly 800 people took turns almost without interruption for two days to try to find the child, within a radius of 5 km around the place where he was last seen”, Mr Chappuis told reporters, praising the “neighbours, hikers, walkers, hunters from the surrounding communes” who “showed an exceptional outpouring of solidarity.”

“We don’t need new arrivals of reinforcements”, he added.

When asked whether the village is cursed, François Balique, the current first magistrate, said: “No, you can’t say that. It’s the coincidences of life.”

The search for the toddler continues.