Last week, Alex Batty returned to the UK after being missing for six years.
The now 17-year-old disappeared in 2017 while on holiday in Spain with his mother and grandfather. He was found last Wednesday (13 December), by a motorist in France.
The missing teen reportedly told the motorist that he'd spent three years in Spain and then two years in France and said he had been 'in a community, let's say something to do with spirituality, that he didn’t feel comfortable with.'
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Now, further insight into Batty's mother - who is suspected of abducting him back in 2017 - has been revealed as an expat friend of hers has spoken out.
It has been learned that Melanie Batty wanted to set up a 'spiritual community' in the south of France.
The fugitive lived in a caravan in the remote area of Ariege, but is thought to have since travelled to Finland.
French police have said that Alex decided to leave after his mother made plans to travel to the Nordic country after his grandfather passed away six months ago.
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British expat Susie Harrison met Melanie at the weekly Esperaza Sunday market. She told MailOnline about her life in France and plans for the future.
Harrison, 61, said: "[Melanie] is a conspiracy theorist. She believed that Covid-19 was not real, that is was created by the state to control the people.
"[Melanie] lived at a campsite in somewhere in [the neighbouring department of] Ariege. I don't know what she did for money, but I know she gave therapeutic massages.
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"But she really wanted to set up a spiritual community here in the south of France, a special group of like-minded people."
Harrison explained that Melanie would sometimes visit the market with her father, David, and son, Alex, who were known to locals as Peter and Zach.
She hasn't seen Melanie in weeks.
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"I last saw [her] a few weeks ago," she said. "I can't remember exactly when."
But, Harrison claims she saw Melanie's father just two weeks ago, despite French authorities saying he had died six months prior.
"But I saw Peter, her father, two weeks ago. I was hitching a ride to go to the market at Esperaza and he was in the car that stopped. I sat in the back with him. He was speaking English so we chatted.
"We drove past a farm that had a yurt standing in a field. He told me that he had helped to erect the yurt."
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No record of David's death — who was known by locals as Peter — was ever filed.
Interpol recently joined the search for Alex Batty's mother. While officials are continuing the search for her in France, a source has said: "If she did travel to Finland, then she would absolutely have needed a passport.
"This would make tracing her journey relatively easy."
Bec Oakes