BRIT Esther Dingley fell 100ft to her death after she slipped on a rocky ledge, French cops believe.

       Investigators have said that they believe the 37-year-old hiker plunged down a steep edge close to the peak of a mountain in the Pyrenees last November.

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       Police believe Esther fell 100ft to her death while hiking in the Pyrenees Credit: Facebook

       Esther's boyfriend Dan found her remains on August 9

       Speaking to the Mail Online, Christophe Amunzateguy, the public prosecutor in charge of the investigation, said: "The accidental theory is now more than strong because the body was found directly below a kind of rocky peak.

       "We believed that Esther would have fallen because along this wall, we found items that belonged to her and they ended up at the bottom.

       "We estimate the fall at about twenty or even thirty meters."

       Last month a skull fragment was finally discovered on the Port de la Gléré mountain pass between Spain and France after months of searching.

       Police had suspended the manhunt in December due to terrible weather conditions but resumed it in Spring.

       Then on August 9 Esther's boyfriend Dan Colegate, who is not a suspect, uncovered her remains 100 metres away from the treacherous hiking trail.

       Pathologists in the city of Toulouse have carried out an autopsy on Esther's remains but a cause of death might be hard to determine, Amunzateguy said.

       "This autopsy is to confirm, with the remains of the body that we could find, if there was a fall and what could be the exact causes of death," he said.

       "The body is badly decomposed, and the snow has aggravated the decomposition of the body."

       LATEST DISCOVERY

       The distance between her remains and the skull fragment is believed to have been made when a bear of a wolf dragged the skull to its resting place.

       Brown bears and wolves roam free in the Pyrenees and vultures are a common sight.

       Commander Jean-Marc Bordinaro said: "This is indeed the area that Esther Dingley was supposed to be in when she disappeared, but we need to be cautious while the identification process is underway.

       “Everything suggests that these bones were recently moved by animals.

       "They would not have been there a few days earlier.”

       Along with her remains, Dan found items from her rucksack, including her phone.

       Photos on Esther's phone are being looked into by investigators as they could hold the key to the events leading to her death.

       SELFIE CLUES

       Esther had a ￡270 Redmi Note 9 Pro which was turned off for large parts of her solo walk to conserve its battery.

       But it is likely to have continued to send signals before she met her death in the Pyrenees.

       Esther used the phone on November 21 to post a selfie on 8,900ft mountain Pic de Sauvegarde.

       Also in the interview with the Mail Online, Amunzateguy went on to say that the events leading to Esther's death may never be known.

       "The exact and precise circumstances of the death we will never know, a person who falls, and the condition of the body, make the investigation very complicated," he said.

       Esther went missing on November 22 during a solo hike and was reported missing by her boyfriend Dan Colegate on November 24.

       She went missing just one day before her trip was due to end.

       Yesterday it was revealed that Dan was quizzed again "at length" by police after he found her body in the Pyrenees.

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       Dan, who met Esther when they were students at Oxford, was the first focus of the missing person inquiry.

       Detectives checked his phone data and credit card transactions and found he had not left the French village of Larroque-sur-l’Osse, 100 miles north of where Esther, from Durham, is believed to have died in an accident.

       He said at the time: “I was glad they got it out of the way but I never felt like a suspect.”

       Footage shows Spanish cops expand search for Brit hiker Esther Dingley to nearby valleys in Pyrenees