PARIS (AP) — A French prosecutor says the parents of a 4-year-old girl found dead three decades ago have been handed preliminary murder charges, in a cold case resurrected by DNA testing.

The unidentified girl's body was found in a ditch along the A10 freeway close to the city of Blois in central France in August 1987.

The girl, whose mutilated body had marks of long-term abuse, was known in France as the "little martyr of the A10." Blois prosecutor Frederic Chevallier said Thursday that a breakthrough was possible "because of the evolution of science and DNA."

The parents were identified and tracked by chance through their son's DNA that was tested for an unrelated 2016 case and matched him as the dead girl's brother in 2017.