Two officers of the bicycle police brigade of Fresnes-sur-Marne were patrolling the road to Claye, when they came in the night upon a smoldering hayrick in a field belonging to Farmer Ernet. Under the rick about 100 feet off the main road and up a cart track, they smelled the odor of burning flesh. It was the body of a slender girl, and it was obvious by the charring of her body someone had set her on fire.
On August 13, 1926, a Friday, the police in the French city of Freses-sur-Marne were trying to solve what was dubbed by the press as the "Friday the 13th" murder. The body of a young girl was found in a burning haystack near a lonely road. The girl was strangled and the fire was assumed to have been started to conceal the crime.
