A 65-year-old Arizona woman has been charged with killing her newborn decades after the baby was found dead on a North Dakota college campus, with DNA testing finally showing she was the mother.
Nancy Jean Trottier was arrested on April 7 for the murder of the child named “Rebecca” by police, who she found on the campus of Valley City State College about 100 miles outside of Bismarck, North Dakota, in 1981. Valley News Live reported.
When police discovered the newborn, she was stuffed inside a plastic bag with her umbilical cord still attached.
Trottier, who was a student at the college from 1978 to 1982, is accused of suffocating the newborn after an autopsy revealed that the baby was alive at birth and that the trauma was consistent with acute asphyxia.
The case remained cold and unsolved for nearly 45 years, until advances in DNA technology gave investigators a new lead, prompting them to reopen the case and exhume the child’s body in July 2019, according to an affidavit obtained by Valley News Live.
DNA extracted from the newborn’s remains produced a genetic genealogy report by August 2020, indicating possible relatives and leading investigators to identify Trottier as a suspect.
When police questioned Trottier in October 2021, she allegedly told investigators, “It could have been me,” and “It could be, it could have been me,” and agreed to provide a DNA sample, the outlet reported.
Investigators also collected DNA from her husband in December 2021.
The results, returned in June 2023, were staggering, with the child being 3.481 quadrillion times more likely to be Trottier and her husband’s biological child than any third party.
Investigators also found that the DNA matched a photo of Trottier found on tissue paper recovered from the scene in 1981.
Trottier, who lived in Sun Lakes, Arizona, made her first appearance in Barnes County District Court in North Dakota on Monday.
She faces a charge of first-degree murder, the most serious felony in North Dakota, in connection with the newborn’s death. Trottier faces life in prison without parole if found guilty.
After Barnes County State’s Attorney Tonya Duffy announced the murder charge Monday, Valley City residents visited Baby Rebecca’s grave, Valley News Live reported.
Local residents told the outlet that the unsolved case cast a shadow over their city for decades.
“I was a senior in high school when this happened in college. Our family was involved in this; we had a funeral home in Valley City,” said Lance Peterson, a resident of the city, adding that he was glad the case had finally been closed after all these years.
“It’s been a long and exhausting ordeal. She’s here now, and we’re in the cemetery. Yes, it’s a good ending for Vale City.”
Trottier’s preliminary hearing and arraignment is scheduled for May 21, 2026 at 1 p.m