An Arizona woman has been charged with murder over the death of a newborn baby abandoned in a North Dakota woodland 45 years ago, in a cold case that was cracked open by modern genealogy technology and a haunting admission from the suspect herself.
Nancy Jean Trottier, 65, of Sun Lakes, Arizona, was charged Monday by the Barnes County State’s Attorney’s Office in connection with the death of an infant known only as “Baby Rebecca.” The charges come more than four decades after the baby’s body was discovered on April 15, 1981, in a wooded area near the Valley City State University campus in Valley City, North Dakota.
Trottier was a student at the university between 1978 and 1982, according to court documents. Investigators identified her as a suspect through a genealogy report generated by a third party — the same type of DNA genealogy technique that has helped crack several high-profile cold cases in recent years.
The infant’s body was found with a plastic sheet wrapped around her head, and her umbilical cord was still attached. An autopsy determined she had died from asphyxiation shortly after birth. The case went unsolved for decades, with no witnesses ever coming forward.
In 2019, authorities exhumed the baby’s body to extract DNA samples. The child was reburied the following year at Hillside Cemetery in a ceremony attended by local officials. At the reburial, Valley City Police Commissioner Mike Bishop reflected on the life that never was. “If this little girl had been allowed to live, what would she have become,” he asked.
Former Valley City Police Chief Dean Ross, speaking to the Associated Press in 2020, said he had never given up hope. “Maybe there’s a conscience out there somewhere too. You know, that someone might say 40 years later that maybe I did something wrong back then and it’s been bothering me for 40 years. That’s what I always hoped, that someone would come forward,” Ross said.
That hope proved well-founded. According to an affidavit cited by Valley News Live, when investigators spoke to Trottier in October 2021, she became emotional and told them, “Maybe it was me,” and “It could be, maybe it was me.” She subsequently consented to providing a DNA sample. Her husband’s DNA was also collected separately via a search warrant in December 2021.
Trottier’s bond has been set at $750,000. She is due in court for a hearing on May 21. A press conference was scheduled for Monday afternoon.
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