An Arizona woman has been arrested for allegedly murdering her newborn baby in North Dakota 45 years ago, according to reports.
The Barnes County State’s Attorney’s Office announced Monday, April 13, it has filed murder charges against Nancy Jean Trottier, 65, who lives in Sun Lakes, Arizona.
According to investigators, she is responsible for the death of a child known only as “Baby Rebecca.”
The deceased newborn’s body was found April 15, 1981, in a wooded area of Valley City, North Dakota, not far from the Valley City State University campus.
Trottier was a student at the school between 1978 and 1982, court documents said, reported the Forum of Fargo-Moorehead.
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Trottier was identified through a genealogy report generated by a third party, according to officials.
An autopsy on the newborn showed she’d died from asphyxiation soon after her birth and “the infant was found with a plastic sheet around her head,” reads a report.
The infant’s umbilical cord was also still attached.
The case has remained unsolved for decades, with no one ever coming forward with any information about the baby.
Authorities exhumed the child’s body in 2019 to extract DNA samples, and the child was reburied in 2020 at Hillside Cemetery in a ceremony attended by local officials.
During the reburial, Valley City Police Commissioner Mike Bishop spoke, and wondered out loud about what could have been. “If this little girl had been allowed to live, what would she have become,” Bishop asked.
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Former Valley City Police Chief Dean Ross told the Associated Press in 2020 he was holding on to hope the case would one day be solved.
“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.
A press conference will be held later today, according to reports. It was unclear if authorities have been able to identify the father using the baby’s DNA.
She is due in court for a hearing May 21. Her bond was set at $750,000.
According to Valley News Live, cops spoke to Trottier in October 2021, and she became emotional and told investigators, “Maybe it was me” and “It could be, maybe it was me,” according to the affidavit.
Trottier consented to providing a DNA sample. Her husband’s DNA was collected separately via search warrant in December 2021.
