Arizona woman charged in 1981 newborn murder case
DNA genealogy links suspect after exhumation in North Dakota, a four-decade delay ends with a $750,000 bond
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Nancy Jean Trottier mugshot
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A 65-year-old Arizona woman has been charged with murder more than four decades after a newborn’s body was found behind a dormitory at Valley City State College in North Dakota. According to Fox News, investigators used exhumation and genetic genealogy to identify Nancy Jean Trottier, who attended the school from 1978 to 1982, as the infant’s mother.
The baby—known for years only as “Rebecca”—was discovered on 16 April 1981 in a wooded area behind a campus dorm with the umbilical cord still attached and a plastic covering over her face. An autopsy found she had been born alive and died from acute asphyxia consistent with suffocation. For decades the case had no suspect and no confirmed identity; police named the child before burial.
The reopening in 2019 reflects how cold-case work is increasingly driven by laboratory capacity and commercial genealogy techniques rather than new witnesses. Investigators exhumed the remains, generated a DNA profile, and then used genetic genealogy to map potential relatives—an approach that has turned unidentified victims into solvable cases even when the original crime scene has long since gone cold. The same toolset also shifts power toward the agencies that can pay for testing, specialist analysts, and the legal work needed to obtain family reference samples.
Court documents cited by local outlets, as relayed by Fox News, say Trottier became emotional during a 2021 interview and told investigators “maybe it was me.” A later DNA report in 2023 concluded it was 3.481 quadrillion times more likely that Trottier and her husband were the biological parents than unrelated individuals, and DNA consistent with Trottier was also found on tissue paper recovered at the scene.
Trottier is charged with a Class AA felony murder count and was held on $750,000 bond. She is scheduled to return to court on 21 May for a preliminary hearing and arraignment.
The infant was found with a plastic covering over her face in 1981. The murder charge is being filed in 2026 after the remains were exhumed and tested.