VALLEY CITY, ND — A 65-year-old Arizona woman is accused of killing her newborn baby more than 40 years ago near her college campus in North Dakota.
According to a probable cause statement from the County of Barnes in North Dakota, the investigation began on April 16, 1981, in a wooded area near Valley City State College Campus. A baby girl’s body was reportedly found covered in plastic with the umbilical cord still attached.
According to an autopsy on the infant, the baby was born alive but had been dead for at least 24 hours after being apparently suffocated, documents show.
Forensic evidence was collected and submitted to the FBI’s crime lab, and then to the North Dakota State Crime Lab in 2005.
In the decades after the discovery, officials were unable to identify the child or a suspect.
Thanks to DNA-testing advancements, the case went under review in 2019. The baby’s body was exhumed in July 2019 for additional testing, including familial DNA analysis, documents say.
Familial DNA testing eventually led to Nancy Trottier, a resident of Sun Lakes, Arizona. Trottier told law enforcement in an interview that she went to Valley City State College from 1978 to 1982.
“During the interview, Nancy Trottier became emotional and made statements of ‘maybe it was me’ and ‘it could be me, maybe it was me’ when informed that genetic genealogy had shown that Nancy Trottier or one of Nancy Trottier’s siblings were the parent of the deceased infant,” documents show.
Additional testing was completed in 2023, with results suggesting the child was the biological child of Trottier and her now-husband, who was her boyfriend in college. Additional DNA from items recovered at the scene matched Trottier.
Barnes County paperwork filed in March 2026 shows Trottier has been charged with the intentional murder of a child victim.
Documents show that on Monday, Trottier promised to appear at her next court appearance on May 21, 2026, in Barnes County.
