North Dakota Cold Case: Woman Faces Charges For Murder 45 Years Later

If you live in North Dakota, you've probably heard about this case. 45 Years ago, in 1981, authorities discovered a deceased infant wrapped in a plastic bag in a wooded area on Valley City State College campus. Valley News Live reported that investigators determined the infant's cause of death to be caused by acute asphyxiation, which is consistent with suffocation. This story shook not only the Fargo community, but echoed across the entire state.

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65 year old Nancy Trottier has been in police custody since 2019, after the North Dakota Bureau of Investigation got a huge lead in the case. According to the source, investigators exhumed baby Rebecca's body in July of 2019 to do a familial genealogical analysis in hopes of finding possible relatives. By August 2020 this testing led them to Trottier who was living in Sun Lakes, Arizona at the time.

According to TMZ, Trottier attended Valley City State College around the time the infant was discovered at the campus, from 1978 to 1982. The source says that during a 2021 police interrogation, Trottier said that she may have done it. Trottier is currently in police custody and faces a Class AA Felony murder charge. She made her first court appearance this past Monday (April 13th) at Barnes County Courthouse; the preliminary hearing and arraignment are scheduled for next month (May 21st).