Arizona woman charged with felony murder for 1981 death of 'Rebecca'
Nancy Jean Trottier was a student when her newborn was found on university grounds
A 65-year-old woman has been arrested and charged with murder 45 years after her newborn baby was found dead on a North Dakota college campus.
Online records show that the Barnes County State’s Attorney’s Office filed a Class AA felony murder charge against Nancy Jean Trottier on 7 April.
Trottier is accused of murdering her infant, nicknamed "Rebecca" by local authorities, who was discovered behind the Valley City State University campus in April 1981.
At the time of the discovery, the infant was found with a plastic bag over her face and her umbilical cord still attached.
The case remained cold for decades until investigators exhumed the baby's body in July 2019 to utilise advances in DNA technology.
A genetic genealogy report in August 2020 pointed toward potential relatives, eventually leading authorities to Trottier, who had been a student at the university from 1978 to 1982.
During an interview in October 2021, Trottier reportedly told investigators, "Maybe it was me." Subsequent DNA analysis concluded it is 3.481 quadrillion times more likely that Trottier and her husband are the biological parents than unrelated individuals.
Trottier, who currently resides in Arizona, is being held at the Stutsman County Correctional Center and made her first court appearance on Monday.
While the prosecution maintains that the evidence is "strong," citing DNA matches between Trottier and tissue paper recovered from the original 1981 scene, her defence attorney, Luke Heck, has disputed the strength of the case. A preliminary hearing and formal arraignment are scheduled for 21 May in Barnes County.