Posted on 04/17/2026 7:00:06 PM PDT by TheDon
Arizona’s Family has learned new information about the life an Arizona woman had after she allegedly killed her baby 45 years ago in North Dakota.
Investigators said Nancy Trottier, 65, lived a life of serving the disabled following the alleged crime.
She had no criminal history when she was arrested in Arizona last week and is charged with murder.
For 41 years, Trottier was a teacher at the North Dakota School for the Deaf. She is a mother of four who has dedicated her life to teaching children with disabilities.
The baby, whom police named Rebecca, was discovered in the woods on the Valley City State University campus in April 1981. The body had plastic covering her face, and the umbilical cord was still attached.
Advancements in DNA cracked the cold case. During an interview with investigators, Trottier said, “Maybe it was me,” according to court documents.
“The defendant’s DNA was also confirmed to be present on items found at the location where the victim was located, including on a fingernail clipper and other items that contained human blood,” said Barnes County State’s Attorney Tonya Duffy during Trottier’s first court appearance.
According to court documents, Trottier was attending Valley City State University and dating her now-husband when she gave birth and shortly afterward suffocated her daughter.
“When the defendant was set to meet with law enforcement again to go over DNA findings, law enforcement learned that she had attempted suicide,” Duffy said during Trottier’s first court appearance.
The mystery of what happened to Baby Rebecca haunted the small North Dakota town.
“It’s been a long, trying ordeal,” said Lance Peterson, a Valley City resident.
Detectives believe that after the crime, Trottier finished school and went on to lead an exemplary life. She had four more children and taught children who were hard of hearing. After retiring in 2024, she moved to Sun Lakes in the East Valley with her husband.
“It’s a terrible decision that she made. It is a life that is lost, but it’s also been 45 years. And I think she’s been spending each of those years, at first intentionally and then later unintentionally, thinking that if she does more good, it will offset the bad thing that she did when she was in her early 20s,” said John Delatorre, a forensic psychologist.
He said he suspects Trottier’s actions were motivated by fear and self-preservation.
“It’s easy to sort of just say that it’s the person’s disposition that she must be a psychopath or a cold-hearted woman or something like that when the evidence tells us that that’s not true. She made a choice and she needs to pay the price for that choice. But we are much more complex than just one behavior that we engaged in 40 years ago,” said Delatorre.
Trottier is in custody awaiting a hearing in May.
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Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
Yep.
I have never heard that definition of repentance before.
I have always heard that it means “turning away from sin.”
Are you kidding? It was 1981 not 1941. Wasn’t nearly as bad as you make it out to be in America in those days unless you lived in some kind of an Amish society or something. Taking a babies life in 1981 was downright selfish and unforgivable. There was always adoption you know? Murder should never have been an option.
It was 1981 not 1921. Out of wedlock births were no longer a scandal. I assume she was hiding her pregnancy so she could just as easily have hidden giving birth.
She was a college student who, instead of going to an ER and giving the baby up for adoption, suffocated her newborn and threw away the body like a piece of garbage.
Maybe in 1955, but not 1985. BTW, one of my sisters got pregnant at 16 in 1966 when we lived in Vallejo, California. She was not shunned by my parents or anyone else
Great minds think alike separated by a minute. See my #24 post.
Don’t you know...many freepers have never sinned...saints all of them.....but God knows....
Congrats Cherry! You win Bullshit post of the week.
And one of the stupidest posts I’ve read here in a long time.
It is even better to know who the anarcho-tyrannists are.
::Girls who got pregnant in those days were severely punished.::
%%%%
Oh, please. Seriously?
The one severely punished here was the poor murdered baby. But I guess that innocent child does not count in your estimation.
Millions of children were sacrificed back then, not murdered, but sacrificed to cartoons entertainment and propaganda of the day, which lead to today’s. Godless people then and now. Nothing really has changed in thousands of years
Candidate for a presidential pardon is an option, presuming penitence.
41 years later, she still lives with the guilt but served no time in prison.
At this age, what good does sending her to prison do? Isn't one of the purposes of prison to rehabilitate the guilty? I think she has already fulfilled that requirement. The only ones who are going to suffer now with her going to prison are her existing family who had nothing to do with her crime.
I don't want to be on that jury, I'll leave any judgment of her up to God......
Girls who got pregnant in those days were severely punished.
What BS.
I don’t know how old you are.
But we who were in HS and collage in the 70’s. Can tell you a different story.
The 80’s there was even less problems for unwed mothers.
Several of my HS and collage classmates got pregnant.
They Ethier got married and went onto raise their children by themselves.
“The baby, whom the police named Rebecca, was discovered in the woods on the Valley City State University campus in April 1981. The body had plastic covering her face, and the umbilicle cord was still attached.”
No good deeds can erase Nancys cold callous actions, or failure to step forward after all these years.
It’s not a “defense” and does not try to be a defense.
It’s an explanation of the motive.
Like robbing a bank - “needed money and they have it”.
"The good old days," to some of the men on here.
“The good old days,” to some of the men on here.
**********
Well what about some of the women on here? Humans
of either sex can make mistakes. All should be held
accountable and will at some time in the future if
GOD so chooses. jmo
You seem to have had a different experience. This woman lived in a small North Dakota town in 1980. In my city in 1980 girls would go away “to visit their aunt” if they got pregnant. If or when they returned the guys would not date them (in public) and certainly not marry them. Sometimes the family wouldn’t want them to return.
Thats not the part I was talking about.
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