MONTEPELIER, N.D. — Wild badgers helped solve one of North Dakota’s oldest cold cases in 1897.

Less than eight years after North Dakota achieved statehood, German farmer August Tromer vanished from his home outside of Montpelier, North Dakota. His Sept. 14, 1894, disappearance was a mystery reported by newspapers all the way from western North Dakota to Minneapolis.

There were no clues as to why or how he vanished. Stutsman County offered a $300 reward — worth about $11,600 today — for any information leading to him or his body.

The case became more complicated months after his disappearance, when his wife, Pauline Tromer, was attacked by a local well-respected farmer, Martin J. Villers, a former deputy marshal from Wisconsin who moved to North Dakota around 1885.

After working as a ju

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