Replay: Barbara Cotton Part 1 - A Lost Girl
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I think even if they don't know that they have the key to what happened, I do think that there's someone out there that has some piece of information that they don't probably feel is significant. Or, you know, maybe they've been holding on to to cover up for somebody else or something. I do. I think there's something out there that could unlock this.

She was very trusting, probably too much I suppose. She was very sensitive to other people's needs and was very thoughtful. With Barb's case, you know, from 1981, a lot of people have passed away, a lot of people that no doubt had to have known something. The longer you wait, the more those people pass away. And yeah, it's just, it's very unfortunate in that aspect.

Well, first of all, it's heartbreaking listening to how many cases out there like Barb's there are.

Sometimes it gets really hard to keep the hope alive, but we're going to keep trying. This is maybe our last chance to find out any answers because it's 40 years old. If we don't get any of these answers now, then we probably never will. I've watched a lot of true crime and you see, especially like with DNA now and stuff, 40, 50 years later, they're solving cases.

On April 11, 1981, a 15-year-old girl named Barbara Cotton disappeared from Williston, North Dakota. Barbara's mother Louise called around to her friends to see if they had seen her, but no one said that they had.

Louise reported her daughter missing to the Williston Police Department, and continued to send them any tips or leads that she heard as the weeks and months passed with no sign of Barbara. But it didn't seem like much was being done to find Barb. At least to her loved ones, that's how it appeared. Perhaps she had run away from home. As with many missing teens in that era, that was often the assumption.

Barb's case went cold, but now, decades later, there's a renewed effort to find her and answer the many questions that linger today. I'm Marissa, and from Wondery, this is episode 361 of The Vanished, part one of Barbara Cotton's story.

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If you're a regular listener of our show, you know that when we dig into cold cases like Barbara's, they can be tricky. In this case, over 40 years have passed. Barbara disappeared before we had the internet or cell phones. Things just weren't documented the same as they are today. And many people who were around at the time have since passed away. Nailing down timelines and separating facts from assumptions and rumors can be difficult.

Often in these cases, it isn't that the family ever stopped looking. They just didn't know what else they could do. They exhausted every avenue that was available at the time.

A theme that we frequently see is that a family member from a younger generation will often take an interest in an old family mystery and start working it with the technology we have today, breathing new life into a missing persons case that has been stalled out in ice cold. We have seen that in other cases that we covered just this year alone, such as Toby Anderson, Jimmy Don Robinson, and Judith Brown, just to name a few.

Barbara Cotton's case was brought to us in June of 2021 by a woman named Lisa, who was related to Barbara through marriage. Lisa is an excellent researcher with an interest in genealogy. So when she heard that there was a missing family member, it piqued her interest. She wanted to learn more.

So Diane's obviously Barb's sister, and I was married to Barb's nephew. And I know it sounds weird, but we're all still close and get along. So I can remember when Diane first told me about Barb, I can remember standing in her kitchen and she was just, you know, talking and said something about, you know, her sister that disappeared or went missing. And I'm like, what?

And she's like, yeah, you didn't know about that? And I'm like, no, I would remember that. And then she kind of told me about it. Obviously, I had a lot of questions. Lisa was intrigued. Then she saw a photo of Barbara and was shocked by how much she resembled her own daughter.

It wasn't that same day, but sometime after that, I can't remember where I saw this photo, but it was one of the photos of Barb when she was, you know, in like kindergarten or first grade or something. And I asked Diane who that was and she told me it was Barb and

Every hair on my body stood on end because my daughter, so Diane's granddaughter, you could have swapped them out and nobody would have done the difference. They looked so identical. I mean, and now my daughter is almost 15 and I'd totally be lying if I said that probably wasn't a driving force for this. So I've started helping research this.

After speaking with Lisa, she got us in touch with other family members who knew Barb. We're going to start by taking a look at Barbara's life, those 15 years before she disappeared, so that we can have a firmer grasp on the circumstances and experiences that shaped who Barb was at 15, when she ultimately disappeared. Barbara Cotton came from a large family. She was born on November 10, 1965, to John and Louise Cotton in Tioga, North Dakota.

Barb was the second youngest child of 10. Two of the children had passed away early in life. Lisa connected us with one of Barb's older sisters, Diane. Diane was able to give us some insight on their family. Well, the firstborn that was live-born was John.

And Frank, Dorothy, Joe. And then there was one above me that died when he was like six months old. His name was Bernard. And then there's 10 years between me and Kent. And then there's Barb and Kathy. We'd go fishing and swimming and stuff in the summertime. We'd spend time.

Always timed down by the lakes, rivers, that kind of stuff. There wasn't a whole lot of good because my dad was alive then and my mom and dad were still married. He drank quite a bit. There were quite a few fights and stuff. I was pretty quiet because, you know, you kind of didn't want to

They noticed. So my mom always kind of had the thing back then, you know, children should be seen and not heard. But yeah, we didn't get to go visiting much because we, when I was in third grade, we moved out by outside of Tioga.

And it's only a mile from town, but it could have been 50 miles for all we cared because we never got to town often. We didn't have much money. We got maybe one pair of shoes in the fall for school, got clothes given to us mostly.

and then they weren't the best. I played a lot outside when I was young, and animals were my friends. I didn't have very many friends growing up because we were kind of from the wrong side of the track, you might say. She was happy. She was quiet, though, very quiet usually, always considerate and giving and

Lisa also connected us with Barb's younger sister, Kathy. Barb and Kathy were just a couple of years apart in age. Kathy shared her memories of Barb and their family.

There was actually 10 of us. Our oldest sister had died as soon as she was born. And then there was a, we had a brother that passed away. She was a very quiet, easygoing person, kind-hearted. She did make friends easily. Just wasn't very talkative around new people. She liked to fish. She was actually fairly athletic. Her favorite thing was Chinese jump rope.

And she was really good at it. Nobody could beat her. It's an elastic band, like regular jump rope, except for it's used with an elastic band. And you spell out Mississippi. She could go so high that nobody was tall enough. She'd always include me on bike rides with her and her friends. And I'd get to go to the show with them. And she usually included me in on their fun.

According to Barb's sisters, their lives in Tioga were tumultuous. Their parents often fought, and some of the siblings were sexually abused by their father, including Barbara. Diane felt like their mother didn't do enough to intervene or protect the children, but she attributes this to how her mother was raised in a different time and forced to grow up and parent far too soon. As my mom, she always thought the girls should be able to protect themselves, and it was man's

That's what they did. And the women are supposed to fight back and protect themselves. I don't know how a three-year-old can do it. It was just what men do. And I still...

for some reason think mom thought it was his fault. Like I say, that's what men do. So I don't know why she never, you know, stuck up for us or she knew or she just turned a blind eye when that was happening younger. But my mom had different ways about her. She was very

Raised in the deep south. Yeah, she was just different than most people. She was raised in a poor, poor family. Had little money or nothing. Got married to my dad really early, like 15. That's just the way she was brought up and in the times that she was brought up. So I never did feel anything bad towards her because of that stuff. I just couldn't figure it out for the longest time.

After more than two decades of marriage, Louise Cotton decided that it was time to leave her husband and the father of her children. The older children were grown and had moved out, but the younger three, Kent, Barbara, and Kathy were still living at home. Louise packed up their things and moved the kids to Williston, where she had been able to rent a small apartment for them.

Divorced my dad. I think they'd been married 25 years when she did that. I was out of the house and married by that time.

She took Kent Barb and Kathy with, and she moved to Williston and got a little, little tiny efficiency apartment type thing where it was like one big room, almost real small, not even a bedroom. And then eventually she moved to a two bedroom right in this, on the same block, right next to each other.

Barb's brother Kent remembers this time when they moved to Williston. They didn't have much, but Louise made sure that their needs were always met, and it didn't feel like they ever went without. Well, my mom got divorced in 73, so it was just me and Barb and Kathy that lived in Williston at the time. My best friend's high school said we were the poorest people that we knew. We lived in a small two-bedroom apartment.

It was probably the size of maybe an oversized one-car garage. I slept in one bedroom. My two sisters slept in another bedroom, and my mom slept on the couch. My mom made sure we had everything that we needed as far as clothing and food as best she could. I guess I didn't feel like we were that poor as far as what we needed and stuff. She made sure we had clothing, like I said, and made sure we went to the dentist when we needed to.

and jewelry glasses. Barb's father passed away in 1978, a few years after their move to Williston. Louise worked hard to support her three youngest children. As the kids got older, Louise depended on them to take care of one another while she worked long hours. We also had the pleasure of speaking with one of Barb's closest childhood friends, Sandy. Barb and Sandy met after the big move to Williston, and the two hit it off straight away.

they moved in across the alley from me. I've tried to place how old we were at the time and I can't really remember, but we were elementary school. And my mom had told me about these two little girls that had moved in across the alley from us and I should go introduce myself and stuff. And I brought Barbies because that was always like, you know, a good opener, even though I hated Barbies. And

And Barb kind of was the same way. I think we played with them that one day and with her little sister, Kathy. And that was probably the last time we ever played Barbies again. But that's how we kind of met. And then we just became best friends after that. We hung out all the time together. As soon as we got out of school, I'm going to Barb's. We never fought. I can't remember getting in one argument or fight with her. I'm sure that we probably did.

I don't know how we could not have. That's just human nature. But I can't remember ever having an argument with her. And she was just the sweetest, most loyal, down-to-earth,

best buddy in the whole world. And we just like did everything together. Like I can share with you my most favorite memory about Barb is that about seventh grade, my parents buy a house three blocks away and we move. And so we'd still hang out together. But then at night, like when I was going to walk home, I'd be scared to walk home at night.

And Barb would always, every time, walk me at least halfway home. That's the kind of friend that she was. And then she would have to turn around and walk halfway back by herself, you know? There was a lot of kids in the neighborhood, and mostly it was me, Barb, Kent, and Kathy that hung out. There was a big courtyard in Barb's, where her apartment complex thing was. Just kids would come and go, but it was always, the core group was always me, Barb, Kent,

Kent and Kathy. And I can tell you like another, one of my favorite memories about Barb is my parents had a bus camper.

And so in the summertime, we would stay in the bus camper all the time and like kind of try to pretend we were adults and on our own, you know, bring our own food and our music and our games. And we'd stay up all night and talk about boys or, you know, and that I'll never forget that. That's probably my most favorite memory about spending the night with her.

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Sandy told us that as they grew into teens, since she was a year older than Barb, Sandy headed off to middle school a year before Barbara. They were still friends, but not as close as they had once been.

The move from elementary to middle school is such a transitional time, and Sandy made a new group of friends in middle school. They had drifted into different circles. Kent is the same age as Sandy, and told us that the same thing happened when he went to middle school too. We got along really good up to about when I was a junior. When I got into junior high, we kind of drifted apart a little bit because while I was in junior high and she was still in grade school,

Barb and her younger sister Kathy were only two years apart in age, so they had always been close. But not long before Barb disappeared, Kathy had told on her for something, so Barb stopped confiding in her about things.

At the time of my sister's disappearance, Barb wasn't, you know, talking to me a whole lot at that time because she was mad at me because of an incident that happened, I think, the year prior that I had gotten her in trouble.

But she put me in a situation that I had no choice but to tell on her. And so she quit confiding in me and taking me with her places. Because her and I, we did a lot of things together up until the year prior to her disappearance.

This is a common theme in Barb's story. She had drifted from many of the people that she was close to in childhood, and for various different reasons. Diane was 11 years older than Barb. She had already moved away and had a growing family of her own. Well, anytime she'd come around, you know, I used to have her come and stay at my house when she was younger. But when she got to be a teenager, we kind of like drifted apart a little bit because I had my family and had kind of moved away a little bit.

When she got to be a teenager, I kind of lost track. The problem this presents is that most of the people who knew Barb and are alive and searching for answers today mentioned to us that they had this bit of distance from her in the lead up to when she went missing. Around this time, Barb had a very close friend named Diane.

The two spent much of their free time together, and Barb often stayed over at Diane's home. Barb even wanted to move in with Diane's family, but her mother Louise said no. Barb and Louise butted heads over this and other things as well. Barb was planning to move out once she turned 16. She was working at a restaurant called Country Kitchen and saving up money for her 16th birthday in November of 81.

Diane was getting married that summer and Barb was due to be her maid of honor. She even had a dress picked out for the occasion. Diane had seen Barb a few days before she disappeared, and then the two spoke on the phone daily. Lisa explained that this week was different for the girls, who were usually inseparable.

Now, Diane herself will say that that week was particularly odd because she, you know, usually they were inseparable and she did talk to her on the phone that week. It's just they kind of didn't meet up as often as they would have. Diane can't seem to recall why this week was different or if there was any reason why the girls didn't see each other as often as they usually did. But it's something to consider as we work our way through Barb's story.

The timeline of Barb's disappearance is fuzzy. There isn't much that can be confirmed today, besides the fact that she disappeared on April 11th, 1981. But there are little threads of information that we can pull together in order to give us an idea of what may have transpired that evening. But much of the story remains a mystery to this day. If you read about Barb's disappearance online, you'll see a narrative about the day she disappeared.

Lisa summarized this on the website she created for Barb, findbarbcotton.com. She was last seen on April 11, 1981, after having dinner with her boyfriend and another friend in downtown Williston. After dinner, her boyfriend offered to walk her home, but Barb declined. From the corner that the Plainsman Hotel occupied, her boyfriend watched her walk into Recreation Park. She has never been seen or heard from again.

But here's the thing. None of Barb's friends or siblings can recall that Barb had a boyfriend. When you're a 15-year-old young woman, the first people you usually tell about a new crush or boyfriend would be your girlfriends. So this detail has always been strange to those who were close to Barb. When her friend Diane had seen Barb a few days prior to her disappearance and spoken to her on the phone, she didn't recall Barb ever mentioning a boyfriend.

The narrative that Barb had a boyfriend comes from her mother, Louise. This is what Louise told the police. Barb was last seen on April 11th, 1981, and Louise called the police to report her missing the following day, April 12th. Louise told the police on the 12th that she last saw Barb in the company of her new boyfriend, named Stacy, who used to wash dishes at Cakes and Cones, a restaurant in Williston.

Louise said that she had contacted this boyfriend, Stacy, and he said that they were at Cakes and Cones, and Barb said that she was going to walk home from there. We're going to come back to this alleged boyfriend later on in the story, but for now we're going to focus on what others knew or were told in the aftermath of Barb's disappearance. One of the first people to be alerted that something was amiss was Barb's childhood friend, Sandy.

Sandy had not seen Barb that night. She was out roller skating until late in the evening. Sandy remembers the evening vividly because it was the first time her parents had let her stay the night alone at home while they were away.

So my parents went out of town for something for my dad's work and left me home alone for the first time, like one of the first times I think ever, overnight. And I can remember sleeping in their bed and I had a weird feeling that night that something wasn't right. I had walked home from another friend of mine and I can remember kind of, it was a cold night. I can remember feeling like just nervous.

nervous or scared where I ran a good portion of the way home. Anyway, then I crawled into my mom and dad's bed and it was kind of cold. So I had all the covers wrapped around me.

And it was probably, I want to say, sometime after 1, 1.30 when the phone rang. And I can remember thinking, this isn't good. Nobody calls at 1, 1.30 in the morning. And then I thought, well, maybe my parents are just checking up on me to make sure I'm home and got home all right or whatever. And it was a Saturday night. Anyway, it was Barb's mom.

asking if I had seen her, which I remember thinking is really odd because there was this year difference between Barb and I. When I went into middle school and she in elementary, I kind of got a new group of friends that I went to middle school with. And then when I had moved the three blocks away, we kind of separated a little bit. Not that we weren't still friends, but

We ended up just started getting a different core group of, you know, friends we went to school with. So we weren't hanging out that much. And I remember thinking, if Louise is calling me, she's down to like her last options. And remember thinking, this isn't good.

Sandy didn't have any answers for Louise. Kathy shared a room with Barb and awoke the following morning to find that Barb hadn't come home the night before. In recent years, Kathy has talked to Sandy about her memories of that night, and she's had a difficult time reconciling the two versions of events.

Actually, I really don't remember a whole lot about the day and the day after she disappeared. I remember waking up. She wasn't in her bed. I went out and woke my mama. My mom slept in the living room and told her that Barb hadn't come home that night. And she acted like she didn't know that Barb wasn't there. Now, things have come out that she knew that night that Barb wasn't home, but

But she acted with me the next morning that she had no idea that Barb wasn't there. See, back then, I thought my mom had no clue that Barb wasn't there. But finding out this year from hearing other people talk and stories and how my mom had called them at 1 o'clock in the morning or 2 o'clock in the morning looking for my sister that night,

Barb's brother Kent told us that he has only vague memories of this time. I really don't remember. I can only speculate that mom told me that she didn't come home that night.

I remember mom trying to talk to friends and stuff, some of her friends and seeing if they knew where she was at and things like that. I really don't remember calling the police, but I know she did. That's about all I remember. Honestly, I don't remember a whole lot way back then. I was 16 at the time. My mom and her fighting quite a bit back then, so that's kind of what I thought. She just left home. So I guess I never really considered anything else, I guess.

Diane was all the way on the other side of the state, over 400 miles away. She remembers her mother calling to tell her that Barb had never come home, and Diane did what she could to help.

My mom called me because my husband and I were living in Wahpeton, North Dakota. He was going to college. Yeah, she called me and told me that Barb didn't come home Saturday night. And she talked to the police and stuff. And she didn't know what had happened to her, that she'd seen her at a cafe in town there. She told me a boyfriend. She had offered...

Offered to give her a ride home because it was like an April cold and Barb declined. She told me that her boyfriend offered to walk her home and Barb declined. Mom left and that's the last time she told me she had seen her.

And we drove back the next weekend because it was Easter weekend. We had, you know, time off from college. My husband had time off from college. I was also pregnant with my fourth child. We went back the next weekend.

tried help searching for Barb because she still wasn't, you know, there. Mom had told me on Monday she'd contacted the police on Monday. And my husband and I went to Tioga or to Ray and Tioga police departments to talk to them. And neither one of them knew that she had been missing a week later. The police in the neighboring towns did not know she had been missing. And

And then I know like we came back as often as we could. That's clean across the state. Wapiton is on the Minnesota border. And then during the summer, then we had a house in Tioga, my husband and I did. And we stayed there for that summer and looked around, searched, whatever.

And then I had my fourth child in August and we moved back to Wahpeton at that point in time for my husband to go to college. I did what I could with my own family and living across the state, there wasn't much I

I could do. I know my mom printed out flyers and different stuff and called different truck stops and stuff after she had disappeared, that kind of stuff. Kathy had told me one time, and I don't know how many years ago it was, that she had talked to one of the detectives and they had showed her a bunch of files that they had on

And that's the first I heard of them taking anything seriously. Even till the day the mom died, I don't know if they did any searches of any type.

Sandy noticed that a lot of people around town seemed to believe that Barb had run away from home. She had been butting heads with her mother quite often and had also been making plans to move out once she turned 16. But Sandy believes that there's plenty of evidence to suggest that Barb didn't leave intentionally.

She just never showed up or came home. And I will say that I believe the police at the time thought she was a runaway. But Barb was like kind of a hoarder of her money.

She had quite a bit of money and stuff. She didn't take any of her money. She didn't take any clothes. She was already smoking cigarettes at the time. And she had like a carton of cigarettes at home, didn't take them. And I knew Barb would have never left without being more prepared than that. Not of her own volition. She had too much family. She was too loyal of a person. If she had the ability, she would not have left people hanging this long and not reached out and

When her mom died, she wouldn't have reached out at this point or 20 years ago. So many people thought she was a runaway. And I, from the very beginning, knew absolutely with 100% of my being, knew she was not a runaway. And then you would have that to fight up against when you're in conversation with people too. No, she's not a runaway. Please stop saying that.

It is true that Barb had worked and saved a significant amount of money in a bank account. She also had a paycheck and another account where her mother had been saving the Social Security money after the death of Barb's father. Barb never touched any of that money.

Barb's sister Diane agrees with Sandy. She doesn't think that Barb would have run away from home under these circumstances. Yes, like many teens, Barb and her mother had their disagreements, but the runaway theory wasn't adding up to Diane.

I don't believe she would have just ran away because number one, she was bright enough to know that she would need money. And she had, from what I understand, a couple thousand in savings. Well, why would she take off when it's chilly and cold and stuff? And then from what I hear now is that she had plans to get an apartment. No, I don't think she would have, even if she hadn't had all that, I don't think she would have just ran away. I think she loved her family enough that she...

She knew my door was always open. And if she had run away, I don't, I think she would have contacted somebody at one point in time and not 40 years, you know, it wouldn't have been 40 years. I would have thought, you know, once she hit 18 or 21, she would have contacted one of us because she was pretty close to Kathy. She had a job and everything and she had a paycheck coming. Why would you run away without getting your paycheck first?

Sandy's mother and Barb's mom, Louise, were very close. Sandy recalls a good bit of information from conversations with her mom, things that Louise had told her early on.

My mom and Louise, Barb's mom, were best friends too. So I would get a lot of my information after that from my mom, from Louise. Louise had told my mom too that she had seen Barb that night and Barb and her were having some issues, you know, like maybe Barb was wanting to grow up a little bit fast or just, you know, adolescent teen mother-daughter issues or whatever. But she had told my mom that they had gotten along so good that night and she was really

really happy or whatever when she had left them that night. But that bar was with this guy named Stacy. And so I remember one of the first things that I've heard, and this is documented in like a incident report where Louise calls in to the police station and tells them that she thought she was with this guy named Stacy and that she thought he was a dishwasher at Cakes and Cones, which was a restaurant here in town.

So she calls in and leaves that tip. I know this is a fact because the police have told us this.

Louise must end up tracking down this Stacy somehow. He tells Louise that he wanted to walk Barb home, but Barb wouldn't let him, which totally sounds like Barb, like I'm saying to you about how she always walked me home. And anyway, he said that he stood outside. I'm imagining smoking a cigarette and watched her walk to the park. Where's the bar as he would be able to see her.

And then she would cut across the park and then head home, which would be another four blocks. So that's one of the first things I heard. Louise had reported Barb missing on Sunday. Then on Monday, she called again. And the police department shared that when Louise Cotton called, she reported that she thought her daughter was in Scobie, Montana with her boyfriend, Stacy, and that they might be in room 205 at the Pioneer Hotel.

Law enforcement responded, and all that is documented is that they received word that Barb was not there. That information about Scobie, Montana, the Pioneer Hotel in room 205, seems very specific.

Here's the strange thing about this. No one knows where this information came from and why Barb would have left town and gone to Scobie with this man, who allegedly told Louise this information. That's one question we can't answer today. It's odd, but there are a number of odd things about this story, like large pieces of the puzzle that are missing. Here's Sandy again.

And then I find out from my mom that now he's moved on to Scobie, Montana. And what I remember my mom telling me, Barb might not be a runaway. Maybe they should check into this more. And they go search or they go talk to him at his motel room. Well, this cannot be confirmed by the police department that they went. The police did go over there, talk to him, did look in his motel room, found no sign of a female person.

you know, with him, no women's clothing or girls clothing or anything like that. So then that was kind of wrote off that she had run away with him.

You're probably assuming that Barb's brother and sister who lived at home at the time that she disappeared would have been told by Louise what she knew and who had told her this specific information about Barb or that Louise would have spoken to them to see if they knew anything. But they told us that this didn't happen. Kathy and Kent were close in age to Barb and siblings often know more than parents about friend groups and so on. Kathy told us that she was left in the dark about her missing sister.

She wouldn't talk to me about Barb. She would never talk to me about the disappearance. She never asked me, what do you think happened to your sister or anything like that. I was 13, so I didn't know maybe she was trying to show to me. But even as I got older, she never really talked to me about Barb's disappearance. I mean, I would go over to her house some days and she'd be crying and I'd ask her, mom, what's wrong? And

I could tell it was about Barb, but for some reason, she really didn't open up to me about it. Was Louise Cotton trying to shield her 16-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter from further pain after their sister had disappeared? Or was it too painful for her to discuss? Or was there some other reason that she wasn't discussing Barb with them? This remains yet another question mark in this story.

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Barb's case went cold, as so many missing persons cases do. To her loved ones, the police didn't seem that interested in finding her. Barb's siblings and friends said they don't even remember being interviewed back then, which is something that Sandy has always felt should have been done in order to preserve important facts and details about this case. What information could those close to Barb have had back then that they've since forgotten or didn't even realize was relevant?

They never talked to, as far as I know, and I've asked all my friends in the neighborhood and stuff, and Kent and Kathy, they never talked to any of us, which seems to me like one of the first things you would do. And some of us have wondered, did they not speak to Kent and Kathy, especially because Louise was protecting them, trying to shelter them from their

their sister missing or that. But if I was a police, I wouldn't let Louise do that because Kathy shared a room with Barb.

She might have overheard something, saw something. Kent was her same age. Their bedrooms were right next to each other. Wouldn't you canvas the neighborhood? I don't remember any of that going on. And you have to give them some credit too. Back then, this just didn't happen. So I think we were all, I was naive, just thinking she's going to come, she's just going to turn up.

It seemed like Barb's case had gone ice cold and might stay that way forever. But then, just a few years ago, a local podcast host, James Wallner, host of Dakota Spotlight, took an interest in Barb's story. We talked to James to learn more about his background and how this all unfolded.

So my name is James Wallner. I produce Dakota Spotlight podcast here in North Dakota. It is covering regional sort of upper Midwest cold cases and crimes. And I've been doing that for about three years. Otherwise, I have a background in IT, web and database development. And basically, this is what I'm doing, trying to

Working on both cold cases, but also I've covered a couple solved cases in the podcast as well. So just really enjoy storytelling and audio storytelling and research. So I believe I saw it on the North Dakota Attorney General's website listed as a cold case. And it was kind of always on my radar.

About two years before I started podcasting on it, I sent an email to an investigator who worked on it, who was retired. And he referred me to Williston PD. And I sent an email then to the head of investigations or chief of police, I think it was. I never got an answer. And then I just kind of left it for a couple of years. I don't know that I was even podcasting at the time I did that. I did some blogging first, but it was just something that's been on my radar due to a listing issue.

at the Attorney General's website. Back when James began looking into Barb's case, Barb's living relatives remembered this alleged boyfriend named Stacy, but they couldn't remember his last name. Louise had known his name back in 1981 when she reported her daughter missing to the police, and her family members remembered hearing it, but they had forgotten his last name with the passage of time.

and there hadn't been much communication between Barb's family and the police department over the years. So James started there, trying to find out what Stacy's name was.

Well, a lot of this podcast was trying to put together information that, you know, just the facts around the case, like what was the name of the guy Barbara was with downtown? Not necessarily facts that were part of the investigation, but just the details like any reporter would want to know. OK, so what happened and who was she with and things like that? So a lot of my work ended up being reconstructing that myself because I

I wasn't able originally to get much information from Williston PD. We had sent seven questions to them that they said they were going to answer, and we never got the answer, or we didn't get the answers to some of them for several weeks. So a lot of the stuff we were doing was just trying to put together the story ourselves because there was no other really access to information. Basically, I was working off of Kathy's recollection that Stacy was the first name. Barbara's sister told me that

They had a recollection that this guy, boyfriend or whatever that she was with, had taken his own life in jail and she remembered his first name being Stacy. I got that information from Kathy, I just didn't have his last name or any more details.

And because I didn't get an answer back from Williston VD, I think I got on newspapers.com and just started searching all Montana papers. I think once I kind of got a general idea of what his age would have been, I think I just started searching.

It was actually rather difficult. I was very happy when I found it. But I eventually found an article about a guy named Stacy who had hung himself. So I think it was newspapers.com, ultimately, that helped me find it. Wilson PD has had this information all the time.

In the process of trying to track down anyone who knew Barb, James found an article that mentioned Sandy. So he tracked Sandy down to see if she wanted to participate. Sandy was always looking for ways to spread Barb's story, so she jumped on the opportunity to speak with him.

Well, 10 years ago, I used to work for the Wilson Herald. And I went to them going, it was around the 30th anniversary of her missing. And I asked them if they could do a story. You look into this. And I hoped it'd be more of an investigative type story, but it wasn't. It was just kind of a fluff piece. All they did is take what little I knew, what little Kathy knew, and...

They might have got a comment from the police department or something, but I can remember being so disappointed when the story come out because I was hoping for some answers. And the only thing it did was maybe put Barb back out there. You could talk to people that grew up in this town and everything and never heard nothing about Barb being missing. So anyway, then I don't know, James finds out about it on the attorney general's website, I think is how he told us.

And he somehow, I think because of the Wilson Herald article, gets in touch with me and asked me if I'd be willing to talk to him. So he actually makes a trip up from where he lives up here.

Because one of the stories is that Stacy watches her walk to the park where he can't see her anymore. And then that's the last time she was ever seen. So he comes up to go to this park and take some video of it and do a walkthrough. And he's doing his sound and stuff. And I said, well, I'll meet you there. And so I took him to the neighborhood and everything like that where we grew up.

James wasn't having much luck getting responses from the police department. He and Lisa pooled their resources, and they did end up finding out Stacy's last name, and also finding out more information about Stacy from people who knew him. We'll discuss Stacy further in part two. But James eventually got to speak to law enforcement, and they told him a whole other version of events that he had not read online when he began looking into Barb's case. One of the most interesting things that we learned was

from Williston PD was that sort of the official timeline that they mentioned to us. I mean, Williston PD did not share the timeline that they put together with us. But, you know, otherwise online and everywhere else, it said that she had, Barbara had dinner with a friend downtown Williston and then walked home and was seen going into Rec Park. But when we spoke to PD, it was

revealed that she was seen at a party that night. And so now it's all become very confusing whether she went to this party and then was back downtown and walked home from downtown and was seen at Rec Park. But one thing that does seem clear is that her mother saw her or was with her downtown with someone else, including this, she says, this individual named Stacey Werder.

And then after that, according to Louise, when she called the police the next day, I believe, she said a friend of Barbara's saw her at a party at around 10 p.m. But then there is a Williston newspaper clipping where it says she was last seen between 11 and midnight walking home from downtown to the rec park. So the

To be honest, it's really difficult to know. And again, Wilson PD apparently has a strong timeline, but that hasn't been shared with us. Hopefully they know a lot more than we know. I believe they have a timeline that they think works. I don't know what it looks like, but I believe they have one.

What had started out as something small began to grow as more people got involved and came forward with bits and pieces of information. Memories that they had stored in the corner of their minds for 40 years. The momentum behind Barb's story continued to build, and the local community rallied behind efforts to find Barb.

Just when it seemed like Barb was nearly forgotten with time, there was a renewed sense of hope again. Tomorrow we're going to look at the three known persons of interest in this case and learn what has been uncovered about them and what motives they may have had to make Barbara Cotton disappear. If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Barbara Cotton, please contact the Williston Police Department at 701-577-1212.

At least with me, I'm not particularly leaning more towards one person of interest or the other versus a stranger even. There's so many possibilities. There's plenty of reasons to suspect the people of interest. But at the same time, you know, it could have been a total stranger. And there's plenty of suspicious things.

But there's not really anything that particularly points to somebody more so than somebody else. I mean, it's amazing how many people you figure out that actually do have useful information on this case.

But no matter how many times you ask, you know, anybody with information, anything at all, you know, it doesn't matter if you think it's BS or not, please reach out. It doesn't matter how many times you do that. But then you ask somebody and they're like, oh, yeah, blah, blah, blah. And they blow your mind. You're like, how did you how did you not come forward? Why didn't you say something?

I don't know. Barbara, I think, was considered, you know, like being poor, maybe the wrong side of the tracks, even though she lived on the right side of the tracks, you know. But there has never been nothing done for her. And for the first time, we have finally raised to have a billboard. And I've dreamed about this for so long. I want to cry just thinking about it.

That brings us to the end of episode 361. I'd like to thank everyone who spoke with us for this story. Special thanks to James Wallner from Dakota Spotlight. Be sure to check out his show. If you have a missing loved one that you'd like to have featured on the show, there's a case submission form at thevanishedpodcast.com. If you'd like to join in on the discussion, there's a page and discussion group on Facebook. I'm on Twitter at The Vanished Pod and also on Instagram at TheVanishedPodcast.com.

If you like our show, please give us a five-star rating and review. Follow The Vanished on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

or you can listen ad-free by joining Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Please support us by supporting our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us offer the show for free. Another way you can support the show is by filling out a survey at wondery.com slash survey. Be sure to tune in tomorrow for part two of Barb's story. Thanks for listening. Wondery.

If you like The Vanished, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. I'm Tristan Redman, and as a journalist, I've never believed in ghosts. But when I discovered that my wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door to where I grew up, I started wondering about the inexplicable things that happened in my childhood bedroom.

When I tried to find out more, I discovered that someone who slept in my room after me, someone I'd never met, was visited by the ghost of a faceless woman. So I started digging into the murder in my wife's family, and I unearthed family secrets nobody could have imagined. Ghost Story won Best Documentary Podcast at the 2024 Ambies and is a Best True Crime nominee at the British Podcast Awards 2024. Ghost Story is now the first ever Apple Podcast Series Essential.

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