Dakota Spotlight | True Crime Podcast by James Wolner
A Better Search for Barbara
On April 11, 1981, fifteen-year-old Barbara Louise Cotton disappeared while walking home in Williston, North Dakota. She had just finished dinner and set out into the evening for what should have been a short, familiar walk. She never arrived. In the years that followed, her case was often dismissed as a runaway, leaving her family with few answers and a story that never fully settled. In A Better Search for Barbara, journalist James Wolner returns to one of North Dakota’s longest-running cold cases. What began as a short series grew into a far deeper investigation, stretching across decades and state lines. Through interviews, records, and newly uncovered testimony, the story unfolds piece by piece, following a search that has never truly ended.
© 2026 Six Horse Media LLC
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