Barbara Louise Cotton, a 15-year-old White female, disappeared from Williston, North Dakota after an evening out on April 11, 1981. Accounts differ about her last moments: some reports say she had dinner with her boyfriend and another friend, and one version says her boyfriend offered to walk her home but she declined and was last seen walking into Recreation Park. She was never seen or heard from again, and her body has never been found.

Her family rejected the idea that she ran away, noting she left behind personal items including an uncashed paycheck. The investigation cooled and the case is now considered an unsolved murder. No arrests were ever made, but law enforcement publicly named three persons of interest, all now deceased: Stacey Werder, 21, who was reportedly with Barbara earlier that evening and later died by suicide in a jail in Malta, Montana, in July 1981; Frank J. Delapena, a migrant worker who left North Dakota after Barbara disappeared and later kidnapped and murdered two young girls in Wyoming before dying by suicide in jail; and Barbara’s older brother Frank Cotton, who was never charged.