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Cold Case Files

A Brother's Burden / The Midnight Attacker

Cold Case Files

A&E / PodcastOne

Society & Culture, True Crime

4.18.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2026

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A police officer helps solve an 18-year-old murder case when he finds the prime suspect-his older brother. And a biker with a bloody finger is the clue that police need to put away a rapist who assaulted 31 women over six years.


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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners.

0:04.3

Listener discretion is advised.

0:08.5

There are over 100,000 cold cases in America.

0:12.7

Only 1% are ever solved.

0:15.9

This is one of those rare stories.

0:27.6

It was his habit of get up of a morning.

0:31.6

He would go to the barn, take care of the animals. It's early morning on July 12, 1985, in Winnebough, North Carolina, and 51-year-old Don Spalding begins his morning ritual.

0:42.2

And he would go out and feed up, and then he would go on to work from there.

0:47.0

On this particular day, however, someone else is in the barn with Don and the animals.

0:53.1

A gun is raised and four shots ring out.

0:56.6

Don Spalding's feed buckets fall to the ground.

1:00.3

Captain Phil Perry of the Brunswick County Sheriff's Office takes the call and heads over

1:05.2

to the Spalding property.

1:07.2

He was right inside the barn about three or four foot laying kind of on his back with his arms thrown out.

1:13.6

A bucket kicked over where he was preparing to feed up his animals.

1:18.6

Perry directs crime scene crews who pick through straw, muck, and mud, but cannot find even a single bit of brass from a gun.

1:30.7

There had been reports of prowlers on the premises.

1:34.8

Was there a possibility that he surprised somebody in the barn,

1:37.8

trying to commit a crime, trying to steal something?

1:41.2

And he confronted them, and as a result of that, he was shot.

1:47.5

Perry walks out of the barn and down to the house, where he talks to the victim's wife, Shirley Spalding.

1:48.6

She told us when she got up that morning, she took it for granted that he had already been

...

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