Port Angeles arrest in 2008 North Carolina double-murder cold case

After 18 years of unanswered questions, the 2008 Sun Drop bottling plant double murder finally crossed state lines and landed Johnny Steven Talbert in custody in Port Angeles. Court records now tie the 43-year-old to a Cabarrus County warrant charging two counts of first-degree murder and one count of robbery with a dangerous weapon, with $9,905.42 listed as the cash taken from the plant.

The arrest did not come out of nowhere. Concord detectives first contacted Port Angeles police on Dec. 19, 2025, and the move to Washington suggests investigators had been following Talbert quietly for months before the case broke open. Port Angeles police took him into custody Thursday, and he later made his first appearance in Clallam County Superior Court on Friday. Judge Elizabeth Stanley ordered him held for 30 days, and he was being kept without bail in Clallam County Jail as prosecutors and defense lawyers prepared the next steps toward extradition.

The killings date to June 13, 2008, at the former Sun Drop bottling plant in Concord, just outside Charlotte. Donna Barnhardt was 59 and had spent 18 years there as office manager. Darrell Noles was 44, recently laid off from a cable company and applying for a job at the plant, where he was also known as a leader of his church choir. Investigators believe the shooter spent only a few minutes inside, grabbed cash from the office, packed it into a box and fled.

Witness accounts kept the case alive for years. A man matching the later sketch reportedly appeared at the plant door about an hour before the shootings, when it was still locked. Several witnesses saw a man leaving afterward, including Noles’ wife, who was waiting in a car in the parking lot. A suspect sketch went out early, and the reward grew from $50,000 to $85,000 as tips piled up and the hunt dragged on.

The case became one of Concord’s most familiar cold cases, with America’s Most Wanted featuring it in May 2009 and police still fielding tips years later. Now the old robbery-homicide has shifted from haunting rumor to active prosecution, with Talbert due back in court for a 9 a.m. status hearing on June 12. After nearly two decades, the unanswered questions finally have a name attached to them.