The FBI is the most sophisticated law enforcement agency in the world pursuing the most dangerous criminals. In Oregon, when a beautiful co-ed vanishes in broad daylight, this takes a certain type of animal. This takes a certain type of shark, a predatory person who’s done it before. The bureau mobilizes.
“A daytime abduction without witnesses is very uncommon,” says one agent. “We literally had nothing to go on. We just knew that something, you know, terribly wrong had happened.”
It’s around 10:00 a.m., and 19-year-old Brooke Wilberger is hard at work at the Oak Park Apartments near Oregon State University. The complex is managed by her brother-in-law, Zach, and her sister, Stephanie.
“She was outside, you know, cleaning up some light posts. It was, um, you know, something we did all the time. It was a pretty routine thing,” says Zach.
A gorgeous day. Brooke, a beautiful blonde, is a rising sophomore at Brigham Young University, where she’s studying speech pathology.
“She would have summer jobs. She’d come up and live with us and work, so she was real close to us, real close to our first couple of kids,” her sister notes.
“Looks good. See you at 12 for lunch today,” Brooke and her sister are planning to have lunch while Zach checks on the complex.
“Yeah, I got to go check a couple of the apartments, make sure they’re all cleaned out,” Zach tells her.
But Brooke doesn’t show up and doesn’t answer her phone. It’s unusual behavior, and her sister is worried.
“Brooke? Brooke, you here?” Zach searches the area. “I knew the apartments that she was supposed to be in, and so I slowly started to, as I got little breaks, to go and check those units and couldn’t find her. And, um, that concern kind of grew a little bit. I checked the apartment; she’s not there.”
Zach is even more perplexed when he realizes Brooke’s wallet and keys are still inside their apartment. He goes out to the parking lot and sees her car. Then, he notices something even more strange near the lamp post where she was working.
“What really got me starting to get pretty worried was I found her flip-flops and then the bucket. So we knew what she had been doing, and it just didn’t make sense.”
Around 3:00 p.m., Zach calls Brooke’s mother, Cammy.
“I realized it immediately because I knew Brooke and I knew that she would not just walk away, that she would never leave like that. We talked daily on the phone, even when she was in college. We called the hospital; she wasn’t there. Basically, scoured the premises more than one time and, at that point, that’s when I called 911.”
“So my name is Zach Hansen. I’m the manager of the Oak Park Apartments. [She is] my sister-in-law, she’s 19, and, um, she was doing some outside work. Her stuff is there and her shoes are there, but she’s been missing now for several hours.”
45-year-old Corvalis police detective Shan Hal and his partner arrive at the complex within minutes. They question Stephanie and Zach.
“I asked him, ‘Hey, could she have gone out to get something to eat? Could she have gone shopping? Could she have gone to visit a friend?’ And he made it very clear that she just simply didn’t leave the complex ever in the time that she’d worked here over the last couple summers.”
The detective learns that at the time of her disappearance, Brooke was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, an Anne Klein watch, and a ring with the letters “CTR” engraved on it. “CTR” stands for “Choose the Right,” a Mormon motto reminding its followers to live righteously.
Detective Hal walks over to the lamp post and is disturbed by what he sees.
“Her cleaning supplies were left next to the lamp post, and the only thing we found other than the cleaning supplies were her flip-flops. And it was in the middle of the day, and that’s not normal.”
Detective Hal notices the toe thong has been ripped out of one of the flip-flops. To the veteran detective of 14 years, it’s an important clue.
“They were damaged for a reason. It’s not like she was walking on them and that it occurred. It’s like she was forced or moved in a manner that caused them to be damaged.”
Detective Hal is now certain that Brooke did not leave the complex willingly and that something has happened to her. Within minutes, dozens of squad cars appear on scene. Brooke’s parents aren’t far behind.
“When I pulled in the parking lot, there were police cars and the tape across it, and it was just busy with, you know, police and things, and so it was pretty, you know, scary for me.”
Detectives get a jump on the case by canvassing the neighborhood and distributing missing person’s flyers.
“We had a website up that night, and, uh, we called down to some of the Eugene television stations and got them to actually say that there was a girl missing in Corvalis,” they recall.
The close-knit community of Corvalis responds immediately.
“And so the word got out really quickly. By that night, there were, you know, several hundred people that were out searching.”
As word spreads, investigators get tips from residents at the apartment complex who heard a blood-curdling scream around 10:00 that morning.
“Three people thought they heard screams—a short, a brief scream, loud enough for them to hear him in their apartments. And one was in this area, one was in that area, and then one was over here. And nobody observed any kind of commotion or anything occurring in the parking lot at that time.”
Corvalis police know that the clock is ticking and they are already running out of time.
“About 47% of the time, they’re killed within the first hour. 76% of the time, they’re killed within the first 3 hours. And 88% of the time, they’re killed within the first 24 hours. We were notified 5 hours after the abduction occurred, so we started this investigation. We were behind the eight ball from the very beginning.”
The Corvalis PD starts a multi-agency task force, and they include the one agency with decades of experience dealing with abductions: the FBI.
Around 6:30 that night, Supervisory Special Agent Joe Boyer, a 22-year veteran with the bureau, gets the call.
“We didn’t know what happened to Brooke, and so if it was a stranger abduction, it could have been a possible serial killer situation, potential interstate kidnapping. We just didn’t know what happened. We were asked to assist, and of course, we did.”
The next day at 8:00 a.m., Agent Boyer reports to the task force command center at Corvalis PD. With him is Special Agent Tim Subtles, a former district attorney investigator and seasoned hostage negotiator.
“Looking at her background, um, I think everybody was convinced that the only way she’d be missing is if somebody took her.”
The task force strongly suspects Brooke has been kidnapped, but they have hardly any clues about where to find her. Detective Hal makes a personal vow to locate the young college student no matter what it takes. He places a picture of her in his wallet.
“Her mom gave me a picture, which I just happened to keep and still have, and it was a quick reminder of, ‘Hey, this is a really precious young lady, and we need to give it our best today and kind of win this day and do the best we can.'”
Detective Hal doesn’t know it, but there are about to be more bad days than good. Finding Brooke will prove to be almost impossible, and her fate hangs in the balance.
“We didn’t have a case. We didn’t have any evidence. We had flip-flops. We had her belongings left behind. We had three people that heard screams. We had no vehicle. We had no name suspect. We had no description. We had nothing.”
May 25th, 2004. It’s been 1 day since 19-year-old Brooke Wilberger was kidnapped while cleaning a lamp post near Oregon State University. The FBI and a local task force want to bring her home alive and are desperate for leads.
“Usually, when you’re working in a criminal case, you have something. You have victims, you have witnesses, you have a crime scene. You have something. In this case, we started with nothing.”
The Wilbergers create a website, findbrook.com. More than 4,000 posters, banners, and billboards go up across Oregon, and Brooke’s family addresses the media.
“We knew that we weren’t comfortable using the media, just because we’re private people, but that was our only hope was to get her face out there.”
The tips immediately start flooding in, giving investigators a new problem: information overload.
“People calling in, certainly with good intentions, trying to be helpful, um, but in a very short period of time, your tip sheets start stacking up, and you have to start prioritizing which ones you’re going to assign to follow up on.”
Two leads stand out. The morning of Brooke’s disappearance, a creepy man in a green van was reported on OSU’s campus.
“The first woman reported seeing a missing back seat in the van. She was walking northbound; he came up behind her in his van, and he parked right in front of her, blocking her path, and then asking to come over and take a look at a map because he was lost. And she got—she felt that that was kind of unusual and very uncomfortable.”
A second woman was approached by the same man near OSU’s Reser Stadium. She noticed the van had Minnesota plates. The man tried to talk to her, but she was immediately suspicious.
“She said her hair stood up on the back of her neck because what he was doing is he was exhibiting luring techniques, luring behaviors that caused her concern. And we hear that a lot from young ladies who are approached by predatory-type guys.”
Agents know that this van could very well be key to the investigation, but they’ll need more than just a color.
“There were so many tips about vans that we kept a separate notebook on white van tips, green van tips, miscellaneous van tips. Nationally, statistically, these type of abductions, stranger abductions, if you had to pick one vehicle that’s most used more than anything else, is a van. An obvious reason is because you can get a person in there and secrete them. Unfortunately, there is little investigators can do with these tips, but we didn’t have anything to follow up on. We didn’t have a plate, we didn’t have a name, we didn’t have any other information about that particular van or the individual driving it.”
Meanwhile, investigators canvas the area for anyone who could fit the profile of Brooke’s kidnapper. They begin with the hundreds of predators and sex offenders living near Corvalis. The task force keeps the Wilberger family apprised of every stomach-turning development.
“And they started going through the list of sex offenders in the area. It made me physically ill, and so I’d have to lay down on the bed. We’d just be sitting on the edge of the bed while they talked to us, and I’d just have to lay down because I couldn’t—couldn’t deal with that at that time.”
“Good afternoon, I’m Captain Ron Noble with the Corvalis Police Department, and we’ve called this press conference to be able to discuss, hopefully, some of the new developments in the disappearance or the abduction of Brooke Wilberger.”
On May 27th, 3 days after Brooke’s disappearance, investigators make a major announcement. From the list of sexual deviants they’ve investigated, they’ve identified a person of interest. He is 30-year-old Sung Ku Kim, a former genetics student from nearby Tigard, Oregon.
“He lived with his parents. As far as I can tell, didn’t have much of a social life, kind of odd. Didn’t—didn’t do well interacting with women.”
Just 11 days before Brooke’s disappearance, Kim had been arrested and released on unrelated charges. His crime: stealing women’s underwear from local dorms.
“Breaking into dorms and stealing women’s underwear is a bit strange, and since he was right in that area, that is somebody that you have to look at.”
When Kim was arrested, officers searched his room and made some dark discoveries. They found 3,400 pairs of women’s underwear, 40,000 photos of women being tortured and raped, and most disturbingly, seven assault rifles. They also found an odd stash of dryer lint, organized and labeled. Some was from the Oak Park apartments where Brooke was last seen.
Investigators discovered something even more terrifying on Kim’s computer: a document detailing a plan to strangle and mutilate a girl.
“Torture, mutilation of all women. Did disturbing stuff—really disturbing things.”
Kim was out on bail when Brooke disappeared and, to many on the task force, fits the profile of her abductor.
“He was a strong suspect because his behavior was bizarre and he was in that very apartment complex where Brooke was abducted roughly around the same time frame.”
With Kim back out on the streets, detectives work to pull together enough evidence to secure another arrest warrant, this time in relation to Brooke’s disappearance. But that could take days. In the meantime, they focus again on finding Brooke and bringing her home alive.
“We had all sorts of tips about potential various sites. Of course, there’s rivers and there’s ponds, there’s lakes, and there’s, of course, the Pacific Ocean. There’s all sorts of ways to get rid of a body, but none of the leads pan out.”
By May 28th, 5 days after Brooke’s disappearance, hope is beginning to dwindle that she’ll ever be found.
Investigators finally get an arrest warrant for Sung Ku Kim. As dawn breaks on May 29th, a SWAT team storms his parents’ house.
“Hands! Let me see your hands! Stay down!”
They seize computers and camera equipment, videotapes, and a book titled “The Beginner’s Guide to Lockpicking.” Kim is arrested and bail is set at $10 million. But back at the task force command center, tension mounts over whether Kim is really the guy.
“When it comes to Sung Ku Kim on the task force, there were those who believed he was responsible for it and there were those who believed that he wasn’t responsible for it.”
Kim turns out to have an alibi. He claims that the morning Brooke vanished, he was buying stocks online at 11:14 a.m. Just over an hour later, security cameras show Kim buying a laptop at a store in Tigard, some 76 miles away.
“We couldn’t put him definitively in Corvalis on that day, and when you can’t do that, you really, um, you don’t have enough to take any action on it.”
Without any definitive evidence linking Kim to Brooke, the task force hurries to find other suspects. If they’re wrong about Kim, a dangerous predator is still on the loose, and there’s no telling where he’ll strike next.
“There’s somebody out there who did this and who’s capable of doing it again, so you have to do everything you can to try and solve it.”
It’s been 5 days since 19-year-old Brooke Wilberger was kidnapped near Oregon State University. Authorities have arrested 30-year-old Sung Ku Kim but don’t have hard evidence linking him to the crime. Agents work to build their case while making every effort to find the beautiful young co-ed. Three-person teams search back roads and highways in five counties.
“I can remember seeing fields and just seeing people that seemed like they were going for miles, and maybe they were. Brooke was that kind of girl that people would sacrifice their time to do that.”
By June 5th, nearly 2 weeks after Brooke’s disappearance, search teams have covered 6,700 square miles and have devoted 5,000 man-hours looking for the young college student. They have nothing to show for it and must admit defeat.
“You realize that you weren’t going to be able to search forever, you know, and after about 10 days, that was winding down. It was pretty hard, but there had been so many people; so many areas had been looked at.”
As the search comes to an end, debate continues as to whether Sung Ku Kim, the only suspect to date, could have kidnapped Brooke.
“Actually, he looked like a very viable suspect, particularly for me. He did. To me, he was certainly our focus of investigation for a quite some time.”
Five long months go by as the task force tries to connect Kim to the case. He insists he had nothing to do with it. At the same time, they look once again into the green van that was seen on OSU’s campus, but they come up empty-handed.
“We had a cold case at that point. We were in trouble, and we needed a break. And her family misses her, and that we are all praying for her.”
Desperate for even the smallest shred of information, Brooke’s family offers a $30,000 reward, but nothing comes of it. They can’t help but hope that somehow she’s still alive.
“We didn’t have any other evidence, and so there was nothing to do. And I always said, ‘You know, until you can show me her body, then I’m going to feel like she’s alive.'”
Then, on November 29th, 2004, 1,400 miles away in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a blonde Russian exchange student is walking down a dimly lit street near the University of New Mexico when she’s grabbed at knifepoint and ordered into the back of a red car.
“Don’t!”
He had approached her at knifepoint and told her to get into his vehicle, and she complied. And once she got into the vehicle, he told her to take off all of her clothes, and again, she complied. Her attacker drives her to a deserted parking lot and threatens to kill her unless she performs oral sex. He ties her ankles together with a shoelace and her wrists with a scarf, then stuffs her underwear into her mouth, holding them in place with another shoelace tied around her head.
The young woman’s terror grows when he drives her to another parking lot.
“He had parked his vehicle in this parking space or parking area. He had entered apartment one, and once he entered apartment one, the victim was able to untie herself, and once she untied herself, she ran in a northwest direction.”
A woman stopped at a red light sees the undressed student darting through traffic.
“Help! Help me!”
“She ran across this intersection, proceeded to the restaurant that is located on northwest corner of the intersection, and attempted to get the employees to help her by knocking on the door, and they just wouldn’t assist her because she was unclothed.”
The woman follows the young student into the parking lot.
“She did see, um, the victim in distress and did stop and assist the victim by placing her in her car, and I believe she gave her clothing or a blanket to cover her up.”
Hysterical and bleeding, the student tells her story in broken English.
“I’ve been walking by street. I was walking on street.”
As the good Samaritan calls 911, she’s been attacked.
“Yes, we have.”
Seconds later, the red car eerily stalks past them. A stuffed animal is in the rear window. The car disappears right before police arrive. Officer Ed Taylor interviews the victim, then cruises the area where her assailant might be. He turns onto a cul-de-sac and immediately sees something suspicious.
“I noticed the vehicle fit the description of the vehicle the victim was in. I noticed the stuffed animal in the rear window. I parked right about here, and when I parked here, I got out of the car, and about 10–15 minutes later, I heard people walking towards me.”
Officer Taylor sees a man approaching the red car.
“He acknowledged me, and when he acknowledged me, close distance on him. When I asked him his name, he gave me the name Joel Courtney.”
The officer takes Courtney into custody and does a full body search. He confiscates a small knife and a glass crack pipe.
“He didn’t ask why he was being placed in custody, where he was going. When I was transporting him from here to the substation, didn’t say anything.”
At Albuquerque Police Headquarters, the Russian student positively IDs 38-year-old Joel Courtney, a married father of three, as her attacker. He’s charged with first-degree rape, kidnapping, and aggravated battery.
“I want to hurt you. I want to hurt him. I’m so sick of you. You don’t push me to the court.”
Courtney has a history of domestic violence.
“You watch—day assaulting his wife so badly at one point that his terrified son called 911. Joel Courtney moved around a lot; he was a drug user; he had other incidents of sexual assaults, some that weren’t reported, and that was generally his background.”
Albuquerque detectives investigate further and learn of an arrest warrant for Courtney out of Newport, Oregon. The warrant was issued after he failed to show up for a DUI hearing back on May 24th, 2004—the same day Brooke Wilberger disappeared.
“He left Portland the morning of the 24th to go to Newport to have a court appearance on the DUI charges that he received in January, and that route would take you right through Corvalis. In fact, it would take you right by the apartment complex where Brooke was working.”
On December 7th, 2004, more than 6 months after Brooke’s disappearance, an Albuquerque detective calls Detective Shan Hal in Corvalis to ask if there have been recent stranger abductions.
“The fact that he felt the need to reach out to other, um, agencies and find out if they had similar crimes in their jurisdictions is not common.”
Now, after months of dead ends and only Sung Ku Kim as a potential suspect, the task force has someone new to investigate: Joel Courtney.
“You just do the probabilities; this guy is looking better and better all the time. And I was fairly convinced that Mr. Courtney had really looks like our our possible suspect.”
But investigators need to prove that Courtney abducted Brooke, and with no witnesses, no body, and not a single shred of evidence, it may be impossible to link him to the crime.
After working for 6 months to figure out who abducted 19-year-old Brooke Wilberger, the FBI and the local task force have a second suspect: 38-year-old Joel Patrick Courtney. Their other key suspect, 30-year-old Sung Ku Kim, has a fascination with torturing women and a penchant for stealing women’s underwear.
“He did have a prior criminal history of being sexually assaulted towards women like Mr. Courtney did, but they could have been his first time too, you know? We simply didn’t know.”
Both suspects are viable, but detectives now focus on Joel Courtney. They interview Courtney’s family, who lived near Portland, 85 miles away from Corvalis. They learn he had stayed with them the night before Brooke vanished.
“They were able to substantiate that Joel Courtney left their residence on the morning of Brooke’s abduction at about 7:30, which would put him here easily at 9:30 or 10:00. And that they provided the purpose for him to be here, the fact that he made phone calls, the fact that he had a DUI in January of ’04, and that he was going to court to deal with that.”
Detectives also learn that Courtney had been working for a janitorial company at the time of Brooke’s abduction. The company had given him a vehicle, a green van, to make deliveries around the Northwest. Rather than wait to secure a search warrant, investigator John Chilcoat strikes a deal with Courtney’s company to buy the van for $3,200. When they take the van to the lab, they see that the back seat has been replaced.
“The question is, has any evidence been preserved? Our primary concern when we obtained the van is that, yes, it had been used by different employees because it was a cleaning company. Any number of chemicals could have been poured on the carpeting. It could have been vacuumed out. I thought the probabilities of finding something were relatively low, but it was certainly worth the try, and it was about the only thing we really could search.”
Back at the FBI garage, agents look for every possible bit of evidence.
“They did an extremely thorough search of the van, including cutting out seats, cutting out carpets, vacuuming everything they could find in the van, taking fingerprints off of anywhere there could be fingerprints, and they seize all of that evidence and they send it back to the FBI lab for processing.”
The task force is looking for a positive match between Brooke Wilberger’s DNA and DNA found inside the van, but they also need Courtney’s DNA. At the Albuquerque jail where Courtney is being held, Detective Shan Hal and his colleagues take fingerprints, swabs of saliva, and various hairs from Courtney’s face and pubic area.
“He didn’t ask me any questions. He didn’t defend himself. He didn’t make any statements or ask any questions, which is kind of unusual unless you’re involved.”
In February 2005, the task force announces that the investigation into Sung Ku Kim is complete and that they find no evidence linking him to Brooke’s abduction. Kim later pleads guilty to stealing bras and underwear from at least eight women and he’s sentenced to nearly 6 years. At this point, Joel Courtney is the prime suspect in Brooke Wilberger’s disappearance.
“We looked at a lot of suspects; nobody else panned out. But Joel Courtney, he fit the bill. Everything that we looked at for him was right on for this crime.”
On May 24th, 2005, exactly one year to the day after 19-year-old Brooke Wilberger vanished, Supervisory Special Agent Joe Boyer gets a call from the FBI lab at Quantico, Virginia.
“I received a call from our DNA analysis unit telling me, ‘You’re not going to believe what we found in the van.’ Then I said, ‘Well, what’s that?’ They said, ‘We found Joel Courtney’s DNA.’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s good, but it doesn’t do a lot.’ And they said, ‘We also found Brooke Wilberger’s DNA in the same area.’ And I couldn’t believe it.”
Agent Boyer rushes to tell members of the task force.
“It made everybody feel very good because we knew that we were going to solve the case. We knew we had enough evidence to charge Joel Courtney. On the other hand, we also knew that we would be telling the Wilbergers that whatever hope they had left was gone.”
The Wilbergers have just given a press conference in Corvalis on the anniversary of Brooke’s disappearance when they get the news.
“I can remember saying, ‘Good, we could pursue something, and DNA is pretty strong evidence.’ And so we had a case—that’s the biggest thing. And then the whole way home, I remember crying because you’re just emotionally, you know, let down, um, but you’re strong when you need to be strong.”
In July, the FBI flies to Albuquerque and serves Joel Courtney with a 19-count indictment relating to Brooke’s disappearance.
“Joel Courtney was indicted under a number of different theories, but the essence of his charge was aggravated murder, which is the highest form of murder in the state of Oregon, with a death penalty as a potential consequence.”
They need Brooke’s body to lock up the case and make Courtney an offer.
“We told him at that time, you know, ‘If you know where she’s at, now is the time to tell us because you have something to bargain with. But once we find her, you don’t.'”
But Courtney doesn’t talk. Instead, he remains in a New Mexico jail awaiting trial for kidnapping and raping the Russian University of New Mexico student.
“He tried, in my opinion, to do everything he can to delay his case in Albuquerque because he knew that he was going to be extradited and brought up to Oregon to face trial for the homicide and abduction of Brooke Wilberger.”
On December 11th, 2007, Courtney pleads guilty to kidnapping the Russian exchange student and is sentenced to 18 years in prison. Will the Wilbergers ever learn what happened to their daughter on that fateful day? Only one man knows the truth, and right now he’s not talking.
“We didn’t have a body, and we weren’t sure we were ever going to have a body, because unless Mr. Courtney told us where the body was, the chances of finding were diminishing, you know, every single day.”
April 4th, 2008. It’s been nearly 4 years since 19-year-old Brooke Wilberger disappeared and 3 years since Joel Courtney was indicted on charges of aggravated murder. Courtney is in an Albuquerque prison after pleading guilty to kidnapping a student. After months of waiting, he’s escorted back to Oregon to stand trial for Brooke’s murder.
Benton County District Attorney John Haroldson makes Courtney an offer.
“You give us the body, we’ll give you true life. We’ll take the death penalty off the table, and we can settle the case.”
Courtney didn’t express any interest in that at all. Haroldson gives Courtney 90 days to think it over.
“The 90 days came and passed, and there was no interest expressed on his part to resolve the case.”
It’s an emotional time for the Wilbergers, who just want to recover their daughter’s body. They thought he might confess.
“But they—they said there’s no guarantees, but that was their estimate was about a 50-50 chance at that point. That was a real roller coaster. That was a frustrating time for us, and it would seem like it was going to happen, you know? He’s kind of looking like he’s going to talk, and then nothing.”
“I need you to sign right here.”
Finally, on September 21st, 2009, Courtney agrees to Haroldson’s offer of life in prison. He signs the agreement and draws a map revealing the location of Brooke’s body. His attorney then tells members of the task force the excruciating details of what happened to the young co-ed the day she disappeared.
According to Courtney, he first spotted Brooke on May 24th, 2004, as she was cleaning lamp posts. He drove past her, then talked to two women near the OSU campus who would later report creepy encounters with a man in a green van.
“Is there a possibility Courtney returned to the apartments where Brooke was working?”
In a remote part of the parking lot, he lured her towards the van by indicating he was lost.
“He had some sort of a FedEx… and he showed it to her, indicating that he needed some information, and she believed him to be honest. And so she went out to chat with the guy, ’cause that’s her nature, is to help other people.”
“I need to find this address ’cause I need to give this box to a friend of mine. I think he’s somewhere over there.”
“Yeah, it’s actually right over there.”
“At which point, he put a knife to her throat and took her down and, um, placed her in the van.”
Courtney drove a half mile away and stopped to duct tape Brooke’s wrists and ankles.
“Quiet! You hear me?”
He then drove to a remote forest about 10 miles west of Corvalis. Terrified, Brooke told Courtney about her family, desperately trying to convince Courtney to let her go.
“She told him that he could, you know, he could find forgiveness, that she would forgive him, that he needed—just let her go. He needed help. She said she talked to her about his problems with drugs and alcohol. She tried really hard to save her own life.”
“No! What are you doing?”
“Later on that evening or early the next morning, uh, he said that he sexually assaulted her.”
Courtney violently pulled Brooke into a thickly forested area.
“Stand up!”
“He tried to strangle her, and again, these are his words, uh, strangled her, thought she was dead. And then picked up—and then she was still alive—and then hit her with a limb or tree branch, crushing her skull.”
Joel Courtney placed her under this tree and covered the tree up, packed it with ferns and other debris to prevent her remains from being found by any hikers or timber people or anybody that might just be up here walking around.
On September 21st, 2009, a team of 20 FBI evidence recovery agents and state and Corvalis police make their way into the remote woods to recover Brooke’s body.
“When we first got out there, we took a moment to stand there and remember Brooke Wilberger before we proceeded any further. That’s something that we promised the family we would do.”
“So this is where we discovered Brooke’s remains, and at the time we were out here, it was very overgrown after 5 years of vegetation and growth. And we started finding small bone fragments underneath this log and then up this hill and then down that gully. We found some ribs and things of that nature.”
Recovery teams worked to clear the brush from the surrounding area and uncover more evidence. They had found a watch. It was an Anne Klein watch with a chain-link style band.
“So I called the Wilbergers and I asked if Brooke had a watch. I just remember leaning against something and giving him the description, but he wanted—I couldn’t tell him. He wanted me to text it to him. And so I sent him the text, and the text came back as her. I felt a heaviness in my heart that even today, when I think back on that moment, I still feel it.”
“When I asked the general area of where they had found her, when they had told me, you know, it was off the highway over here, I knew exactly where she was at. I had been out in that area so often and just, you know, walked by her remains several times, and so that was that was a little tough.”
Investigators are relieved to have the case behind them and to have gotten Joel Courtney, a serial sexual predator, off the streets.
“I don’t believe Brooke Wilberger was his first victim. I don’t believe that his victim in New Mexico was going to be his last victim. But I just don’t believe he started doing this at age 38.”
“I’ll never forget this case. This case will never go away completely, and it won’t go away for a few of us. It will never go away for the Wilbergers either.”
Though their strong Mormon faith has enabled them to survive this crushing loss, “I hope that if people see things about Brooke that they’ll remember that she was a great person. We hope that others might see that you can get through difficult situations and that you can learn forgiveness and that you can move on and not be filled with hate.”
“People will often say, ‘You know, well, at least you’ve got closure now,’ and you know, to me that’s kind of a naughty word, a little bit. Because when you have something like this happen to you, you’re never going to have closure. To me, the only justice would have been if it had never happened. Do I think he should pay for what he did? Yeah. You know, I have a feeling he’s going to get judged, you know, after this life is over, and that—that’ll be fine by me.”
