The Last Time We Saw Her

by Robert Scott

  The driver, Aubrey Cutsforth, thirty-six, of Vancouver, Washington, was questioned about the altered license plates and the situation at the 7-Eleven. The CPD officer noted, “Mr. Cutsforth seemed very nervous as he spoke, sweating and talking very fast. He agreed to talk with detectives about the 7-Eleven incident and Brooke Wilberger.”

  A search of the vehicle turned up a second set of license plates from California, pornographic pictures, sexual lubricant, and masking tape. In the interview Cutsforth admitted that he sometimes got “urges.” When that happened, he went somewhere in his vehicle, watched women, and “sexually gratified himself.” But he denied having anything to do with Brooke Wilberger.

  Cutsforth was cited for altering vehicle license plates and driving without insurance. He was also looked at closely to see if his alibi would hold up about Brooke. After investigating the matter, it was apparent that Cutsforth had not been involved with Brooke Wilberger’s disappearance.

  Eight days later, a more grim and potentially devastating event occurred.

  A hunter in Tillamook County, thirty miles from Seaside, discovered human remains while he was out in the forest. The remains were found in a clear-cut area of timber, off a dirt logging road. The gender or age of the remains could not be determined until an OSP crime lab did forensic studies on them. OSP lieutenant Gregg Hastings told reporters, “They did look like they’ve been there for an extended period of time.” Lieutenant Ron Noble, of the Corvallis PD, added, “We don’t have any idea at this point if it is related to Brooke.”

  After forensic exams it was proven that the remains were not those of Brooke Wilberger’s. It was just one more bump on the emotional roller-coaster ride that had become the Brooke Wilberger case.

  Meanwhile, in the task force’s eyes, Sung Koo Kim still looked to be the most promising suspect in Brooke’s abduction. And by November 2004, Kim was on his third set of lawyers. Attorney Des Connall now represented Kim, and he sought a court order to make the Benton County DA’s Office show him what law enforcement knew about Brooke’s case and any ties Kim might have to that incident.

  DDA Haroldson wrote his own document to the judge stating why Connall should not get any information gathered by law enforcement investigators concerning Brooke. Haroldson, in essence, said that it was still an open investigation, and there were no charges at this point against Kim on Wilberger’s abduction. Haroldson noted, “The pending charges stand alone.” Then he added, Connall would get all necessary discovery on Brooke when and if Kim was charged with that crime.

  Despite all the charges against him in the thefts of literally thousands of pairs of women’s underwear, Sung Koo Kim did have his supporters. Or to be more exact, he had people in the Korean community who thought Kim had been singled out and treated unfairly by law enforcement and the DA offices. These people noted that beside Aaron Evans, not one of the other “persons of interest” had their names and stories mentioned in the press to any great degree. More than anyone, Kim had been vilified, with one article after another about him in the newspapers and many reports on the televison news as well. He was often referred to derisively as the “Panty Thief” in the newspapers and on television.

  In a petition to the court, members of the Korean community in Oregon and Washington, including a dozen pastors of Korean Christian churches, spelled out their concerns in the matter. The petition, in part, stated: Sung Koo Kim should be treated in a manner that is unbiased, fair and not prejudicial or discriminatory. We should remember that people are innocent until proven guilty. Being different shouldn’t subject a person to mistreatment and humiliation.

  Around this same time Aaron Evans entered into a plea negotiation with the Benton County DA’s Office. Evans’s lawyer, Brett Jaspers, told a judge that Evans waived his right to a speedy trial and was, instead, conferring with DDA Haroldson about a plea deal on the alleged OSU student assault and the harassment of the woman in the shopping center parking lot.

  And so it went; as soon as news died down about Kim and Evans, a new abduction report popped up. On November 10, 2004, a woman was getting into her car in Corvallis about 6:30 P.M., after attending an ACES meeting. (ACES was a drug and alcohol treatment center.) It was dark, and as she climbed into her car, a man ran out from behind some Dumpsters and attacked her. He grabbed her and punched her in the face, but she fought back, kicking him several times, and managing to drive away. As soon as she got to a safer location, she contacted the Corvallis Police Department.

  The woman who had been assaulted described her attacker as a thin white man, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, about five-nine. At the time of the attack, he had been wearing a stocking cap, dark jacket, and dark-colored pants.

  By now, it seemed almost like a mantra. There would be an attempted abduction, soon followed by a law enforcement statement addressing if they thought it was related to Brooke’s case. This time CPD captain Jon Sassaman told reporters, “The signature of the incidents is very different. The person clearly did not bring his own car. He attempted to push the woman into her car.”

  As to why there were so many of these incidents lately, Lieutenant Ron Noble said, “I’m pretty sure there were incidents in the past that no one called us about.” He related that since Brooke’s abduction more women were willing to fight back and call the police later. Then Noble shook his head and added, “I’ve still seen young women running alone at night.”

  After all the recent abduction attempts in the area, that seemed like a recipe for disaster. And the abduction attempts were far from over.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE MAN IN THE SKI MASK

  Even though one abduction attempt after another occurred in and around Corvallis, the search for Brooke Wilberger never ceased. Granted, it was now in a very scaled-back mode compared to the frenzied activity in May and June 2004, but law enforcement officers and volunteers were still working hard on the case. Lieutenant Ron Noble told reporters, “I had no idea I’d be here in five months still talking about Brooke and having nothing solid in this case. We still develop leads on a daily basis. This is not a cold case for us. We are doing work every day.”

  Noble related that by the five-month mark, detectives had received forty-five hundred tips and there had been 350 “possible sightings” of Brooke around the world. Five hundred people had been named as “suspicious” in the case, and fifty-four of them had been labeled “persons of interest.” Citizen volunteers had spent over eight thousand hours searching four thousand acres in the area. Benton County Search and Rescue had spent twenty-eight hundred hours searching sixty-six hundred miles of highways, roads, and dirt tracks. Noble still held out hope that Brooke was alive. He said, “We wanted it solved on the evening of May twenty-fourth. We’re still looking for the one tip that will bring her home.”

  Greg Wilberger agreed and stated that many detectives still believed that Brooke was alive. Greg added, “That gives us a lot of strength. One of these days she’ll show up. You kind of have to pace yourself. You spend an hour a day on her, and then you go on.”

  Greg and other family members thanked the community once again for all their support. The latest round of items to keep Brooke in the public consciousness were bracelets. The bracelets had a photo of Brooke and pertinent information on the case. They also listed how to contact the “Find Brooke” website on the Internet and a toll-free number to call. Twenty thousand bracelets were made, in large part due to donations that still came in from individuals and businesses. Volunteers continued to go out, in and around the area, taking down old battered posters and replacing them with new ones. Zak Hansen was amazed about how much people still cared about Brooke, and he told reporters, “We think very highly of people in this state.”

  But five months turned into six, the half-year anniversary of Brooke’s kidnapping, and still there were no concrete clues as to where she might be either dead or alive. On that anniversary Noble noted that he still met with the Wilberger family on a regular basis, and
he fielded questions from reporters at least once a week. Even at this late date, some detectives worked so persistently on the case that they were ordered to take vacations. Noble related, “One of the detectives said to me, ‘How can I take a vacation? Brooke is still missing.’”

  One question put to Noble by a reporter was if he thought Corvallis was more unsafe now than it had been in the past. Noble answered that he’d been in law enforcement for twenty years, and that there seemed always to be a cycle of these kinds of incidents that ebbed and waned. He thought that Corvallis wasn’t any less safe now than in years past.

  Asking about Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapping—when she had been held for nine months and then was found alive—the reporter wanted to know if Noble thought Brooke was in a similar situation. Noble answered, “It was a different scenario and different circumstances. I know that the likelihood of this being a similar incident isn’t great. But it’s something they (the investigators and Wilberger family) have to hold on to. It’s not outside the realm of possibilities.”

  As December 2004 arrived, the first order of business in the Benton County DA’s Office was a plea deal with Aaron James Evans. Rather than face a trial, Evans agreed to make the plea deal wherein he had to give up his right to remain silent and give up his right to a trial by jury. Instead, he pled to attempted sexual abuse and menacing of OSU student Rachel in that abduction attempt. By making the deal he avoided being sentenced for harassment and the much more serious charge of attempted kidnapping, which would have brought him a long stint in prison.

  Evans had no prior criminal record, and the judge sentenced him to sixty days in jail. And since Evans had already been in jail seventy days prior to trial, he walked out of court a free man. His freedom had many stipulations, however. If he broke any of the rules, he could find himself right back in jail once again. He had to register as a sexual offender, be on probation for several years in the future, attend sex-offender counseling, and take a polygraph test any time the court instructed.

  There were also clauses that were going to be hard to enforce unless someone caught Evans in the act of disobeying them: [Evans was not to] have direct contact or indirect contact with any person under the age of 18 without permission and consent of his supervising officer or the court. Nor frequent places primarily for the enjoyment of persons under the age of 18 or where children were likely to congregate, including but not limited to: playgrounds, arcades, child care agencies, amusement parks, zoos and circuses.

  [He was not to] possess or view images, magazines, motion pictures, video recordings, audio recordings, photographs, computer files or telephonic communication used for the purposes of sexual arousal. [He was not to] enter a business displaying live adult entertainment; strip bars, topless bars or peep shows.

  At the end of a very long list of things he could not do, there was one thing that Aaron Evans had to do—he had to cooperate with law enforcement in the investigation of the disappearance of Brooke Wilberger.

  Even with this relatively light sentence, which basically meant probation and not jail time, Evans still managed to violate the court order. His probation officer soon noted: On December 21, 2004, Evans reported that he had been living with his wife and two minor children since being released from the Benton County jail. Evans was not to have had any close contact with young children, even his own, and he was forced to move out of his house. He did so within days, and after that point he complied with the court instructions. But one more item was added to the list of places he could not be: the offender shall not frequent any places of higher learning. (This obviously stemmed from his assault on Rachel on the OSU campus.)

  From that point on, Evans apparently lived up to the stipulations in the plea agreement and he began to recede from the headlines around Corvallis. He did so just in time for another man to have his name linked as the possible Brooke Wilberger abductor. And once again it would be a Portland television station that brought the man’s name to public awareness.

  Loren Krueger was forty-five years old in 2005, and he’d been in and out of trouble for years. In fact, in 1985, Krueger was convicted of attempted rape in Lincoln County, Oregon, and sentenced to five years’ probation. Less than a year later, Krueger was again arrested—this time for kidnapping, attempted rape, and attempted murder in Benton County. This had occurred on Witham Hill Drive when a young woman returned to her apartment after jogging. During the attempted rape Krueger had pulled a gun on the young woman, struck her with it and with his fists, and savagely beaten her. Then he had tried pulling her into some brush. The woman managed to escape and was in luck. When she ran for help, there was an officer nearby who was checking out a dead raccoon on a nearby road.

  Krueger had not been very secretive in his rape attempt. He’d left his vehicle nearby, with his wallet containing his ID inside it. Police went looking for Krueger and stopped by his parents’ home. They found Krueger asleep in the basement. They also found a loaded handgun, several lengths of rope tied into loops, and rubber gloves. One of the ropes was tied into a noose and another had double loops, which the police report cited as effective as wrist restraints.

  Loren Krueger pled guilty to charges and served eleven years in prison. Once Krueger was out, he was questioned again by police, when a young woman reported a man stalking her. Her description matched Loren Krueger and his vehicle. When he was detained by police, Krueger said that he was out in the area delivering newspapers.

  Then in 2003, he was in trouble with the law again. He went to a neighbor’s house and masturbated in full view of the residence. This was seen by an underage girl in the house. Krueger had also been stalking her for a period of time prior to this incident. Krueger was arrested, but he got a light sentence. He was barely through with that incident when he was arrested again, in Linn County. The arrest was for possession of marijuana, DUI, and improper use of a 911 call. Krueger had been found passed out in his pickup truck while it blocked a person’s driveway.

  And then in 2004, Krueger was in trouble once more. A resident in the small town of Blodgett, Oregon, about eighteen miles from Corvallis, reported to police that she saw a man in a black ski mask lurking in her backyard. The woman’s husband saw the man leaving their area and followed him to the Blodgett Country Store. The man pulled off a ski mask, got into his pickup in the parking lot, and took off. The husband wrote down the license plate number of the pickup truck, and Benton County sheriff’s officers soon tied it to Loren Krueger. He was arrested for attempted criminal trespassing.

  Of course, this latest criminal activity by Krueger occurred all around the time that Brooke Wilberger was kidnapped. And it happened in and around Corvallis. None of this made its way as a possible link to Brooke Wilberger, until February 2005, when Portland television station KGW started looking into Loren Krueger’s background and noted that he had once attempted to rape a young woman in Corvallis. KGW sent a reporter to talk to the Brooke Wilberger Task Force about Krueger, and Lieutenant Noble admitted that Krueger had gone onto the list of “persons of interest” one day after Brooke went missing. Noble said, “He’s been on the radar since May twenty-fifth. He’s a local guy we know about.”

  In one CPD police report, there was the line Krueger is acting out like he did in the 1980’s when he attacked two women. Asked directly by the reporter if Krueger had been eliminated from the list of suspects in Brooke’s case, Noble answered, “He has not. We’re still doing work on the case involving him.”

  For Loren Krueger’s court appearance in Benton County for the Blodgett incident, there was once again a crush of media there to witness the proceedings because of Krueger’s possible links to Brooke. And just as in Sung Koo Kim’s case, Krueger’s lawyer cried foul about all the media attention. Krueger’s court-appointed attorney, John Rich, said, “My client is being intentionally persecuted for his status as a person of interest in the Brooke Wilberger investigation. That’s the reason we have cameras here today.”

  Unlike Kim or Eva
ns, who kept mum about their criminal activities, Krueger later spoke with a television reporter and claimed that he had nothing to do with Brooke’s disappearance. He added that he was fully cooperating with investigators on that matter.

  As time went on, the investigators seemed to agree that Krueger had not abducted Brooke Wilberger. At around the time of her disappearance, Krueger was caught on security videotape at a Corvallis car dealership. And even though he was fairly close to where Brooke had been abducted, he was not at the Oak Park Apartments complex in the time frame in which she disappeared.

  Not that Krueger was out of the woods on other charges in the area. The Lebanon PD identified Krueger as a suspect in a June 2004 incident where a man entered a residence in that town through an open window. The man attempted to rape a fifteen-year-old girl inside the house and in the process he assaulted the girl’s father, who came to her rescue. The suspect escaped at the time, and Krueger’s link to the case only became apparent to police later. And if that wasn’t enough, a girl came forward and told police that when she was fourteen years old, Krueger had sex with her. Now on top of the Lebanon attempted rape case, Krueger was charged with sex abuse and unlawful penetration of a minor in the Linn County case.

  Once again a person who had looked so promising as the abductor of Brooke Wilberger was eliminated as a suspect. Which brought the investigators’ gaze right back to the person on top of the list: Sung Koo Kim. Unlike all the others, Kim could be placed as doing criminal activity right inside the Oak Park Apartments complex. And Kim had a penchant for young female college students about Brooke’s age.

  CHAPTER 10