The Last Time We Saw Her

by Robert Scott

  PSYCHIC VISIONS

  Because Kim was being “painted with the brush” of being the possible abductor of Brooke Wilberger, especially in the eyes of the media, Kim’s defense team demanded that all Wilberger police documents be handed over to them. And by now, Kim had a new defense team, which included Des Connall, Shannon Connall, and Laura Graser, of Portland. Like the other attorneys before them, they argued that the bail for Kim, which amounted to $15 million in four counties, was driven by the fact that he was perceived to be Brooke’s kidnapper—even though he had never been charged with that crime. And because that was the case, they argued that they should be able to see the Wilberger investigative data so they could defend Kim against the allegation.

  Sung Koo Kim’s sister, Jung, also asked Judge Holcomb in Benton County to lower Sung’s bail. During a break in the court proceedings one day, Jung spoke with a reporter. She asked why her brother was being “victimized” when video games and rap music often had themes of violence against women.

  Jung said, “I’m really upset because not everybody who does this (views violent video games and rap music) commits a crime. And some people who don’t do this, do commit a crime.” Jung then described her brother as a “gentle, peaceful person.”

  Benton County DA Scott Heiser disagreed and said, “While we are confident the defendant would very much like to see what his exposure is in the Wilberger case, he has not been charged in that case, and he simply is not entitled to inspect or copy any records related to the Wilberger investigation.” And on the issue of reducing bail, Heiser commented, “The defendant’s threat of sexual victimization to the women he is hunting is well evidenced. There should be no bail reduction.”

  DDA John Haroldson, who was trying the actual case against Kim, went one step further. He asked Judge Holcomb to strike any references made earlier that may have connected Kim to Brooke Wilberger. Haroldson wasn’t saying that Kim was no longer a suspect in Brooke’s case—what he was saying was that nothing concerning Brooke should be in the present set of charges against Kim. That way, Kim’s defense lawyers would have no right to look at any police documents connected to Brooke. The last thing anyone wanted in the DA’s office or law enforcement was for details on their investigation to start leaking into the press.

  Judge Holcomb eventually agreed with the prosecution on both counts. There would be no evidence on Brooke’s case handed over to Kim’s defense team, and bail was not going to be reduced.

  On this last issue the defense was far from giving up. In fact, they had Kim’s mother, Dong Kim, write a lengthy letter to the judges in all the counties where Sung Kim had charges against him. Perhaps the defense knew this would become a public document in court files, and it might make its way into the media, where the perception of Sung Kim as a “monster” might be altered for the better.

  Dong started out by saying the Kim family had moved to the Portland region when Sung Koo Kim was four years old. He had gone to school in the area, and always done well there, even winning several awards. He had never been disruptive in class and didn’t drink alcohol or use illegal drugs. Sung and his family regularly attended services and meetings at the Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall, and Sung often volunteered to help people in need.

  After high school Sung went to Portland Community College, where he got an A.A. degree in electronics and computer engineering in 1994. Later he went to Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, where he continued his studies. After that, he attended Washington State University and obtained his B.A. in 2001. During the years prior to 2001, he also worked as a computer technician in Olympia, Washington, where he supervised a team of twelve employees. It was after Washington State University that Kim decided his real interest lay in cancer research. He quit his job in Olympia, and was living in Tigard, Oregon, with his parents and was self-employed in stock trading, when arrested.

  As for the SWAT team arrest on May 29, 2004, Dong related, It was extremely traumatic. She wrote that the front door had been blown open with an explosive device and an assault team rushed into the house at 3:00 A.M. A flash-bang device was thrown into her daughter’s room, according to Dong, which terrified Jung. Her husband was struck with a rubber bullet, causing a major abrasion. She noted, A member of the assault team said that my husband was one inch away from getting killed.

  Dong stated that the entire family had been handcuffed with plastic ties, and the handcuffs on her daughter were so tight that later they had to be removed by a knife blade rather than the usual use of scissors. Even now, Dong related, her daughter was so traumatized that she no longer worked, and she didn’t have enough money for therapy.

  In fact, several Korean-American leaders from the region went to meet with Multnomah County DA Mike Schrunk on February 3, 2005. They voiced their concerns about the way Sung Koo Kim was being treated and about the whole issue in general. They even pointed out correspondence they had come across from DA Brad Berry, of Washington County, to DA Mike Schrunk. In the note Berry had stated, Kim may never be fully tied to the Wilberger abduction, but all of those involved agree that we need to do all we can to get as many burglaries on him as possible to get him off the streets. I’m happy to discuss this on the phone to let you know facts sufficient to make you comfortable that this isn’t just a panty fetish, but much more.

  The Korean community pointed out that this was not the way American justice was supposed to operate. They said it was unfair to keep piling on charges until a bail amount was so high, no one could ever pay that amount to get out of jail before trial. To them it was imprisonment without due process.

  Whether the meeting by the Korean leaders had its desired effect could be ascertained by what happened next. Within a few days Ron Noble held a press conference and stated, “We’ve exhausted all our leads involving Sung Koo Kim in the abduction of Brooke Wilberger. It appears right now that Mr. Kim, although he has some pretty strange behaviors and is alleged to have done some outlandish things, there’s nothing we can find that we can connect him with the disappearance of Brooke.”

  With that information in mind Multnomah County reduced their bail amount from $10 million to $800,000, and Washington County reduced their bail amount from around $1 million to $480,000. Yamhill County reduced their bail down to $2.4 million from its previous higher total.

  Judge Collins in that county added that if Kim somehow was able to make bail, he would have to wear an electronic device at all times, and a security camera would be placed across the street from his residence in Tigard. Collins added, “There are strong public and victim safety issues and risk of flight factors that require the court to take these precautions.”

  After such a long period of time with Sung Koo Kim seeming to be the top candidate on the abduction of Brooke Wilberger, everything went back to square one in the investigation. There were no new viable clues as to her whereabouts and no new individuals who rose to the status of “person of interest.” In fact, that list was now down to three, which included Aaron Evans, Loren Krueger, and one more individual whom authorities would not name. In fact, in regard to that matter, Lieutenant Noble said that they would not give out any names of people who had been on the list, unless those names somehow showed up in the media from the media’s own investigation. Noble declared, “We need to be as responsible as we can be. We don’t want to cause problems for innocent people by dragging their names in as suspects.”

  Noble added that the CPD, BCSO, OSP, and FBI still looked at the case on a weekly basis, and that it was not a cold case. He said, “We’re looking for that one piece of information that will bring a solution to the case. More than likely what we’re going to get is someone who may not realize that what they saw is of interest.” Noble was going to be a lot more correct in this assessment than he may have realized at the time.

  It was not only law enforcement investigators who were still searching for clues about Brooke; Benton County search-and-rescue teams were as well. They continued to act on new tips by doi
ng “spot searches” in isolated areas. Benton County Emergency Services manager Mike Bamberger said they had done hundreds of such searches since May 24, 2004, and planned to do more as the tips came in.

  Three days a week there was one more person in the county doing “spot searches”—Benton County Parole and Probation officer Kristina Bailey. She put on her hiking boots and headed out into overgrown areas where transient sex offenders had registered as their addresses. These locations were under bridges and in forested areas. Bailey told a reporter, “I’m confirming they’re staying where they say they are staying.”

  Homeless sex offenders in Benton County had to go to the Benton County Parole and Probation Office every day and fill out a form of where they spent the previous night and where they planned to spend the coming night. Bailey would make unannounced trips to these locations to make sure the offenders were complying with their statements. Three of the individuals she checked on were listed as “predatory sex offenders.” They got the designation because they had offended with children under twelve years of age and had been arrested and convicted.

  DA Scott Heiser told the same reporter, “It takes a tremendous amount of oversight to ensure these people don’t offend again.” Then speaking about the county’s sex offenders in general, and Brooke Wilberger in particular, Heiser said, “It would have been a godsend to have had ankle bracelets on every sex offender to know exactly where they were on May 24, 2004, and be able to interview them.” The offenders had not had that technology placed on them on May 24. In some cases the investigators literally had beaten the bushes, tracking them down.

  Even now, some volunteers still signed up to go out with an official search-and-rescue leader in the new year. On February 11, 2005, one group was heading for Linn County to check on a tip given by a person who lived near the town of Tangent. Another group was headed up to isolated logging roads near Marys Peak. These were old tips that never had been checked out because of the huge backlog of tips that had come in since May 24, 2004. The tip from the Marys Peak area concerned a man who had been up there in early June 2004. He had smelled something decaying and his dog had been particularly interested in that spot. The man didn’t dig around to find out what was there. Bamberger noted of this site, “It was a remote area, where somebody can park in seclusion. It is a site common to abductor profiles.”

  Just how complex and thorough these searches could be was highlighted by the process that day as three searchers rappeled down into a steep ravine, which was used by poachers to get rid of deer carcasses and others to dump unwanted mattresses, carpet, and refuse. In the ravine the searchers found an old elk carcass and animal bones. Bamberger had advised them, “If you find something squishy, don’t touch it. Use your poles to check it out.” It was both physically and emotionally tiring work. The something “squishy” might turn out to be Brooke’s remains, and that constantly weighed upon their nerves.

  Meanwhile, four others hiked up the gravel logging road, searching the ditches on each side of the road. Anyplace that was overgrown with bushes and brambles was looked over more thoroughly. It could also be dangerous work. More than once, search crews had stumbled upon illegal marijuana-growing locations and meth labs. A searcher never knew if they were suddenly going to come upon a person with a gun protecting their illegal activities.

  As for the searchers themselves, they were driven by many different reasons. Volunteer Christina Lodge worked for the Corvallis Chamber of Commerce. She told a reporter, “It was frustrating sitting back when everybody else was doing the work. I just wanted to get out and do my part.”

  Dan Kearl, who worked for Hewlett-Packard, said, “The people I’ve worked with on searches, they’ve probably created the strongest sense of community I’ve ever seen.”

  On February 28, 2005, there was a new wrinkle to developments as the Wilberger family and investigators asked anyone who had a FreshJive sweatshirt to bring it to authorities. The reason was, Zak Hansen knew that Brooke had been wearing an indigo-blue FreshJive sweatshirt when last seen polishing lampposts in the Oak Park Apartments complex. Captain Jon Sassaman said that a FreshJive sweatshirt was needed, just in case they found something in the future and a comparison needed to be made. Sassaman added, “It’s just another tool that sooner or later we may need.”

  Law enforcement, professional search-and-rescue crews, and volunteers were obviously still working on Brooke’s case. And so were psychics around the country. Many detectives hate working with psychics because they deem it to be wasted time and resources when time is of the essence. Law enforcement on Brooke’s case, however, took in tips wherever they could find them—psychics included. Many of the psychic predictions were way off base; but as things would turn out, one, in particular, was a lot more accurate than anyone knew at the time.

  Bonnie Wells, of Ohio, ran an Internet site, and part of it was dedicated to Brooke. What was interesting was a set of circumstances that occurred in February 2004, three months before Brooke’s abduction. A person whom Bonnie had never met e-mailed her on February 14, 2004, Valentine’s Day, because she awoke that morning to find a small silver ring lying in her bedroom. She had no idea who owned the ring or why it was there, but this person had worked with police before on several missing person cases. She wondered if it was some sort of sign.

  The woman contacted Bonnie and asked about the strange occurrence. Bonnie replied that her feeling was that it concerned the abduction, rape, and murder of a young woman, but it had not occurred yet. For some reason the number 3 was going to be very prominent. Three months later, Brooke Wilberger disappeared. Despite all the disappearances and abductions of other young women in the United States between February and May 2004, Bonnie e-mailed the woman and told her, “This is it.” As facts came out on the case, it was learned that Brooke had been wearing a silver ring, with the letters CTR, when she disappeared.

  Since Bonnie knew virtually nothing about Central Oregon, she looked on a map of the area around Corvallis. For some reason her thoughts were pulled to the northwest of Corvallis in relation to Brooke. Even though the abductor could have taken Brooke in any number of directions, Bonnie felt that the man who took her already had a hidden campsite picked out before he grabbed the young woman. That campsite, in Bonnie’s mind, was west of Corvallis.

  A woman named Shawna, who lived in Oregon, read Bonnie’s postings on the Internet and e-mailed her. Shawna had recently had her own vision that Brooke was being kept in a small building with lettering on the side of it. Shawna didn’t know where or what type of building this was. On February 15, 2005, Bonnie told Shawna to drive out on Route 20, past the town of Philomath, on to Flynn and then to the small town of Noon. Something out there would catch Shawna’s eye.

  Shawna did as instructed and was absolutely flabbergasted by what she spied. Not far outside the town of Noon, Shawna spied a shed in a plowed field. Spray-painted on the side of the shed were the letters CTR. It already had been reported that Brooke’s silver ring contained these letters. Not only that, the shed resembled the type of building that Shawna had seen in her vision.

  Shawna was so astounded by this revelation that she told a local police officer about CTR being painted on the shed and that it should be checked out. The officer replied that it was private property and they couldn’t just break in there on a whim. And besides, he added, “‘CTR’ is a common phrase in the Mormon religion, meaning ‘Choose the Right.’” In other words, choose the right thing to do. It was akin to the letters WWJD in other Christian denominations—“What Would Jesus Do.”

  Shawna, who was a Mormon, said that in all her life she had never seen the letters CTR painted on any buildings, fences, or rocks. Nonetheless, the officer did not check out the shed.

  When Shawna related all of this to Bonnie, Bonnie told her to go back to the area, which Shawna did a week later. She was stunned to see that someone had painted over the CTR lettering so that it could no longer be read. Just why someone would do that in the middle
of February, an unlikely time to be painting, was anyone’s guess.

  In the end the shed was not checked out. Whether it had anything to do with Brooke’s abduction may never be known.

  But what was true was that Bonnie, living so many miles across country in Ohio, and no firsthand knowledge of Oregon, was going to be a lot closer in her estimate to where Brooke was than law enforcement could have imagined at the time.

  CHAPTER 11

  AN “AHA!” MOMENT

  The big news in May 2005 was the one-year anniversary of Brooke’s abduction. The Wilberger family held a press conference at the Hilton Garden Inn in Corvallis, which, of course, had played a prominent role during the first days of the search for Brooke. Now, at the conference, a dozen television stations had their camera crews in attendance, along with many print journalists as well.

  Lieutenant Ron Noble started things off by telling the media that there had been numerous requests to the Wilberger family for interviews on the one-year anniversary, and they wanted to address everyone at one meeting. Then Noble added, “Are we any closer to solving the case today than we were on May 24, 2004? Only by the standpoint that we know what hasn’t happened.” Noble stated that by now they were sure that Brooke had not been abducted by a family member, her boyfriend, or anyone who knew her. Noble typified this case as a “stranger abduction.”

  Noble related that more than five thousand tips had come in since May 24, 2004, the previous year, and 250 of those had been about vehicles. Investigators in multiple agencies had spent thousands of hours sifting through the tips, and volunteer search teams had covered four thousand acres. Foster Lake had been searched by scuba divers using high-tech equipment, and even a satellite had been used to take photos from space. From all of this, Noble said, the areas that could be scratched off the list helped in the overall scheme. Then he declared, “Even though leads have dwindled, we’re not done yet. Not a day goes by that some work doesn’t get done on this case.”