The Last Time We Saw Her

by Robert Scott

  With a large poster of various photos of Brooke behind him, Greg Wilberger related, “It’s been a hard year, as you can probably imagine. We keep hoping each week we might find something. Family beach trips aren’t the same now. Brooke’s absence has a dampening effect on what used to be joyous occasions. You continually miss her and don’t have her and feel like we’re kind of leaving her behind. You have to put your trust in God and move on. We keep hoping eventually it will be resolved.”

  Cammy related, “I take more than an hour each day to read, think, and pray before I walk out the door. Then I’m ready to face the day. We’ve tried hard to move on, but there’s still one piece of life that’s kind of stuck. Brooke was just an ordinary girl in the wrong place. I think people can identify with that. When people see that, they think it could be my child. You never as a parent ever give up. You always have that piece of hope, but you come to a realization that finding her alive is not as much of a percentage as it was in the beginning. We’re still dealing with the unknown, and that’s a piece we want to resolve. Coping mechanisms don’t last forever.”

  Zak Hansen, Brooke’s brother-in-law, said, “Oftentimes you find yourself wandering. You kind of find yourself in this haze. The coverage has been great, but sometimes it’s overwhelming and you try to find a place where you can get away from it. I grew up in this community. It took me awhile to call law enforcement because I couldn’t believe this could happen here. It hit me like a ton of bricks.”

  Brother-in-law Jared Cordon added that Brooke’s abduction made all young women in the area be more aware of their surroundings, and that was a positive thing that had come out of the situation. Cordon said, “Brooke has become an icon. We’ve had a lot of people say, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing for all missing people.’”

  Then Zak Hansen made a plea to Brooke’s abductor. “Bring her back. You’ve had her for a year. It’s time you bring her back to us.”

  A reporter for the Gazette-Times went around the area to gauge how the community had been affected by the girl’s kidnapping at the one-year mark. Steve Isom, who had spent seventy-five hours as a volunteer searcher, said that there wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t think of Brooke. Anne Merten related that her family had postponed a trip to Utah when the news first broke, and she spent many hours at the stake center in Corvallis. Anne recalled, “I was surprised at how emotional it was for me. I felt strangely connected to Brooke. I thought whatever we could do to help was worth it.”

  Loren Cochrun was actually shocked when he realized it was now the one-year anniversary of the abduction. He said, “I still see posters of Brooke and Brooke bracelets everywhere, every day.”

  The reporter then spoke with Megan Zimmerman, who was wearing a Brooke bracelet. Megan related that it was a catalyst in striking up conversations with complete strangers. She said, “A girl disappears, and it’s like our whole town got turned upside down.”

  Kevin Roddie, of Peak Sports, said that his shop had sold more than two thousand Brooke bracelets since May 2004. And a man named Josh remarked that the abduction had been a wake-up call for the region. “There [are] a few people who obviously are doing horrible things. But there are hundreds of people willing to give up what they are doing for someone they’ve never met. That was impressive to me.”

  One of those people was Emily Haymond, who went on several searches. She said, “It could be like the Elizabeth Smart thing or maybe she’s buried somewhere. I feel like she was a friend I lost. It’s something the whole community went through together.”

  In addition to the LDS wards, other churches kept Brooke’s case alive as well. A large yellow sign on the First Presbyterian Church in Corvallis proclaimed: PRAY FOR THE SAFE RETURN OF BROOKE. The church’s senior minister, John Dennis, stated that there were no plans to take the banner down. Reverend Dennis added, “We’ve prayed for her in a fairly consistent way each week. Part is for our respect for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Part is because she is a child of this community.”

  The other big story in Corvallis at the time was that of Sung Koo Kim’s upcoming trial. He may not have been Brooke’s abductor, but he’d had plenty of impact on the community and was looked at by the prosecution as a real and dangerous threat to young women.

  Judge Holcomb, of Benton County, ruled that statements that Kim made to police during the May 13, 2004, search and seizure would be heard by jurors. It was during that interview that Kim told an officer that he considered the collection of women’s underwear to be “a hobby.” Kim said, “I mainly just store them away.” And then he lied and said that he’d bought the undergarments on eBay, as well as from Dumpsters on college campuses.

  During the interview Detective Baltzell told Kim about the declaration of some female students from colleges, that they’d seen him in the dormitories. Kim replied, “You have someone who actually saw me taking something, and I swear I did not. You’re trying to pin something on me that I didn’t take.”

  During the first search and seizure, Newberg PD officer David Brooks had been assigned to keep an eye on Kim, who sat nearby on a couch with handcuffs on his wrists. Kim wanted to see the search-and-seizure papers, and Brooks let him do so, by turning the pages for him. When Kim was done, he told Brooks, “You can’t touch the computers.” Apparently, they weren’t on the list.

  Kim may have wished he’d never spoken up about those computers. A new search warrant had allowed police to seize them, and it was then learned that Kim had thousands and thousands of images of women being tortured and raped. What many in law enforcement originally viewed as only a panty thief fetish turned into something much, much more ominous.

  Des Connall, Kim’s lawyer, sought to suppress a lot of the evidence from the May 13, 2004, search and seizure because of what he termed as “errors” in the warrants. This however was Connall’s last hurrah for Kim. On May 24, 2005, one year to the day after Brooke Wilberger had been abducted, the Corvallis Gazette-Times reported that Connall was withdrawing as Kim’s lawyer. In a document to the judges in four counties, Connall stated, Because of very recent activities which have occurred between Mr. Kim and this law firm, we would move to withdraw representation in that matter in all four counties.

  When it was revealed why Connall and his law office was dropping Kim as a client, the news was dynamite. The Portland Oregonian got wind of the reason, and it was because Kim had just given a letter to Connall asking that Kim’s father sneak a gun to him and help him escape. Kim wrote, You have my rifles. They are better than anything the police have. The plan was that Kim would somehow get a weapon while he was being transferred by two deputies, who were lightly armed. Then he would shoot his way out of the van.

  Kim’s parents or Des Connall must have alerted the authorities and Kim’s violent escape plan was averted. Kim’s mother soon told a reporter, “This proves just how delusional my son is.” Because of this episode Kim’s bail amount was doubled.

  By June 2005, Kim was on another lawyer. This time it was Charles Wiseman, of Hillsboro. Wiseman told the various judges in the four counties that he was nowhere near ready to go to trial. In one statement he wrote, I have about 5,000 pages of documents I haven’t even looked at yet.

  And Kim’s family was fighting back on another front. They obtained a different lawyer, David Park, to represent them and filed a lawsuit in federal court. The Kim family claimed that on May 29, 2004, during the SWAT team “invasion” of their home, they experienced, “shock, fear, anxiety, humiliation, mental and emotional trauma.” They were seeking $11 million in damages against the Newberg Police Department, Oregon State Police, the Tigard Police Department, and Benton County. They specifically named Newberg detectives Eric Ronning, Todd Baltzell, and Mark Cooke, as well as OSP trooper Timothy Gallagher. There were also “thirty-five John Does” who worked for various agencies.

  Despite all the hoopla surrounding Sung Koo Kim, it was something else that happened around that time that had a tremendous impa
ct on Brooke’s case, and this “something” went back to the Reser parking lot on the OSU campus. It had all started clear back on December 1, 2004, when members of the task force started looking once again at the possible link of a green minivan near Brooke’s abduction site on May 24, 2004. At the time the green minivan was just one more possible lead in a mountain of tips that had come in.

  Lieutenant John Keefer, of the CPD, went to the OSU police headquarters and spoke with Lieutenant Phil Zerzan. Zerzan recalled of the events of May 2004, “We (the OSU police force) recognized this abduction would have a significant impact on the campus community. Even though it was off campus, we often responded to that area as well. It was very near the parking lot for Reser Stadium. My involvement was to ensure we provided whatever resources were necessary to the Corvallis Police Department. And to act as a liaison to those aspects of the investigation that involved the campus and campus community.”

  On December 1, 2004, Keefer spoke with Zerzan and said that he wanted his help in locating a few people who had an association with the campus. (He was probably talking about Diane Mason, Jade Bateman, and Bob Clifford.) These people had left tips on the tip line about a man in a green minivan acting strangely on the morning of May 24, 2004. Zerzan took Keefer out to the Reser Stadium parking lot, where a couple of the people who’d called in—Jade Bateman and Bob Clifford—had reported the green minivan at the time.

  As the two officers were standing there, Lieutenant Keefer told Lieutenant Zerzan that his report indicated that the green minivan had come from the northwest corner of the parking lot and traveled in a southeasterly direction. Zerzan recalled, “As we stood there, just kind of looking over the scene, you could see the roof of the Oak Park Apartments. It was a direct line of sight. It was kind of an ‘aha!’ moment for me. This was where the van was, and a short distance away is where the crime occurred.”

  Keefer also had that “aha!” moment. Out of all the thousands and thousands of tips, this one seemed to have some teeth to it. Because of that, both Keefer and Zerzan contacted Bob Clifford, the man who worked as an athletic assistant and had been so worried about Jade Bateman being alone in the parking lot, talking with a man in a green minivan, that Clifford had driven over to investigate what was going on. Now on December 1, 2004, Lieutenant Zerzan noted, “Mr. Clifford remembered a green van in the parking lot. The driver was speaking with a student named Jade there. It had Minnesota license plates. Mr. Clifford had seen the occupant of the van.”

  Later, Jade Bateman filled in the officers all about what had occurred to her on the morning of May 24, 2004, in the Reser Stadium parking lot. And Diane Mason spoke to investigators about her recollections of a man in a green van asking for directions. His actions had made her so uncomfortable that she made up an excuse as to why she had to leave.

  Zerzan noted, “From Diane’s location to Jade’s location to the parking lot of the Oak Park Apartments was a distance of about eight hundred yards.”

  Things on the Brooke Wilberger case were about to take an unexpected and dramatic turn. And it all came about because of excellent police work being done at the Albuquerque Police Department. Already having information about the man who had kidnapped a young woman off the street near the University of New Mexico, APD sent out memos to other police departments around the nation to see if they had experienced similar situations. APD particularly keyed in on Oregon, since it was learned that the man who called himself “Joel” had recently been living in Oregon.

  On getting this information from APD, the Brooke Wilberger Task Force was indeed interested about this guy Joel in relation to Natalie Kirov. They alerted APD that they’d had a similar incident near the Oregon State University campus. APD detectives John Romero and Jinx Jones decided that this Corvallis, Oregon, case sounded an awful lot like their Natalie Kirov case. Joel hadn’t been driving a green minivan in Albuquerque, but he had abducted a petite blond college student just blocks from campus shortly after 6:00 P.M. on November 29, 2004. This wasn’t an abduction in the dead of night or in some isolated location. It had happened on the sidewalk of a city street.

  The New Mexico detectives got in touch with Keefer, who passed the information on to Detective Shawn Houck, of the Corvallis Police Department. Houck had been working on Brooke’s case since day one. Interested in what the New Mexico detectives had to say, Houck phoned Detective Romero back and learned that a white adult male named Joel was in custody for abducting a female college student at knifepoint just blocks from campus. Romero gave Houck all the details and then added that Joel was “willing to take a huge risk by abducting a victim off the street, in plain view, and place her into his vehicle, all in the hope of not being seen. This was done at about six P.M., and even though it was dark outside, there was both vehicular and pedestrian traffic in the area.” Romero said that Joel was so bold in this that Romero suspected he had done this before. And the “before” could have very possibly been with Brooke Wilberger.

  Romero added one more thing—he believed that if Natalie Kirov had not escaped, Joel was going to take her to an isolated area, rape her some more, then kill her when he was tired of her and worried about being caught. Romero saw a lot of similarities between this and what had happened to Brooke Wilberger.

  From the thousands upon thousands of tips and supposed sightings of Brooke since May 24, 2004, it was this “aha!” moment that was the key that was about to unlock the door of who had abducted Brooke more than a year previously. This clue was so viable that the task force released a short statement to the media. They wanted anyone who may have seen a green 1997 Dodge minivan around Brooke’s abduction area on May 24 to contact them.

  Very closemouthed about information concerning Brooke up until this point, the task force was now seeking the public’s help on a very specific matter. The Corvallis Gazette-Times headline for June 1, 2005, was VAN MAY BE CLUE IN DISAPPEARANCE. The article stated that investigators were seeking information about a 1997 green Dodge Caravan in connection with the Brooke Wilberger abduction. And there were three photos of either the van in question or one that looked similar. They were photos of the van front, side, and rear. It was noted that the van had tinted dark windows in the rear passenger area.

  Lieutenant Noble also let it be known that the task force wanted to contact a man named Brian. On the morning of May 24, 2005, this Brian had phoned a 911 dispatch center about a green van speeding away from the area where Brooke had disappeared. In Brian’s words the van had been “speeding and recklessly driven.”

  Noble said now, “There are certain things that we’ve left out on purpose because we need to be able to validate the information. That is not to say that anyone should hesitate to call the task force. Especially if they had seen one around that time being driven erratically, on an old logging road, parked in a farmer’s field or if its driver was acting suspiciously. We assume that whoever took Brooke would be acting in such a manner.”

  The authorities particulary wanted to hear from Brian. Noble released one more bit of information. “There are potentially hundreds of green minivans in the mid-Willamette Valley. But investigators know exactly what they’re looking for.” Then he added that there were some other witnesses besides Brian whom they had already spoken with about the van.

  A short time later, Ron Noble told the media, “At this time we’re not looking for a green van. What we want to do is find out whether the van we know about was in a certain area. We want to know whether or not our guy, with a green van, was possibly related to Brooke. We want to know if anyone saw a green van in the area when Brooke was abducted.”

  Noble said that they did have a person of interest in connection with the van. Noble wouldn’t say what the name was of the person in question. Noble did add that this “person of interest” was not in a position to harm anyone at the present time, which indicated that the person was already in jail somewhere.

  As of June 6, 2005, the task force was still hoping to hear from Brian. In fact, the
y even had America’s Most Wanted television program air a segment about Brooke and put out a request that Brian call the 800 number listed on screen if he watched the program. Several Brians did call in, but it wasn’t the task force’s Brian.

  One thing the America’s Most Wanted program did was cause a flurry of supposed sightings of the green minivan, especially down in Arizona. Noble responded to this by saying that they knew exactly where the van was, and it wasn’t in Arizona. What the task force wanted was information from people who may have seen it in the Corvallis area on May 24, 2004, and not where the van was today.

  Out of view of the public, Brooke’s task force was now connecting the dots between a green 1997 Dodge minivan and a man named Joel who had abducted Natalie Kirov in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A man named Joel who had phoned the Newport court that he wouldn’t make it there for a hearing on May 24, 2004, and a man in a green van in the Oak Park Apartments complex area between ten and eleven that morning. When the lines began coming together between the dots, they pointed toward one man: thirty-nine-year-old Joel Patrick Courtney. The same Joel Courtney who had abducted and raped Natalie Kirov in Albuquerque on November 29, 2004. The same Joel Courtney who was now sitting in jail in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

  CHAPTER 12

  AN ARREST AT LAST

  The whole green van scenario had been a topic of discussion for some time with the task force, and it was the reports of three people connected to it that made it seem so valid. Jade Bateman, independently of Bob Clifford, had phoned in a tip about the van back in May 2004. Eventually CPD detective Karen Stauder interviewed her, and Bateman said that she had been approached by a man driving a “dark green, boxy, older-model minivan.” The man appeared to be in his early thirties with “short, thinning hair and a pointy nose.” She said the driver asked her for directions to the OSU athletic office, and she directed him to Gill Coliseum, at which point the man drove away. A few minutes later she saw the van drive out of the lot with a second person in the passenger seat. (Bateman was almost certainly wrong about this.) She believed the second passenger was also a male.