The Last Time We Saw Her
Page 25
That evening began a conversation amongst my husband and I that started with the half-posed questions, “Do you think …” Pause. “He couldn’t be involved with …” and then finally, “It’s impossible to think it’s possible.”
Those phrases came because as soon as we heard of the details of the case in New Mexico—we couldn’t help but wonder at the similarities related to the disappearance of Brooke Wilberger.
We talked at length. We tried to reconstruct events from several months earlier. We came up with a basic idea of a timeline, and then we went to our family datebook and compared notes.
With dawning realization, we dreaded that there was, perhaps, a chance that Joel was somehow involved in the abduction of beautiful, vivacious, precious Brooke Wilberger.
What do you do when you are faced with the thought that someone whom you love is capable of something so inexplicably evil? Who do you call? We wondered if we were just being paranoid. We wondered if we were not paranoid enough.
After a great deal of time communicating about it, well into the early hours of the morning, we concluded that we would pray, sleep on it, and then if we still felt that there was any chance of Joel’s involvement, we should contact law enforcement.
As it turned out, we didn’t have time. Law enforcement contacted us. Early December 2004 began a working relationship between my mother, now deceased, myself, and the various law enforcement agencies involved with the pursuit of truth and justice for Brooke Wilberger and her loving family.
From the very first inkling of a possible connection, the core of our family has stood with the solid conviction that while we love Joel, we answer to God first and foremost, and would commit to making ourselves available to the pursuit of clarification of facts and events.
This has been a long and difficult season for all concerned. Our hearts continue to weep for the Wilberger family. We weep for Joel’s family—two of whom are young children who have suffered losses that continue to break our hearts. There are countless other family members and friends who have suffered in one way or the other for the Wilberger family, and our own.
Our first prayer from November 30, 2004, was, “Father God, we ask, if Joel is responsible for this that he would tell the truth, and please let Brooke be found.” This is a prayer that has oft been repeated. We’d go so far as to say it daily. When we learned that the truth had been revealed and Brooke’s body had been recovered, I wept. The emotions are so bittersweet, but I am thankful that the Wilberger family can have the resolution that they have so diligently sought.
As a family, we want to express our love and continued support for the Wilberger family. Their unswerving devotion has been an inspiration and encouragement to us. We also wish to thank the various law enforcement agencies that have been involved, the Assistant District Attorney and District Attorney of Benton County. Their commitment to excellence, attention to detail, kind and compassionate interaction with our family has been a blessing.
Lastly, if I could ask anything of you, the media, and those who hear or read these words, to remember that these actions taken by my brother have deeply impacted, and will continue to do so, several extended families. We as a family continue to ask that you respect our privacy and honor our need to mourn and heal.
On October 10, 2009, there was a final memorial service for Brooke Wilberger at the LaSells Stewart Center on the OSU campus. The LaSells Stewart Center was only a few blocks from where Brooke had been abducted on May 24, 2004. The center had also been a command center during the fevered search for her during May and June 2004. Now the entire region was invited to the memorial service to remember what had been lost.
Hundreds of people attended as DA John Haroldson and the Wilberger family were on stage to remember Brooke. A slide show was presented about Brooke growing up. Then there were speeches by Haroldson, Benton County Emergency Services coordinator Peggy Pierson, and the Reverend John Dennis, of Corvallis’s First Presbyterian Church. A community choir sang, and then a solo hymn was sung by LDS member Valerie Steig. She sang “I Am a Child of God.”
Many people who had been volunteers in the months and months of searching for Brooke attended the event. Two of them were Dale and Bonnie Romrell, who were there to remember Brooke and to remember all the people who had given up their ordinary lives to search for the girl whom they came to think of as their daughter.
Cammy Wilberger took the stage. Bathed in a glow of spotlights, she was gracious as she had always been.
Cammy said to the audience, “We loved Brooke. You grew to love her like we did. Now we’ve grown to love you all.”
In some ways things had come full circle. It was near the LaSells Stewart Center where Joel Courtney had tried abducting Diane Mason and Jade Bateman on May 24, 2004. And not far away, he eventually succeeded in abducting Brooke Wilberger. By his rash and thoughtless act, Joel had ended her young life. And in time he also ensured that he would never see the light of day beyond prison walls for the rest of his life.
Even at the age of 18, Joel Courtney was in trouble with the law. In 1985, he pled guilty to first-degree sex abuse in an Oregon case. (Mug shot)
In 1991, Courtney was arrested again on similar charges. (Mug shot)
Brooke Wilberger was a beautiful young woman. She attended Brigham Young University in 2004 and was good at academics and sports. (Yearbook photo)
Brooke grew up in the pastoral Willamette Valley of Central Oregon. (Author photo)
On May 24, 2004, Joel Courtney tried to abduct Diane Mason, a student at Oregon State University, on this corner of 30th Street in Corvallis, Oregon. (Author photo)
When the kidnapping attempt on Diane failed, Courtney spotted another young woman, Jade Bateman, in the parking lot of OSU near the Reser Football Stadium. (Author photo)
On his third abduction attempt on May 24, Courtney spotted Brooke Wilberger, who was on vacation from college, in the parking lot of the Oak Park Apartments complex in Corvallis. (Author photo)
Brooke was cleaning lampposts for her sister and brother-in-law, who managed the Oak Park Apartments complex. (Author photo)
When Courtney blocked Brooke’s escape route near these garbage cans, she had nowhere to run. He may have used a knife to force her into his minivan. (Author photo)
Word soon spread all over the region about the missing girl. Thousands of posters and flyers went up in an ever-widening area around Corvallis. (Missing person police photo)
Hundreds of volunteer searchers scoured the fields and forests around Corvallis for traces of Brooke throughout the summer of 2004. (Author photo)
Volunteers searched creeks, riverbanks, and even underneath covered bridges for Brooke. (Author photo)
Law enforcement checked out hundreds of leads about potential abductors, including Richard Wilson, who had gone on a crime spree in the Northwest that spanned four states, including kidnapping, rape and murder. He was known to have been in the Willamette Valley around the time of Brooke’s kidnapping. (Mug shot)
Aaron Evans became a suspect in Brooke’s case when he harassed a woman in Corvallis and then attempted to abduct an OSU student on September 29, 2004. She sprayed him with Mace and escaped. Evans was soon tracked down and arrested. (Mug shot)
Sung Koo Kim became a “person of interest” in Brooke’s disappearance when law enforcement discovered he had stolen over a thousand women’s undergarments—some of them from OSU and even from the Oak Park Apartments. (Mug shot)
To spread the message about Brooke, her parents, Greg and Cammy Wilberger, handed out flyers at OSU’s popular Da Vinci Days Parade. Many of the people attending the parade were from out of the area. (Author photo)
No concrete leads to Brooke or her abductor surfaced throughout much of 2004. Then, on November 29, 2004, Joel Courtney struck again. This time he kidnapped a woman near the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. (Author photo)
Foreign exchange student Natalie Kirov was walking home from campus when she was abducted at knifep
oint near this corner in Albuquerque. (Author photo)
After being sexually assaulted, Natalie managed to escape and gave a detailed description about her attacker and his vehicle. Her description led Albuquerque police to apprehend Joel Courtney, who now lived in the area. (Mug shot)
Courtney was arrested on multiple charges, including criminal sexual penetration and kidnapping. His court hearings took place at the Second District Court in Albuquerque. (Author photo)
Because of the Albuquerque Police Department’s good work, a link was established to a green van that witnesses had seen in the Corvallis area where Brooke had been kidnapped. Joel Courtney drove a green minivan on May 24, 2004. (Photo courtesy of Albuquerque Police Department}
After Courtney was arrested for Brooke Wilberger’s kidnapping, he became a suspect in the disappearance and murder of other young women and girls in the area, including Leah Freeman, 15, of Coquille, Oregon. (Yearbook photo)
Twenty-two year old Katheryn Eggleston of Portland, Oregon, disappeared under mysterious circumstances on August 2, 1993. Like Brooke and Natalie Kirov, Katheryn was blond, pretty and petite. (Yearbook photo)
Another area girl, Stephanie Condon, went missing from Myrtle Creek, Oregon, in October 1998. Detectives looked very closely at Joel Courtney to see if he had been Stephanie’s abductor. (Yearbook photo)
Farther away than any others was Kristin Smart, who disappeared near a college campus in San Luis Obispo, California. Kristin was also a pretty blonde. (Yearbook photo)
A billboard was put up in the area concerning Kristin’s disappearance. (Author photo)
Joel Courtney was extradited from New Mexico to Oregon in a death penalty case for the kidnapping and murder of Brooke Wilberger, even though her body had not been found. Once again, he changed his looks. (Mug shot)
Benton County Sheriff Diana Simpson spoke at a news conference concerning Joel Courtney’s extradition. (Photo courtesy of Benton County Sheriff’s Office)
Pretrial court hearings for Courtney took place in the ornate Benton County Courthouse in Corvallis. (Author photo)
Benton County District Attorney John Haroldson worked tirelessly to bring Joel Courtney to justice in the Brooke Wilberger case. (Photo courtesy of John Haroldson)
Defense lawyer Steven Gorham took his job seriously and fought hard for Courtney. (Author photo)
In a plea deal to spare his life, Courtney pleaded guilty to the kidnapping and murder of Brooke Wilberger. He then told authorities where her remains could be found. Hundreds of people attended Brooke’s memorial service at this building on the OSU campus. (Author photo)
In September 2009, Brooke Wilberger’s remains were recovered in the Oregon Coast Range near the small community of Blodgett. (Author photo)
Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals connected to this story.
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