The murder of Brooke Wilberger

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In May 2004, 19-year-old Brooke Wilberger suddenly vanished just after she finished her freshman year at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. She was just phasing into summer break & disappeared in the midst of her shift at an apartment complex in Corvallis, Oregon. 

Evidence suggested that Brooke was abducted while she stood cleaning light posts in the busy apartment complex during the mid-morning hours when people would have been milling about. Her case became the center of one of the most publicized missing person cases in Oregon’s history. 

Brooke Carol Wilberger was born on February 20, 1985 in Fresno, California. She was the fifth of six children with three sisters & two brothers & they were raised in a loving household in Eugene, Oregon. Despite the fact that Brooke was a petite, soft spoken girl next door, she was a fierce competitor who possessed both inner strength & kindness & she never shied away from standing up for what was right. As gorgeous as she was on the outside, she was that much more beautiful & exceptional on the inside. She was a compassionate girl who excelled both academically & athletically & during high school, she excelled in basketball, snowboarding & running.

Brooke’s Mormon faith was also a big part of her life as she was a devout member of the Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints. After graduating from Elmira High School in Veneta, Oregon, Brooke decided she wanted to study to become a speech-language pathologist. Since she struggled with speech difficulties in early childhood & had been unable to speak until she was four, she dreamed of one day helping others overcome the same challenges she’d faced. 

While she was a freshman at BYU, Brooke maintained a long-distance relationship with her once childhood friend & now boyfriend since 16-years-old, Justin Blake, who was serving a two-year mission for their church in Venezuela. Marriage was assumed after their life & professional aspirations fell into place as their relationship was built on a strong foundation of faith & years of friendship. 

As Brooke finished her first year at BYU in the spring of 2004, she was looking forward to going back home for summer break to both reconnect with her friends & family & make money for the upcoming school year.  Brooke’s sister, Stephanie, offered her a job at the Oak Park Apartments where she & her husband lived & managed the complex. 

The complex was in Corvallis, Oregon, 38 miles north of Veneta, on the campus of Oregon State University. 

Since the drive from her parents home in Veneta to Corvallis was about 50 minutes, Brooke planned to stay a few nights a week with Stephanie while she worked her shifts.

On Monday, May 24, 2004, the college town of Corvallis was just starting to quiet down as students filtered home to their respective towns for summer break. Brooke left her parent’s house in Veneta that morning as her sister Jessica was getting ready for 7th grade. Jessica recalls the last time she ever saw her big sister when  Brooke was rushing to get out the door for work. She left, but only about five minutes later, she rushed back inside & yelled up to her sister that she loved her. 

After Brooke made her way to the Oak Park Apartment complex, she started her tasks & planned to have lunch with Stephanie & her kids at their apartment in the complex. 

When Stephanie glanced out the window at about 10 am, she saw her sister filling a bucket with water so she could clean the exterior light fixtures around the complex. Brooke looked content & focused as she gathered the supplies she would need. She wore a BYU soccer t-shirt, an indigo sweatshirt, jeans & flip flops.

Meanwhile, Stephanie was getting lunch prepared for herself, her children & her sister when she noticed that it was 1 pm & Brooke was late for their planned meal. Being a very responsible person, this was very much out of character, but Stephanie only assumed that she likely got immersed with her tasks & lost track of the time. As she walked out the door with her kids in tow, Stephanie wasn’t worried & actually joked out loud to her kids that the search party was heading out to find Brooke. As they walked around the large complex that had over 100 units, there was no sign of Brooke. 

What Stephanie did find made chills run down her spine; the bucket of soapy water she had seen Brooke filling a few hours earlier sat abandoned near a lightpost with her other supplies. More concerning, her sister’s flip flops were lying nearby with one of the plastic straps broken at the part that goes between the toes & covered in mud as if she’d been ripped out of them. 

Before contacting investigators, Stephanie called her husband & they continued to search the apartment complex high & low hoping they would find Brooke & there would be an innocent explanation as to where she’d been. When they came across her purse, wallet & cell phone inside her locked car, they immediately knew that something was terribly wrong & contacted investigators to report her sister missing at 3:07 pm.

Based on the evidence they were faced with, investigators immediately believed they were dealing with an abduction. The evidence painted a picture of Brooke being suddenly dragged away, out of her shoes as she cleaned the light fixture. 

Brooke’s search became one of Oregon’s most intensive missing person investigations. Because the evidence within the complex was indicative of an abduction, paired with the fact that Brooke was an incredibly reliable person, officials immediately launched a massive search operation.

The Corvallis PD, Benton County Sheriff’s Office, Oregon State Police & the FBI joined forces in a case that would eventually span multiple states & involve hundreds of law enforcement agents. 

Investigators began by canvassing the area of & around the Oak Park Apartments. They went door-to-door to interview residents & spoke with each employee within the complex. Searches were expanded to nearby businesses, dorms within Oregon State University & surrounding neighborhoods. Thousands of volunteers came forward to join search parties while fliers were distributed & rural areas within the Willamette Valley were combed through. 

One witness reported hearing a bloodcurdling scream sometime around 10:30 am, but beyond the bucket, cleaning supplies & abandoned flip flops, there were no other sightings of an actual abduction & there were little clues as to Brooke’s whereabouts. 

Police also received several reports of a suspicious green vehicle that was seen around the area in the timeframe of Brooke’s abduction. 

With these reports, police asked the public for any information in regards to a 1997 green Dodge Caravan. One employee at OSU, Bob Clifford, reported seeing a green van with Minnesota license plates in the parking lot of Reser Stadium in the morning. He saw the driver speaking with a female student. The student later reported her encounter to a fellow employee in the athletics department who then reported it to police. 

Another report came from a student who heard about Brooke’s disappearance & reported a man driving a green van who pulled in front of her & asked her for directions. After the man got out of the van & opened the rear door, she walked away.

There was also a 911 call placed at 11 am on the day that Brooke vanished from a man named Brian who reported seeing a minivan driving recklessly south of Corvallis. Unfortunately, the call was disconnected before police managed to get more information from this caller.

These accounts made investigators believe that there was a predator who appeared to be actively hunting for a victim on OSU’s campus & the surrounding areas.

Investigators couldn’t help but reflect that it was incidentally almost exactly thirty years earlier when Ted Bundy had been prowling around Corvallis & the OSU campus. On May 6, 1974 he abducted 20-year-old Roberta “Kathy” Parks from campus at 11 pm after she left her dorm to get some ice cream or coffee, depending on the source, only 350 yards away. She became the 4th known victim of Bundy. He claimed to have raped & killed her at Taylor Mountain, five hours north of the OSU campus where her remains were found nearly a year later on March 3, 1975.  

Several weeks into the investigation, police were alerted to a man who lived with his parents about 80 miles from Corvallis. 30-year-old Sung Koo Kim was a reclusive man who had been arrested for stealing thousands of pairs of women’s underwear from college dorms throughout the region, including OSU. When police searched his home, not only did they find an incredibly large collection of stolen undergarments, but they also found disturbing materials on his computer that depicted rape, torture & mutilation. 

It seemed that Kim could be the person responsible for Brooke’s abduction since he had been active at OSU around the time she was taken. However, as his electronic data was carefully analyzed & paired with store receipts, Kim was ruled out as a suspect on February 7, 2005. His alibi was solid since he had been home with his father, making local purchases in the timeframe in question. He did end up serving seven years in prison for various charges, including burglary. His parents filed a lawsuit against law enforcement claiming that the way officers stormed into their home was excessive & scary; they were settled for just over $300,000.

Weeks turned into months & as people began returning to their normal routines, the initial surge of volunteer activity began to dwindle & there was still no sign of Brooke. Media attention was still present, but began to focus on other, more current stories & cases. For Brooke’s loved ones, each passing day only decreased the odds of finding her alive, but they understandably refused to give up hope. 

It wasn’t until six months after Brooke’s abduction & nearly 1400 miles away when police in Albuquerque, New Mexico received a 911 call on November 30, 2004. A 22-year-old Russian exchange student from the University of New Mexico had just escaped from a horrific kidnapping & sexual assault. 

A woman named Dara Finks & her three daughters were driving their SUV when they saw a naked woman running across the street to a nearby restaurant. Dara drove to the restaurant & saw the woman desperately trying to get help inside. When no one came to her aid, Dara allowed the terrified & trembling woman into her car & locked the doors. The young woman saw her attacker in a red compact car sitting at a nearby light so they immediately called 911 to describe both the man & the car.

The victim described him as a tall, caucasian man with a shaved head, a beard & broad shoulders. He came upon her & grabbed her from behind, held a knife to her throat & forced her into his car. He bound her with her own shoelaces & raped her, but thankfully when he pulled into an apartment complex & left the car to go inside one of the apartments, she managed to break free & run for help. He drove a distinctive red two-door car with a red floral interior & a stuffed toy that was hanging near the window. 

Thanks to the victim’s detailed description, within hours of the attack the Albuquerque police arrested a 38-year-old married father of three who was a convicted sex offender, Joel Patrick Courtney. When he was apprehended he had a crack pipe & a knife. Because the man had been bold enough to grab a woman off the street in broad daylight, they theorized that he could be involved in other crimes.

Investigators began looking into Courtney’s background & learned that six months earlier, Courtney’s wife filed a restraining order against him alleging he had choked her. He also had a DUI arrest in Lincoln County, Oregon in 2004 & when he failed to show up in court on May 24, 2004, the very day that Brooke Wilberger was abducted, a warrant was issued for his arrest. 

When the detective contacted the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office & spoke with a detective about the DUI case, he discussed the details of the abduction & sexual assault in New Mexico. The detective immediately noticed that the circumstances sounded eerily similar to what they theorized happened to Brooke & not only that, the victim from New Mexico looked strikingly similar in appearance to Brooke & both victims were college students who were abducted in broad daylight.

Investigators learned that Courtney, his wife & children were in the Portland suburbs in May 2004 which placed him in the area at the time of Brooke’s abduction as Portland is an hour & a half drive northeast of Corvallis. He left Portland on the morning of May 24, 2004 for Newport, but he never showed up. Not only was he driving a green 1997 Dodge Caravan, but review of his electronic data proved that he had been in Corvallis that morning. 

In June 2004, Courtney had driven the green van from Portland to New Mexico, but the janitorial service he worked for reclaimed it. The county purchased the van so investigators were free to search it. In December 2004, state police criminalists & FBI experts dismantled the van & sent numerous items to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia to be examined. They recovered trace evidence of body fluids containing DNA from both Brooke & Courtney. The results came back exactly one year after she went missing. They also found her blond hair wrapped around a hair tie that was found in one of his bags. 

While Courtney was incarcerated in New Mexico facing serious charges for the kidnapping & rape of the Albequerqie victim, Oregon prosecutors were busy building a murder case despite the fact that they had yet to locate Brooke’s remains. 

The Benton County grand jury in Oregon heard testimony from 13 witnesses, including Brooke’s family & investigators, as well as reports from three experts which included two FBI crime lab analysts as well as a physician. The grand jury returned a 19-count indictment that accused a then 39-year-old Joel Courtney of 14 counts of aggravated murder.

Under Oregon law, the aggravated murder charges carried the possibility of the death penalty, but before the case could proceed, Courtney had to first face justice in New Mexico for his attack on the exchange student & in September 2007, he accepted a plea agreement which resulted in an 18-year prison sentence. 

Courtney was then extradited to Benton County, Oregon on April 8, 2008. He was scheduled to appear at the Benton County Courthouse the following day, nearly four years after Brooke vanished. Benton County DA John Haroldson was seeking the death penalty in the case that had garnered national attention. Without Brooke’s body, the prosecution was relying heavily on forensic evidence, witness testimony & Courtney’s own admissions. 

While he was incarcerated in the Oregon prison system, awaiting his trial that was set for early 2010, Coutney had been experiencing major issues with other inmates who were regularly beating him after learning about his crimes against young women. Because his mental health began to deteriorate & he wasn’t able to obtain the anxiety medication he claimed he needed, his resistance began to wear down. 

Prosecutors decided to offer Coutney a deal in exchange for information that could lead to Brooke’s remains which would spare him the death penalty & allow the Wilberger family an opportunity to lay their daughter to rest after not knowing where she was for nearly six years.

As part of the plea deal, Courtney pleaded guilty to Brooke’s murder which meant he would face life in prison without the possibility of parole. On September 21, 2009, 42-year-old Joel Courtney agreed to reveal where her remains could be found. 

Investigators came to learn that on Monday, May 24, 2004, the 38-year-old drifter drove out to Corvallis that day in his 1997 green Dodge Caravan for the sole purpose of hunting for his next victim. Before he abducted Brooke, he attempted to abduct two OSU students who both managed to get away. When he noticed Brooke working outside alone in the complex, he realized that not only was she isolated, but she was also focused on her task of cleaning the outdoor light fixtures. Courtney finally confessed that he approached under the guise of being a delivery driver. He held a FedEx envelope in his hand in order to lure her close to his van. Once she was within reach, he pulled a knife & forced Brooke into his van. 

He drove her to the woods outside of town, bound the 19-year-old with duct tape & raped her in the van. He then drove to a remote forested area in the Oregon Coast Range. Through her first night of abduction, the terrified teen was kept alive. He indicated that he wanted a compliant victim, but instead, Brooke fought back with a determination that enraged Courtney. On Tuesday morning, May 25, 2004, after he raped her, he bludgeoned the innocent girl to death & concealed her remains under a fallen tree on private property in a location that was so remote, he assumed she would never be found. 

On the same day as his confession, September 21, 2009, investigators were able to recover Brooke’s body, which was identified through dental records as well as the distinctive silver watch her mother had given her for Christmas. Her remains were on an abandoned logging road between Blodgett & Wren in the Oregon Coast Range. Brooke’s mother, Cammy Wilberger, spoke in a conference & said that after five years of not knowing where her daughter was, We just want to strengthen our family & go on with our life.

Investigators learned that Courtney was an incredibly violent man who had gone to prison in the Oregon Department of Corrections for nine years in 1985 when he was only 19-years-old for a sex abuse case in Washington County near a suburban area of Portland where he grew up. According to his sister, he had a genius level IQ, but he began using drugs as young as 11-years-old & by age 15, he developed an interest in Satanism. He had been in & out of juvenile hall for various offenses, incuding sexual assault & he even tried to rape his own sister. 

According to his sister, he would sneak into her room during the middle of the night & put a hand around her neck while he tried to sexually assault her. 

He spent much of his adult life moving around between Alaska, Florida & New Mexico, working as a fisherman, janitor & mechanic. When he turned 23 he met his wife, had children & settled in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, a suburb of Albuquerque. Things seemed to calm down in his life, but after a few years, he began to drink heavily & regularly smoke crack cocaine.

After he was arrested on a drunk driving charge in January 2004, he was due to appear in court on May 24, 2004, the same day that Brooke was abducted, but he never showed up. Court records indicate that he contacted the Lincoln County Court to say that he was in Corvallis & on his way to Newport that day, a drive that would have taken an hour, but he never made his appointment. 

Courtney was sent to New Mexico to serve his 18 year sentence for kidnapping & rape & he would possibly be returned to Oregon to serve his life sentence which would happen right around 2025. However, some sources indicate he may serve the entirety of his life sentence in New Mexico. 

Because Brooke’s favorite color was pink, her memorial service was saturated in the color from balloons to the outfits that her loved ones wore. 

Her high school friend had the idea of establishing The Brooke Wilberger Scholarship Fund as a way to honor & keep her memory alive. Brooke was a young woman whose life was cut far too short in such a horrifically violent way at the hands of a monster who viewed women as something to take, use & discard to satisfy his sick sexual desires. Joel Courtney stole her dreams of becoming a speech pathologist who could help others as she’d been helped when she was a child. She was never given the opportunity to get married or have a family.

Brooke Wilberger is not remembered as a victim, but rather, she is celebrated as a young woman who lived her 19 years with purpose & courage. Her story is a reminder that despite the evil that might be lurking in broad daylight, the human capacity for hope, love & resilience is stronger than the darkness that lives inside of some. Her community came together & thousands of volunteers worked tirelessly to find Brooke & as the years continued to go by, no one gave up hope for answers.

References:

1. ABC News: Brooke Wilberger Found: Killer gives location of remains to avoid death penalty
2. BYU News: BYU freshman missing since May 24, 2004
3. The World: Memorial scholarship for Brooke Wilberger
4. Medium: Vanished in broad daylight: The heartbreaking murder of Brooke Wilberger that shook Oregon
5. ABC News: Arrest made in Brooke Wilberger case
6. CBS News: Slain BYU student Brooke Wilberger’s body found
7. Find a Grave: Brooke Carol Wilberger
8. Oxygen True Crime: Was Brooke Wilberger abducted?
9. Oxygen True Crime: A college student mysteriously disappeared mid-shift from her summer job. It would take years to find her killer
10. YouTube: Truly Criminal: The abduction & murder of Brooke Wilberger
11. ABC News: Timeline of many of Ted Bundy’s brutal crimes
12. KGW: Green van led to Wilberger murderer
13. Fandom: Kathy Parks