Happy True Crime Thursday!
For this weeks story I'm going to talk about a case that I recently was reintroduced to.
It took place In my home state of Oregon.
Today we are talking about the case of Brooke Wilberger.
Brooke was born February 20, 1985 in Fresno, California to Greg and Cammy Wilberger. She had 3 sisters and 2 brothers. She graduated from Elmira High School near Eugene, Oregon and was a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She had just completed her freshman year at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah when she came home to visit her family in Oregon. The 19 year old was set to help out her sister and brother-in-law at an apartment they managed in Corvallis.
On May 24, 2004 Brooke was at the complex and was out in the parking lot cleaning the lampposts. When she didn't show up for lunch, her sister began to worry. She found that Brookes car keys and purse were in their apartment and that her car was still in the lot. She also found her flip-flops, but no Brooke. She searched all the apartments she could have been working at and exhausted all possibilities, when they couldn't find her they called police.
Lt. Ron Noble of the Corvallis Police Department received the call and recalled that "Normally, we would wait. Because adults can come and go as they please and we would normally wait to see if she showed up maybe the next day," but they agreed with Brooke's sister, they sensed that Brooke wasn't the kind of young woman to disappear on her own.
They began their search for Brooke. Their first suspect (like in most cases) was her boyfriend Justin Blake. The 2 had been dating since Highschool and marriage was definitely on the horizon for the couple. Police discovered that he was actually in Venezuela doing missionary work.
The city of Corvallis came together and a community-wide search effort was put together very quickly. "The community of Corvallis was wonderful. That first night they had hundreds of people helping search," said Cammy Wilberger. "Our church organized it, but everyone in the community filled in."
By the next day there was still no sign of Brooke. The town started to flood with media which is just what the investigation needed. They had no leads as to what happened to Brooke, they needed her picture out there in the hopes of tips coming in. Sadly, even though there was such a quick response to her disappearance, national media attention and a ton of community support it was years before they would have an answer.
On November 30, 2004 a University of New Mexico foreign exchange student was beaten and raped before escaping. She later identified her attacker as Joel Patrick Courtney. On September 12, 2007 he plead guilty to her attack, he took a plea deal and was sentenced to up to 18 years plus 5 to 25 years on parole. Joel had quite the history of sexual abuse.
One night when his sister was 14 she stated that she awoke to Joel on top of her. He was partly undressed and had his hand around her throat. She hit him on the head with a clock to get him to stop. A cousin of Joel's told investigators that on 4 separate times during her youth Joel had tried to sexually assault her. The incidents happened when she was 12 to 17 years old and Joel was between 14 and 19. At 19 years old Joel was convicted of first- degree abuse and first-degree attempted rape. A female friend was driving him home from a party when Joel started groping her. He punched her in the face and when she stopped the vehicle he tried to force her out of her clothes. She was able to convince Joel that she wanted to go back to the party, and ended up driving him home.
Joel got married in the early 1990's and had 3 children. In April of 2004 they moved from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Portland, OR.
In 2009, the detective working the New Mexico case discovered that Joel had himself an active warrant out of Oregon and had a criminal record. This led him to look into if there were any abductions or rapes reported in the areas he was in. This is when he struck gold. Oregon officials told him about Brookes case. Eventually a search of Joel's work van turned up DNA evidence linked to Brooke. With evidence in hand they went to Joel, to escape the death penalty he plead guilty. He stated he abducted Brooke from the apartment parking lot on the morning of May 24, 2004. He then drove her into the woods outside of town. He returned to town with Brooke bound in his work van, he kept her alive throughout the night before he raped her the next morning. He then bludgeoned her to death when she tried to fight off the rape.
Apart of his plea deal was that he would bring them to Brooke's body. And he did.
Her parent's could finally lay their daughter to rest.
“It might be hard for you to understand, but at this time we just really feel gratitude, even to Mr. Courtney that he could see fit to tell us where he left Brooke. And for our family, what happens to him, we're thankful that justice was served and that he will not have the opportunity for parole," said Willberger's mother, Camille Wilberger.
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