do we find her and recover her? the family simply needed to know. remember, thousands of searchers had covered dozens of square miles in every direction from oregon s coastal range of mountains to its rocky coast without any success. joel courtney had not said a word to police or prosecutors since asking for a lawyer years before. the man who had studied law books in jail had to know that despite dna evidence linking him to brooke s rape and murder, without a body, the prosecution s case would be much harder to prove. so if courtney knew where to find brooke, he was keeping the secret to himself. d.a. john haroldson. you can t appeal to this man to just do the right thing, can you? i never saw that as an incentive for him. i felt that the incentives were probably going to be more based
scientists were working feverishly, examining every inch of that green minivan joel once drove, hunting for dna evidence. on the day marking the first anniversary of brooke s abduction, her family and police dutifully held a news conference. privately, the family had held the secret for months that police had a strong suspect and that brooke was likely no longer alive. yet, in public, they held fast. you still have that hope, though. you don t give that up. one year after brooke wilberger disappeared, her tattered picture is still posted on street signs in corvallis. but as local stations played the story of a grim anniversary, some real news was about to break. we were heading back to eugene and we got a call and they said, how far out of town are you? and we said well, not too far. they said, could you come back? unbelievably, that very day, on the one-year anniversary of brooke s disappearance, fbi special agent supervisory joe boyer received a long-awaited
and oregon. and a detective noticed that nearly a year before, in january 2004, in coastal lincoln county, oregon, courtney had been pulled over by a state trooper and charged with driving under the influence. but courtney had failed to appear in court, so a warrant had been issued for his arrest. and that s when an albuquerque detective did something he didn t have to do. he decided to dig deeper. picked up the phone and made a call to oregon. that would lead to a long-awaited break in the case of brooke wilberger. he calls up lincoln county sheriff s department and gets a detective. what do you know about this case? this is what he did in new mexico and he s relaying the circumstances. and the lincoln county detective, having heard about brooke s case because everyone here has heard about brooke s case. heard about it says to
and when shown her photo, denied ever knowing brooke. but when confronted by his own mother, courtney came perilously close to a confession. she actually asked him, point blank, joel, did you do this? and he said, it s not really what it seems like and i ll never be held accountable for this. he said that to your mother? uh-huh. they ll never hold me accountable for this? uh-huh. why did he say that? because i don t think he feels the need to be held accountable for the things that he does. power? yeah, power, and doesn t have to play by the same rules that other people have to. the rules. to investigators, it did seem like joel courtney thought he was playing a game. the inmate whose sister said he had above-average intelligence knew that without physical evidence or brooke s body, it would be nearly impossible for investigators to charge him with murder. by the spring of 2005, fbi
investigators less than a week after brooke vanished. kim was a reclusive 30-year-old with a degree in genetics and biology who still lived with his parents in this home 80 miles from corvallis in a suburb of portland. he spent much of his time online trading stocks. just weeks before, a search of kim s home turned up thousands of pairs of women s underwear, stolen from college dorms throughout the area. burglary charges had been filed and he would soon be charged with stealing underwear from a dorm at oregon state university, just blocks from where brooke was abducted. police had an investigative theory based on their experience in other cases. when you start making steps to entering other buildings and dormitories and going and stealing other people s property, being underwear, that s a progression. meaning what? that he could then do something violent? there s going to be step two, step three, and contacting somebody next and ultimately abducting somebody. then, just five da