thinking back to another crime, a crime many here in corvallis barely recall. on another day in may, nearly 30 years to the day and one mile away from where brooke disappeared, a young oregon state student vanished. it wasn t until her body was discovered and her killer caught that people here realized this town had been visited by one of america s most notorious serial killers, ted bundy. authorities in corvallis wondered if there was now another sexual predator bold enough to abduct a young woman in broad daylight. it was a rough day for the sex offenders in our county because there was a team who went out and put their finger on every single one of them. how many sex offenders are there in this area? i think that was something that was very startling to realize is how many there actually were. when police told brooke s
when you start getting this information. from our perspective, every red flag went off that we had to spend some energy looking at sung koo kim. the media pounced. any comment about being a person of interest in corvallis? no comment. sung koo kim s life was examined from every angle. headlines blared his new nickname, the panty thief. soon brooke wilberger s family heard news reports that kim, on the day of brooke s disappearance had purchased cinder blocks. my thought was, maybe if he were the person and if he took brooke, then he might have tied her to bricks and dropped her in a river. those reports about kim buying bricks were never substantiated. his besieged family attempted to clear his name any way they could. he s not related to this disappearance of girl. everybody knows. despite all of the suspicion, was it possible that sung koo kim really was innocent?
it read like a how-to guide for committing a sex crime, it included a list of supplies. hood, glasses, video, and digital cameras. it s more than just a checklist. either someone is planning a very heinous mutilation, sexual assault crime and murder, or it s a fantasy. but either way it s extremely important to us and our investigation and very startling. as detectives dug deeper, they discovered this while kim was stealing underwear from dorms and laundry rooms, he had also developed a bizarre fetish for collecting lint from clothes dryers. in kim s home they discovered a bag of some of that lint labeled with the name of an oregon state university swim team member. like brooke wilberger, she was young, blond, blue-eyed and she used to hang out a lot with other swimmers in corvallis, right here at the oak park apartments. so i m imagining red flags are going off all over the place
the search expanded daily. at times it seemed the whole state of oregon was pitching in to find brooke. i have daughters this age and i want to help. more search teams, dozens of square miles. what is the geography like around here? where could someone have taken brooke? limitless. we re ten miles from interstate 5. we have a north-south highway running right through corvallis. we have an east-west highway running through corvallis. you could drive five miles from corvallis and be in a very remote area. in the deep woods? absolutely. that s right. but despite the odds, within days investigators were hot on someone s trail. coming up, a police search turns up a terrifying checklist and investigators wonder if it s the lead they have been waiting for. either someone is planning a very heinous mutilation, sexual assault crime and murder or it s a fantasy. when bringing brooke home continues.
while detectives were still looking at sung koo kim as a person of interest, at least one of brooke s siblings took one look and thought, no way. we never once for a second thought he had anything to do with it. i personal didn t, because i just looked at him and thought, she could get away from him. he didn t look very threatening to me. and soon more reason surfaced to cast doubt on the idea that kim was involved in brooke s disappearance. he offers an alibi. well, offering an alibi and us being able to validate that alibi are two different things. but kim s alibi for the day of brooke s disappearance consisted of not just one but three pieces of evidence. put together, they showed kim could not have been in corvallis at 10:30 a.m. when the kidnapping occurred. first, these records show an online purchase of 500 shares of stock with ameritrade executed on kim s computer 75 miles from the crime scene at 11:14 a.m. pacific. next, a witness came forward