The Last Time We Saw Her Page 2

  Joel started cruising the streets of Corvallis, closer and closer to campus. On the southwest side of campus, he spotted a young woman walking into the parking lot of the Oak Park Apartments, about a block away from OSU’s Reser Stadium. There was no one else around that he could see. Here was his chance.

  Diane Mason was twenty years old in May 2004, and a student at OSU. She lived not far off campus, and on that morning she began her usual walk to class by cutting through the Oak Park Apartments complex. As she did so, she noticed a green minivan enter the parking lot from a side street. As the van drove in, Diane exited the parking lot and crossed Western Boulevard, walked past the Reser Stadium parking lot, and headed for Thirtieth Street, on the edge of campus. There were a few cars going by on Western Boulevard, but no people or cars at all on Thirtieth Street.

  Suddenly the green minivan she had seen at the Oak Park Apartments pulled up and actually blocked her path. Diane had to walk out into the street to move around it. The van’s engine was still running; and as she approached the driver’s side of the vehicle, the driver rolled the window down. As soon as Diane was adjacent to the window, the man inside spoke to her.

  “I’m lost,” he said. “Can you help me?”

  Diane asked where he was going and he mentioned the name of some fraternity she had never heard of. Diane told him, “It’s probably on Greek Row, near Twenty-fifth and Harrison.”

  Diane noticed that the man was in his late thirties or early forties, had light-colored hair, a goatee, and light-colored eyes, which were probably blue. He was wearing a casual shirt and had two earrings in his left ear. One of them was a gold hoop-type earring.

  Diane recalled later, “When I gave him directions, he seemed a little confused. He had an Idaho map in his hands, but he said he also had a Corvallis map in the back of the van. He wanted me to point out directions on that map. At that point he opened the driver’s-side door to get out and I had to back up about three feet into the street to let him out. I thought this was odd, since most people don’t get out of their vehicles to ask directions.

  “I began to get a really uneasy feeling about all of this, since I was alone on the street. There was no traffic. There was no noise. And this person I didn’t know had just gotten out of his vehicle.”

  When the man got out of the minivan, Diane judged his height to be between five-nine and five-eleven. He had a medium build and seemed average in most respects. He walked to the side of the van, opened a sliding door, and began rummaging around inside the van behind the driver’s seat. Diane could see that there were several boxes inside and items of clothing and blankets.

  Diane said later, “He slid one box in the back, which I thought was odd, since there was nothing behind it and it wasn’t heavy.” She wondered if he didn’t want her to see what was inside the box.

  The man said to her, “Let me look for another second.”

  But by this point Diane was becoming very nervous. Things just didn’t seem right about this situation, and she was aware that no one else was around. Diane told the man, “I’ve got to get to class”; she started walking away.

  Soon after she began walking toward campus, she heard the van begin to move. It turned around toward Western Boulevard once again. Diane walked on, and the van did not return.

  Joel became even more irritated. This ruse had not worked, but he was persistent. Now that he was determined to have a young woman, he was in prime “trolling grounds,” near a university campus. He drove back on Western for a short ways, doubled back, and soon spotted another young woman walking alone in the Reser Stadium parking lot. This was a wide area of dirt and gravel, and there was no one else around.

  Jade Bateman was a student at OSU and very athletic. In fact, she worked part-time at the athletic office on campus. As Jade walked along, she noticed a green minivan cruising through the Reser Stadium parking lot. The minivan cruised by her very slowly, and the man inside was staring at her. It made her very uncomfortable. Instead of walking away, Jade decided to confront the driver. She moved toward the van and said to the man, whose driver’s-side window was rolled down, “Can I help you?”

  The man seemed to be in his thirties or early forties. He was wearing a baseball cap and had a goatee. He also wore dark sunglasses. The man said to Jade, “I’m looking for the athletic offices.”

  Jade replied, “Are you looking for the football office or one of the other sports offices?”

  He said he was looking for one of the sports offices, and Jade told him that he should drive up to Gill Coliseum and they could help him there. All during this conversation Jade was on a cell phone with her mother, who lived in Portland.

  Jade said later, “I asked my mom to stay on the phone. I was very serious about this. It was more of a demand than a suggestion. I was nervous. I felt that I was in a situation that wasn’t good.”

  Jade’s mother, Phyllis, recalled that phone call very well. She said, “I knew that Jade lived not far off campus. From my daughter’s apartment you could see the football stadium. That morning I was getting some things ready for the recycle center, and Jade’s friend was coming over with his pickup to get it. I was on my cell phone with Jade and she was giving someone directions to someplace. I told her, ‘Jade, I’m going to hang up and let you talk to that person.’ She told me, ‘Do not hang up the phone!’ She said it fairly strongly. She normally didn’t speak to me that way.”

  Jade was indeed nervous. A green minivan with a stranger at the wheel—in a large parking lot, with no one else around—was very unsettling.

  And then, as luck would have it, another individual drove out onto the parking lot. The individual was Bob Clifford, an athletic director at OSU. Clifford knew Jade by sight, and what he saw now in the Reser Stadium parking lot disturbed him enough to make him drive over and see what was going on.

  Bob said later, “I noticed a girl I knew named Jade, standing by a green Dodge minivan out in the Reser Stadium parking lot. It just didn’t seem like a normal situation. I drove over and noticed that the van had Minnesota plates. I pulled up to the passenger side and tried to get the driver’s attention. But he kind of ignored me. He kept his hands attached to the steering wheel and would not acknowledge my presence. He was wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a light spring coat.

  “So I pulled in front of him and put my car in park. I turned around and looked at Jade. Then he and I exchanged quick glimpses of each other. I looked at her again, and she started to walk away.”

  Jade was glad that Bob Clifford had arrived on the scene. She wasn’t sure if the man in the van was up to something, but the whole situation just didn’t feel right to her. Jade started walking toward campus, and the man in the van just sat there.

  Bob noted, “At that point everything seemed okay. I pulled away, and the van followed me. I took a right onto Twenty-sixth Street, and the van turned onto Western.”

  By now, Joel was “really pissed.” Two situations that should have worked for him had now been foiled, but he wasn’t giving up. He remembered a pretty young woman in the parking lot of the Oak Park Apartments who was cleaning lampposts when he had first followed the other girl to Thirtieth Street. The young woman cleaning the lampposts was petite, blond, and pretty. With any luck she would still be out there all alone, cleaning light fixtures.

  CHAPTER 3

  VANISHED

  As luck would have it, the young woman cleaning light fixtures was nineteen-year-old Brooke Wilberger, who was on summer break from where she attended college at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Utah. Brooke was born on February 20, 1985, in Fresno, California, to Greg and Cammy Wilberger. The family soon moved to La Grande, Oregon, and then to Veneta, Oregon, a town in the Willamette River Valley, about forty miles south of Corvallis. Brooke had several older siblings, brothers Bryce, twenty-five, and Spencer, twenty-two, and sisters Shannon, thirty, and Stephanie, twenty-seven. Sister Jessica was six years younger than Brooke.

  Although Brooke was bright,
she had trouble with her speech as a child. Even though she spoke, many of her words were unintelligible. Cammy, who was a third-grade teacher, told Brooke’s siblings not to tease her. Cammy said later, “I took her brothers aside and said, ‘I don’t care what you say or do, but never tease Brooke about her speech.’ And they never did.”

  Eventually, with the aid of a speech therapist, Brooke did just fine in learning to speak. In fact, by high school, she was carrying nearly a 4.0 average. Very bright in academics, Brooke also did well in extracurricular activities, especially tennis and track. By then, she had a long blond ponytail, a trim figure, and was very pretty. Since the Wilbergers lived out in a rural area, Brooke joined 4-H and loved horses. And even though Brooke was quiet, she wasn’t afraid to stick up for herself, and she joined in a high-school play, The Pirates of Penzance.

  It was at Elmira High School that she met a boy, Justin Blake, and soon she and Justin were going to dances. Eventually they became girlfriend and boyfriend. Brooke’s mom recalled later, “The church had dances in Eugene, and when Brooke came back, I’d say, ‘Who did you dance with today?’ Pretty soon she started telling me about this boy named Justin. In high school they did most things together. She really liked him.”

  After high school Justin, who was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), more commonly known as Mormons, went on a mission to Venezuela. Brooke and her entire family were also Mormons, and Brooke was well aware that many young men in the Mormon Church went off on a mission at about that age in their lives. Brooke wrote him at least once a week. She even thought about going on a mission herself when she turned twenty-one, the minimum age that females could go on missions for the church.

  Brooke’s parents, who had atteded nearby OSU, along with all of Brooke’s older siblings, thought that Brooke would go there as well. But Brooke was very independent, and she told them she wanted to go to Brigham Young University in Utah. Her parents told Brooke that she would have to save up money to do that, and she did, taking on jobs during the summer months. Brooke wanted to go to BYU because they had a department that specialized in early childhood speech problems. She was very grateful to her own teachers when she was young, and she wanted to specialize in that area as well. That was a constant in Brooke’s life. She was always giving back to individuals and to the community.

  As far as being safe while walking to and from classes at BYU, Cammy later said, “She was a cautious kid. One of the concerns she had about her little car was that it did not have automatic locks on the doors. She even took a class in self-defense, because there had been some issues at BYU.”

  In May 2004, classes were over at BYU, and Brooke came home to Veneta, Oregon. She stayed for a short while with her parents and younger sister, Jessica, and then decided to go and help her sister Stephanie and Stephanie’s husband, Zak Hansen, who managed the Oak Park Apartments in Corvallis.

  On May 24, Brooke got up about six-thirty and had a bowl of cornflakes for breakfast at her parents’ home in Veneta. Soon her parents were off to work, and Brooke asked Jessica if she needed a ride to school. Jessica said no, so Brooke packed a few bags and took off for Corvallis. In a short while, she arrived at her sister Stephanie’s apartment around eight-thirty. Brooke and Stephanie talked for a bit and then Brooke went outside to clean lamps and lampposts around the apartment complex. It was a job she didn’t relish, since many of the lampposts had spider webs on them. Brooke didn’t like spiders; but as in all of the tasks that she performed, she cleaned them well.

  Brooke was wearing a BYU Soccer T-shirt, FreshJive sweatshirt, blue jeans, and flip-flop sandals. Around 8:45 A.M., Brooke started cleaning lampposts at the Oak Park Apartments on the west side and completed those around nine. This area could clearly be seen from vehicles driving along Philomath Boulevard.

  Brooke continued working eastward, where trees and twenty-foot shrubs on the back side of the property blocked views from the street. Around 9:30 A.M., a tenant named Mark Wacker spotted Brooke in the parking lot by a light fixture. Wacker saw that the girl was at the third light fixture from the east side of those set of apartment buildings. She was cleaning the bottom of the light fixture with a rag and a bucket of water.

  At 9:45 A.M., Brooke’s cousin Kris Horner saw Brooke working on a light fixture, and around ten o’clock, Brooke’s sister Stephanie spied Brooke cleaning near the number 1223 unit. Stephanie took her children to preschool and was gone for a while from the apartment complex.

  Sometime after ten, Corvallis Disposal truck driver Jim Kessi drove into the Oak Park Apartments parking lot to pick up material from the recycle bin. As he did so, he spotted a young blond woman cleaning lampposts. He waved at her, and she waved back. He noticed that she was cleaning the third light fixture from the east end of that area. She had its round plastic cover in her hand.

  Kessi picked up his load of cardboard from the recycle bin and backed out into the parking lot once again. As he did so, he could see that the blond girl was still cleaning light fixtures. There were no cars in the parking lot near her, and no people around as well.

  Sometime after ten o’clock, Nathaniel McKelvey, who lived in the 1229 unit at Oak Park Apartments, heard a loud, piercing scream. He would later describe it as “short in duration and bloodcurdling.” At that same moment Carina Howrey, who also lived in the same unit, heard a female’s scream. She later described the scream as “short in time.” Howrey looked out her back door, then out her front window. But she didn’t see anyone.

  Nathaniel McKelvey and Carina Howrey were the last people to hear anything escape from Brooke Wilberger’s lips. All except for the man named Joel, in the green minivan. After two failed attempts he now had what he was looking for: a pretty young woman abducted into his van, and restrained there. Now all he had to do was get her out of town, unnoticed.

  As the minivan headed west, out of Corvallis, the only things left in the Oak Park Apartments complex testifying that Brooke Wilberger had been there were two flip-flop sandals, a few wet rags, and a bucket of sudsy water.

  CHAPTER 4

  SEARCHING

  Brooke was supposed to come to her sister Stephanie’s apartment for lunch at twelve-thirty. When she didn’t show, Stephanie went to investigate. What she discovered in the apartment parking lot was unnerving—there was a bucket near a light fixture, but no Brooke anywhere.

  Stephanie Hansen and Kris Horner began searching the entire apartment complex for Brooke. It was not like Brooke to change plans without telling anyone. And why would she just leave a bucket of water near a lamppost and a job unfinished? That was not like her as well. Around one o’clock, Horner found Brooke’s blue-and-white flip-flop sandals in the parking lot. They were about eight feet apart from each other as if she’d suddenly lost them in haste. The thong on the right sandal had been pulled out.

  Stephanie and Kris kept on searching all throughout the complex, until around three o’clock. At that point they were so upset by no signs of Brooke, Stephanie phoned the Corvallis Police Department (CPD). A dispatcher took Stephanie’s statement and notated it as a missing person. What may have helped convince the dispatcher of the seriousness of the situation was Stephanie’s description of Brooke as being a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was common knowledge that Mormons did not generally drink alcohol, take drugs, or engage in illegal activities. Stephanie later said of Brooke, “She’s a very responsible girl. She doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t party. She has a longtime boyfriend, who is off on a Mormon mission.”

  With other college-age girls at OSU, it’s possible the dispatcher might have been less convinced that something was amiss. There might have been many other possibilities—a sudden change of plans, going to meet a boyfriend or friends at school, an argument with her sister, or any number of things. But none of those factors seemed to apply to Brooke Wilberger. And the state of Brooke’s sandals was taken into account as well. Why would anyone leave them strewn in
the parking lot like that, unless something out of the ordinary had occurred? The dispatcher agreed with Stephanie that something was wrong, and a CPD officer was dispatched to the Oak Park Apartments.

  Cammy Wilberger didn’t learn about Brooke’s disappearance until after she had finished teaching school for the day. Cammy called Brooke’s cell phone from class and was surprised when Brooke’s brother Spencer answered it.

  Cammy recalled, “So I chatted with him, and he didn’t say much. Finally I said, ‘Is Brooke there?’ And he said, ‘We can’t find her.’”

  “Spencer, don’t tease me!” Cammy replied to her son.

  “Mom, I’m not! We can’t find her!” Spencer responded.

  “I knew that something was horribly wrong! My arms, everything in my body, just drained out,” Cammy noted later.

  Cammy soon contacted her youngest daughter, Jessica, who was at home, and told her, “Something’s going on in Corvallis. We need to have a bag packed. I’m coming home now.”

  Then Cammy phoned her friend Cheryl Blake. Cheryl was the mother of Justin Blake, Brooke’s boyfriend, and also the wife of the bishop in the LDS ward in which the Wilbergers attended church. As soon as Cheryl heard about Brooke, she put the LDS network of families into action. One person called another, and soon the news had spread amongst LDS members all over the region.

  Greg Wilberger, who worked for the Borden Chemical company in Springfield, Oregon, was on his way to a business trip in San Francisco on that day. He was at the Portland International Airport when his family contacted him with the news. Greg immediately canceled his flight, got a rental car, and drove down to Corvallis, as fast as he could, in a daze. None of this seemed real. Corvallis was supposed to be a safe city. What had occurred there that his daughter would suddenly end up missing?