 Brooke Willberger was anything but your average teenager. She was an avid churchgoer, always did right by her family, and put her faith in God above everything else in her life. Unfortunately, the criminals in her area didn't have the same set of values. One fateful day in May of 2004, Brooke had her innocence, her future, and her life taken away from her at the hands of a disgusting criminal in one of the most heartbreaking and grotesque ways possible. It would take investigators the better part of a decade to finally get this case solved, but detectives are still trying to wrap their heads around the motive all these years later. Brooke Willberger was born on February 20, 1985, to Greg and Cammy Willberger, and she grew up in Fresno, California. She had a relatively sheltered childhood, as her family were extremely devout members of the Church of Mormon, more commonly known as the Church of the Latter-day Saints, or LDS for short. Church and their dedication to God was always the primary focus of the Willberger family, setting their sights on things much higher than the world around us. Brooke went to school in the Fern Ridge School District, eventually graduating from Elmera High School sometime around 2002 or 2003. After leaving high school, Brooke decided to continue her education, but we don't know for sure what her major was. All we know is that she decided to enroll at Brigham Young University in Utah, a Christian school sponsored by the LDS Church. It was around this time that Brooke began to date her longtime boyfriend, Justin Blake. Much like Brooke's family, Justin also had dedicated his life to his church, becoming a Mormon missionary in Venezuela. Brooke and Justin were incredibly close, and it seemed as though their long-distance relationship was working out quite well for the two. When Justin eventually headed off to Venezuela, he left Brooke behind for the summer while she worked for her sister and brother-in-law to make some extra money before her upcoming school year began. This was around May of 2004. Brooke's sister and brother-in-law had been managing an apartment complex in Corvallis, Oregon. They needed help around the apartment during the summer months, so they offered Brooke a job doing various tasks around the property, usually cleaning or restocking supplies, simple things. Brooke was excited about her new job and the freedom that the new-found income would provide for her. But unfortunately, her freedom was about to be taken away in an unexpected and shocking turn of events that would lead to one of Oregon's most publicized missing person cases in the state's history. Corvallis, Oregon isn't a place that you typically associate with a high rate of crime, but while researching this case, they actually found out that crime is actually a pretty big issue in the area. The only exception to this fact is that it's mostly petty theft or other property crimes that run rampant in the area. Violent crime is actually much lower than the national average. But disinmind, it doesn't seem like most people in the area really pay much mind to keeping themselves safe from criminals. Yes, everyone locks their cars and their doors at night, but the area doesn't put its residents in any particular danger, at least not any more so than any other part of the country. Because of this, Brooke and her family never thought much about Brooke's safety when she worked at the aforementioned apartment complex. Brooke would spend a lot of time outside, cleaning buildings, picking up trash, and making sure the place looked the best that it could. This also happened to be what Brooke was doing on the morning of May 25th, 2004. Brooke showed up for work that morning just like it was any other day. She was outside near the parking lot, cleaning up some lamp posts in the surrounding areas, when without notice, she went missing. I'm not sure who noticed that she vanished first, but her family would soon discover her sandals had been left behind a lamp post in the parking lot, almost as if she'd walked right out of them. Her sister and brother-in-law searched the whole property, but there was no sign of Brooke. She had vanished into thin air, leaving zero trace behind outside of her shoes. One of the most interesting aspects about her disappearance is that the apartment complex was located on the edge of Oregon State University, so close in fact that you should have been able to see the school from the parking lot of the apartments, according to several reports. This area was presumably very well-policed, considering there were thousands of college students running around. It was an area where Brooke should have felt the safest, but that safety had quickly been turned on its head when Brooke's family decided that it was time to call in the help of the police. When officers arrived at the scene of the crime, they collected a little bit of evidence that they could and began their investigation immediately. What ended up being fairly unusual in this case was that the police pursued every lead with the utmost urgency. According to Lieutenant Ron Noble, this case was very unusual. In the past, it was the Corvallis Police Department's policy to wait a full 24 hours before pursuing a missing person case. It's their belief that adults are allowed to come and go as they please, and they don't treat any case as suspicious until 24 hours have passed by. But in Brooke's case, they knew something was wrong. After all, a 19-year-old girl isn't typically going to walk out of her sandals in the middle of a parking lot on a hot summer's day and just disappear. This case was bizarre from beginning to end. Police agreed with the family. Brooke didn't appear to be a woman who would disappear on her own. All the evidence alluded to the fact that Brooke was taken, kidnapped. As soon as Brooke's church heard about the crime, they organized a team of volunteers to help search the area in Corvallis. Unfortunately, the search team wasn't able to come up with any leads, nor did they find any evidence to further the case. But it wouldn't be long before police found their first person of interest. A very strange man that police seemed to have had their eye on for quite some time. And you won't believe what they found when they brought him in for questioning. Police had narrowed down their search efforts and it honed in on a man by the name of Sung-Koo Kim. I wasn't able to determine specifically what led police to this man, but as they began investigating him, they uncovered mountains of evidence that proved that this man was, by all means, pretty unusual. By many people's definitions, he was a bit of a creep. Sung-Koo Kim was heavily questioned by police regarding Brooke's disappearance. Kim continually pleaded his innocence, but police weren't letting up. After days of interrogation, police had found that there was far more to Kim than he was letting on. After a few weeks of research and detective work, police connected Kim to dozens of thefts and crimes all across the state of Oregon. Each of these crimes specifically targeted women. For investigators, this was all they needed to know to believe that they had found their man. But there was just one problem. Even though they were able to prove that Kim was a criminal, they still had no evidence that directly linked him to the disappearance of Brooke. But this is when things went from strange to bad to just plain weird. As they dug deeper into every aspect of Kim's life, they learned that he had a collection, so to speak. As it would turn out, the breaking and entering charges that were now being placed against Kim were not the result of him stealing money, electronics, or even cars. Rather, he'd been stealing women's underwear. You're not going to believe this, but the research and detective work uncovered more than 3,400 pairs of women's underwear in the possession of Kim. That's more than your average woman would wear in a decade. Now, I could understand if he had a few pairs in his apartment, maybe even a couple dozen. Not saying that it isn't weird, I'm just saying I could understand how a creep may be able to procure something like this and keep it hidden. There's some pretty strange people out there, after all. But 3,400 pairs, I can't wrap my mind around how he could have stolen so many. He would have needed an entire room in his home to dedicate just to this type of collection. It just doesn't make sense, but it's the truth. After all was said and done, Sung-Koo Kim was sent to trial and was convicted for various charges, including the theft of the underwear. He was given an amazing 11 years behind bars, but not before his family filed a lawsuit of their own, claiming that police used excessive force during their interrogation and their arrest of Kim. The Kim family ended up winning this lawsuit, being awarded over $300,000 in compensation. But this is all little more than a side note in the case of Brooke Willberger. While Kim was certainly a man that police need to keep their eye on, they were forced to exclude him from their investigation after they found no evidence tying him to Brooke's disappearance. With this, police reached a dead end in the investigation, but they weren't willing to give up just yet. By this point, it was November of 2004. Police were left scratching their heads, desperately hoping for a new lead in the disappearance of Brooke Willberger. It would be November 30th before this lead would finally arrive, and it would be yet another heartbreaking turn that no one could have ever expected. On November 30th, 2004, a foreign exchange student who had been attending the University of New Mexico several states away contacted police after being kidnapped, beaten and taken advantage of. She was able to survive the ordeal, but naturally, her life would never be the same afterward. Thankfully, it didn't take police long to track down the culprit, a man named Joel Patrick Courtney. Joel was sent through all the typical hoops of the American court system, and it would be nearly three years later in 2007 before he was finally sent to prison, being given a sentence of 18 years, then an additional five years' parole after his release. But it was during this time that Joel was awaiting trial that police in Oregon began to notice a few connections between the foreign exchange students kidnapping and the disappearance of Brooke Willberger. In particular, police were interested in the victim's report of being taken away in a green minivan. Investigators would soon reveal that, in Brooke's disappearance, witnesses had also reported seeing a green minivan that may have been a bit suspicious. Worse yet, investigators soon learned that Joel was a native to Oregon, making it very likely that he would have been in the area on the day that Brooke vanished. Court documents explain that, in fact, detectives were able to place Joel in Corvallis on the exact date of Brooke's kidnapping. Further stating that his van had been witnessed by multiple people, with these witnesses claiming they'd never seen the van before or since the crime. To make matters worse for Joel, an OSU employee identified Joel in a lineup, saying that he witnessed him acting suspiciously on the day that Brooke was taken. Investigators eventually tracked down Joel's green minivan, but not without all the usual hurdles that you would expect during a multi-state investigation. When detectives finally gained possession of his vehicle, they managed to find Brooke's DNA all throughout the van, as well as a strand of her hair. Mind you, all of this unfolded in mid-2005, but investigators weren't able to do much with this information until April of 2008, as they were forced to wait for all the paperwork to be filed and all the usual legal hoopla in order to extradite Joel from New Mexico to Oregon. But all throughout this process, there was a much bigger problem than investigators still had not been able to solve. Where was Brooke? Her body had never been located, and Joel certainly wasn't going to admit to anything. But that's when everything changed for Joel, and he had a sudden change of heart. Prosecutors were interviewing Joel in the case when they revealed something to him that shook his world to its core. They explained that they weren't just looking to get Joel sent to prison. They were pursuing capital punishment, and it certainly seemed as though they had enough evidence to secure this type of conviction. Joel rather obviously changed his tone after this and began to cooperate with police. Joel was finally willing to talk about Brooke's disappearance. After an intensive interrogation, Joel admitted to kidnapping Brooke on May 24th. He said that he had noticed her in the parking lot of the apartment complex. And when no one was around, he jumped out of his car, overpowered her, then restrained her in the back of his van. He then drove her out to the woods just outside of town. But after a short while, he returned to town to grab some food. All the while, Brooke was bound in the back of his van, unable to escape or even call for help. This twisted man literally drove all over town with the victim in the back of his van, playing it off as if nothing was unusual, and the people that he encountered along this journey never thought anything about it. Joel says that he hadn't done anything to Brooke at this point. He kept her alive throughout the remainder of the night, seemingly unsure of what he planned on doing. But the following morning, he had made his decision. Joel says that his intentions were simply to take advantage of Brooke, then let her go. But Brooke wasn't going to make things easy for him, and she fought him every step of the way. In the end, he grew so angry with her resistance that he claimed her life, did the deed that he'd been waiting for, then buried her on a logging road where she presumably would never be found. After Joel learned that police had been seeking capital punishment, he cut a deal with investigators. In exchange for taking capital punishment off the table, he would reveal where he had buried Brooke's remains. Both parties accepted this deal, and Brooke's location was determined in late 2009. The trial had been set for February of 2010, with Joel pleading guilty to all charges and being given life in prison with no possibility of parole. After five long years, the case was finally closed. Brooke's family were finally able to begin seeking the closure that they so desperately wanted, knowing that this monster would be locked behind bars for the rest of his life. The only mercy in this case is that Brooke's suffering appears to have been over relatively quickly, but the pain and agony that her family are left with is something that they'll likely never recover from. But we also need to keep in mind the innocent foreign exchange student who had all hopes of a normal future stolen from her on that chilly November day. All she wanted to do was come to America in the hopes of getting a better education, but instead, her dreams were crushed and her future forever changed course. I'm sure Joel's arrest makes little difference to this young woman at this point. What's done is done, but maybe at the very least, she can rest a little bit easier at night, knowing that the man who stole so much from her will never be able to lay a hand on her again. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of True Crime Stories. If you wanna see other cases like this, be sure to hit the like button and subscribe. I post new true crime documentaries every week, so be sure to stick around. If you wanna help support the channel, the best way you can do that is just by leaving a comment below, any comment at all. That type of thing really helps out a channel more than you may realize. And if you'd like to help out financially, you can click that blue join button below this video. But with that, my name is Ty Nottz, and I'll catch you guys in the next video.