by Robert Scott
The car he had been driving was a Honda Accord, silver in color with gold tints. It had an automatic transmission, electric windows, and door locks. Detective Hyde discovered from a Honda dealer that this type of Accord was sold between 1998 and 2002 and the color was called “heather mist.”
The police put out an alert, and a story and a description ran in the local newspapers. Then around 2:00 A.M., on Monday, June 14, a bartender at Ma’s Dairy Farm, in Albany, called the Albany PD to report a man, who had been at her bar, who matched the description of the suspect in the newspaper. Even more than that, he drove a Honda Accord.
According to the bartender, the man had been sitting at the bar reading an article in the Albany Democrat-Herald about the suspect and his vehicle. The man started commenting to her that he looked a lot like the person in the drawing and his car resembled the image in the paper, too. It made the bartender very uncomfortable and she asked him to leave. He asked if he could finish reading the article first, and she let him do so. After he was done, he left without any trouble. As he was driving away, the bartender tried to get the license plate number of his Honda, but all she could remember was an S.
The man and his Honda didn’t turn up, but something else did within days. A sixteen-year-old girl in Albany reported to the police department that she had been walking on Eighteenth Avenue when a man in a blue pickup truck pulled up next to her. With the passenger window rolled down, he ordered her into his car. She refused and took off.
The man continued driving slowly, with his window rolled down, and asked if she needed a ride. She said no and took off running, hiding in some bushes. The pickup turned around and drove away. This man was described as being between thirty and forty years old. According to the girl, he was white, of medium build, clean shaven, with short “marine-style” haircut. Whether it was the same man, with his goatee shaved off and a short haircut, the police didn’t know. This man was obviously driving a different vehicle. The sixteen-year-old said it was a small pickup, dark blue with a lighter blue interior. There was a child’s seat in the passenger seat, and that child’s seat was multicolored.
Because of Brooke Wilberger’s abduction, and all the attempted abductions in the region, women and girls all up and down the Willamette Valley were concerned about their safety. Beth Rietveld, with the OSU Women’s Center, said, “Women should always let people know where they are going to be when they go out. Bad things like this happen all over the country all the time to women. We are just more aware of it here, right now.”
Karen Roberts, of Corvallis, told a reporter that she walked three times a week and always told people where she was going. She added, “I have really become aware of where people are, and if they are following me. I have learned to keep my eyes on people.”
Chris Merrill, who ran in the area, told the same reporter that she always carried a can of Mace with her when she ran in isolated wooded areas. The runner admitted that the Brooke Wilberger kidnapping and other attempted abduction incidents in surrounding towns had “really shaken her up. You just don’t think that will happen in your little safe haven.”
Even the Corvallis High School girls’ cross-country running team was taking more precautions. Coach Meghan Arbogast said, “I make sure that no one on my team runs alone.”
Some women wanted more protection than just being with someone else, or carrying Mace. In Elmira, where Brooke had gone to high school, Laurie Forbes, a pastor at Fern Ridge Faith Center, contacted the school district superintendent, Ivan Hernandez. Forbes asked Hernandez if a self-defense class for women and girls could be set up in one of the schools. Hernandez agreed and offered free use of the Elmira High School gym. Soon other ministries, the chamber of commerce, and the city of Veneta were promoting the program. Two instructors of martial arts volunteered their services.
As June turned into July, walking searches, horseback searches, cycling searches, and riverine searches had not turned up one viable clue as to where Brooke Wilberger was. Law enforcement began asking people in the area to look at the task force website concerning Brooke, which contained photos, statistics, and information. CPD captain Jon Sassaman told reporters, “We want people to use all their senses. We’re asking people to be alert to their surroundings for anything that could potentially lead us to Brooke. If you think there is something important, call the line.”
Lieutenant Ron Noble admitted there had never been anything like the search for Brooke Wilberger in CPD’s history. And he also admitted it had caused great strains on the department. This was only exacerbated by budget cuts and the fact that two CPD officers were now serving with the military in Iraq. Noble said, “The officers on the search have spent more time at the office and in the field than at home.” Obviously, the case was wearing on law enforcement officers, volunteers, and especially Brooke’s family. One of the most draining things that almost all parents of kidnapped children expressed was the fact of not knowing what had happened or where their child could be found.
Asked if things now looked bleak for Brooke, because of how much time had gone by, Noble said, “We do know the statistics. We’re refusing to label her a statistic. That’s his daughter,” and Noble pointed to Greg Wilberger, who was standing nearby.
In fact, both Ron Noble and Greg Wilberger at the moment were standing in the Reser Stadium parking lot at OSU when the reporter asked the question. Noble and Wilberger looked across Western Avenue at the Oak Park Apartments complex, where Brooke had been abducted on May 24. They were in the same parking lot where Jade Bateman had been stared at by the strange man in the green minivan, the same parking lot where Bob Clifford had been so concerned that he drove up to see what was going on.
But on July 10, 2004, neither Lieutenant Noble nor Greg Wilberger knew anything about Bateman’s and Clifford’s concerns. Both Bateman and Clifford had sent in tips to the hotline, but these tips were buried under a mountain of other tips. And on July 10, 2004, the most viable suspect in the case was looking more and more to the CPD to be Sung Koo Kim.
Not only had Kim stolen an undergarment from Lynsey at the Oak Park Apartments, he had labeled lint taken from a dryer there: The OSU swim apts. This lint and label had been found in Kim’s possession when he was arrested. He had accessed the OSU website and typed rape, torture, genital mutilation of women in relation to female students there. He had also written on a file: hood, mirrored glasses, video camera, digital camera, six nylons and bring panties and bra to put on her. All of this made the CPD believe Kim had either done a violent rape or he’d been planning to, when arrested. Whether Brooke Wilberger had been a victim of Kim’s remained to be seen.
The Benton County DA’s Office wanted Kim to take another polygraph test. They were concerned that on the initial polygraph test, Brooke Wilberger’s name had not been used. The questions on that test only referred to “that girl” from the Oak Park Apartments, and “that missing girl on May twenty-fourth.” CPD captain Sassaman added that Kim’s family had not cooperated with police.
And yet, there was a note of caution about Kim, if anyone had been listening. It came from the FBI to local law enforcement. The FBI warned them that at this stage of the game, they should not focus on any one individual concerning the abduction of Brooke Wilberger. Putting all their eggs into one basket could come back to haunt them later.
In an attempt to depict what Brooke Wilberger might look like now, if her abductor had tried to alter her appearance, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) created computer-generated images of Brooke’s changed appearance. In addition, the Wilberger family handed out ID kits at the da Vinci Days Festival in Corvallis. Da Vinci Days was put on by students at OSU, and was replete with creative floats that they had made. These floats wound around Central Park in a parade in front of the citizenry lining the streets. The Wilbergers knew that da Vinci Days was a good way to reach a lot of out-of-town visitors to Corvallis, who poured in over the length of the festival. While many people in Oregon knew
about Brooke’s case in a general way, the Wilbergers wanted to give them specifics about Brooke and about keeping children safe in general.
Over the weekend of July 16 through July 18, the Wilberger family passed out over one thousand ID kits, which contained useful information about how to keep children safe. The kits also had a card where the child’s fingerprints could be embossed and a DNA collection sub-kit. On the back side of one card, statistics showed that more than eight hundred thousand children were reported missing in the United States. Of those, 450,000 were runaways, 350,000 were abducted by family members, and 4,600 had been abducted by strangers. Brooke was, of course, in this last category.
Despite the FBI’s warning not to zero in on any one individual, Sung Koo Kim began looking more and more in Benton County’s eyes as the perpetrator in Brooke’s abduction. Mark Posler was a CPD detective and had previous work as a policeman in Manhattan, Kansas. In an affidavit in support of yet one more search warrant on Kim, Posler wrote that he’d recently been in contact with Trooper Timothy Gallagher, of the Oregon State Police. New information had come to light from forensic efforts on one of Kim’s computers, and what they had found there sent up red flags all over the board. On that computer Sung Koo Kim had looked up topics on the Internet: asphyxiation, strangling, whores, killers_anonymous, female strangulation, faces of death fan club, and Corpse of the week. These topics, in conjunction with his penchant for invading the private lives of young women, put Kim in a very bad light, as far as law enforcement was concerned.
In his request for a new search warrant, Posler wrote, I believe there is evidence at Hotmail.com which will aid in corroboration or contradiction of Sung Koo Kim’s statements regarding his online purchase of stolen underwear.
By now, Kim was saying that he hadn’t personally stolen the female underwear, but he had bought them on an Internet auction site.
Posler was granted the search-and-seizure warrant, and he soon had some new evidence of words that had been typed into Kim’s computer as well: hairpull, tit pull hang, slap hard, hogtie, fist pussy ass, cut off blood to head for ten minutes, needles in tits, cut off tits.
All of this was disturbing, to say the least, and DDA John Haroldson, of Benton County, amended a document of charges against Sung Koo Kim to be more harsh in nature. Count 1 now read: Burglary in the First Degree—A Felony—Defendant did unlawfully and knowingly enter and remain in a dwelling located at Sackett Hall, with the intent to commit the crime of theft therein. Count 2: Theft in the Third Degree—A Misdemeanor—The defendant on or about May 2, 2004, did unlawfully and knowingly commit theft of women’s underwear of Ashley M. Count 3: Theft in the Third Degree—A Misdemeanor—The defendant on or about May 2, 2004, did unlawfully and knowingly commit the theft of women’s underwear of Stacey R.
Sung Koo Kim’s lawyers weren’t taking all of this lying down. Kim’s original lawyer, Michael Greenlick, had hired an investigator very early on in the proceedings named Michael Hintz to try and discover evidence that would corroborate Kim’s claim that he was nowhere near Corvallis on the day Brooke Wilberger disappeared. And Kim and his new lawyers had no doubt that the incredible bail amounts that ran over $10 million were because the authorities were trying to tie Kim to Brooke Wilberger.
Hintz wrote in a report that he contacted various people who would back up Kim’s claims. First off was a meeting with Sung Koo Kim’s father, Joo W. Kim, who said that his son had been home all night on May 23, and didn’t leave the house all morning on May 24. Sometime around 12:30 P.M., both he and Sung went to a Circuit City in Tigard, because they wanted to look at laptop computers. They drove to the Circuit City, looked at laptops for a while, bought one, returned it, and then bought another one at a different store. It essentially took all afternoon for them to buy, return, and get a new laptop computer.
Hintz went to the Circuit City in question with Sung Koo Kim and Joo W. Kim. The Kims pointed out an employee there whom they said they had dealt with on May 24. Hintz had a copy of the receipt from the store and it was printed as being at 1:11 P.M., May 24, 2004.
Hintz described the employee at Circuit City as a “tall white female, wearing a name tag—Cameron.” Hintz noted that the last name “Oulette” was written on the receipt and Hintz went up to Cameron and showed her the receipt that he had. She said that her full name was indeed Cameron Oulette.
Hintz then pointed out Sung Koo Kim and Joo W. Kim, who were standing nearby, and asked Cameron if she recognized them. Cameron was hesitant to answer and asked Hintz, “What is this about?”
Hintz replied that he was an investigator, and Sung Koo Kim had been accused of something. Hintz added that he was just checking out Kim’s alibi.
At that point Cameron called her supervisor, a woman named Michelle, to come over. Hintz asked Michelle if the store had a security camera that would have been functional on May 24. Michelle said that there were cameras functional that day, and they would have recorded everything that went on in the store. Then Michelle added that the Loss Prevention Department had the authority to search their video database and release sections to law enforcement. However, since Hintz was not an officer, she couldn’t just hand a copy over to him. He would have to go through the Circuit City legal department to get a copy of the tape.
Right around that time Joo W. Kim spoke up and asked Cameron if she remembered him. Cameron replied, “I remember both of you.” Then she referred to an ad that Sung Koo Kim was holding in his hand. Cameron said she remembered the Kims coming into the store with that very ad.
After that investigation Hintz contacted a woman named Jamie about her recollection of events on May 24. Jamie told Hintz that she was a friend of Sung Koo Kim’s sister Jung. On May 24 in the morning hours, Jamie, who was a nursing student at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), was taking a clinical exam. At around 11:45 A.M., she was through with the exam and believed that between that time and noon she phoned the Kim residence asking for Jung. Sung Koo Kim answered the phone, instead, and said that his sister was out. Jamie told Hintz that she didn’t have the bill as yet from her cell phone provider; but when it came in, it would prove that she had called the Kim household on May 24.
Because of charges in Yamhill, Benton, Multnomah, and now Washington counties in Oregon, one of Kim’s lawyers, Joseph O’Leary, wrote a document in trying to combine all of the cases for a “release” of Kim. The Washington County charges were a new set of charges against Kim; they were comprised of eight counts, including “Encouraging Child Sexual Abuse in the First Degree.” This stemmed from finding child pornography material on one of Kim’s computers. Apparently, this had happened eight times between 2002 and 2004.
O’Leary’s document contended that all of the charges should be lumped together so that Kim’s attorneys could present just one “Release Hearing Motion.” O’Leary noted once again that for the charges against Kim, the amount for bail was astronomical. It was now $4 million in Yamhill County, $1 million in Benton County, $1 million in Washington County, and $10 million in Multnomah County. This was a huge amount for allegations that Kim had only stolen women’s undergarments. Obviously, what was fueling the high bail amounts was not what authorities knew he had done, but rather what they thought he might have done and was capable of doing.
The motion to consolidate the release motions into one noted that the SWAT raid at 3:00 A.M. on May 29 had supposedly been in the middle of the night because Sung Koo Kim possessed dangerous weapons. But O’Leary pointed out that no officers ever seized the weapons. In fact, it was Kim’s father who later took the guns out of the house after the SWAT raid.
O’Leary wrote that if Kim was released, he would not have access to guns; he would constantly have to wear a tracking device; he could not leave his parents’ house except for medical reasons, court appearances, or psychiatric sessions. This last part dealt with the fact that Kim was now meeting with Dr. Richard Wollert twice a week. One meeting was an individual session and the other was a group sess
ion; both of them took place in the county jail.
While all this was going on, television station KGW reported that they had learned that Sung Koo Kim had bought three 28-pound cinder blocks on the afternoon of May 24 at Parr Lumber in Newberg, about sixty miles from Corvallis. An employee there spoke with a reporter of KGW about this purchase. Asked about the fact that Kim was so far away from Corvallis on May 24, Lieutenant Noble said, “We’re aware of that story. It’s part of the investigation. But Sung Koo Kim is still a person of interest in Brooke Wilberger’s abduction.”
Benton County DDA John Haroldson went a lot further than that. He wrote a lengthy document as to why Sung Koo Kim should not have his bail reduced or be released from custody. And some of the points put forward were very damning. Haroldson wrote, The evidence collected in this case uncovers a depraved individual with a perverse and diabolical obsession with the sexual torture, mutilation and murder of young women.
Then Haroldson noted that the examination of Kim’s computer revealed over forty thousand images of sexual torture, mutilation, and murders of women. Haroldson added, The sheer volume of images and videos demonstrates that this is not a simple penchant for pornography, but rather an absolute obsession with brutal sexual torture, mutilation and murder.
Haroldson acknowledged it was not a crime to collect such images, but he said that several women in the Corvallis area had been in the “crosshairs” of Kim’s obsession. These young women included two Benton County female residents who were on the OSU swim team. Kim had gathered images of them, biographical information, address information, and maps of where they lived. Then Haroldson stated that Kim didn’t have a job to which he was bound if released, but rather he had spent all of his time looking at violent porn and stealing women’s undergarments. There was nothing in Haroldson’s opinion that kept Kim from going on the run if released.
