by Robert Scott
The FBI offered a $10,000 reward for information about Stephanie, and tips and leads came in from all directions. Not only that, but just as in Brooke Wilberger’s case, psychics and self-styled psychics were soon weighing in on the disappearance of Stephanie Condon. Out on the island of Hawaii, an organization called the Hawaii Remote Viewers’ Guild did what they called a “remote view” of the incident. They noted that it was done in double blind conditions, wherein the viewers, monitor, and analyst did not know who the target was. (The target was Stephanie Condon.) In fact, the target was only given code letters to them as CGAN-NSBV. None of the viewers had ever been to, or even heard of, Myrtle Creek, Oregon.
A person identified as “Rose” analyzed what the viewers “saw” and made a report that the target was deceased and was probably killed by a bearded man. Her body was buried in a remote location, with heavy vegetation, in the Northwest United States. All of this was fairly accurate, given the fact that the “viewers” had no idea who or where their target was. The target could have just as well been a person in other regions of the United States or even in Europe or in Asia.
Other psychics from around America jumped in on the disappearance of Stephanie Condon. One person said that Stephanie had been murdered on the night of her abduction and that she was buried approximately two thousand meters from the FM radio station transmitter in Tri City, Oregon.
And just as things had often taken a twisting and erratic course with Brooke Wilberger, such as with Sung Koo Kim, they now did so with Stephanie Condon. Television station KOIN reported in 2003 that there were “new investigators on the scene of an old crime, looking for evidence they hope will solve the case of missing fourteen-year-old Stephanie Condon.” KOIN noted there was a team from the United Kingdom that was highly trained in finding missing people. Pam Frank, of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office (DCSO), stated, “These people from the UK—this is their job. They have great success. They do searches—not once in awhile when a child comes up missing, but it is something they do every day.”
The organization was known as the National Crime and Operations Faculty. To help defray the costs of bringing the UK team over to Oregon, the Ford Family Foundation had picked up part of the cost, and the Mercy Foundation also helped. The local Seven Feathers Hotel and Casino in Canyonville provided free hotel accommodations for the UK team members.
KOIN also reported that a Black Hawk helicopter would be flying overhead in the area to be searched, and the FBI, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, Air National Guard, and University of Oregon would be involved in the search.
The Black Hawk helicopter did fly over an area near the small town of Riddle as the searchers fanned out in the area. Douglas County detective Joe Perkins said, “I had Mrs. Condon down here. She was able to see what was going on and meet with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. So for her, I think it’s reassurance that this case is ongoing and we haven’t quit.”
The UK crew also showed the media just how they went about searching an area. On a patch of ground near Lawson Bar Road in Myrtle Creek, work crew inmates cleared weeds and brambles from a patch of ground near the South Umpqua River. Lead investigator Detective Perkins said, “We needed to take the brush back five years.”
Once the brush had been cleared, a ground-penetrating radar device was used, which gave a rough picture of what was underground. The team was looking for soil disturbance and depressions in the ground, where a body might be buried. Anomalies in the soil were noted and stored on a computer so that forensic experts could return later to excavate the most promising locations.
The searchers went to a “hot spot” they had developed near Riddle, Oregon, not far from where Stephanie had disappeared. Brush was cleared from the area so that ground-penetrating radar could be used there. British officer Mark Harrison related, “The speed at which the beam bounces back will actually tell us whether there are human remains there, or whether it’s just a rock.” Harrison also related that they used special scent-trained dogs in trying to find remains. The oldest case they had ever cracked had gone unsolved for twenty-three years until the team was able to solve it.
And then, as had happened so often in the Brooke Wilberger case, the Stephanie Condon case took a very strange turn. An article on a UK website Bedford Today announced on June 27, 2003, BODY FOUND: STEPHANIE CONDON. The article reported that a Bedfordshire resident, Mark Harrison, had found the remains of Stephanie. The article related that Sergeant Mark Harrison had found the missing girl’s remains wrapped in a bedcover. It even reported Harrison as saying, “I am delighted I was able to help in this case, in particular for Stephanie’s family, so they can come to terms with what happened to their daughter.”
The article went on to relate that the suspect was believed to have been looking for someone else, but instead found Stephanie, and abducted her in a drunken rage. Then he took Stephanie to his residence at gunpoint, raped her there, shot her, and dumped her body in the woods. Harrison went on to say, “We were met with open arms (in Oregon) and people are eager to learn the new techniques. We had everything we could possibly ask for to do a job [that] until then had seemed impossible.”
All of this was great news, except for one thing—it wasn’t true. In fact, it was all an elaborate hoax. Even KOIN television had been fooled by the posting on the Bedford Today website, and ran a story that Stephanie Condon’s body had been found.
Within a short period of time, however, the DCSO said that Stephanie Condon’s body had not been found; there was no suspect in custody; the case was not solved. The DCSO detectives weren’t even sure where the story on the website had originated, or why someone would want to pull off such a prank.
Two more years went by; then suddenly Joel Courtney’s name came to light in relation to Natalie Kirov, Brooke Wilberger, and Katie Eggleston. Now the FBI was taking a hard look at Courtney in connection with the disappearance of Stephanie Condon.
A third disappearance of an Oregon girl happened in one more area that Joel Courtney had been known to travel. It occurred in Coos County on the Oregon coast. Fifteen-year-old blond Leah Freeman was dropped off at a friend’s house in the small town of Coquille by her boyfriend on the afternoon of June 28, 2000. He was to pick her up at around nine o’clock; but for some unknown reason, Leah started for home on foot earlier than that time. Then she simply disappeared.
Leah’s mother, Cory, awoke around three in the morning to check if her daughter ever made it home. Not finding the girl there, Cory called the police. A search went on throughout the area; a few weeks later, Leah’s shoes were found near a local road. Then on August 3, 2000, Leah’s body was discovered twelve miles away, near Fairview, in a section of woods.
Just as in Stephanie Condon’s case and Katie Eggleston’s case, forensic and police work came up empty-handed as to who the killer was. The murder of Leah took a terrible toll on the family. Leah’s father suffered a heart attack, and Cory was often distraught. All she had was the official report about her daughter, which mentioned “homicidal violence” and “pending investigation.” Even the term “homicidal violence” was just a catchall phrase about how Leah had died. Not even Leah’s mother knew by what means she had died.
Like the parents of Brooke Wilberger, Stephanie Condon and Katie Eggleston, Cory had to deal with the loss of her daughter. Cory joined an organization called Parents of Murdered Children. It is a group that no parent wants to join, but circumstances beyond their control often send them into that doleful and select group. At one meeting Cory met with Jenie Shilling, whose daughter Heather Anderson had been strangled to death by her roommate in The Dalles, Oregon.
Also in the group was the mother of Emily Krevi, who had been given a ride home by a man from a grocery store. Once they got to her apartment, he demanded sex, which she refused. The man returned with a steel pipe filled with cement. The man then hit her so hard that he bashed in part of her skull, raped her, and robbed her apartment. Emily died from that
attack. As if that wasn’t enough for Phoebe Krevi, her husband committed suicide after their daughter’s murder.
Phoebe later told a reporter for the Eugene Register-Guard that when she met Heather’s mom on the Oregon coast, they went out to the beach and talked. “We looked out at the ocean. We cried a lot. It was invaluable to connect with somebody who’s been through the exact same thing.” Soon Leah Freeman’s mom joined their small group.
On the National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims, they tied red and black balloons to their cars—red to mark the blood that had been spilled, black for violence. They went to a small park in Coquille to remember their daughters. Cory read a short statement: “‘Oh, Leah! I don’t know why, why it had to end this way, but it did. I know you’re with Grandma and Grandpa now. Give them hugs. I’ll never forget you, ever.’” Then Cory let a helium balloon sail into the sky.
Phoebe Krevi and Jenie Shilling promised to help Cory in her fight for more information about Leah’s case. For years it had been stalled with only a death certificate of “pending investigation, homicidal violence.”
Cory said, “I don’t even know whether she was shot, stabbed, or strangled.” Cory was fighting for the case to be transferred to another police agency and have the state attorney general’s office look into the matter. It was an uphill battle, but Jenie Shilling noted, “We’re a small, tiny group. But it’s a start, isn’t it?”
And then as time went on, Joel Courtney’s name popped up in relation to Leah Freeman, just as it had done with Katie Eggleston and Stephanie Condon.
CHAPTER 18
THE BLOND GIRL WITH BROWN EYES
In some ways the crime that most matched those of Brooke Wilberger and Natalie Kirov didn’t happen in Oregon at all. It occurred on May 25, 1996, in the college town of San Luis Obispo, on the central coast of California. Nineteen-year-old, blond, brown-eyed Kristin Denise Smart was a student at the California Polytechnic State University, where she majored in architecture. She was at an off-campus fraternity party until around 1:30 or 2:00 A.M. on May 25. At the party it was noted that Kristin seemed to be intoxicated or under the influence of drugs. She had trouble walking, and only later would it be wondered if a date rape drug had been slipped into one of her drinks.
Kristin left the party in the company of another student, Cheryl Anderson, to return to their dorm rooms on campus. A fellow student, nineteen-year-old Paul Flores, offered to walk with them to their dorms. When the trio got to the intersection of Perimeter Road and Grand Avenue, on the edge of the college campus, Cheryl went her own way. Flores told Cheryl that he would make sure that Kristin made it safely to her dorm. She never got there.
Later on May 25, Paul was seen with a black eye. When police finally were called into the situation, because Kristin had not made it back to her dormitory, Muir Hall, Paul told them that he had last seen her on Grand Avenue. But it was very suspicious that his story kept changing about the black eye. At first, he told the police that he’d received it while playing basketball. Later he told them he got it while working on his truck at his father’s home. Even later he admitted to a friend that “I just woke up with it. I don’t know how I got it. But it would have been pretty stupid to tell the police that.”
The police noted that Kristin’s clothing, toiletries, cosmetics, medicine, and identification were all left in her room. Even though it was obvious that she had not disappeared on her own, a missing person report was not created immediately, because it was Memorial Day weekend. The police knew that students often took impromptu vacations at that time.
Later, Kristin’s parents were very upset about this delay, and even the police department admitted that the four days between the time she was gone and when they started searching hampered the investigation. When the police finally did contact Kristin’s parents, her father, Stan Smart, said, “I was first frustrated that she might have done something embarrassing.” It was only as the days passed, and there was no word from or about Kristin, that her parents began to think something more sinister than just “embarrassing” had occurred.
Posters began going up around San Luis Obispo about Kristin Denise Smart, the way posters would later go up around Corvallis about Brooke Wilberger. Kristin was known to go by the nicknames of “Roxy” and “Scritter” at times. She was last seen wearing a light gray cropped T-shirt, black nylon running shorts, and red-and-white Puma athletic shoes. Her case was termed: “Endangered/Missing.”
In the beginning Paul Flores cooperated with the police. However, after talking with them twice, he refused a third time. To make matters even more suspicious, Paul dropped out of Cal Poly shortly after Kristin disappeared. He had been making poor grades and was in danger of failing his courses. He had also been arrested for driving while intoxicated and lost his driver’s license. Prior to a search of his dorm room in Santa Lucia Hall, Paul removed his belongings. Eventually the San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s Office (SLOSO) used three scent dogs in his dorm room. One of the dogs led the handler to Paul Flores’s mattress in connection to Kristin Smart, but no other evidence of any kind was found in the room.
Because Paul Flores was the last person to be seen with Kristin, and his story kept changing about how he got a black eye, Paul became the main suspect in Kristin’s disappearance. After the third attempt at questioning him by police, Paul Flores invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. Even when offered a plea deal, where he could plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter in exchange for showing authorities where Kristin’s body was located, Paul refused to cooperate. SLOSO sergeant Bill Wammock stated, “Because of inconsistencies in Mr. Flores’s activities, or claimed activities during that period, we believe he has further knowledge about what happened, and he is a suspect in her disappearance.”
And then everything about Paul Flores stalled. Even though investigators looked at him from every angle, they were never confident enough that he was the perpetrator to make an arrest. He had looked very good for the crime, but so had Sung Koo Kim for the abduction of Brooke Wilberger, as well as Aaron Evans and Loren Krueger. As the FBI had told the Brooke Wilberger Task Force, it is not always prudent to become focused on one individual. In fact, had Kim or the others been arrested on the Brooke Wilberger case, it would have made the defense for Joel Courtney much easier in that case. All the defense would have to do is tell a jury that another man had been arrested in her disappearance, but now the police were saying their client had done it. If they had been wrong once, then why not twice?
The same thing could have occurred in Kristin Smart’s case. Even though Flores looked good for the crime, the very fact that Joel Courtney had done things so similar had to be taken into account. Natalie Kirov, Brooke Wilberger, and Kristin Smart were all college girls of about the same age. They had all been abducted or disappeared very close to a college campus. What often seemed so crystal clear—as in Sung Koo Kim’s case and Paul Flores’s as well, only got murkier over time with lots of unanswered questions.
Eventually in February 2006, the FBI eliminated Joel Courtney from two Oregon cases. The FBI wouldn’t say which two cases, but the consensus was by journalists that it must have been the Leah Freeman and Stephanie Condon cases. The reasoning was that Paul Eggleston still spoke of the FBI’s involvement with his daughter Katie Eggleston’s case. And, in fact, Leah Freeman’s boyfriend was later arrested for her murder.
FBI spokesperson Beth Anne Steele told reporters that Joel Courtney was being looked at “as a normal part of the process.” She emphasized that he was still a “high possibility in cases involving victims in Alaska, Florida, New Mexico and Oregon.” Just which cases in Alaska and Florida remained a mystery.
And it was noted once again that Courtney tended to “abduct white females, fifteen to twenty-five years of age, with blond hair, in an outside setting.” This, of course, met some of the parameters into which San Luis Obispo’s Kristin Smart fell. The inclusion of her being near a college campus when she disappeared only added to circ
umstances akin to those of Brooke Wilberger and Natalie Kirov. And the fact that Joel Courtney had mentioned to Diane Mason that he was looking for a fraternity in Corvallis only added one more element to that scenario. Kristin had last been seen leaving a party at a frat house in San Luis Obispo. It was exactly the kind of area that Joel Courtney liked when he wanted to abduct a young woman. Even DA John Haroldson had spoken of Courtney going to “target-rich environments,” such as the OSU campus.
Despite all the rumors swirling around Joel Courtney in 2006, there were now concrete circumstances that he and his lawyer had to contend with. The first of these was for the abduction and rape of Natalie Kirov. And as 2006 progressed, it became apparent that Joel Courtney was not going to be cooperative with anyone, even his lawyers. Joel would argue with them and be intransigent on the Kirov case, and even more so when it came to anything concerning his eventual extradition to Oregon on the Brooke Wilberger case.
Despite Joel’s combative and often irrational nature, there were the beginnings of a plan within the Benton County DA’s Office to make some kind of plea deal arrangement with Joel Courtney. If he would confess to all of the kidnappings, rapes, and murders he had committed, the death penalty would be taken off the table. In their minds, Courtney had done a lot more than just the kidnapping and rape of Natalie Kirov, and allegedly the kidnapping and murder of Brooke Wilberger. Joel Courtney might not have been involved in all of the cases that law enforcement thought he was capable of doing, but there was a very good chance that he had been responsible for some of them. It was going to boil down to how much of a gambler Joel Courtney was.
