In Dateline Season 19, the episode titled Bringing Brooke Home , focused on the case of Brooke Wilberger, who disappeared as a teenager in 2004 and was eventually declared to have been murdered by Joel Courtney. A two-hour special episode was dedicated to the case, with the episodes aired as Part 1 and Part 2.

Brooke Wilberger had disappeared on May 24, 2004, after last being seen with a bucket of water, and her parents reported her missing the same day. Hence began the search for her, which eventually concluded in 2009 after her killer Joel Courtney admitted to the murder, and revealed the location of her body.

Let us now explore in detail the complete timeline of Brooke Wilberger’s case and how the police eventually nabbed Joel Courtney.

Timeline of the Brooke Wilberger disappearance and murder case as shown in Dateline

In April 2004, Brooke Wilberger came back to her hometown Corvallis in Oregon to spend her summer break after completing freshman year at Brigham Young University. In May, she took up work at the Oak Park Apartments, where her sister was already working.

On May 24, 2004, Wilberger went off for work, but it was subsequently discovered that, while all her personal belongings were in her apartment and her cleaning bucket and shoes were at her place of work, Wilberger herself was not anywhere to be found. Her parents got concerned and reported it to the police. The next day, the law enforcement officials announced that Wilberger was probably kidnapped.

The news quickly became a media sensation and on May 28, 2004, the police named their first suspect, Sung Koo Kim, a thief. As the investigation proceeded, Wilberger’s family announced a reward of $6,000 for any information regarding Wilberger’s location as six months passed without any update.

In an unrelated case, a person named Joel Patrick Courtney is arrested on November 30, 2004, for kidnapping and raping an exchange student studying at the University of New Mexico.

On February 7, 2005, Sung Koo Kim was let go by the police as no evidence could be found against him. On May 31 of the same year, the police started enquiring about a green 1997 Dodge Caravan, which seemed to be important regarding Wilberger’s disappearance.

In a surprising turn of events, Joel Courtney, was arrested by the police, who claimed that he was the man behind the disappearance and murder of Brooke Wilberger. Following his arrest, in 2006, Wilberger’s parents filed a case against the company that had hired Courtney, as they claimed that not enough background checks had been done before hiring him.

On January 5, 2007, Courtney was announced to be mentally sound enough for a trial to start against him in New Mexico. On May 16 the same year, he was accused by a Benton County grand jury of attempted kidnap and murder of two other women on the very day Wilberger had disappeared.

On September 10, 2004, in Albuquerque, N.M, Courtney put forward his request of separating the rape and kidnapping charges against him. On December 13 the same year, John Haroldson, the Benton County District Attorney, mentioned his intentions of extraditing Courtney from New Mexico and eventually putting him up for the death penalty.

On January 24, 2008, Bill Richardson and Ted Kulongoski, governors of New Mexico and Oregon, agreed to the proposal of extraditing Courtney to Oregon to start his trial. Since Wilberger’s body was still not found, the authorities had to start building their case depending on circumstantial evidence.

While Courtney was offered a deal that would have saved him from the death penalty if he told the police where he had buried Wilberger, he refused to take it on November 4, 2008.

In May 2009, things started moving fast as the prosecutors combined the two cases against Courtney and eye witnesses also testified that they had seen him driving the aforementioned green van before Wilberger had disappeared.

Another person also came forward and accused Courtney of trying to kidnap her in 1993. Finally, after much back and forth, on September 21, 2009, prosecutors announced that they had successfully retrieved whatever was left of Wilberger, as Courtney agreed to the plea that said he would be given a lifetime sentence in prison instead of the death penalty if he revealed the location of Wilberger’s body.

Dateline can be streamed on Peacock.

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