D.A.: Missing Student Case Suspect May Be Serial Killer

Aug. 4, 2005 — -- The man charged with murder, kidnapping and rape in the disappearance of Brigham Young University student Brooke Wilberger may be a serial killer who has struck in several states, according to a New Mexico district attorney.

Oregon authorities announced Wednesday that a grand jury has indicted Joel Courtney on 19 counts of aggravated murder, kidnapping, rape and sodomy in the disappearance of Wilberger, who vanished from the Corvallis apartment complex her sister manages on May 24, 2004. Wilberger's body has not been found.

Police say Wilberger, 19 at the time, was last seen helping with some cleaning chores. Authorities believed Wilberger's disappearance was suspicious because her cleaning supplies were left behind, her flip-flops were found in the complex parking lot, and her cell phone and other personal items were left behind in her sister's apartment.

Courtney, 39, is currently being held in Albuquerque on kidnapping and rape charges in an unrelated incident involving a foreign exchange student at the University of New Mexico. In a statement to ABC News affiliate KATU News in Portland, Ore., Bernalillo County, N.M., District Attorney Kari Brandenburg said Courtney is "a possible suspect in other homicides" involving college students.

Courtney, authorities said, has lived in a number of places, including Beaverton, Ore.; Cape Canaveral, Fla.; Anchorage, Alaska; and Albuquerque, N.M. In New Mexico and Oregon, Courtney's alleged crime victims were both young college students and it is possible that other victims also were college age, Brandenburg said. Investigators are trying to determine whether evidence links Courtney to other unsolved slayings.

"In this one [the case in New Mexico], we have a live victim and we're very thankful for that," said Brandenburg. "In some of the other cases, the victim wasn't that fortunate. So this is an individual that we want to put away for the rest of his life."