Brooke Wilburger

With Courtney returning to Oregon soon to face charges for murdering Brooke Wilburger, I am remembering the time she disappeared. It was a hard time for this community. I could not believe she had been taken, in broad daylight, and close to where I live. I wanted her found. I wanted her found alive.

I phoned in way too many tips. I was watching for any tiny thing, remembering things from my past that might mean somebody was suspect. In retrospect, I should have not been sending tips in. My car had broken down. I was totally isolated out in my shack, watching the coverage, and I wanted her found so badly.

I'd been trapping cats along the river, for an old friend, right before Wilburger's disappearance. I was trapping along the Mary's River, in Pioneer Park, not very far from where the kidnapping occurred. I have a good memory. I was out after dark, too, until late. I saw a lot of people, some quite spooky, while trying to trap that pregnant long hair torti. I have a memory like a steel jaw trap. I e-mailed descriptions of everyone I saw in those days and nights to the cops.

I took the weekend off because there was an FCCO clinic that Sunday. On Monday, the day she was kidnapped, I slept late, and even so, was exhausted. I finally loaded the Harrisburg warehouse cats into my car and returned them. My car's transmission was failing. I drove right by that complex right during the time frame during which she disappeared. NOrmally, I remember everything. NOt that day. Was too worn out.

On Tuesday, I was back trying to trap the long hair torti. I remember hearing helicoptors overhead and boats on the Mary's and saw searchers going through even the berry bushes. I had no idea what was going on. I caught the cat. I headed back with her to my place and saw huge media RV's in the parking lot at Reser. I wondered what was going on. When I got home, I turned on the TV. I couldn't believe it. I felt guilty, too, that I had not seen anything the day before, when driving the cats back. I went over and over in my mind, the trip past the complex when returning the cats to Harrisburg and even the drive to Harrisburg, trying to remember every car that passed me. I had to go really slow, because of my failing transmission.

The car broke completely. The clutch went out and the engine too had severe problems. I was stranded then, a couple miles from anywhere, and very upset over Wilburgers' broad daylight disappearance. I have a thing about that. I don't like it when young women or girls are abused or raped or hurt. I wanted to find her or her found---alive. I couldn't stand seeing the parents grief, evident behind their bravery, on TV. I took to going out nights to search. Later, when I'd see buzzards circling, I'd go back and search that area in the night.

When the tipline was announced, I was stuck at home, stranded by my vehicular failure. I e-mailed in too many tips.

But way later on, over a year at least later, KATA asked me to check out an area. They said a Californian, on her way back to California, had seen a white cat in a certain place and wanted the cat helped. They were swamped. D had a family funeral to attend. I was exhausted but I went anyway. It was a large area to search for a cat.

I stumbled across something buried, partially, under a log. I pulled at it. It was a sweatshirt. Something in me, perhaps due to exhaustion, prickled. There was other stuff there, some woman's underwear on a stick, some other stuff, buried. Whatever it was, whatever had gone on there, totally freaked me out. I don't scare easy. I wondered if the faded sweatshirt, rotted from time, but at one time a shade of blue, was "hers". The prickley feeling increased until I bolted from the area. I couldn't get away fast enough. I went back into Albany to the house of a friend and after debating it with her, called the Corvalis police and asked if they had checked that area. The woman told me to wait, that someone would call back. No one did. So my friend and I figured the area must have already been searched or that they had really already found her or something.

I am going back to that spot. I am going to search it myself. It's just something I need to do.

I want that bastard convicted. I want the parents to have closure and peace. That it happened in Corvallis, in my backyard, still to this day does not set well with me. In the time since, in my rural roamings after cats, I keep a watch out, for anything that might be Brooke.