The Sales Call: The Unsolved Disappearance of Katie Eggleston

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
On a hot summer day in nineteen ninety three, recent
college grad, Katie was doing sales calls in downtown Portland, Oregon.
After spending the last few weeks onboarding and shadowing, this
was her first day going solo on the job. She
completed her morning calls and was headed to some in
the afternoon as well appointments. She never made it to

(00:33):
the recovery of her abandoned car in an industrial lot
sent the investigation in several different directions, including one that
she had left on her own accord, but the disappearance
of another woman a decade later would lead investigators to
wonder if the two cases were connected and if Katie
was the victim of foul play all along, something her

(00:56):
family knew in their hearts from day one. I'm your host, Megan,
and each week on a Simpler Time True Crime, I
cover older unsolved cases and challenged the idea that a
simpler time means a safer time. This week, I'm bringing
to you the unsolved disappearance of Katie Eggleston. Catherine Eggleston,

(01:37):
who mostly went by Katie, was born in Redmond, Oregon,
on May fourth, nineteen seventy one. It was the day
after her sister Janet's fifteenth birthday, and Janet would declare
Katie as the best birthday present she ever received. Katie
was the third of four girls born to Paul and
Heather Eggleston. When Katie was going through her teen years,

(02:00):
her family purchased the oldest home in Redmond on a
pristine five acres of land, referred to in a later
newspaper article as their own little house on the prairie.
In the nineteen nineties, Redmond, Oregon was a small but
quietly shifting high desert community with a landscape of sagebrush
and juniper. The central Oregon city had only around seven

(02:23):
thousand residents at the time. Now it's one of the
fastest growing places in Oregon and has a population of
over thirty five thousand, and it has really nice proximity
to neighboring Bend. Katie was always known in school for
her creativity and artistic ability and her passion for life.
She was the life of the party, friendly, social, outgoing,

(02:47):
and involved in everything. After graduating from Redmond High School
in nineteen eighty nine, Katie took her passion for art
and studied that along with English at Oregon State University
in Corvallis. Corvllis is about two and a half hours
west of Redmond, towards the coast in between Salem and Eugene.

(03:08):
Katie was just as involved in college as she was
in high school. She joined a sorority, She was participating
in activities in campus and holding down multiple part time
jobs throughout her college career. She graduated in June of
nineteen ninety three and landed a lucrative job. Upon graduation,

(03:30):
Katie would bring her charismatic personality to the sales world,
working for a company called ALLNet Communications, which was a
telecommunications company, where Katie would be selling telecommunication products such
as faxes, teleconferencing in eight hundred lines. The company headquarters

(03:50):
were located in Lake Oswego, which is just south of Portland,
and there to help her get on her feet and
get started with this new chapter in her life was
her big sister, Janet Taylor, who was in her late
thirties at this point. Janet lived in Gresham, just east
of Portland, and offered to have Katie come live with her.

(04:11):
Janet called how it wasn't much, just a mattress on
the floor in a spare bedroom, but she wanted her
sister to be able to live life and start her
new career without all the money stressors that so many
people fresh out of college feel. Janet was divorced and
was enjoying this time with her baby sister, but none
of it would last very long. Katie went away to

(04:33):
do some enhanced training out of state and then began
shadowing sales calls. This training wrapped up and Katie felt ready.
Her parents were a little nervous about her navigating a
big city like Portland after growing up in such a
quiet town with little safety risk. Katie's dad, Paul, even
asked her if she was aware of Portland's crime rates,

(04:54):
and she said, Dad, don't worry. I stay out of
the bad neighborhoods and I always carry my whistle with me.
A common phenomenon of nine to five workers is getting
the Sunday scaries anticipating Monday, but Katie was excited for Monday,
August second, nineteen ninety three. It was the first day
she got to do sales calls solo, and she had

(05:15):
a booked schedule. She would be doing appointments all day
before meeting her supervisor back at the main office in
Lake oswego to debriefun how it all went. The forecast
called for sunshine in temperatures in the mid nineties, but
in the same way I used to trek through ice
and snow in pencil skirts with no jacket in twenty

(05:38):
degree weather when I was trying to look the part
in college. Katie ignored the forecast and did the inverse
of what I did to dress for her new professional gig.
She put on a white blouse layered with a dark
purple blazer, white stockings, and a black skirt. From what
we can tell, the morning went well. Katie did her

(05:59):
morning sales calls. She stopped at a gas station and
the bank, and then employees at a local burger king
recall seeing her there for lunch. She then had an
early afternoon appointment at seven hundred Moltnomah Street, formerly known
as the Port of Portland Building, near the Lloyd Center,
which is a shopping center. Like many malls, Lloyd Center

(06:21):
has now become somewhat obsolete, but at the time it
was quite busy and popular, and I mentioned that just
so you can get a sense of the type of
area Katie was in that day. A very busy hub
in Portland with a lot of people in broad daylight.
We know that Katie completed that call. She was selling
an enhanced eight hundred phone system to a travel agency

(06:43):
called World Travel in the Port of Portland building. After
her afternoon calls, Katie, as I mentioned, was supposed to
meet with her supervisor back at the office at five pm,
but she never showed up. I can't speak for this supervisor,
but I imagine that they may have found it odd
but not necessarily alarming. I work in a supervising position

(07:06):
in my day job, and many times over the years,
I've had instances where I thought I communicated a meetup
or a time, and then wires got crossed and I
realized we weren't on the same page. And because this
is the early nineties and cell phone use was more limited,
it wasn't as if her supervisor could just shoot her
a quick text or call her. So I imagine they thought

(07:27):
Katie must have forgotten to meet me back here and
just went home. We'll connect tomorrow. Katie's sister Janet had
a similar lack of concern on that first evening. Katie
always worked out in the evening, and at first she
thought Katie must have just met up with someone after
She is young and social after all, So Janet went
to bed, but concern for everyone grew. That next morning,

(07:51):
Janet realized that Katie had not come home and slept
in her bed that night, and a call to the
office found that she hadn't reported to work. Her supervisor
found her lack of return to the office the evening
before even more troubling when they found out that Katie
had not made any of her mid to late afternoon
sales appointments. With that Katie's sister, Janet Taylor, knew she

(08:14):
had two phone calls she needed to make to her
parents in Redmond and to the police. Both jumped into action,
and from that very moment on, Paul Eggleston, a teacher
turned superintendent of schools, kept a meticulous record of everything
he encountered in the case. Contemporaneously, when police put a

(08:37):
bolo for Katie's Volkswagen, they got surprising news, and the
discovery added more questions than answers to the twenty two
year old's disappearance. Investigators searching for Katie Eggleston and her

(09:01):
Volkswagen Golf were shocked when they found that it had
already been found. In the early hours of that morning,
August third, nineteen ninety three, a security guard found Katie's
car in a parking lot of an industrial park near
one hundred and twenty second Avenue and Airport Way. The
location was nine point six miles away from the building

(09:23):
Katie was last seen at doing her sales call. All
have a map of this on our Instagram at simpler time,
crime Pod. He had been walking around in the early
morning hours doing security rounds when he found the car
at about twelve thirty am. There were no signs of
a struggle in the car. It was unlocked, the windows
were down, and the keys were in the ignition, Katie's

(09:46):
purse containing her checkbook, credit cards, driver's license, and a
small amount of cash were still in the seat. Something
to note about Katie's Volkswagen It did not have air conditioning,
and remember it was like ninety three degrees out that day,
so that might provide some context to the open windows.

(10:07):
But also could the open windows put her at risk
if someone rushed up to her in her car as
she was getting in after her sales call. Maybe, I
mean absolutely, the less secure your car is, the more
at risk. You are in that type of situation for
something like a car jacking or an abduction, but we
just simply don't know for certain what impact it had here.

(10:30):
The discovery of the car was an ominous clue, and
investigators were quick to say within just the first few
days that they were concerned about an abduction and foul
play being involved in the case. Katie's family felt the
same way, but they were hopeful that somebody was just
holding her and that there was still time to release her.
Paul's notes would discuss his observation of all the industrial

(10:53):
buildings and warehouses around and how as he drove by
them he wondered if Katie was being held in them.
Paul made the trip to Portland with Katie's younger sister
Sarah to begin the physical search, and when they arrived
there was already investigators and search operations under way. The
gravity of the situation washed over Sarah at this point,

(11:16):
and Paul would tell the papers that Sarah had a
physical reaction to seeing all the searchers. Katie's new employer, Alnat,
was dedicated to finding her. They were devastated that she
had seemingly vanished while on the clock doing her job
for them, and they immediately contributed money to a search fund,
as well as provided a helicopter. Meanwhile, police in volunteer

(11:40):
searchers did a foot search through the surrounding woods and fields.
Paul Eggleston went to the Port of Portland building with
flyers in hand, and he went floor by floor asking
for tips and leads. Just the day after Katie's car
was found, there was a homicide investigation underway and Portland,

(12:01):
and another one on the fifth and the sixth. Paul
noted that one of the lead investigators told him multiple
times how overworked and understaffed they were to keep up
with the violent crime they were encountering. And while that
may have been true, I can't help but feel for
Paul Eggleston in that moment. Objectively, it wasn't his responsibility

(12:22):
to shoulder that burden. His primary and only focus was
finding his daughter. And secondly, it doesn't feel good to
hear that the people in charge of doing so have
really divided attention in bandwidth to do that, But that
was the reality, and I wonder how much of that
contributed to some of the police work. I'll get into
more in a bit. While Paul and Sarah were in Portland.

(12:46):
Katie's mother, Heather, stayed in Redmond, hoping for leads and
phone calls. The preschool teacher received over one hundred from
friends and community members showing support and looking to help.
For that first weekend, Katie's old co workers at a
restaurant in Corvallis pulled together and decided that any tips
they earned were going to go to a search fund

(13:07):
for Katie. These are low income earners and this was
their most lucrative night for tips, but they still wanted
to contribute them to finding their friend. And that should
just tell you a lot about the person Katie was
and how much she was cared for. Initial reporting in
the paper reflected the attitude from law enforcement that Katie

(13:28):
may have been randomly abducted by a stranger, which is
the hardest type of crime to solve. But Katie's family
first wanted to look into someone closer to Katie, her boyfriend.
According to Paul Eggleston, Katie's boyfriend was a childhood sweetheart
of sorts and still lived in Redmond. I don't know
for sure, but you could speculate with her new life

(13:51):
starting and living ways away, she was just itching to
shift away from this relationship. Whatever the reason, Katie had
told her father that she was planning on breaking up
with this boyfriend, and according to Paul, she had shared
it with the boyfriend the weekend before she went missing.
He was apparently very upset about this and had a

(14:11):
strong reaction. Furthermore, after finding out Katie went missing, he
showed up to help with the search, and Paul noted
that he had extremely odd behavior. What exactly that looked like,
I'm not sure. It also doesn't seem to matter because
despite all of this, Portland police were able to rule
out the boyfriend almost instantly because he had an alibi

(14:34):
for being in Central Oregon on the day of the crime.
So in terms of suspects in people she knew, that
was pretty limited. Remember, Katie had only moved to this
area about one month prior. On Saturday the seventh, another
large volunteer search was underway in the area near the
airport where her car was found. All Net Communications sent

(14:56):
employees to help with the search and provided a five
thousand dollars a reward for information. The air search began
at seven thirty am and the bloodhound searched an hour later.
Then the volunteers alongside the local Explorer post in Moltnomah
County Search and Rescue took to the search at around eleven.

(15:17):
Portland Police spokesperson Sergeant Derek Foxworth said that he had
no reason to believe they would find her body there. However,
without conducting a thorough search, there was no way to
know for sure, so they had to rule that out,
and seemingly it did. No signs of Katie or any
clues were found in the area. As a side note,

(15:37):
the scent dogs had also been around her car when
that was found, and there was no trail leading away
from her car. That week, the paper ran an article
about jobs that women have to be more careful in
where they were more at risk, but Katie's job selling
to businesses seemed less risky than some of the others mentioned,

(15:57):
like taxi drivers and real estate agents, a topic I've
covered in my earlier episode on Charlotte Famiano. Between the
one to two week mark, flyers were distributed along the
I five corridor looking for any witnesses. Meanwhile, Alnett set
up a tip line. It was a one eight hundred
number specific to Katie's case. Callers would get an answering

(16:20):
message asking them to leave their name, number, and what
they knew about Katie's case. The combination of police and
family efforts seemed to be collaborative and aligned in those
early weeks. That was until later in August, when one
of the lead detectives asked Paul Eggleston why he hadn't
been forthcoming about a family dynamic. This would begin the

(16:44):
fractured relationship between the Eggleston's in Portland law enforcement, something
that would never fully recover. Is there something your family
should have told me? Portland Police Detective Terry Wagner's question

(17:09):
caught Paul Eggleston completely off guard, and he answered accordingly.
What he replied. Wagner shared she liked to hear things
from people themselves, not others, and when she doesn't, she
has to wonder why they wouldn't tell her everything. Right
from the beginning, Paul Eggleston was still not picking up

(17:29):
what she was putting down. Detective Wagner said she was
referring to Paul's former son in law's impending trial for
tax evasion charges, something that Katie's sister, Janet Taylor was
also caught up in, and something that Katie was supposed
to be a witness for Paul was flabbergasted. He told

(17:49):
her he hadn't mentioned it because it wasn't even at
the forefront of his thoughts, and that it was completely
irrelevant to Katie's case, to which Terry was Wagner lost
her patience and said, you mean to tell me you
don't see the connection between a trial for a felony
and a key witness disappearing. Paul again replied no, and

(18:12):
Wagner said I find that hard to believe. Do you
know where Katie is now? The implication angered Paul and
hit him like a gut punch. No, he said he
did not, and Detective Wagner doubled down and asked him
if he would take a lie detector test, to which
he said, of course, and he subsequently passed. But I'm

(18:34):
sure what you're saying to yourself right now is Megan.
Please back it up. What are these tax evasion charges
and what do they have to do with Katie? The
first question I can confidently answer, the second not so much.
Leading up to Katie's disappearance, Katie's sister, Janet Taylor and

(18:54):
her ex husband Jeffrey were in a bit of trouble.
When they were still married. They had five taxes and
allegedly failed to report approximately one hundred and ninety thousand
dollars in business income in nineteen eighty six. In nineteen
eighty seven, as is often the case, the irs had
caught up to them and they were facing serious charges.

(19:17):
For a point of reference, the couple owned a wood
product's import company called Highline Industrial Supply, Inc. Katie was
listed as a possible witness for the prosecution should the
case go to trial. Detective Wagner surmised that one of
two things was the case. One, Jeffrey Taylor was somehow

(19:37):
involved and had wanted to eliminate a witness, or two
Katie had taken off to avoid having to take the
stand against her sister and former brother in law. To
support theory number two, Wagner pointed out that Katie's car
was parked near the airport, she had retrieved her passport
from her parents just ten days before her disappearance, and

(19:59):
the passport was not found amongst her belongings. That all
may seem promising, but there were many holes to be
poked in Detective Wagner's theory. For starters, the Egglestons knew
why their daughter had asked for her passport. They said
that as she was heading to California for training it
all that, and as she picked up new contracts in telecommunications,

(20:22):
she needed her passport for identity verification known well to
hr gurus as a nine verification. They suspected that she
placed the passport in her big work binder for all
that which was suspiciously missing along with her. In fact,
at this point, Katie, her binder, and her passport were

(20:43):
the only things missing. As far as the witness theory,
there was a major flaw in that Katie's sister, Janet,
had already pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return
prior to Katie ever having gone missing. According to the
IRS investigator and the prosecution, they had a strong case
with or without Katie, and all that was left after

(21:05):
Katie's disappearance was the sentencing that Janet would inevitably face
Shortly thereafter. Janet's ex husband also pleaded guilty and was
just awaiting sentencing. If you were to believe the theory
that Katie was taken because her former brother in law
hired someone, you'd have to believe that he was willing
to face conspiracy to commit murder charges to avoid house

(21:28):
arrest and probation, which is inevitably what both Janet and
her former husband were sentenced to. It just didn't make sense.
The sentencing didn't all happen until the fall of ninety three,
so in August, when Paul was confronted with this, he
was angry, and he wrote two letters to the Portland
Police Department. He said that Katie knew as much about

(21:50):
the case as their younger daughter Sarah, who was also
a potential witness, so why would someone trying to block
a witness target just Katie. He also emphasiz Isaac again,
Katie was a very minimal witness to the prosecution and
as far as the Eggleston's being involved, Paul told the
paper quote to believe that, you have to believe that

(22:13):
a family would trade the career, reputation and future prospects
of a dearly loved daughter to very slightly improve the
courtroom chances of a man they have not seen, heard from,
or spoken with in several years, and who all believe
got into his predicament through his own actions. End quote.

(22:34):
Despite all of this happening behind the scenes, the public
was not aware of it. At this point. All the
news reported on was that the Egglestons had hired a
private investigator. I haven't even touched on the full scope
of all of it, but the various fundraisers for Katie
had brought in a lot of money and they were
investing it in the route they thought would be the

(22:54):
most beneficial. This PI worked alongside Portland PD to a
point in all time, helped the Egglestons with the phone
line set up by all Net. Speaking of all Net,
by August thirtieth, they decided to double their reward to
ten thousand dollars. Weeks ticked on, and by the end
of September, Paul and Heather Eggleston took to the media

(23:15):
to say, Hey, I know it seems quiet, but we
know that the police that they're working leads behind the scenes,
and that Portland PD is on her case constantly. Don't
mistake a lack of news stories or updates for a
lack of progress, but the facade of a harmonious partnership
would be dismantled in mid October of ninety three, when

(23:37):
Janet received her sentencing and Detective Terry Wagner took to
the papers. The papers reiterated how Janet had pleaded guilty
prior to Katie ever going missing, and emphasized Katie's minimal participation. Still,
when asked if Katie's disappearance was related to the case,
Detective Wagner said, quote, common sense would dictate that anyone

(23:57):
consider that end quote, and consider that the moment that
the gloves came off, Paul Eggleston was done playing nice.
Up to this point. He had left the conflicts he
had faced with one of the lead detectives out of
the public narrative so as not to distract from his
daughter's case. But with this he had had enough. Janet

(24:18):
was resigned to her sentencing five years probation. In four
months house arrest, she told the Albany Democrat Harald that
involving her sister quote tarnishes her in a way that
is unbelievably painful to me. End quote. The next lead
would come off the eight hundred tip line, a voice
that sounded evil, who some thought held the answers to

(24:40):
the case. Back early in the investigation, the Egglestons had
received a message on their tip line that they in
authorities deemed relevant, but on the guided of the experienced investigators.

(25:02):
They kept it under wraps. After what the Egglestons now
believed was a low blow, they kind of said, forget it,
we don't trust these investigators or taking matters into our
own hands. Wagner and others would advise that if the
Egglestons were going to release the recording, that they were
careful not to release when it came in, or other

(25:22):
specifics that could be used to rule people out, and overall,
Detective Wagner did not support releasing the tape to the public.
The Egglestons released the tape and investigators released that they
had been able to trace the call to a phone
booth in northeast Portland. The caller told the Egglestons that

(25:42):
they had killed Katie and that the Egglestons would never
find her body, but he wished them luck in their attempts.
If you listen to this show and follow true crime,
you know it's not unheard of for quacks to call
tip lines. In fact, specific to Katie's case, they had
heard from psychics and people demanding false ransoms on multiple occasions,

(26:05):
and for whatever reason, this caller stood out to the
Egglestons and Portland PD. The man was believed to be
a white man with a southern accent from the southeastern
part of the US. A few radio stations played this
and leads came in, but nothing that moved the needle
in a large way in the investigation, and I wasn't
able to find the audio of this myself. In February

(26:30):
of ninety four, the investigation took a new turn with
a new abduction. Susan Ray Hostler, who was a married
mother in her mid twenties, was set to meet a
nineteen year old friend for coffee or dinner in Portland.
She and the friend drove separately, and when they went
into the restaurant in the Strip Mall, they found that
it was super busy, so they had decided to go

(26:52):
to a new place and just meet up there. Susan
never made it to the new location. Witnesses reported seeing
one to two men men jump into her vehicle as
she was getting in and hearing her scream sharply as
if she was surprised. There were all sorts of composites
and even people saying they saw two men panhandling that

(27:12):
could be connected. Portland authorities wanted to compare the cases
to get a sense of if they were related, especially
when Susan's car was found abandoned near Mount Omah Falls.
A couple of days later, two pretty young women who
had cars abandoned with windows down and purses inside, seemingly

(27:33):
and likely abducted from a parking area. Circumstantially it sounded promising,
but soon thereafter, and unlike Katie, Susan's body was found.
She was partially nude and she had been sexually assaulted.
Her body was found just a few hundred yards from
her abandoned car. The detectives from both jurisdictions compared cases

(27:57):
and found no connection between the two. To be honest,
to this day, I struggle with it because what's to
say one of the men involved in this case wasn't
involved with Katie's. At the time they ruled out involvement,
they hadn't mentioned suspects, and eventually those suspects were caught.
Two brother in laws who had been out drinking that

(28:17):
night allegedly ambushed Susan in a drunken, sexually motivated attack.
Years later, in two thousand and two, DNA linked Andrew
Tagnoor to the crime. In two thousand and four, he
pleaded guilty and was sentenced to twenty five years in prison.
His brother in law really dragged out his legal appeals
in the whole process before being found guilty as well,

(28:40):
and he was sentenced to twenty two and a half
years in prison. This man, Joseph Major, was a few
years into his twenty two and a half year sentence
when he was murdered by a fellow inmate. So if
he did have answers in Katie's case, they died with him.
Going back to real time, in September of ninety four,

(29:01):
a body was found in the Columbia River, but it
was said to not be Katie, and basically the next
few years would go this way. The family would be
interviewed on the anniversary and share updates, and they would
discuss how each body found in Oregon would stop them
in their tracks. I think when you listen to podcast
episodes like this one, or you watch a true crime documentary,

(29:23):
sometimes an update like this you just sort of breeze over, like, yep,
a body was found and it was ruled out. But
for the family, they just palpably feel this and experience
the emotional highs and lows, and it's a completely different
experience for them. And it's not just a blip on
their radar. On the three year anniversary, the family wrote

(29:45):
to Unsolved Mysteries to have Katie's show profiled, but Unsolved
Mysteries declined to share Katie's story, stating that they preferred
to share stories that gave tangible leads to viewers, that
viewers felt like they could follow up on, and that
Katie's case lacked those now listen. I love some old

(30:06):
school Unsolved Mysteries. I think it did well with what
it knew to do at the time. If you ever
want a debrief on them, there is a podcast called
Unsolved Couple that I love, and they are a married
couple that goes through all the old cases on Unsolved
Mysteries and they give updates on kind of where they
stand now. But part of why I do these episodes

(30:27):
is for cases with even less information than Katie's. Back
in the day, there were limited options. And I know
modern podcasting and crime media can be a blessing and
a curse for families and survivors, but to me, it
is essential to share all types of stories, even ones
that have limited leads to follow, especially ones that have

(30:49):
limited leads to follow, because you never know what new
leads may surface with exposure years past, and it wouldn't
be until two thousand and one until Katie's case came
into the news again with a fresh appeal from her parents.
And it was around this time when a lot more
of the early leads came forward. For a point of clarification,

(31:11):
these leads were not new, it's just it was the
first time they were reported on. And here's what we
found out. Special shout out to the book The Last
Time We Saw Her by Robert Scott. This book was
not focused on Katie, but rather another case we'll get
into in a moment, but it did go into Katie's
case and revealed some new details alongside some that were

(31:32):
released in some news articles. According to the articles in
the book, the man who last saw Katie because she
had made a sales call to his workplace. He said
he saw Katie getting off the elevator at the Port
of Portland Building at around two fifteen or two twenty
pm with a man with a dark complexion and a

(31:53):
blue blazer on. She seemed nervous to him and preoccupied.
Based on my understanding of the source material, this same man,
the last guy she made a sales call to saw
Katie's vehicle still at the Port of Portland Building at
five pm. Other witnesses stated that they saw Katie in

(32:15):
the Port of Portland Building that afternoon, making phone calls
from phones in the lobby. The last new note was
that from a gas station attendant. He claimed to have
seen Katie the day she went missing. Earlier in the day,
she had allegedly asked him for directions to the airport
and he had given those to her. She was driving

(32:35):
her Volkswagon at the time, and he described that she
had a large black binder on the seat and that
is what those all nutbinders looked like. He claimed to
see her a while later and said she was in
distress driving a Honda Civic with two black men. She
had been driving erratically as if to draw attention to

(32:55):
call police. She had been half dressed and crying, and
slipped this cashier ten dollar bill. He contemplated calling for
drunk driving at the time, but he didn't. When he
saw Katie's face on the news, he was certain it
was her and lived with the regret of not calling
it in because in doing so, it would have prompted

(33:16):
him to grab the plate number on the car, it
was just a couple of minutes from where her car
was found, and he noted that the binder, which again
matched that description of the ALLNet binder, that was no
longer with her the second time. This was not a
year's later lead. Apparently this guy came forward pretty early,
but the police didn't take it seriously because they were

(33:38):
more leaning into Katie's disappearance being connected to the Southern
white man collar, and the gas station worker claimed these
men were black men. I wish we had a little
more information on the gas station stop. It's honestly all
kind of bizarre. I can't even really picture the series
of events in how they transpired, with the money passing
and her being half dressed, like how she even made

(34:00):
contact with this guy. But also because we know she
also stopped at a gas station earlier in the day,
according to a timeline of events that was established by
law enforcement. So was that earlier in the day. Was
that the same gas station trip, or did she like
the one where she stopped and asked for directions, or
did she stop later in the day at this different

(34:21):
gas station just for that purpose of asking for directions.
It's a bit convoluted, I know. And the thing with
this case is, I feel like it's dangerous to put
all of your eggs in one basket, and unfortunately detectives
seemed to do that multiple times with both the tax
fraud theory and the anonymous caller. Believe it or not,

(34:43):
most sources, including Katie's family, state that police really held
on to the theory that Katie left on her own
accord for years. That was until years later when another
young woman who looked like Katie Eggleston was abducted. Now,

(35:08):
this case is one you may be familiar with because
it was talked about a lot when it happened. It's
horribly tragic and there are so many moving parts to it.
So I'll try my best to give important details while
being a bit more high level with the case so
we don't lose sight of the connection to Katie's case.
In late May of two thousand and four, a Brigham

(35:29):
Young University student, nineteen year old Brooke Wilberger, was working
doing exterior maintenance at an apartment complex where her sister
was the manager. She was last seen cleaning lamp posts
mid morning. Suddenly, residents heard a scream and a little
while later her flip flaps were found there, with her
cleaning supplies left behind. Police recognized early that this was

(35:53):
very likely an abduction, and they treated it as such,
but even with large scale searches in media attention, they
came up empty. In late November of that same year,
a University of New Mexico foreign exchange student was abducted
and sexually assaulted. She was able to escape her drugged
up attacker and run into traffic for help. She identified

(36:17):
a man named Joel Patrick Courtney as her attacker. His
DNA was collected and he pleaded guilty in New Mexico
and was sent to prison. On the day of the
abduction of Brook Wilberger, two other young students in Corvallis
described attempted abductions by a man driving a van that
matched Joel Courtney's. Courtney had been driving a work van

(36:41):
on the day of Brooks subduction, and amazingly police were
able to track it down. The new owner was embarrassed
that he hadn't cleaned it out and that it was
all dirty, and law enforcement said, no, that's actually perfect.
One of Brook's hairs was found in Courtney's van, and
so there was a DNA. Faced with this forensic evidence,

(37:04):
Courtney eventually would be extradited back to Oregon for trial.
He accepted a plea deal to avoid the death penalty
if he led investigators to Brooks Remains, which he did.
It was around two thousand and six when fresh investigators
on Katie Eggleston's case told her parents that they were
looking into Courtney as a suspect in her disappearance. They

(37:27):
collected DNA from the Egglestons and explained that Katie had
similar physical characteristics to Brooke Wilberger and how Joel Courtney
was in Portland at the time. If there is a
definitive connection to Courtney, he hasn't admitted to it and
they haven't been able to prove it unless investigators are
withholding information, which is of course their right and responsibility

(37:51):
at times to do. It doesn't appear that detectives have
physical evidence to link the cases. Still, he is often
listed as a person of interest in referenced in case
material and articles about Katie. Katie's case remains as much

(38:16):
a mystery today as it did over thirty years ago.
Katie's mother believed, at least at one point that Katie
being charismatic and trying to land sales, may have ended
up talking with someone and went into their card to
escape the hot day. Some in Katie's family have expressed
that it had to have been a person she knew

(38:37):
and went willingly with, because Katie would have put up
a fight and screamed if somebody just tried to grab
her in a parking area. I completely understand where families
are coming from when they say that, But on the
flip side, I think it's difficult to predict how anybody
would react if someone, say, pulled a gun on you
and told you not to scream or they'd kill you.

(38:59):
Joel Patrick Courtney, for example, would later admit that he
got close to Brooke Wilberger by posing as a FedEx
type delivery worker. Then he quickly pulled a knife and
threw her in his van. She let out a brief
scream in surprise that a couple of neighbors heard, and
then they carried on with their day. It's scary to
think about because it relinquishes our prized sense of control

(39:22):
in these types of situations, but it is the reality.
So was Joel Courtney involved? Maybe? If so, I doubt
the man getting off the elevator and Joel were one
and the same. Joel didn't really work jobs that would
have had him wearing a blazer, and he has a
lighter complexion in blue eyes. I'll share a picture of

(39:45):
him on the Instagram. If it was Joel Courtney. In
my opinion, the abduction occurred like the others and simply
had no witnesses because none of the other puzzle pieces
fit with him. Was the man getting off the elevator
irrelevant or just a red herring? Could this possibly have
been the man her mother suspected lured her to his

(40:07):
vehicle with the promise of a sale for his company.
Police have never released where her end of day appointments
were supposed to be. If the witness statement was true
and her vehicle was still at the Port of Portland
building at five pm but later moved, then it seems
like whatever was going to happen to her already had
happened by five pm, because she wouldn't be late to

(40:29):
meet with her boss on day one. One piece of
information that is interesting to me is the missing all
net binder. If we assume the horribly sad but likely
reality that Katie was murdered that day. What was in
that binder that would make the killer want to dispose
of it along with hiding Katie's remains. To me, that

(40:51):
could tie back to something to do with her workplace,
but at the same time that also could be used
to throw detectives off track. I haven't even scratched the
surface on all the different possibilities, and the answer could
be outside any of the ones that I've mentioned. Whatever
the answers are, Katie's parents died without getting them here

(41:12):
on this earth. Her mother died on July fifteenth, twenty eleven,
the day after Paul's birthday. He died in March of
twenty seventeen, still at their little house on the prairie
in Redmond. Katie has surviving sisters, classmates, and a loving
community that feel haunted without answers, and there are people

(41:35):
out there who could hold the key to those answers.
If you have any information on the disappearance and presumed
abduction of Katie Eggleston in nineteen ninety three, please contact
the Cold Case Homicide Unit investigators directly at five zero
three eight two three zero four zero zero to remain anonymous.

(41:57):
Witnesses may provide information through Crimestoppers of Oregon. That number
is five zero three eight two three four three five seven.
There is also a website that I'll link in the
show notes. This has been another episode of a Simpler
Time True Crime. If you appreciate the work I'm doing,

(42:18):
please leave a five star review and share the podcast
on your social media or with a friend. If you
would like to support the show monetarily, there is an
option to do so in my Spreaker Supporters Club link
at the bottom of the show notes. Case suggestions can
be made to Simpler timecrimepod at gmail dot com. I
love to talk about cases with listeners, and I do

(42:39):
so often on Instagram and my other social media platforms
like TikTok and Facebook. Just more so on Instagram. I
love partnering with families in uplifting their loved ones cases,
so please don't hesitate to reach out. As always, thank
you so much for listening, and I'll see you again
next Monday. Shook Shook

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