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CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) -- One of two women Joel Courtney is accused of attempting to kidnap, rape and murder testified Tuesday that she saw him driving a green van on the Oregon State campus the day Brigham Young University student Brooke Wilberger vanished.
Courtney, 42, faces 14 counts of aggravated murder in the case of Wilberger, then 19, who vanished from outside an apartment building near campus May 24, 2004.
Her body has not been found but she is presumed dead.
The testimony from the witness, now 26, came on the second day of pretrial motion hearings.
The prosecution wants to consolidate her case with the Wilberger case and to get Courtney's "other acts," including past convictions and his contact with the two women introduced as evidence at a trial expected to begin in 2010.
The woman said she was on the phone with her mother that morning, gave the man directions to the athletics offices, then walked away, the Corvallis Gazette-Times reported.
On Monday, Bob Clifford, an associate athletic director at OSU, testified that he'd seen the student speaking with a man in a van. He thought it looked unusual, he said, so he drove up to the van and tried unsuccessfully to get the driver's attention.
He made a note of what the driver and the van looked like and later selected Courtney's photo out of a photo lineup.
When deputy district attorney Karen Kemper asked Clifford if he could describe the man, he said, "Yes, he's sitting right there," and pointed at Courtney.
Defense attorney Steve Gorham asked Corvallis Police Lt. Jonathan Keefer, who conducted the photo lineup, if Clifford had said anything about the pictures.
Keefer said Clifford had indicated he'd feel more comfortable if the men in the photos were wearing hats, like the van driver had been. The court recessed until next Tuesday.
Both sides said they plan to call more witnesses before offering their arguments on the motions to Benton County Circuit Court Judge Locke Williams.
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Information from: Gazette-Times
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
