JAN 21, 2020
Warning signs were there for Spokane woman missing more than a year; now she is feared dead
Courtney Holden cried out for help before she went missing a year and a half ago. But no one heard her.
The 27-year-old had bruises on her body that she told family and friends came from beatings inflicted by her adoptive brother, Joshua Holden. The last time her biological brother saw her about two years ago, she had a black eye, according to police reports.
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One neighbor’s phone would ring in the middle of the night with Courtney on the line crying about how Joshua was out of control and wouldn’t allow her to have a life.
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Courtney never had a cellphone or a car. At one point, she was allowed to chat with a neighbor over the back fence, but eventually that stopped, too.
One person talked to Courtney every day via Facebook until Joshua discovered she had an account.
“I gotta go. I gotta go. Josh is coming,” her final message from nearly two years ago said. And then her account went dark.
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But then Joshua, at more than 6 feet tall and 300 pounds, forcibly picked up 160-pound Courtney and brought her back inside. She wasn’t able to put up a fight, the neighbor said.
That was the last time that neighbor, and perhaps anyone outside that home, saw Courtney.
Police fear she may be dead.
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... This account of Courtney’s disappearance and the investigation is based on police interviews and court records.
When patrol officers and detectives went to the house on separate occasions, Joshua and Judy Holden refused to cooperate with the investigation, which isn’t normal when it comes to welfare checks and missing person cases, Lesser said.
The day Courtney was reported missing, a woman claiming to be her called Crime Check and said she was fine. A police dispatcher also spoke to a woman claiming to be Courtney. But police later learned it was really Courtney’s sister, who wouldn’t tell Lesser why she had impersonated her.
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Joshua was charged with rape in 2005, but the case was dropped just before trial when the victim stopped cooperating with prosecutors. Investigators were in the process of obtaining DNA evidence, and court documents from that case say Holden was a suspect in another rape in 2003.
Neighbors and family described Joshua as “unstable,” violent and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. A neighbor said Joshua doesn’t have a job and Judy “cowers” before him.
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“People don’t just disappear, especially if they have a child,” Lesser said.
And by all accounts, Courtney was a loving mother who would never abandon her child, court documents say.
When neighbors saw Courtney’s child at the home over the last year, they noticed he called Joshua “Daddy” and Judy “Mom,” something a family member said was normal even when Courtney was around.
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For the year and a half or so that no one outside Courtney’s home saw her, Joshua and Judy told neighbors and family that Courtney was traveling with a boyfriend, a nameless long-range truck driver none of them had met. Sometimes the story was that she’d run off with a fiancé. Other times she was just inside the house but not available to visit.
Judy told Lesser that Courtney had been home a few days prior when he came knocking in early October. She said Courtney had left the home on foot with her son in tow.
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But despite the gap in medical records, money continued to be withdrawn from Courtney’s bank account each month and her EBT (food stamps) card was used to buy groceries.
Video footage showed Joshua and Judy with a young child purchasing the groceries. And cameras captured the pair making the final withdrawal from Courtney’s bank account on the day she was reported missing in early October.
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Cellphone numbers police associated with Joshua and Judy were deactivated in mid-November, but two new numbers on the account were activated the same day. They had Texas area codes.
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Joshua and Judy were arrested on identity theft and custodial interference charges for using Courtney’s bank accounts and concealing her child, Lesser said. The child was OK and handed over to his father. The other family members aren’t facing criminal charges.
Police have searched Judy’s properties in Spokane with cadaver dogs but did not find anything, Lesser said. Searches at the residence in Texas provided no additional clues to Courtney’s whereabouts.
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Joshua, 40, and Judy, 74, remain jailed in Texas, where they have declined interviews with police, Lesser said. They have not agreed to be extradited to Spokane, so police are in the process of obtaining a governor’s warrant to bring them back.
“This one is probably one of the more in-depth cases trying to locate a person,” Lesser said about the monthslong investigation. “I’ve got four notebooks full of stuff.”
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