On September 21, 1983, the lifeless body of 13 year-old Danny Joe Eberle was found outside of Bellevue, Nebraska. Eberle had gone missing three days earlier while delivering newspapers. There were indications that he had been tortured and then stabbed to death. Less than three months later another boy in the area was killed under similar circumstances. A concerned citizen later took down a license plate of a suspicious vehicle driving around the area. This led the FBI to US Air Force radar technician, John Joubert.

On January 12, 1984 the FBI and local police interviewed Joubert and executed a search warrant on his barracks. A length of rope was found that matched the rope used to tie up Eberle. The rope was a very specific rope manufactured in South Korea for the US military. Joubert confessed to the two murders along with an additional murder of a boy that took place in Maine in 1982. An FBI profiler and the follow-up on the origins of the rope assisted in securing a guilty plea, but it was the interview “in the box” that broke the case. Joubert was executed on July 17, 1996.