Runaway bride heads home

updated 8:14 a.m. ET May 1, 2005

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - It was supposed to be Jennifer Wilbanks’ wedding day — an elaborate affair in suburban Georgia with 600 invited guests and 14 bridesmaids and 14 groomsmen.

Instead, the bride-to-be was sobbing into a pay phone outside an Albuquerque 7-Eleven, alone and broke, as she concocted a story about kidnappers and a blue van. She later admitted that pre-wedding jitters led her to leave home without her keys and wallet, creating a mystery that left her family in anguish for days.

Wilbanks, 32, was picked up by police after a cross-country bus trip that took her through Las Vegas to Albuquerque, where she eventually admitted her disappearance was voluntary.

‘Needed some time alone’
She was “scared and concerned about her impending marriage and decided she needed some time alone,” Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz said Saturday.

Police said there would be no criminal charges, although more than 100 officers led a search that involved several hundred volunteers, including many wedding guests and members of the bridal party.

“She’s obviously very concerned about the stress that she’s been through, the stress that’s been placed on her family,” Schultz said. “She is very upset.”

‘Spur of the moment situation’
Wilbanks returned later Saturday by plane to Atlanta, where she was picked up in a squad car on the tarmac — with a towel covering her head — to avoid the media that had gathered inside the terminal.

There were no family members at the airport to greet her, but her stepfather and an uncle had flown to Albuquerque to escort her home, authorities said.

Bill Elwell, an FBI spokesman in Albuquerque, said Wilbanks apparently decided to flee shortly after purportedly leaving for her jog Tuesday without her keys or wallet.

“Based on the information we received, it was a spur of the moment situation,” he said.

After finding herself broke in Albuquerque, Elwell said she decided to call her fiance, John Mason, and 911 with the story about the kidnapping.

In   her 911 call, Wilbanks sounds frantic and confused, telling an operator she was kidnapped from Atlanta by a man and a woman in their 40s who were driving a blue van.

At one point, the operator asks if Wilbanks knows what direction her captors went after dropping her off in Albuquerque.

“I have no idea. I don’t even know where I am,” she says.

Wilbanks cut her hair so no one would recognize her, but gave no indication that she had watched news reports of the search or realized the magnitude of the situation, Elwell said.

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