The Binary Circumstance

Jennifer Wilbanks, who is 32, got cold feet before her wedding and ran away.  Who knows how much time and money was spent trying to find her?  Then she emerged and concocted a story about being abducted.  She lied to the legal authorities.

Jennifer Wilbanks, 32, was in police custody more than 1,420 miles from her home on what was supposed to be her wedding day.

“It turns out that Miss Wilbanks basically felt the pressure of this large wedding and could not handle it,??? said Randy Belcher, the police chief in Duluth, Ga., the Atlanta suburb where Wilbanks lives with her fiance. He said there would be no criminal charges.

Wilbanks, whose disappearance set off a nationwide hunt, called her fiance, John Mason, from a pay phone late Friday and told him that she had been kidnapped while jogging three days before, authorities said. Her family rejoiced that she was safe, telling reporters that the media coverage apparently got to the kidnappers. [emphasis mine]

[…]

Just hours before Wilbanks called her fiance, police in Duluth said they had no solid leads in the case and began dismantling a search center. Relatives offered a $100,000 reward for information and were planning a prayer vigil.

The hunt for Wilbanks had consumed Duluth, a tight-knit town. Her picture and newspaper articles about her disappearance were on telephone poles and shop windows. Police had also seized three computers from the home she shared with Mason.

[John] Mason [her fiance] had become a target of suspicion and agreed to a private polygraph test, which Wilbanks’ family said he passed. He had been negotiating with authorities for another test.

Martha Stewart spent five months in jail and is currently under house arrest for lying to legal authorities.  Unlike Wilbanks, Stewart’s action of selling some stock before some bad news became public, did not cost the taxpayers any money or steal any time or money from private individuals. (It was the government’s prosecution of her that lowers the value of her company’s stock and also cost the taxpayers millions.)

Wilbanks on the other hand has stolen a lot from numerous people: the time spent by volunteers, the privacy of those who had their computers seized, and the tax dollars spent on the nationwide investigation.

Yet, she will not be prosecuted. 

She is 32, not a child, and fully capable of understand the consequences of her actions on others, yet she’s being treated like a little girl of five or six, who just got scared, did something she shouldn’t have and then lied about it.

Ray Schultz, chief of police in Albuquerque, said Wilbanks “had become scared and concerned about her impending marriage and decided she needed some time alone.??? He said she traveled to Las Vegas by bus before going to Albuquerque.

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

Interesting how she commits a fraud upon a number of people, including her fiance, friends and family, her community, government officials and the taxpayers and yet she’s seen as the victim.

This is what happens when you have a legal system based on faith and emotions rather than reality.

UPDATE 5/2/05: The State of Georgia might press charges.

Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter told NBC’s "Today" show Monday that he hoped to decide by later in the day whether to prosecute Wilbanks, 32, on a charge of violating the law by reporting a crime that didn’t exist.

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