Posted on 04/28/2005 10:13:06 AM PDT by varina davis
Hundreds Search for Missing Bride-To-Be
April 28, 2005 10:40 AM EDT
DULUTH, Ga. - A 32-year-old woman disappeared just days before she was to be married, and authorities said Thursday they were expanding their search for her.
Jennifer Wilbanks' fiance told authorities she left home Tuesday night to go jogging. When she did not return in a couple of hours, he began looking for her, then notified police.
On Wednesday, more than 250 people searched for Wilbanks, including volunteers and police using helicopters and tracking dogs. Authorities called off the volunteer search but continued canvassing door-to-door for clues in this northeastern Atlanta suburb. They were treating the disappearance as a criminal investigation but did not elaborate.
"It's a very real possibility she did get cold feet. I mean, how many husbands have gone out for a pack of cigarettes and not come back," Duluth Police Chief Randy Belcher said.
Earlier, police Maj. Don Woodruff said friends and family believed "this is totally uncharacteristic of her. We don't believe it was a case of premarital jitters."
On Thursday, about 100 police officers expanded their search a quarter-mile deeper into woods near her home. Police had not asked anyone to take a polygraph test, but her fiance has volunteered to do so, Belcher said.
Friends and relatives have told police Wilbanks seemed happy and was looking forward to her wedding Saturday. Her keys, cash, credit cards and identification were found in her home.
"She left out of here with just a radio and the clothes she has on," said Wilbanks' fiance, John Mason. "Everything she owns is in the home. If this is cold feet, it is the weirdest case of cold feet I have ever seen."
Wilbanks and Mason were to be married in a large ceremony. Six hundred invitations had been mailed, and the wedding was to feature 14 bridesmaids and 14 groomsmen, according to Mason's mother, Vicki.
Investigators checked the banks of the nearby Chattahoochee River, and the state Department of Natural Resources planned to search the river, Woodruff said.
Wilbanks was described as 5 feet, 8 inches tall, about 123 pounds, with shoulder-length dark brown hair. She was last seen wearing a gray sweat shirt and blue sweat pants, police said.
Strange way the fiance brought up the "weirdest case of cold feet" comment last night. It seemed suspicious to me...Like, why would he even consider that?
?....is this a Washington, D.C. copy-cat type staging?
:-(
That is one big wedding!
He is way too calm, also notice the constant twitching in his left eye as he talks. Hmmmmm, sure is a "weird" way to back out of a marriage ceremony.
Cold feet? More like stage fright.
Has the fiancee mentioned where he was when she went missing? When was the last time she was seen by anyone other than him?
I did think he acted rather non-plussed, but maybe that was just being on camera.
Good God. That's not a wedding. It's a unisex chorus line.
(saith the woman who hates girlie things like big fairy-tale weddings)
I thought my wedding, with eight groomsmen and bridesmaids, had a lot of people involved. mine pales in comparison.
he does appear to volunteer that too quickly.
It was a cop who first said the "cold feet" line. The fiance was just refuting the cop. I do agree he acted strangely on TV, but I'm not sure how he was supposed to act, either.
He killed her. When women "go missing" it's almost always because the husband or boyfriend killed them. You'd think that they'd have enough sense to come up with a better story than the old "she went walking" or "she went jogging" story. Peterson said his wife went to walk the dog, Hacking said his wife went jogging....
Article on Fox at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,154880,00.html includes her diamond in the things she left behind. I don't know about anyone else, but I NEVER left my diamond anywhere. It was always with me. This alone makes her disappearance seem very suspicious to me.
Fiance is my choice of perp.
yeah. My ceremony was equally short. I edited down the raw footage from my ceremony and kept track of the total time.from the start of the processional for the groomsmen/bridesmaids to when she came out, was actually longer than the rest of the ceremony.
The fiance said "if it was cold feet, it's the strangest case of cold feet i've ever seen".
That is a wierd thing to say under the circumstances. It sounds contrived. It sounds like something a defense lawyer on TV would say.
"Mason, who had just returned from a run himself, said Wilbanks prefers to run by herself, but “she doesn’t just go and run and hide."
That must explain the excessive sweat build-up and the sweaty shoes and clothes he had on him when the detectives arrived. I wonder if they asked him for his jogging clothes?
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