Jennifer Wilbanks, the so called “Runaway Bride who sparked a very expensive missing person search when she decided to disappear,” pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and is making restitution for the cost of the search, along with 120 hours of community service.
Aside from her fiancee, nobody seems to be happy that she’s alive and safe. The sheriff’s and Police Departments in Lawrenceville, GA all want their money back. The locals who put up posters and tramped through the bushes searching for her are mad as hell that they wasted their time while she was on a Greyhound bus to Albuquerque, NM.
But I think it’s the Main Stream Media who’s really pissed off. They wanted a body to be found. They wanted another ongoing sensational story, just like Laci Petersen. (In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last two years, that’s the pregnant woman in California who went missing on Christmas Eve and turned up in the San Francisco Bay months later. At least her torso did. And it was her husband who did it!)
When a swarm of reporters and remote broadcast trucks descend on your town, demanding to know the status of the search for the missing woman, what else are you going to do but put more money and effort into it?
As for all those volunteers, I would expect a good many of them went on the search in hopes of seeing themselves on CNN.
I can understand why Wilbanks lied to the police when she was found. If I were in her position, realizing the huge amount of trouble I’d just caused, I know I’d want to make up a story about being abducted, just to save a little face.
Outside of the Lawrenceville, GA area, no one needed to know about Jennifer Wilbanks’ disappearance. And yet, once again, it was all over the media. Shame on all those newsroom editors who made this as big a story as it was. Watch yourselves next time, OK?
Posted by judy5cents
at 10:06 AM EDT
