Jennifer Wilbanks was afraid to marry her fiance, according to an FBI report.

LAWRENCEVILLE, Georgia (AP) -- Runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks wanted to vanish because she feared she could not be the perfect wife. She picked Austin, Texas, as her original destination after seeing actor Matthew McConaughey talk about his hometown on TV.

And she funded her odyssey by cashing a cell phone rebate check and emptying an old bank account.

Those were some of the details that emerged Tuesday from investigation reports by the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that detailed Wilbanks' flight. The reports portrayed the 32-year-old nurse as a naive woman whose mother did her banking for her.

Wilbanks also discussed her ordeal in an NBC interview Tuesday night, saying she was suicidal when she fled.

"I had a bottle of pills or I had the bus ticket," she said.

Wilbanks' disappearance four days before her scheduled 600-guest wedding gained national attention. Hundreds of officers and volunteers -- including members of the wedding party -- searched for her for three days before she called her fiance from Albuquerque, New Mexico, early in the morning of her planned wedding day, claiming to have been abducted and sexually assaulted. She soon recanted her story, saying she fled because of personal issues.

Mother handled bride's bank accounts
Wilbanks told investigators that she didn't know about the extent of the search because she didn't see any television or listen to any radio while on the run. The one time she glanced at a newspaper, she "did not see her picture on the front," FBI agents wrote after interviewing Wilbanks on May 4, days after she returned from her cross-country bus trip.

"Wilbanks stated that she felt very humbled that so many people had been searching for her, but she did not feel like she had done anything wrong and she just wanted to disappear," the report said.

Agents said in the report that Wilbanks "was scared to marry (fiance) John Mason because she is afraid of an imperfect world. Wilbanks stated that she could not be the wife that her fiance John Mason needed. Wilbanks wanted to disappear without a trace."

The report from Georgia investigators said she broke off an earlier engagement to another man, and -- even though she had been in a relationship with Mason since August 2004 -- she kept "I love you" text messages on her cell phone from another man she dated in 2003.

Wilbanks pleaded no contest earlier this month to telling police her phony story and was sentenced to two years of probation and 120 hours of community service. She also was ordered to continue mental health treatment and pay the sheriff's office $2,550. The city of Duluth spent nearly $43,000 to search for her; Wilbanks has repaid $13,249.

Wilbanks originally wanted to flee to Austin after seeing McConaughey on TV, the FBI report said. After doing research on the Internet, she "thought it looked like a nice place to visit because of Austin's ranches and national parks," the report said.

A week before she disappeared, she purchased a ticket for a Greyhound bus that left April 26 from a station near the Atlanta airport.

Because her mother did her banking for her, Wilbanks scraped together a little more than $240 for her journey in a various ways, the report said. She cashed in a $100 rebate check for her cell phone. She received less than $100 after closing an old account at a credit union.

The night she disappeared, she withdrew $40 with her ATM card. She dared not use her card anymore because "her mother would be able to track her down," she told the FBI.

Called fiance when she ran out of cash
Then, after a bath and dinner, she left home for a jog, telling Mason that she would "run until she was tired." She instead ran a few blocks away to the city library, where a taxi took her to the airport. She then boarded the bus.

"Wilbanks realized during her travel on Greyhound that the Greyhound bus traveled to really rough areas for their bus stations," the FBI agents wrote.

After eating a meal during a stop in Dallas, she felt safer to be on the bus, the report said. She had no lodging arrangements in Austin and "was scared it may stop in a bad area," the report said, so she spent $107 of her money to continue on to Las Vegas.

She tried to get a room at three different hotels near the bus station in Las Vegas but they were all too expensive.

She told investigators that she then remembered a street full of hotels in Albuquerque, a city the bus had passed through on the way to Las Vegas. With only about $80 left, she bought a $76 ticket to Albuquerque.

Wilbanks arrived the next day. She asked a taxi driver to take her to a hotel where she had a travel coupon advertising rooms for $19.99. However, she only had enough money to pay for a taxi ride for part of the way. Out of money, she finally called her fiance collect.

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I missed the interview last night -- but this sounds like we are supposed to feel sorry for her... Poor baby...

I almost do -- that at her age her mother did her banking for her? What is she 12?

I watched it, it was pathetic....I have no sympathy for her

I don't use the word "fool" too often as a descriptive word of another of God's creatures, but anyone that buys a book or watches a TV show in which Wilbanks is getting money from it is a fool.

The only way to keep such trash from being publicly traded is to turn off the set when the made-for-TV movie comes on and leave the books to gather dust on the shelves until they are shipped back to the publisher for credit.

C'mon, people, we can do this!!

I don't know, she's a good example to use when talking to my daughters. As in, "That's your future if you don't learn some responsibility and how to take care of things yourself".

Let's play this to the logical end: Your daughters can see someone that (a) got their picture all over the newspapers and TV (b) got a slap on the wrist by the law for it and (c) is going to be cashing a big paycheck.

My point is not that we should condemn her for getting the money, but rather we (the public) should make the companies that offered it to her for her story suffer a financial setback in the form of low ratings and no sales of the book.

That'll teach the companies a lesson; the next Jennifers of the world may never learn. (I hope your daughters do, though! :thumbsup: )

False reports of rape are reprehensible. They make it much more difficult for those who were genuinely assaulted to be believed, and make conviction of men like Scott Petersen more difficult because it plants the seed of doubt that things are actually as they are claimed to be. The moment she did this, she lost any possibility of sympathy from me.

One has to wonder how much this has to do with the spoiled bitch not being able "handle a less than perfect world". Not so much the banking but the mommy does too much for her bit. And is momma going to have to take care of the money from the book and movie deals for her?

I still can't muster any pity for the spoiled bitch.

Runaway bride draws lawn mower duty

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/LAW/08/0...y.wilbanks.jpg
Yay for community service... and isn't that a flattering ensemble on her.. :) (Oh Dangit, be nice maleficent)

Damn,...no movie of the week. Wud up Amorica?

I saw this as a snippet on the news this morning - she apparently called the press herself and invited them to come watch... Awwww...

They were giving her hell on the radio this morning cause all her mowing lines were REALLY crooked lol

Probably by design also. But then if the media would ignore her, or would have ignored her from the get go, she would still be a nobody.

That's the good thing about Canada. When it is a slow news day, instead of popularizing those unwarranted of celebrity value, we air documentaries or have discussions (ie call in shows) about the nations affairs.

Because afterall, we are all stars already :thumbsup:

Oh crap, I have one of those, but it is green. Is it still OK to keep?

And was she being ironic by wearing that hat, or did she not think about it?

A buddy of mine asked me if I thought she was attractive. :mad: I said yeah ... if you like your women to have the constant 1000 yard stare... maybe that's part of what made her so appealing to him. He likes them to be a little lower on the IQ scale for some reason. *shrug*....I prefer a little give and take now and then and if there's a zero between the ears it's just not going work.

the picture of her from cnn's website is so unflattering, when she was being interviewed on the news, she didn't look near as frumpified... she's kinda cute... but definitely has that vacant look to her...

'Runaway bride' on the rebound
Talk about stories that don't end..

Gotta love a slow news day... and that CNN actually had this as one of their Top stories (right below the guy who moved out and left 70,000 beer cans behind)

So.. no movie of the week.. and she's single again.. will the men of Georgia be lining up for her? :D

I always found her creepy with that deer in the headlights face she always had. Maleficent, there could still be a movie, she is single. she might pull this again on some schmuck.

Well, CNN is headquartered in Atlanta and any Atlanta area story usually gets great play from them.

I heard some additional news that he did the dumping. I wonder if they are still (or ever were) virgins?

The story that never ends...

Runaway bride sues former fiance
LAWRENCEVILLE, Georgia (AP) -- The "runaway bride," who took off days before her lavish wedding in 2005, is suing her former fiance for $500,000, claiming he defrauded her out of her share of their assets, including a ladder, a gold sofa and gifts.

Jennifer Wilbanks is seeking $250,000 as her share of a home she says John C. Mason purchased through the partnership with proceeds from $500,000 received for selling their story to Regan Media in New York.

She also wants $250,000 in punitive damages for alleged abuse of the power of attorney she granted for Mason to handle their financial affairs. (Watch why the runaway bride is running to court -- 1:49)

She is seeking the return of personal property she claims he has kept, including the ladder that belonged to her father, a gold sofa and wedding shower gifts. Mason's attorney in July wrote to Wilbanks attorney that his client had agreed to deliver those items.

Wilbanks and Mason broke up for good in May, about a year after her excursion to Las Vegas and New Mexico made international headlines while hundreds of friends and family members searched for her back home in suburban Atlanta.

Mason has until October 22 to respond to the lawsuit, filed last month in Gwinnett County's Superior Court. The lawsuit, Wilbanks vs. JCM Consulting and Mason, was filed September 13, according to court records.

Wilbanks' attorney, Michael Wetzel, and Mason's father, Claude, declined comment Tuesday morning. John Mason's attorney, James C. Watkins, wasn't immediately available for comment.

The lawsuit says the $500,000 was put into an account of JCM Consulting, based in Gwinnett County. After Wilbanks was "hospitalized and under medication," Mason bought a home in Dacula in his name with the money, the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit claims that Wilbanks asked JCM Consulting during the summer for various documents, but the firm didn't give her records of bank accounts. Through the lawsuit, she wants to inspect and copy those records.

Wilbanks also claims that Mason used the company to defraud her.

Wilbanks disappeared four days before her planned April 30, 2005, wedding. Hundreds of police and volunteers searched for her for three days before she called Mason from Albuquerque, New Mexico, claiming to have been abducted and sexually assaulted.

She later recanted, saying she fled because of unspecified personal issues, and pleaded no contest to telling police a phony story.

She was sentenced to two years' probation and performed community service that included mowing the lawns of public buildings

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Ok - so let's see- she took off on the groom, causing him worry and speculation that he did her in.. she lied about where she went.. and made up an outlandish story... and She thinks she's entitled to anything?

People amaze me...

in the immortal words of Keanu Reeves....

woah.

This woman just keeps getting nuttier.