Missing Bride
 

I dont know how many of you have seen this....

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/04/28/wilbanks/index.html

but I thought I would pass it along so people can keep her in their thoughts.

She was having a huge wedding 500-600 guests with 16 bridesmaids.

This is really close to home....the command center that the Duluth police have set up is about 2-3 miles from my house.

What I dont get.....if its not the fiance...why wouldnt he agree to the polygraph test today? Why wait and tell the police that he will tell them tomorrow if he will take it or not.

Dave said while we were watching the news conference.....if it were you missing....I'd have already taken the damn thing

Saw it on the news this morning-- Legally, I can understand the reasons behind not taking it until he had consulted with a lawyer, been a lawyers kid too long to know you don't do anything without talking to a lawyer first. However... I do believe that he's hiding something...

Shades of that case out in Salt Lake City... I doubt this will end well.

I just saw this....so sad. I have a feeling that nothing like this turns out good. There is no way she would have missed her own wedding.

Good grief, his father was the city MAYOR and a judge.....wouldnt he get enuff legal "counsel" from him?

I don't know - if he'd done something to her he'd have a pretty good way to cover it up - he could go with the "cold feet" story, which he's steadfastly denying. It would be easy to remove her stuff from the house and say "gosh, I don't know where she went, she must have gotten cold feet and run off."

Then again, criminals are not always the brightest bulbs in the box. And it is suspicious that he's postponing the lie detector test. Maybe just legal paranoia, and given how quickly people assume that it's the husband/fiance, it may be justified.

nikki and lurkette if something happened to either one of you dont you think R or Ratbastid would be the first people trying to make sure they were cleared as much as they could be?

Im sorry this whole thing just pisses me off so much

it's horrible...just like with scott peterson...just BREAK UP WITH HER...I certainly hope he has NOTHING to do with this..it would be so horrible if he killed his own fiancee

I really hope that he had nothing to do with it - but Scott Peterson and that guy in Utah kinda raise the bar on suspicion. Right now, he's probably their chief suspect, and he's not being all that cooperative... so what that might mean is that while they are waiting for him to be talked to, the trail of her disappearance grows colder...

Well, it's usually the spouse. I always hope it's not, but it usually is. Sigh.

I find myself increasingly finding these guys guilty before they are even charged with a crime. Sad that I have got that soured against society.

Maleficent, what are you referring to the Mark Hacking case? I live in SLC.

yeah that's the name...

Yeah, unforunately that one ended on a sad note.

At least they were able to recover the woman's remains after searching for 2 months in the county landfill.

Anybody have any statistics on the accuracy of polygraphs?

I can only see a downside to taking one, since they're not admissible in court.

Apparently, the guy passed his private polygraph. He hasn't taken the GBI polygraph because he wants it:

1) In a neutral location
2) to be video taped.

The cops won't agree to #2, and that is the hold-up. For some reason, I don't think this guy had anything to do with it. In the Peterson and Hacking cases, I felt like the guys were involved immediately. With this guy, I just don't get that sense.

It appears the police are calling off the search and a prayer vigil will be held instead of the wedding.

This from MSNBC

Page one of a two page story.
It's like this woman just disappeared off the face of the earth. I watched a bit of the press conference on television tonight and had to change the channel. It was just too hard to watch. :(

Just saw on the news that they found her alive. Looks like the hubby is off the hook......

I cannot believe that she would leave on purpose and put her family through that hell thinking she might be dead. What a selfish bitch!

Things like this make me rather irritated. The police man hours she wasted by running off and not telling anyone, her whole family was a mess with worry. The worst is, when they did find her, she lied and claimed she was kidnapped! More resources and time wasted that could have been used to catch real criminals.

I'm sorry I don't care how cold your feet are, running away and making up a kidnapping story is unacceptable and extremely selfish. The worst part is, both Georgia and New Mexico are agreeing to press no criminal charges. Apparently it's ok to do all this?

Man, that's the height of fucked up. Shame on her! Reminds me of the case in Wisconsin where the woman faked her own abduction for attention. Sheesh, don't people think about the consequences of their actions? About the suffering they're causing the people around them? The guy should consider himself lucky that they DIDN'T get married, if she's capable of this.

One thing that I will take away from this, is that innocent, well-advised people do refuse lie detector tests. Declining to give the police carte blanche doesn't imply guilt.

is there any possible legal issues that she would have to face because she got cold feet and had the entire nation looking for her? also, for lying to the police about being abducted? i would hope something could be done to her to prevent this from happening again. cold feet, i understand, just tell somebody so it doesn't get blown way out of proportion and thousands of people are looking for her.

In a way I feel sorry for her, I can see how she must have felt trapped in the nightmare she created... but at the end of the day, massive amounts of resource have been wasted, and countless people have been deeply traumatised.... and Im afraid she will have to face the consequences of her actions.

I saw that woman's poor mother on the news yesterday.....it was awful, she was a wreck, really really bad off

HOW do you do that to your parents? I feel sorry for her fiance, and ashamed I thought he had something to do with it. That poor man had everybody in the city pointing fingers at him.

She will definitely receive a bill in the mail for the resources spent on her search. You know that $100k her family put up for a reward? Yeah, it's going to be used to pay for her search. I doubt that 600 person wedding will EVER occur. If they get married, it will be 20 people. The parents aren't going to pay again for all of that and there will be people so pissed at her that they won't go.

Here is something I noticed about this thread and I wanted to see if others noticed this and wanted to analyze it with me:

Review this thread and notice the discussion:

1) Prior to the announcement of her being found, the discussion is virtually all girls and they all imply the fiance's involvement.
2) Of the "undetermined" or male entries, they either speak on facts or acknowledge that they always suspect the man's involvement and feel guilt about that.

So, it appears as if the discussion was split, at some level, along gender lines. Is this because of the gender of the "victim"? Past cases in the news? Upbringing of the poster? Gender roles in society? Please discuss...

(Mind you, I am not being sexist or starting a gender fight. I am willing to admit this is all coincidence. However, there might be some room for discussion here.)

All I know is that I feel badly for assuming that it was her fiance because he wouldnt take the lie detector test....I mean REALLY bad. I would have to say my opinion was based on past cases in the news...there are so many of them here in Atlanta alone where it was the person's S/O that was involved. Then you have the petersons, hackings, that guy in Boston that killed his preggie wife, Pamela Smart...the list just goes on and on

I guess I need to work on "innocent until proven guilty"

She got cold feet and returned home. She's got a LOT of apologizing to do.

While there are plenty of losers in this case, the biggest is the fiance. The woman he loves turns up missing and he's automatically assumed guilty until proven innocent. I really try not to jump to conclusions in cases like these, although it's not easy, and although I feel really badly for him, I'm glad it turned out the way it did and hopefully have this restore something to the innocent until proven guilty motto we are supposed to have.

wow .guess this proves you should think people innocent until proven guilty.

If shed successfully hid away then no doubt this guy would have been labelled a murderer for the rest of his life.

That is disgusting, she wasted all those police hours that they could have been actually doing there job. I hope she has to pay the ENTIRE cost of all the hours the police and city officials waste on her looking for her, court costs..etc. What a loser. I have a feeling she is gonna say now that her husband beat her or some other torture type thing to try and save face. just a feeling....

It's sad how we as a society automatically blame the man, not knowing him, or ever having met him. If a woman disappears, string the bastard up. Now just imagine the guy doing something so selfish. Would we say the woman probably had a hand in his disappearance? Noooooo. We would say the guy was an asshole and probably ran off with his mistress. Pathetic.

This useless piece of shit of a woman should at the very least be made liable for paying back the thousands of dollars in resources spent looking for her. She might even be able to afford it depending on how long her 15 minutes run. But we couldn't do that to the poor soul because then she would become a victim. Fucking idiot.

FYI, lie dector tests are only around 65% accurate and aren't "one shot kill evidence" in a court of law. Part of the reason the guy probably didn't want to take one is because he knows it would have been used against him in a malicious way.

You know, I sympathize with the woman, even though what she did was really terrible. I used to work with someone who really really really really really really didn't want to get married but was afraid to admit it to anyone. She went through with the wedding, and during the reception her new husband got drunk and told her in front of 200 people that he didn't love her, never had loved her, and shouldn't have married her.

This girl was probably just confused about what to do and did the only thing she could think of- run away from her problem.

Remember the case of Jon Benet Ramsey- I don't think her parents ever took a lie detector test.

If the Hacking case and the Peterson case hadn't gotten such non-stop media attention, I seriously doubt that anyone would have thought that she did anything but run off... Her wedding was a circus--600 people and 16 bridesmaids? Who is she-- Princess Diana? That would be enough to make anyone want to turn tail and run...

But in cases where it couldn't possibly happen -- Laci was 9 months pregnant -- herehusband would never murder her .... well he did-- and that plants the seeds of distrust in the people closest to the missing people.

That was what I was alluding to earlier. With that kind of error ratio, you'd have to be nuts to take one. Plus, the general feeling is that a good liar can pass one, so you don't really get publicity points for doing so.

The fiance is lucky he wasn't arrested by now. That's the first thing cops usually do, whether or not there's any evidence.

If you REALLY want to see division along gender lines, try researching the Betty Broderick case.

Briefly (to the best of my recollection--it's been awhile), she was married to an attorney. They got divorced. One night she drove over to his house, got in somehow, and shot the attorney and his new wife (to death) while they were in bed.

Her defense was something to the effect that he was subjecting her to mental torment, because he was a good enough attorney that he had retained more of the marital assets than Betty, the ex, thought was appropriate.

Reporters who did surveys tabulated a nearly dead-on split among office workers in the downtown area: Men thought she committed murder; women felt he "drove her to it."

Oh yeah, she claimed she didn't go to his house with the plan to shoot them, although she took a gun with her. It was another gun that "went off" all by itself, and just happened to go off enough times to kill both people.

Fortunately, the jury didn't buy her story, or her defense, and locked her up for a long time. I think she's still in prison.

The scary thing about it (to me, anyway) was the number of women who seemed to think she shouldn't be locked up.

I can't recall a single man expressing the same sentiment about Scott Peterson.

I guess what I am trying to get at is that whether there is a predisposition for people who are the same gender as the "victim" to automatically convict the SO and people who are the same gender as the SO to automatically give the benefit of the doubt.

Does anyone else think there is a correlation here?

I think you can blace some of the blame on everyone pointing their fingers at the hubby to be on Peterson. Now anytime a wife takes a walk, he will be the first thing anyone thinks of. I just hope this dumb bitch counteracts some of the damage Scotty did. i hear he's still going to marry her after she pulled this stunt. If so, they are botha couple of dumb fucks.

I saw this story on the news tonight. I guess she can face charges because she told the cops she was kidnapped when she called collect from a payphone. On a side note, i Took a philosophy class at the U a couple of semesters ago and one of my books used to belong to mark hacking. It has his name written across the top in black sharpie... with a few notes in some margins. I think i took the class when all the shit was going down, too bad i didn't notice until way after the fact. i'm wondering what to do with the book.

I don't think she should have to pay for the search, she didn't ask for the police to do a search for her. I'd be hot pissed if I went off for a weekend at the beach or something, and everyone thought I had been killed. Then I come back and people try to stick me with a bill / call me an evil asshole. Granted this happened a little diffrent, but it is with in her rights to go running for however long she wants.

While it is a kind of 'shitty' thing to do to your loved ones, nothing illegal about leaving town for a few days.

“I don’t care where you are — unless you’re in the Amazon rain forest, you’d know everybody was out looking for you.”

That is BS, if you don't have a TV (and you don't while skipping town, I doubt she stoped somewhere to watch the news.)
Hell I know people who didn't know about 9/11 for large parts of the day, and that was a million times bigger.

Now, later making up the kidnaping story, that was dumb, but put your self in her shoes.
You have ran away from home, you are panicing at the end of your rope, you see that your all over TV and that going home is going to suck. Easy to see how you might want to go along with the kidnaping story.

If you are kidnapped you are a brave person. If you just paniced and ran off... you are a evil bitch and everyone hates you.

Anyway, she might be a evil bitch, but we really don't know.

I think I would be frightened at having a wedding that big...it is terrible what she did..but we don't KNOW her..what if sh is depressed or bi-polar and just couldn't handle it. It certainly is no excuse for what she did..but only a reason as to why he would still want to marry her