Duluth, Ga. – The jilted groom whose bride-to-be ran away days before their wedding still wants to marry fiancée Jennifer Wilbanks, saying, “Haven’t we all made mistakes?”
“Just because we haven’t walked down the aisle, just because we haven’t stood in front of 500 people and said our ‘I dos,’ my commitment before God to her was the day I bought that ring and put it on her finger, and I’m not backing down from that,” John Mason told Fox News on Monday.
It was Mason’s first public statement since he learned on the morning of his scheduled wedding day that Wilbanks had gotten cold feet.
At an evening news conference Monday, Duluth Police Chief Randy Belcher provided a chronology for Wilbanks’ disappearance. He said Wilbanks bought a Greyhound bus ticket to Austin, Texas, a week before running away April 26. That day, she had a taxi pick her up at the local library and take her to the bus terminal in Atlanta.
She never made it to Austin, instead getting off in Dallas and buying a ticket to Las Vegas. She spent some time there before going to Albuquerque, authorities said.
She called Mason and police from a pay phone at a 7-Eleven in Albuquerque, saying she had been kidnapped. She later said it simply was a case of having jitters ahead of the lavish, 600-guest wedding planned for last Saturday.
Mason said he gave the 32- year-old Wilbanks her ring back – she had left it at the house – and said they still planned to marry. “Some things need to happen first, and we need to talk about a few things, and … she needs some treatment, for lack of a better word,” he said.
Authorities said they are looking into the possibility of suing Wilbanks for the estimated $40,000 to $60,000 cost of searching for her.
The local prosecutor said Monday that he will conduct a thorough investigation before deciding whether to charge Wilbanks for falsely claiming she had been kidnapped.
