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Groom will still have her, city feels betrayed

Officials are considering suing Jennifer Wilbanks for the $60,000-plus spent searching for her.

DULUTH, Ga. - The jilted groom whose bride-to-be ran away four days before their wedding still wants to marry fiancee 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 do's', 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 said Monday in an interview with Fox News' Hannity & Colmes show.

It was Mason's first public statement since he learned on the morning of his scheduled wedding day that Wilbanks had gotten cold feet.

As family and friends feared the worst, police say Wilbanks cut her hair and took a Greyhound bus to Las Vegas to get out of a lavish, 600-guest wedding planned for Saturday. She then went to Albuquerque, N.M., where she called Mason and police from a pay phone at a 7-Eleven, saying she had been kidnapped. She later said it simply a case of cold feet.

Mason said he has given 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.

Mason and his fiancee's father, Harris Wilbanks, who also appeared on the show, said Jennifer Wilbanks is working on a releasing a written statement. "She just needs some space and some time," Mason said. "She just wants the whole world to know she's very, very sorry."

But if Mason and the family are ready to forgive the jittery bride, authorities are still peeved.

The Duluth mayor said Monday she is looking into the possibility of suing Wilbanks for the estimated $60,000-plus cost of searching for her. That option would have to be approved by the City Council.

"We feel a tad betrayed and some are very hurt about it," Mayor Shirley Lasseter said.

A prosecutor said Monday he will conduct an investigation, which could take weeks, before deciding whether to charge Wilbanks for falsely claiming she had been kidnapped.

He said Wilbanks could face a misdemeanor charge of false report of a crime or a felony charge of false statements. The misdemeanor carries a penalty of up to a year in jail; five years in prison is the maximum sentence for the felony.

[Last modified May 3, 2005, 01:19:05]