Jennifer Wilbanks got a case of cold feet last week, a few nights before her wedding. Wilbanks said she was going jogging and instead cut her hair and took a cross-country road trip. It didn’t take long after her fiancé, John Mason, filed a missing persons report for the media feeding frenzy to get wind of the case. Twenty-four-hour news networks, with 23 hours of extra space to fill every day, interviewed criminologists and detectives who speculated on where Wilbanks was, who had abducted her, and whether or not she was still alive. It is unlikely that a single person who tuned in to cable news at any point between the disappearance and the time this paper reaches newsstands didn’t see “an undated photo” of Jennifer Wilbanks. In fact, as of May 5, the term “runaway bride” appears in the top five headlines on the websites of all three cable news networks.
Isn’t enough enough already? Is there anyone out there who could actually care less about Jennifer Wilbanks? The poor woman freaked out over her 500-guest wedding and skipped town for a couple of days. She wasn’t on a lavish vacation; most of her time in Vegas was spent hanging around the Greyhound station. Wilbanks is an adult. She doesn’t need to ask permission to buy a bus ticket and take a ride. Admittedly, when she saw that everyone was looking for her and that the case had become a national circus, she probably should have at least phoned home.
When police found her, she shouldn’t have said she had been abducted. However, a woman who was in a state of mind that caused her to run away from her wedding probably wasn’t capable of acting rationally. In fact, realizing that Greta Van Susteren, who has been in desperate need of material ever since Scott Peterson was sentenced, had preemptively turned her into the next Laci probably didn’t help her mental condition.
Can we get a little forgiveness here, please? It’s not like Wilbanks pulled an Audrey Seiler, staging her own abduction and letting heavily armed cops spend an afternoon sweeping a field. Her fiancé, who was the prime suspect for any foul play involved in the disappearance, has already publicly said that he still plans to go through with the marriage. No one is a bigger victim here than the man whose fiancé disappeared and was the prime suspect in the murder case.
Regardless, Wilbanks is still front-page material. Does anyone actually care whether or not she is charged with a crime? Actually, it appears they do. The Gwinnett County District Attorney’s office has been flooded with phone calls and correspondence demanding that Wilbanks be punished for her actions. The cable news networks’ panels of experts are currently fiercely debating the merits of a criminal case.
Meanwhile, the alleged BTK killer, a suspect in 10 murders, pleaded not guilty Tuesday morning and the headline only appeared on the front page of one of the three networks’ websites Tuesday evening. In other news, protesters have planned 60-straight hours of vigils for convicted serial killer Michael Ross, who has admitted to killing eight women and whose time on death row is coming very close to its end. Thankfully, the media and public have their priorities straight.
On a lighter note, next Saturday I will walk down the aisle and end my tenure as a student at the University of Wisconsin, and consequently this will be my last piece as a member of the Badger Herald’s staff. I have enjoyed writing and hope that you have enjoyed reading. I appreciate all of the feedback and e-mails that I received in response to my columns this last year, favorable or otherwise. I want to thank all of the people who have made the last four years the best four years of my life as well as the entire staff of the Badger Herald, who work tirelessly to produce the best damn student paper in the country every single day. And most of all, I want to wish everyone who is graduating next weekend good luck in all of your future endeavors and I hope that everyone who still has some time left at this fine university makes the most of it. Thanks for reading.
Adam Smith ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in economics and political science.
