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Search for Bride-to-Be Now a Criminal Probe, Please pray a prayer that she is found. "We really don't have any suspects ... we really have nothing at this point," Belcher told reporters Thursday morning. He said searchers would continue looking for Wilbanks, expanding the search into nearby woods with the aid of bloodhounds. Mason said she left the house "in good spirits" with her MP3 player around 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday for a jog and said she would return in about 40 minutes. He said that after an hour passed, he went looking for her on foot and then checked area hospitals. He called police 2 to 3½ hours after she left the house, he said. Before she left, "she talked to her mom ... about the different wedding stuff they had to get done for today," Mason said Wednesday night during an interview on FOX News' "On the Record With Greta Van Susteren." Mason, who had just returned from a run himself, said Wilbanks prefers to run by herself, but "she doesn't just go and run and hide."
The pair were set to be married Saturday at Duluth First United Methodist Church, followed by a reception at the Atlanta Athletic Club. The groom's father, Claude Mason, a former Duluth mayor and municipal judge, was to be the best man. Mason's mother, Vicki, said about 600 wedding invitations had been sent out, and there were to be 14 bridesmaids and 14 groomsmen. Belcher told FOX News in an interview Thursday that Mason was the only person who has told them that Wilbanks went jogging. "We're not doing a polygraph [test] at the present time, but he has volunteered that he would like to take a polygraph," Belcher said. Family members told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Wilbanks' aunt, who knew of their mutual love of running, had introduced the couple. At a news conference Thursday, Woodruff said the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation were assisting in the search. Speaking on a network morning news program Thursday morning, Woodruff dismissed the idea that Wilbanks' disappearance was a case of a bride getting cold feet. "There's been a lot of speculation from that perspective that it could have been a case of the premarital jitters," Woodruff said. "But again, according to all of her friends that have been interviewed, all of her family, that's simply not the case. ... This is totally uncharacteristic of her to have just simply disappeared this way." Gifts have poured in for the wedding, according to the couple's bridal registry at Macy's, which listed Lenox dinnerware and Waterford crystal among the items bought for the bride and groom. "She was so in love. The wedding is huge. It's the talk of the town. Everybody knows her, and was so excited," said Killie McCauley, of Gainesville, who went to high school with Wilbanks. McCauley was at the police station to find out how she could help find her friend, she said. The missing woman's father, Harris Wilbanks, told the Journal-Constitution that she had taken Tuesday off from her job as a medical assistant to attend to wedding details. Hundreds of volunteers searched Wednesday for the woman. Authorities called off the volunteer search late in the day but continued canvassing door-to-door in this northeastern Atlanta suburb seeking clues in the disappearance. Woodruff said police had checked the banks of the nearby Chattahoochee River and that the state Department of Natural Resources would be searching the river. Wilbanks is described as 5 feet, 8 inches tall, about 123 pounds, with shoulder-length dark brown hair. She was wearing a gray sweatshirt and blue sweat pants when she went out, police said. "She left out of here with just a radio and the clothes she has on," Mason said. "Her cell phone is in there, her credit cards, her pocket book, her money, her keys to her car, her diamond. Everything she owns is in the home. If this is cold feet, it is the weirdest case of cold feet I have ever seen." Anyone who thinks they may have seen Wilbanks is asked to call the Duluth Police Department at 770-476-4151.
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