Wilbanks: What She Was Thinking

She Reportedly Was Suicidal, Feared She Wouldn't Be Perfect Wife

(AP) 
Wilbanks pleaded no contest earlier this month to telling police a false story and was sentenced to two years of probation and 120 hours of community service. She also was ordered to continue mental health treatment and pay the sheriff's office $2,550. The city of Duluth, Ga., spent nearly $43,000 to search for her; Wilbanks has repaid $13,249 of that cost.

Wilbanks originally wanted to flee to Austin after seeing McConaughey on TV, the FBI report said. After doing research on the Internet, she "thought it looked like a nice place to visit because of Austin's ranches and national parks," the report said.

A week before she disappeared, she purchased a ticket for a Greyhound bus that left April 26 from a station near the Atlanta airport.

Because her mother did her banking for her, Wilbanks was forced to be resourceful in the way she scraped together the cash that paid for her unannounced getaway. She cashed in a $100 rebate check for her cell phone and picked up almost another $100 by closing an old account at a credit union.

The night she disappeared, Wilbanks also withdrew $40 with her ATM card but then put it away, according to the FBI, which says she told them she didn't dare use her card again because "her mother would be able to track her down."

Then, after a bath and dinner, she left home for a jog, telling Mason that she would "run until she was tired." She instead ran a few blocks away to the city library, where a taxi took her to the airport, where she boarded a bus.

"Wilbanks realized during her travel on Greyhound that the Greyhound bus traveled to really rough areas for their bus stations," the FBI agents wrote.

After eating a meal during a stop in Dallas, she felt safer to be on the bus, the report said. She had no lodging arrangements in Austin and "was scared it may stop in a bad area," the report said, so she spent $107 of her money to continue on to Las Vegas.

She tried to get a room at three different hotels near the bus station in Las Vegas but they were all too expensive.

She told investigators that she then remembered a street full of hotels in Albuquerque, a city the bus had passed through on the way to Las Vegas. With only about $80 left, she bought a $76 ticket to Albuquerque.

Wilbanks arrived the next day. She asked a taxi driver to take her to a hotel where she had a travel coupon advertising rooms for $19.99. However, she only had enough money to pay for a taxi ride for part of the way. Out of money, she finally called her fiancé collect.