Cops 'Have Nothing' in Search for Missing Bride
April 28, 2005 -- -- Two days after the disappearance of a Duluth, Ga., bride-to-be, police investigating the case admitted they "have nothing."
Jennifer Wilbanks, 32, who was to be married Saturday, went for a jog Tuesday night and never returned.
Police classified the investigation as a criminal case on Wednesday night, and early this morning, after initially deciding to call off the search of the area where she might have been running, reconsidered and decided to intensify their efforts to trace her movements.
Police, working with some 250 volunteers as well as K-9 units, will now take a different tack, Duluth Police Department Chief Randy Belcher said at a news conference today.
"We have nothing," Belcher said. "This is really just a case where a lady went for a jog and just didn't come home."
They will re-search some of the areas where volunteers looked on Wednesday, this time with just police officers on the trail, and will have bloodhounds -- instead of the less-specialized K-9 units -- try to pick up her scent.
"A bloodhound is very efficient at tracking people," Belcher said. "A bloodhound can track a person even in an area that has been contaminated by other people."
There is no evidence of any foul play and no one has been identified as a possible suspect, but because of the circumstances, police are treating the case as if a crime may have been committed.
"We have no recourse but to classify it as a criminal investigation," police Maj. Don Woodruff told ABC's "Good Morning America." "Everybody that knows her says this is totally uncharacteristic for her to have simply disappeared this way."
Her fiancé, John Mason, said everything she owns, including her wallet, phone, keys and diamond ring, is in the house. "If this is a case of cold feet, it's the weirdest I've ever seen."
Duluth police initiated a mobile command center to coordinate the search effort over an area of five square miles Wednesday, and police K-9 units followed Wilbanks' possible jogging route. But Belcher said Mason told investigators she varied her route, and as a marathon runner, she had been saying recently that she was planning to extend the distance she would run.
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