The runaway bride case concerns Jennifer Carol Wilbanks (born February 28, 1973), an American woman who ran away from home on April 26, 2005, to avoid her wedding with John Mason, her fiancé, on April 30. Her disappearance from Duluth, Georgia, sparked a nationwide search and intensive media coverage, including media speculation that Mason had killed her. On April 29, Wilbanks called Mason from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and falsely claimed that she had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a Hispanic man and a white woman. Jennifer Wilbanks gained notoriety in the United States and internationally, and her story persisted as a major topic of national news coverage for some time after she was found unharmed. Many critics of the mass media attacked the coverage as a "media circus". Howard Kurtz, an influential media critic for The Washington Post and CNN-TV, and Fox News wrote that the runaway bride had become a "runaway television embarrassment", comparing the story to a TV soap opera. Wilbanks repeated the false claims that fell apart under FBI interrogation resulting in a felony indictment of providing false information to law enforcement, a charge that could have resulted in up to five years of imprisonment. On June 2, 2005, Wilbanks pleaded no contest to this charge. As part of her plea bargain, she was sentenced to two years of probation and 120 hours of community service, and she was also ordered to pay $2,250 in restitution to the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Department. As part of the plea bargain, a misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report was dismissed. Wilbanks's criminal record was expunged after she successfully completed her period of probation. Timeline April 26, 2005 – Mason notified police that Wilbanks was missing two hours after she failed to return from her evening jog. April 27 – 250 people took part in the search for Wilbanks. Local police speculated publicly that Wilbanks' disappearance might be "a case of the premarital jitters," but the search continued. The mayor of Duluth later reported the city spent between $40,000 and $60,000 in the search. April 27 – Police received numerous pieces of evidence that later turned out to be false leads, including large clumps of dark brown hair in an area next to a retention pond, a variety of clothing, and purported murder weapons. April 28 – Major Donald L. Woodruff of the City of Duluth's Police Department