Runaway Bride - In It for the Money

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I'm assuming everyone has heard of the news story of the runaway bride, Jennifer Wilcox. After all, it was splattered all over the news.

The skinny for those who don't: Four days before her $50,000 wedding, Jennifer hops on a Greyhound bound, and basically travels from Georgia to New Mexico. She tells her husband to be that she is going out for a jog, only she never returns. She didn't tell anyone what she was planning to do. So family and friends of Jennifer start a nation-wide search effort, assuming that she was kidnapped, raped, beaten, killed, or met with some form of foul play. In fact, the husband to be was extensively questioned by the FBI as a possible perpetrator.

Anyway, on the day of her wedding, she calls from New Mexico, telling people that she was kidnapped by a Hispanic man and Caucasian woman driving a white van, driven to New Mexico, and raped. Anyway, it was all made up, she eventually fessed up, and said she fled because she was very stressed out about the wedding. In the time since she has also been diagnosed with a mental disorder - either obsessive-compulsive or manic-depressive, and also suffers from panic attacks.

After all of this the husband to be says he forgives her and still wants to marry her. What!?!? If her actions do not cross the line, then what isn't this guy willing to accept in his marriage? I thought he had to be crazy. How would he know that five years from now his wife wouldn't be stressed out again, and arrive home from work to find that she had run away again? Also, he has now lost all leverage in future disagreements with her. Men can only hope to win about 10% of all disagreements with their wife/girlfriend to begin with, and now his percentage has been reduced to effectively 0%.

I heard a good analogy for the husband to be's actions. This is like taking a car for a test drive, having it break down during the test drive, and then deciding to buy the car anyway. It was completely indefensible in my opinion.

Then the truth came out. It turns out if the two decide to get married anyway (there is a required happy ending) they have been given an offer of $500,000 for the movie rights to their life's story. This made me sick. The wife runs away because she's stressed out over a $50,000 wedding in which 600 guests were invited (yeah, life is hard ) and then after we find out that she wasn't a kidnap victim but instead a coward and a liar, we turn around and give her half a mil? Has the world gone entirely mad? Of course, this does make sense from the husbands perspective, he marries her, stays with her for a year, then divorces her and gets a quarter mil. Money fixes everything. I can understand how someone would be willing to marry a loon for a short period of time (and let's face it, this marriage is doomed to divorce) for $250,000. You wind up with a pretty good nest egg for when you do finally meet Miss Right.

 

Love blurs senses. That's not necessarily so bad. It was meant this way. Come on, how else would you put up with a woman. Or man. Hehe.

But lie is a big no-no. I don't think a disorder can totally take control of one's brain and force him or her to start lying and coming up with stories. Especially about rape. I surely would stay as far away as possible from a woman lying about being raped.

If not a lie but a real disorder... well, I would have to know more about the circumstances. One very important thing I want from my future wife is honesty and consistency. If she can't keep consistent even without ill will, it means she's in no condition to make her mind about marriage and it's doubtful if she's able to make valid marital vows. You can't validly make a promise that you can't deliver.

Maybe... But if I were a woman, a guy who had married someone for money would be the last guy I would like to marry. A guy needs to be a reliable provider and a history of fraud is a huge bull's eye. Besides, you know what I think about using one's sexuality to get money.

 

I rated this story right up there with the Wacko Jacko trial - can someone please explain to me exactly why it was that I was supposed to care in the slightest? Why was this story of interest to anyone outside of Georgia, if even that broad a region?

She was charged with felonies, wasn't she? Will she still get to profit from the endeavor if she's found guilty? I thought there were laws against profiting from one's own crime. If there aren't, there should be.

Failing that, God Bless Capitalism. I guess some producer somewhere sees an avenue for significant profit, and half a mil is a downpayment. All I know is that I won't be watching that movie.

 

Rally, you're talking about the Son of Sam law - not being able to profit from a felony. (For those wanting additional info - Son of Sam was the moniker used by a serial murderer in the 1970's. After being caught he wanted to write a book about his life's story. The Son of Sam Law was enacted to prevent someone from profiting from a crime (specifically a felony) they committed.) However, she did not get charged with any felony. The only charge was misuse of police resources, which is a misdemeanor. She plead no contest to that charge and her sentence included re-paying $13,000 worth of police overtime spent on the investigation, and 120 hours of community service.

That having been said, I agree that I don't understand why this became a national news story. I think it is even worse than Michael Jackson - at least his celebrity status means we knew who he was. However, outside of her immediate circle of family and friends no one knew who the hell Jennifer Wilcox was before this. I imagine the reason news agencies hopped on board so fast was because they thought they had another Lacy Peterson story. However, once it was discovered that she made it all up and just took off, it became a non-story. I still maintain that we are rewarding her for her immature, selfish, and cowardly actions.

 

Unfortunately, selling memories of someone's misdeeds doesn't fall under that. She would have to return everything she gained directly from the crime (or whatever she sold/exchanged it for) but she can sell memoirs and give interviews all she wants. I say, make her pay all judicial costs and all costs incurred by the police while seeking her. To the last drop of petrol. Plus all the costs of the wedding party that didn't take place. If she has made money on the whole thing, that's enough of equity IMHO.

 

But after what that bitch did to him, he deserves to get something out of her...

 

A pound of flesh, I'd say

Incidently, CNN claims it'll be avoiding sensationalizing stories such as this and Jacko in the future. If they follow through, we might actually see some *gasp* positive progress in the media.

 

Yes its a worthless story, but you should crap that British tabloids like the Sun print every day. But then what do you expect from a paper, thats biggest feature is the daily topless 19 yearold?