The runaway bride who generated a media storm with her phony tale of abduction and the fiance who took her back have broken up for good, the man’s friends and family told People Magazine.
“We’re just glad there’s a final resolution,” John Mason’s father, Claude Mason, told the magazine. He had planned to be his son’s best man at the wedding.
Jennifer Wilbanks, 33, told the magazine: “John and I have some things to work out.”
Wilbanks would not confirm or deny a breakup, the magazine said on its Web site Thursday. She, her attorney and a family spokesman did not respond to requests seeking comment Friday. Her mother, Joyce Parrish, declined to comment.
Wilbanks disappeared four days before the scheduled wedding in April 2005. Hundreds of police officers and volunteers searched for her for three days before she called Mason from Albuquerque, N.M., claiming to have been abducted and sexually assaulted.
She later recanted, saying she fled because of personal issues, and pleaded no contest to telling police a phony story. She also was sentenced to two years probation, which she performed through community service that included mowing the lawns of public buildings.