The 'runaway bride' who once faked her own kidnapping to get out of a wedding is now divorced

• Jennifer Wilbanks went missing three days before her wedding in 2005.
• After first claiming she had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted, she admitted she had run away.
• Sixteen years later, Wilbanks got divorced from a different man.

Jennifer Wilbanks, the "runaway bride," just got divorced, according to People.

Wilbanks became a national news fixture in 2005 when she went missing three days before her wedding, as CNN reported.

Wilbanks was supposed to marry John Mason in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, in the spring of 2005, according to CNN. The April 30 wedding was supposed to have 600 guests and 28 bridal party members.

On April 26, 2005, Wilbanks did not return to her and Mason's home after telling him she was going on a jog, per CNN. Authorities began a search operation in her absence, spending thousands of dollars to try to find her.

According to CNN, Wilbanks called the police and her fiancé from Albuquerque, New Mexico, on April 30 and said she had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted. But during FBI and police questioning, she recanted her story. Wilbanks told authorities that she had actually called a taxi to take her to a Greyhound terminal, where she said she got on a bus to Las Vegas and then Albuquerque.

After pleading guilty to a felony count of making a false statement, Wilbanks was sentenced to two years of probation, 120 hours of community service, and mandatory mental-health counseling, as People reported. Wilbanks was also ordered to pay the city of Duluth $13,250 and the sheriff's office $2,550 to help cover the costs incurred while they searched for her.

Wilbanks and Mason broke up shortly after the incident, but she did later get married, according to People.

The outlet reported that Wilbanks married Greg Hutson, the owner of a landscaping company, in Gainesville, Georgia, in 2010.

But public record shows that Hutson filed for divorce from Wilbanks in March of 2021. The divorce was finalized on April 6, 2021.

Wilbanks did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.