ATLANTA – Runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks has been indicted by a grand jury on a number of counts related to her failure to return thirty-seven library books she borrowed from the Gwinnett County Public Library in Norcross, Georgia, last year. The indictment charges Wilbanks with thirty-seven misdemeanor counts of failure to apply for extensions on the books, one felony count of making false statements to a library official, and one felony count of interstate flight to avoid surrendering the overdue books.
If Wilbanks is convicted of either felony charge, “she could be doing her reading in prison for the next five years,” said Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter.
According to library records obtained by Porter’s office, Wilbanks borrowed the books, using the library’s RapidScan self-checkout system, between January 8 and January 13 last year. Each of the thirty-seven titles, which ranged from self-help books to wedding guides, was borrowed for the standard term of three weeks. They are now more than 16,500 days overdue, and Wilbanks owes the library more than $800 in fines.
Because Wilbanks had given the library an incorrect address and phone number when she applied for her library card, the library’s overdue books department could not locate her until early September last year. When representatives of the library finally confronted Wilbanks as she was jogging through a local park, she told them she had just moved in with her fiancee and the books were still packed somewhere in the basement, which they were going to convert into a wine cellar. She promised to return the books as soon as she had time to locate them.
Although library officials thought there was “something strange” about Wilbanks, who kept running in place and breathing heavily during their conversation with her in the park, they took her at her word. Indeed, they kept taking her at her word until February of this year.
“First she told us she was too busy planning her wedding to look for the books,” said Mavis Clarke, head of the library’s collection department. “Then she told us she thought the books had been stolen by an African-American member of the landscaping crew installing an English garden on her fiancee’s property.
“We thought it odd that a man would be interested in Gothic romances and books about eating disorders,” said Clarke. “At that point [early April this year], we had no choice but to obtain a warrant to search her fiancee’s house and to seize the books if they were there.”
The search warrant was never executed because Wilbanks disappeared on April 26, sparking a nationwide hunt. Library officials who reported for work four days later were surprised to find a message from Wilbanks on the library’s voice mail system.
“She sounded disoriented,” said Clarke. “She was crying and hollering and claiming she had been kidnapped by an Hispanic man and a middle-aged woman in a blue pickup truck while she was loading the books into her car before taking them back to the library.”
Wilbanks later recanted that story, and after she had returned to Duluth, she told Clarke where to find the books, which the library has since reclaimed.
“The books didn’t look any the worse for wear,” said Clarke, who declined to name specific titles for fear that “weirdos in the community” would want to check them out as curiosity items.
A source close to the library told the Gwinnett County Shopper‘s lifestyle editor that Five Simple Steps to Emotional Healing, Secrets of Style, and Disguise Techniques were among the books seized by the library.
Wilbanks, who checked herself into an inpatient medical treatment program two weeks ago to deal with physical and mental issues, was not available for comment about the indictment. There was no shortage of comments around Gwinnett County, however.
“I think they ought to throw the book at her,” said Bud “Junior” Higgins, waiting for his wife outside the Winn-Dixie in an SUV. “She’s got a record for shoplifting, you know. I don’t expect she was planning to return those books any time soon. If she likes books so much, she can work in the prison library.”
“She’s obviously a very sick woman,” said Claudia Snopes as she loaded groceries into an SUV outside the Wal-Mart. “People who shoplift or take things that don’t belong to them are really asking for help. That’s what she needs, not prison.”
In other news, President Bush’s nominee for the post of chief U.N. delegate, John Bolton, bit the head off a bat on the Capitol steps early this morning.
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