[UPDATE, Jan 1, 2008: Solanki NOT to face criminal charges; civil charges may come.]
This is a photo of Anu Solanki, a Chicago woman who was reported missing by her husband on Christmas eve (here's the first SAJAforum post about her case). After a week-long search that cost the police $250,000, she was found safe. From Chicago Tribune's coverage:
Seven months into her marriage, Anu Solanki wanted out, she told officials upon returning to Chicago after she went missing last week.
She left with a friend to start a new life. She told no one—a decision she now regrets, officials said.
"She was unhappy in the marriage," Bill Cunningham, a spokesman for the Cook County sheriff's office, said Saturday. "She said she wanted to make a clean break and end things immediately."
The 24-year-old gift shop clerk, who moved to the Chicago area after her marriage in May, was reported missing Monday by her family after her car was found running with the door open near a dam on the Des Plaines River.
Her reappearance Friday came after days of tedious searches of the river in the cold. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart estimated the search cost taxpayers $250,000.
Solanki met with investigators on Friday night for several hours to explain why she left and where she had been. She told them she and the friend, Karan C. Jani, 23, began the 30-hour drive Monday to California, where Solanki planned to find an apartment and a roommate in Los Angeles and start over.
Her husband was not abusive or cruel, but she was unhappy and regretted getting married, Cunningham said. She told officials she never meant to deceive anyone or to make people believe she had fallen into the river.
"She was adamant in insisting this was not some sort of hoax," Cunningham said.
The rest of the story, and video, here. According to Google News, more than 1,000 stories were written about Solanki.
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