Pastor's Wife Disappears After Conference

[Rhino]

Alabama Pastor's Wife Disappears After Attending Christian Conference

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

SUMMERDALE, Ala. — Police said Wednesday they have no reason to believe that the wife of an Alabama minister, who disappeared after a religious conference this past weekend, was the victim of foul play.

Authorities did not disclose specifics but spokesman Mark Natale said that, "something of a private, personal nature we learned" indicates 30-year-old Mary Byrne "Beth" Smith was not abducted.

Natale said the Smith's family said it is out of character for her to disappear....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,262022,00.html

[DoctorDoom]

Well, it wasn't the rapture, cuz the rest of us are still here.

[DeclinetoState]

Unless the rapture is grabbing a lot fewer folks than expected.

[DesertFox]

Well, better she disappear than die. Or run off with a choir boy. Or pork dogs.

[Lubbock]

Decline, that is falling off the chair funny. And it came along at the exact moment when I really needed a good laugh.

[DoctorDoom]

Unless the rapture is grabbing a lot fewer folks than expected.Unfortunately, it will.

[Rhino]

Missing Alabama Minister's Wife Found Working at Fast-Food Restaurant in New York
Monday, July 30, 2007

By Sara Bonisteel

The wife of an Alabama minister missing for more than four months has been located by police unharmed and working under an alias at a fast-food restaurant in New York state, authorities said Monday.

Louisiana police located Mary Byrne Smith alive and well in New York state on Friday. The 30-year-old kindergarten teacher had been working under an assumed name at a fast-food restaurant.

"We know it’s her," Bossier City Police Chief Mike Halphen said at a press conference Monday. "She did not want us to disclose the reasons why she left, and she did not want us to disclose where she is living."

She does not face criminal charges, he said.

"People have their reasons for wanting to start a new life and that was her choosing," Halphen said. "And again, we encouraged her very, very hard to contact her family and at least talk with her children and we believe that she will."

Police were able to trace Smith to New York after the Alabama Department of Education notified authorities that she had applied for a copy of her teaching certificate. She knew detectives were looking for her and expressed remorse, authorities said.

Last week, officials released images from a pawnshop security tape that showed Smith selling her wedding ring on the morning of March 24, the day she disappeared from the CenturyTel Center in Bossier City.

Police said Smith then caught a ride to a Greyhound bus station in nearby Shreveport, La.

"She had the amount of money she sold her wedding ring for and asked them 'How much this will get me?' and 'How far away will this much money get me?' and it was New York," Halphen said.

Officials have said all along that they believed Smith — the wife of the Rev. Jason Smith of the First Baptist Church in Summerdale, Ala., and mother of two children — left of her own volition....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,291424,00.html