Wife Tired of Defending Herself in Husband's Disappearance

March 1, 2006 — -- Jennifer and George Smith were supposed to have spent the last months building memories together as husband and wife -- making their first Thanksgiving dinner, exchanging their first Christmas gifts, sharing their first New Year's kiss.

Instead Jennifer, 26, has spent much of the last seven months defending herself and her relationship with her husband after George disappeared on their honeymoon cruise in July.

"Why do I have to convince people that I loved George and he loved me and we were just so happy and we were just a normal couple on our honeymoon?" Jennifer said.

On the evening before George's disappearance, he and Jennifer were drinking and gambling on a Royal Caribbean Cruise ship sailing through the Mediterranean. What happened after they left the ship's casino is not clear, but in the morning a pool of blood was found on the deck below their room and George was missing.

"Yes, we were drinking," Jennifer said. "Yes, we were having a good time. We were on our honeymoon. Does that mean that we were two alcoholics and we just were crazy and did not know our limits? No."

Jennifer says she cannot remember her last night with her husband. ABC News has learned she was found passed out on July 5, hundreds of feet from her cabin. She was found closer to the cabin of the men the Smiths had been drinking with the night before.

"That frightened me," she said. "I'm constantly learning about new information. I still don't know exactly what happened to me or how I ended up there."

Media attention has focused largely on criticism surrounding Jennifer -- both on her inability to provide more details about her husband's disappearance and her seeming lack of attachment to the case. But the news coverage has not focused on Jennifer's own horror story, which started when she found herself in a foreign country, left to fly back from her honeymoon alone.

"I remember a couple in the next aisle, and it was terrible to watch a loving couple," Jennifer said of the flight. "It all reminded me of George."