HAMMOND | Hammond police may consider trying to recoup money spent on investigating the 1980 disappearance of a Hammond pastor who resurfaced last week under an assumed identity in Arkansas.

But local authorities were skeptical Friday that any money for investigative expenses actually would be recovered from the pastor as it has been elsewhere in the country in the cases of others who ran away of their own volition or staged their disappearances.

But Don LaRose could face other legal problems for taking up a new life after abandoning his identity as a Hammond pastor in 1980.

LaRose vanished from the region in June of that year, leaving his family to assume he had been abducted for the second time by the same satanic cult that he claimed kidnapped him five years earlier and erased his memory with electric shocks.

When LaRose resurfaced this week as the mayor of Centerton, Ark., after 27 years missing, observers wondered whether he might be liable for restitution for investigative expenses, as was true in the 2005 case of "Runaway Bride" Jennifer Wilbanks.

Wilbanks, then 32, had to pay to the city of Duluth, Ga., $13,250 to cover part of the cost of the massive manhunt that began after she went missing four days before her planned lavish wedding.

"We've never tried to do it," Hammond Police Chief Brian Miller said of trying to recoup the cost of an investigation after an intentional disappearance. "But it's something we might look into."

But Miller isn't holding out hope of getting back any money.

The chief said the statute of limitations may have expired and that it was not clear how much time Hammond detectives spent on the case 27 years ago.

Wilbanks was charged with making false statements and false police reports because she called authorities and claimed to have been abducted and raped. She later recanted and admitted she ran away purposely.

In a similar case in 2004, Wisconsin college student Audrey Seiler, then 20, had to pay the city of Madison $9,000 after her disappearance led to a search effort. She turned up four days later, and police concluded the event was staged in the midst of a failing relationship with a boyfriend.

LaRose told The Times Tuesday that he was threatened with arrest by New York police in the late 1970s for filing false reports after his first supposed satanic-cult abduction in 1975. Police believed he staged the disappearance himself, LaRose said.

That's why he chose to abandon his family and run away in 1980 instead of going to the Hammond police when the same types of threats and letters from Satanists started showing up again, LaRose said.

News reports from the 1980 incident indicate that both of LaRose's disappearances were investigated by the FBI. But FBI spokeswoman Wendy Osborne said Friday an initial search for records has not turned up any investigation into LaRose's whereabouts.

Osborne said if LaRose has legal problems, they might be related to the federal law against assuming someone else's name and Social Security number -- which LaRose has admitted.