Two sources told Fox News that Mollie Tibbetts’ body was found on Tuesday, but authorities have not confirmed her death.
The University of Iowa college student went missing while on a jog on July 18 near Brooklyn, Iowa, and hasn’t been seen since. A reward of more than $400,000 was offered for information, but there was little information released by police.
Mollie Tibbetts’ mother, Laura Calderwood, told ABC News that there are “no words to describe how you feel when you don’t know where or how your child is,” adding that not knowing where her daughter was is “excruciating.”
“Sometimes, I just feel her sitting on my shoulder,” Calderwood told the Des Moines Register. “I don’t know that I have the strength in me, but Mollie’s lending me her strength every day, every night.”
Mollie Tibbetts’ body found hours after father left
Iowa authorities recommended that Tibbetts’ father, Rob Tibbetts, return to his home in California.
“Very reluctantly, I’m being told I sort of need to do this,” Rob Tibbetts told ABC affiliate KCRG in Cedar Rapids of being told to go home. “We’ve called this sort of a halftime, a break.”
Born in California, the 20-year-old moved to Iowa as a child where she earned a reputation as a kind person willing to help anyone.
I will have good days and bad days, I will have days that I can push my body rather than I thought I could, and days where it’s best to take it easy. But seeing the glow I have In pictures where I am TRULY happy with myself shows how big of a difference self love makes? pic.twitter.com/Jb70GZyX2X
— Mollie Tibbetts (@Motibbs) January 23, 2018
“There wasn’t a mean bone in her body,” her former principal, Katie Murphy, told the Des Moines Register. “You couldn’t help but just love her.”
Tibbetts was going to “change lives,” her friends told the newspaper.
“And there’s something tragic about having [her] disappear like this without any explanation,” Rob Tibbetts told the newspaper.
Mollie Tibbetts’ body found: Press conference planned
The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation is planning a 5 p.m. CST press conference regarding the Mollie Tibbetts search and say a “significant amount of information will be shared” at that time.
