The body of missing college student Mollie Tibbetts was found Tuesday, her father and two sources told Fox News, bringing an end to an intensive search that lasted more than a month and captured national headlines.
Tibbetts' father, Rob Tibbetts, told Fox News the body found is that of his 20-year-old daughter, who vanished in mid-July.
A law enforcement source earlier told Fox News the body was found in Iowa, but more specific details about the location were not released. Iowa Department of Public Safety said a body was discovered in Poweshiek County.
Greg Willey, the vice president of Crime Stoppers of Central Iowa, also told the Associated Press the body found Tuesday is believed to be Tibbetts.
No arrests have been announced in connection with the Tibbetts case. A news conference was announced for 4 p.m. local time on Tuesday.
Tibbetts, a University of Iowa student, was reported missing after she failed to respond to messages from her boyfriend, Dalton Jack, and did not show up for work. She was last seen jogging around Brooklyn around 7:30 p.m. on July 18 and was staying with her boyfriend and working while home from school over the summer. She would have started her junior year of college this week.
MOLLIE TIBBETTS, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA STUDENT, MISSING: A TIMELINE OF EVENTS
Tibbetts' family pleaded for her safe return and had remained hopeful she would be found alive. Rob Tibbetts was returning home to the San Francisco area after spending weeks looking for his daughter, The Des Moines Register reported Sunday.
"The bottom line is somebody knows something," Rob Tibbetts previously told Fox News, adding Brooklyn is a small city and “you can’t do anything there without someone seeing it.”
For the last month, investigators followed “hundreds” of leads — interviewing hundreds of people and canvassing a nearby hog farm, cornfields and other properties for traces of the college student. Two items Tibbetts typically took with her — a Fitbit and cellphone — remained missing.
Investigators announced last week they were focusing the search on five locations in and around Brooklyn, which included a car wash just a block away from the city’s main commercial strip and a TA truck stop next to Interstate-80, which runs across the entirety of Iowa.
Brooklyn, a town of just 1,400 people, was shaken by Tibbetts' disappearance. Blake Jack, the brother of Tibbetts’ boyfriend, told Fox News on Aug. 8 there was no sign of a struggle at the Brooklyn home she was staying in at the time.
Dalton Jack, Tibbetts' boyfriend of two years, said he believed the doors of the home where his girlfriend last stayed had been left unlocked.
“It’s Brooklyn. You don’t lock your doors,” Jack told Fox News. “We lock our doors now. Every night.”
MOLLIE TIBBETTS, MISSING IOWA STUDENT, HAS ALWAYS RELIED ON PRAYER, DAD SAYS
Rob Tibbetts stayed optimistic to the end, theorizing his daughter must have been with someone she knew and would return home safe.
“It's totally speculation on my part, but I think Mollie is with someone that she knows, that is in over their head,” he told Fox News. “That there was some kind of misunderstanding about the nature of their relationship and at this point they don't know how to get out from under this.”
A reward of nearly $400,000 leading to information on Tibbetts' whereabouts will now become a reward for information leading to the capture of any suspects.
"Once they catch their breath, this will turn into a weapon going the other direction to catch the person who did it," Willey said.
Fox News' Matt Finn, Cristina Corbin, Greg Norman, Jennifer Earl and Elizabeth Zwirz and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
(CNN) Authorities investigating the disappearance of 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts announced Tuesday a body has been found in rural Poweshiek County.
Officials are working to identify the body, the Poweshiek County Sheriff's Office said in a statement. No details will be released by police before a news conference at 4 p.m. (5 p.m. ET), according to Mitch Mortvedt with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, but he told CNN to "expect quite a bit of news."
Tibbetts' father, Rob Tibbetts, had no comment.
Mollie Tibbetts, a University of Iowa student, was last seen jogging on July 18 in the small community of Brooklyn, Iowa, about an hour east of Des Moines, according to the Poweshiek County Sheriff's Office.
Before she went missing, Tibbetts' brother dropped her off at her boyfriend's house so she could dog-sit, HLN reported. Her family reported her missing after she did not show up for work the next day.
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POLICE are investigating the death of Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old University of Iowa student, who went missing after going out for a run.
Her body was found a month after her disappearance near Brooklyn, Iowa in the American Midwest.
AP:Associated Press 3 Mollie Tibbetts vanished after going for a jog and her body was found five weeks later
When did Mollie Tibbetts go missing?
Mollie vanished on Thursday, July 19, in her hometown of Brooklyn in eastern Iowa.
She vanished near America's Highway of Death moments after sending her boyfriend a Snapchat selfie.
FBI and Iowa investigators concentrated their search on areas around the town that she was known to have gone to in the past.
The town of Brooklyn, Iowa, is home to less than 2,000 people and is located just off Interstate 80 which cuts through the US from New York to San Francisco.
It has been dubbed the Highway of Death due to many unsolved disappearances linked to the route.
Mollie sent her boyfriend Dalton Jack a Snapchat selfie the night before she was reported missing, which he opened around 10pm.
She was reported missing the following day when she failed to turn up for work.
How was her Fitbit used in the search?
The FBI was reported to have used an array of computer forensics such as studying online history and smartphone app usage in an effort to pinpoint where she might have disappeared.
She was known to have a Fitbit - a fitness tracker which is connected to the internet to record exercise.
A neighbour had reported seeing the youngster going for a jog the day before she was reported missing.
Facebook 3 Dalton Jack with his girlfriend Mollie Tibbetts - Jack received a Snapchat message from Mollie on the night of her disappearance
What has boyfriend Dalton Jack said since her disappearance?
Dalton Jack, who had been dating Mollie, his high school sweetheart, since October 2015, said he received a Snapchat photo from her late on the night of Wednesday July 18.
This was after she would have returned to his home from her run.
She was there to watch his dogs because he had a construction job about 100 miles northeast in Dubuque.
County Sheriff Thomas Kriegel said that Dalton was not considered a suspect in Mollie's disappearance.
How large was the search for Mollie?
Dozens of volunteers in the town of about 1,500 had been searching fields around her house and the house where she was staying.
They also blanketed the area with missing posters, T-shirts and billboard pleas for help in finding Tibbetts.
But a week after she went missing it the public search largely been wound down as the FBI and state investigators took over, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.
But Tibbetts' aunt, Kim Calderwood of Brooklyn, told the Des Moines Register that Tibbetts' family was frustrated by the lack of progress in the search.
Agents also worked with staff from the University of Iowa, where she was taking a degree in psychology, her friends and others to gain access to her laptops and online accounts.
Mike Pence, the US Vice President, was also known to have taken an interest in the search and Mollie's family and boyfriend met with Mr Pence.
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When was her body found?
On August 21, detectives found Mollie's body after a month-long search.
No information has been released about where the body was found.
A £310,000 reward for information about her disappearance has become a reward for information about the suspect.
Speaking a week before her body was discovered, Rick Rahn from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, said law enforcement had conducted over 500 interviews in the case.
He said at the time: "We have not lost hope. We continue to strive to bring her home safely."
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Missing Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts has been found dead five weeks after vanishing.
The 20-year-old's remains were found on Tuesday on a rural property in Poweshiek County close to the town of Guernsey, around 10 miles from Brooklyn, where Mollie vanished on July 18.
The FAA issued a no fly zone in the area which will last until Wednesday morning. It prevents news choppers from flying overhead.
Police are not releasing any information until 4pm local time but people working for Crime Stoppers to help find her say her family has been informed.
No one has been arrested in connection with her disappearance and several police agencies have been working for weeks to try to uncover leads.
The student was staying alone overnight in her boyfriend's home the night she went missing and was last seen going for a jog in the neighborhood at around 8pm but what happened afterwards has remained a complete mystery for weeks.
Her boyfriend opened a Snapchat photograph from her at 10pm which appeared to suggest that she was indoors but it is not known what time Mollie sent it.
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Mollie Tibbetts has been found dead a month after vanishing. The 20-year-old vanished on July 18
Last week, the FBI said it believed she had been abducted by someone she knew.
They warned that the person was 'hiding in plain sight' and had even attended vigils held in her honor but no arrests were made.
A $400,000 fund for her safe return was established but it did not produce any leads either.
The hunt for the missing student lasted five weeks and drummed up hundreds of tips but it remains unclear how she died or what led to the discovery of her body
Now, it will be dedicated to finding the person responsible for her death.
Greg Willey of Crime Stoppers of Central Iowa said her family and investigators would dedicate their resources to catching her killer 'once they catch their breath'.
The Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation refused to share details of the discovery on Tuesday when contacted by DailyMail.com.
Last week, the student's heartbroken family and boyfriend had a private meeting with Vice President Mike Pence and an award fund for information about the case reached hundreds of thousands of dollars.
No one was arrested in connection with her disappearance and the only person who has come under visible scrutiny is pig farmer Wayne Cheney.
Cheney was questioned several times and had his property searched after police found a red t-shirt that was similar to one owned by the student near his property.
However it was never established if the t-shirt did in fact belong to Mollie.
The search for Tibbetts zeroed in on five areas (above), including a truck stop and car wash, in the rural Iowa town where she vanished from a month ago. Her body was found near Guernsey, on a rural property not far from 460th Avenue and Highway 21. It is 10 miles from Brooklyn
Mollie was staying alone in the home she shared with her boyfriend Jack Dalton (above) in Brooklyn when she vanished. He is not a suspect in her disappearance
Mollie's boyfriend's older brother Blake Dalton (left with his fiancee) were not in town on the night she vanished either. The only person who has been visibly scrutinized by police is pig farmer Wayne Cheney (right) who was questioned more than once and had his property searched after police found a red t-shirt that was similar to one owned by the student near his land. Cheney took a polygraph test and has never been charged
What happened? It remains unclear who took Mollie or how she died. She is pictured before she vanished on July 18
Cheney maintained his innocence throughout media interviews and took a polygraph test to try to rule himself out. He was never charged.
In the past few days, Mollie's father Rob Tibbetts, who has been in Iowa since she disappeared, went to California for a 'break'.
Mollie's father Rob went back to California, where he lives, last week for what he called a much needed 'break' from the investigation
He said he had been urged by authorities to do so and that it was a 'half way' point in the investigation.
Rob was not in the state when his daughter disappeared.
Her boyfriend, Dalton Jack, was away for work when she disappeared as was his older brother Blake.
The youngsters lived together in a home in Brooklyn with Blake's fiancee who was also cleared.
As the hunt for her intensified, authorities set up a website that was dedicate to finding her.
It provided a map detailing five locations police considered to be significant. It is unclear if Mollie's body was found at any of those spots.
The website also offered a tips page which generated hundreds of clues about what may have happened to her.
It remains uncertain what led to the discovery of Mollie's body on Tuesday.
