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.
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
Mollie's body was found on August 21, 10 miles from where she vanished in Brooklyn on July 18. There have been several points of interest in the location including five areas close to Brooklyn which investigators zeroed in on. Pig farmer Wayne Cheney also had his home and land searched but he was never arrested. He lives four miles from where Mollie's body was found
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.
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.
Mollie Tibbetts, a student from Iowa who went missing while out running, has been found dead, according to multiple reports.
The 20-year-old rising sophomore at the University of Iowa was last seen alive on 18 July jogging near her home in Brooklyn, Iowa, located nearly 70 miles east of the state's capital Des Moines.
She was reported missing shortly after by her family.
Both Fox News and CBS News reported the discovery of the body, citing police sources.
Greg Willey, the vice president of Crime Stoppers of Central Iowa, told the Associated Press that a body had been found on Tuesday and it is believed to be Ms Tibbetts. He said he received the tip from a close friend of the Tibbetts' family. No information has been released about where the body was found.
Mr Willey said a nearly $400,000 reward fund for her discovery would become a reward for information leading to the capture of any possible suspects, once the news is officially released.
The Independent has contacted Poweshiek County Sheriff's office, which covers Brooklyn, for confirmation.
After Ms Tibbetts was reported missing, a joint investigation had been launched by the Iowa Department of Public Safety’s Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI), the Poweshiek County Sheriff’s Office, the FBI, the Iowa State Patrol and the Brooklyn Volunteer Fire Department.
ABC reports the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation is holding a 5pm news conference, local time, at the Poweshiek County Sheriff’s Office in Montezuma to release information on the case.
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Ms Tibbetts’ father, Rob Tibbetts, recently told ABC he was “reluctantly” returning home to California as the investigation continued.
“Very reluctantly, I'm being told I sort of need to do this,“ Mr Tibbetts said. "We've called this sort of a halftime, a break."
Laura Calderwood, Mollie Tibbetts' mother told ABC last month that not knowing where her daughter was, was "excruciating".
Authorities had launched a website earlier this month, findingmollie.iowa.gov, which encouraged people to offer any possible tips regarding Ms Tibbetts' whereabouts.
(CNN) An undocumented immigrant has been charged with first-degree murder in the presumed death of Mollie Tibbetts, an Iowa college student who went missing on July 18, officials said Tuesday.
The suspect on Tuesday led authorities to a body officials believe is that of Tibbetts, 20, said Rick Rahn, special agent in charge at the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.
An autopsy to determine when and how the woman died is planned for Wednesday.
Authorities said surveillance video helped them determine a suspect.
The suspect, Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 24, is an undocumented immigrant who authorities believe has been in the area for four to seven years, Rahn said. Charges were filed in the district court in Poweshiek County and bail was set at $1 million.
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