Elizabeth Waddell search reaches ninth day as Grenada police widen inquiry

Nine days after Elizabeth Waddell walked to a jetty north of Grand Anse Beach and swam into the Caribbean, the Royal Grenada Police Force has not recovered her, has not named a cause and has not moved the file out of the missing person category. Acting Commissioner of Police Randy Connaught told reporters in St George's on July 28 that the force "has not reached or announced any final conclusion," and repeated the operative phrase twice inside a single sentence: "At this time, the matter continues, continues to be treated as a missing person investigation."

Elizabeth Waddell, 44, a doctor of physical therapy from Cary, North Carolina, was last captured on surveillance video at 12:04 p.m. on Wednesday, July 22, swimming beneath the jetty outside the accommodation she had rented the previous day. She was reported missing to police at 5:50 p.m. that afternoon. In the nine days since, Grenadian authorities have put the Coast Guard, local dive professionals, a police drone unit and a university canine unit across a ten-mile band of the island's south-western coastline, and have asked the FBI's regional office for help building background on a United States citizen whose movements after noon that day remain undocumented.

Nine days without a confirmed sighting

Connaught set out the trip's structure at the July 28 briefing. Elizabeth Waddell arrived in Grenada from Miami on July 11 with a female friend. The pair spent ten days at a resort on the island's west coast, then moved on July 21 to accommodation in the south, a relocation Connaught described as a pre-arranged plan to see both parts of the island. Grenada sits in the eastern Caribbean roughly 100 miles north of Venezuela, according to NBC News, and Newsweek describes Grand Anse as one of the island's most popular tourist destinations.

The Royal Grenada Police Force issued a public missing person alert on July 23, the day after the report, Connaught said. Nine days on, no arrest has been announced, no remains have been recovered and no suspect has been named. "It is our hope that Elizabeth will be found and found alive and well," he said. "The Royal Grenada Police Force remains equally hopeful that she will be safe and that she is safe."

His appeal to the public was narrow and repeated. "Any bit of information will do at this time, and we do hope that we can locate Elizabeth very soon," Connaught said. He asked residents and media to treat the police force as the "official source of information" in the case, a request made against a backdrop of daily coverage built largely on family statements rather than police briefings.

Timeline investigators built from jetty cameras

The most precise element of the case is a sequence of camera timestamps that Connaught read out publicly. Surveillance video shows Elizabeth Waddell walking toward the jetty at 11:36 a.m., sitting on it for several minutes, removing her towel and entering the water at 11:51 a.m., and swimming beneath the structure at 12:04 p.m. No camera recorded her leaving the water. Her travelling companion appears on the same system walking toward the jetty and returning alone at 12:46 p.m., having found only a towel on the pier.

Between 12:04 p.m. and the report to police at 5:50 p.m. there is a gap of nearly six hours in the documented record. Into that gap falls a single reported sighting: police acknowledged receiving an account of a swimmer matching Waddell's description in open water at around 5:30 p.m. The Grenada Broadcasting Network, in an account relayed by WRAL, interviewed a man who said he was riding a jet ski when he spotted a woman far from shore, stopped and asked whether she needed help, and was told she was a strong swimmer. Her husband referred to the same reports on the family website: "You have likely seen reports from folks on Jet Skis of an interaction with a woman they potentially identify as Liz in the water farther out from shore around 5:30PM." In a later statement he said she "communicated her confidence in her swimming and location, as well as the beauty of the island."

Investigators are working without the data that ordinarily anchors a timeline. NOW Grenada, the island's main online outlet, reported that Elizabeth Waddell left her mobile phone, identification, wallet and footwear at her accommodation, leaving police with no GPS record, no cell-site data and no payment trail for the afternoon. What she was wearing had to be assembled from a photograph the family published rather than from a police description. The FindLiz site shows her leaving the rental in blue and white striped shorts and a loose burnt orange crop top, and her husband, Cailen Waddell, wrote that "both of these clothing items were newer, so I don't think we have pictures of her in them," adding: "To confirm, she was wearing this clothing in the water."

Connaught was asked directly about the travelling companion, who had stayed at the rental to take an online course while Waddell went to swim. "There is nothing questionable about her account of the investigations and we continue to receive cooperation from her," he said. Family friend Amanda Romano-Harmon, who has known the couple for 25 years and whose husband was Cailen Waddell's college roommate, gave WRAL the same sequence. "She had her swimsuit on, and she went outside their Airbnb," Romano-Harmon said. "They had a pool that overlooked the bay. Liz was set up out there just sightseeing from the pool, and her friend was taking her online course." The friend finished the course, looked up, could not see Waddell, and found the towel on the pier.

Search assets across ten miles of coastline

The operational response began within hours of the 5:50 p.m. report. "That report triggered an immediate police response, including an initial search of the premises, the surroundings, shoreline and desperate searches of all of the areas in and around that resort," Connaught said. A larger sweep followed on July 23 involving police officers, divers and students from St George's University, the American-curriculum medical school whose campus sits at the southern end of the Grand Anse corridor. Several hours of searching produced no trace.

By the end of the first week the deployment had broadened. Connaught listed the Grenada Coast Guard, local dive professionals, the Royal Grenada Police Force drone unit, the St George's University canine unit and members of the wider community. The drone unit covered a ten-mile stretch running from Point Salines, at the island's south-western tip near Maurice Bishop International Airport, north to Happy Hill. Officers checked beaches, bays, inlets and other coastal points along that line.

The Coast Guard's contribution went beyond surface patrols. Connaught said tides, currents, wind conditions and possible drift patterns had been assessed, the standard modelling used to define a search box when a swimmer is lost from a known entry point at a known time. Marine, underwater and shoreline searches were run in parallel. Police have not shifted the stated posture of the operation: six days in, NBC News reported, officers said they still sought to rescue Waddell rather than recover her.

Cailen Waddell added his own reconnaissance to the public record. He swam the stretch of water himself and posted a description of the conditions to the family site, calling the sea shallow near shore and rocky in places, with points a swimmer can stop at, and writing that "the water is like a lake, not like ocean water we experience in North Carolina." On July 28 he posted that footage confirmed his wife was last seen "around 12:04 PM, about 20' at most from shore."

Devices and witnesses in the investigative file

Connaught said investigators have taken possession of Waddell's electronic devices, interviewed witnesses and reconstructed her movements up to the point she was reported missing, and are still analysing photographs and videos submitted by the public. One line of inquiry acknowledges, without asserting, the possibility of third-party involvement. "The investigative team is also examining whether any person, vessel or vehicle, moved to the relevant locations during this critical period," Connaught said, in remarks reported by ABC11 in Raleigh-Durham. He did not say the examination had produced anything.

The commissioner's closing instruction to the public was to lower the threshold for what counts as worth reporting. "No information should be considered too minor," he said. Police published three contact points for tips: the South Saint George police station on 444-4454, the Criminal Investigation Department on 440-3921, and the emergency line on 911.

Consular and federal roles in a case abroad

Because Elizabeth Waddell is an American citizen missing on foreign soil, the case runs through consular rather than domestic channels. Connaught said the Royal Grenada Police Force has maintained contact with Cindy Diouf, the principal officer of the United States Embassy in Grenada, and has reached beyond the embassy. "As part of our international cooperation, the FBI regional office has also been contacted," he said, adding that investigators wanted assistance in developing "a better understanding of the background" of a United States citizen. CBS News coverage indicates the bureau is supplying background information rather than deploying personnel to the island.

The State Department told Fox News Digital that it was aware of reports of a missing American citizen in Grenada and that the administration has no higher priority than the safety and security of Americans abroad. It declined to give further detail, citing privacy considerations, and noted that consular staff can help relatives file missing persons reports and understand local procedure. American law enforcement has no independent jurisdiction to search Grenadian territory, and the file belongs to the Royal Grenada Police Force.

Recent Caribbean precedent shows how long such a file can stay open. Sudiksha Konanki, a University of Pittsburgh student, disappeared on March 6, 2025, from Arena Gorda Beach near Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, last seen on surveillance footage walking to the water at about 4:15 a.m. The inquiry drew in the Dominican Attorney General's office under Yeni Berenice Reynoso, the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office in Virginia and Interpol. Her parents asked on March 18, 2025, that she be declared legally dead. She has not been found, and Dominican law permits a declaration of legal absence only after four years. Grenada's file is nowhere near that stage, and Connaught's language on July 28 was still the language of rescue.

Family arrives in Grenada and revises its assessment

Cailen Waddell, an operations manager with the Town of Cary Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources department, flew to Grenada on Friday, July 24, with the couple's daughter. His first public appeal was posted to Facebook: "Facebook Friends. My wife Liz is missing in Grenada. If any of you have connections to the island, can you please share the following with your contacts there?" In a later post he wrote that he expected "nothing less than Liz's safe return." WRAL reported that the couple's adult daughter has been in Grenada with him since that Friday.

Connaught confirmed the husband's role in the operation and his standing with investigators. "He's been in touch with our lead detective on the matter," the commissioner said, describing him as cooperative. The family has run its own information channel through the website findliz.com and a Facebook search group, publishing updates, volunteer instructions and, on July 29, the surveillance footage itself.

The most consequential family statement came the same week. Writing on the family website on July 29, Cailen Waddell said the household had reached a conclusion after consulting others on the island. "After careful and thoughtful consultation with family, local authorities, the U.S. Embassy, and others here in Grenada, I join authorities in believing there was no foul play," he wrote. He described the 5:30 p.m. sighting, said the investigation would continue, and acknowledged the state of the search directly: "Despite our exhaustive efforts, we have not been successful." Newsweek reported that family, friends, local authorities, volunteers and residents had by then put hundreds of hours into the effort. His appeal for information was framed in the same terms Connaught had used the day before: "No detail is too small."

Discrepancies that complicated the search

Two categories of unconfirmed information have complicated the case. The first is the last-seen time itself. Early WRAL coverage carried a Royal Grenada Police Force account putting the last sighting at around 8 a.m. on July 22, while IBTimes UK reported the force giving approximately 8 p.m. that evening near Grand Anse Beach. Neither figure matches the 11:51 a.m. entry and the 12:04 p.m. camera frame Connaught later read out, and IBTimes UK noted that authorities have not publicly explained the discrepancy.

The second is the description itself. Widely circulated photographs show Waddell with fluorescent pink hair; the police description issued on July 23 gives short blond hair and a medium build. Height figures published in the first week ranged from five feet, reported by WTVD, to five feet five inches in the police description carried by Fox News. Age was reported as both 43 and 44 before outlets settled on the 44 given by the Royal Grenada Police Force. Romano-Harmon, who has watched the footage the family released, told CBS News that Waddell can be seen "floating" and "swimming around" before she "floats out of the camera view and so that's the last footage of Liz."

Cary practice, patients and the professional record

Elizabeth Waddell holds a doctorate in physical therapy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and founded Art of Movement Physical Therapy in Cary. She has more than two decades in fitness and dance and over a decade in clinical practice, and teaches at Aradia Fitness, which called news of her disappearance "disheartening." Amanda Romano-Harmon described the trip to WRAL: "The two of them went down there, and they were just vacationing and sightseeing." MaryBeth Rubano, who came to know her through physical therapy, told the station: "You just can't help but like her. She's outgoing. She cares about you, and you were important to her."

IBTimes UK, reviewing her public posts, reported that Waddell had been treated for long COVID, post-viral complications and chronic fatigue syndrome, and that in a May 22 post she linked those conditions to endometriosis and perimenopause. She wrote that symptoms which began the previous September had forced her to step away from her business and cut back sharply on physical activity, and that her health had since begun improving. Police have not connected her medical history to the disappearance, and no official has advanced it as an explanation.

Dates and decision points ahead

Police have published no end date for the search and no schedule for further briefings, and Connaught's July 28 appearance remains the fullest official account. Anyone who was on the water, on the Grand Anse road or on the beach between 12:04 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on July 22 is the audience for the appeal.

Two concrete tasks remain outstanding on the husband's own account of what investigators have told him. Police are working to reach the jet ski riders who described the 5:30 p.m. interaction and to fix a more precise location for it, and they are collecting security footage from every hotel along the beach, Cailen Waddell wrote on the family site. Neither task has produced a published result.

Nothing in the record released so far establishes what happened to Elizabeth Waddell. Police have three fixed points: a woman entering the water at 11:51 a.m., a camera frame at 12:04 p.m., and a report to police at 5:50 p.m. Everything between those points rests on a single uncorroborated account from a stranger on a jet ski. Until that changes, the Royal Grenada Police Force says the file stays where Connaught left it on July 28, open and classified as a missing person investigation.