The husband of an American mother who vanished while on holiday in Grenada says her disappearance simply does not make sense. Elizabeth Waddell, known as Liz, has not been seen since 22 July, and although her husband, Kalen Waddell, believes she most likely drowned, he has begun raising questions about the circumstances after speaking to two people who reported seeing her in the water not long before she disappeared, in a case that is now stretching into weeks.
The family has released surveillance footage from the day Liz was last seen, recorded at the property near Grand Anse beach where she and a female friend had been staying. In the video, at around 11:45 in the morning she is seen walking near the pool, grabbing a towel and making her way toward the jetty. About a minute later, at 11:47, she drops into the water and begins swimming away from the shore, an image that has become central to the family's attempt to piece together her final movements.
The next apparent sighting came hours later. Jet skiers say they saw Waddell in the water about a third of a mile from the shore at around 5:30 in the afternoon on that same day. Kalen Waddell later met with them, and they showed him the approximate spot where they had come across her. According to his account, they spoke with her for five or ten minutes, trying to persuade her to ride back in with them on a jet ski rather than remain in the ocean, but she declined, indicating she would simply give them a thumbs up.
For Kalen, both the timeline and the swim itself are difficult to accept. He said he had never heard Liz describe herself as a strong swimmer and that he simply cannot believe she made such a swim, calling it completely out of character for her. The roughly five-and-a-half-hour gap between the moment she entered the water and the reported afternoon sighting strikes him as strange, and he does not believe she could have been swimming continuously for that entire length of time.
The family has also gone to considerable lengths to rule out the possibility that Liz disappeared on purpose. According to Kalen, they combed through her social media accounts, her text messages, her WhatsApp, her journal, her emails and even her YouTube history, and found nothing at all to suggest she would do such a thing. On the contrary, he said, everything they saw pointed to a woman who was busy making plans for the future with her family, which only deepens their confusion over what happened.
Despite his doubts, Kalen said the family does not know with absolute certainty what took place, and that, based on everything they have learned, drowning may still be the most likely scenario. He said he is placing his trust in the investigation, which the Royal Grenada police force is continuing to treat as a missing persons case. As the days pass with few firm answers, the family is holding on to the hope of finally learning the truth about what happened to Liz on that beach.