Elizabeth Waddell: The Search for the North Carolina Mom Who Vanished in Grenada

The last confirmed images of Elizabeth "Liz" Waddell come from surveillance cameras on Grand Anse Beach — the two-mile stretch of white sand that is Grenada's postcard. Recorded around 12:04 p.m. on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, the footage shows the 44-year-old roughly 20 feet from shore, in water about five feet deep, swimming toward the beach.

The cameras never show her coming out of the water. She has not been seen since.

Who she is

Liz Waddell is a physical therapist — founder of Art of Movement Physical Therapy — from Cary, North Carolina, in the Raleigh area, a wife and mother described by friends as an experienced traveler. She was vacationing with a friend, staying in the Grand Anse area of St. George's, Grenada's capital, and had left her Airbnb that day for a swim.

She is described as 5 feet 5 inches tall with short blonde hair.

When she didn't return, the alarm moved fast for an international case: the Royal Grenada Police Force issued a missing persons alert on July 23, the day after she was last seen.

The search

The response on the island has been extensive:

• Royal Grenada Police Force officers working the beach and the surrounding Grand Anse area
• The Coast Guard and underwater dive teams searching the waters off the beach where the surveillance footage was recorded
• A K9 unit deployed on land
• Student volunteers from St. George's University, the American-affiliated university whose campus sits on the peninsula at the south end of Grand Anse

Her husband, Cailen Waddell, who works as an operations manager for the Town of Cary, and the couple's adult daughter have been in Grenada assisting the search since Friday, July 24. Friends and family back in North Carolina have organized to support the effort and press for continued attention on the case.

As of late July, Police Commissioner Randy Connaught says the case remains a missing person investigation — not a recovery — and that investigators are hopeful she will be located.

By August 1, the case had taken two turns. First, her husband said publicly — after what he described as careful consultation with family, local authorities, and the U.S. Embassy — that he believes there was no foul play in his wife's disappearance. Second, an unconfirmed report surfaced of a possible sighting: someone resembling Liz seen in front of a grocery store in town on Friday evening. Police were pulling surveillance video from the area to try to corroborate it. It must be stressed that the report is unverified — but it is the first potential sighting since the beach footage, and in a case where the last camera showed her in the water, even an unconfirmed land sighting changes the shape of the search. After more than a week of searches, family members were reported to be preparing to leave the island while the investigation continues.

What investigators have — and haven't — said

The honest answer about this case right now is that it sits in the hardest early phase of any disappearance: a confirmed last sighting, and then nothing.

What's established: she entered the water at a busy public beach in the middle of the day, on camera, alone — last seen close to shore, in shallow water, swimming toward the beach. What isn't: how someone twenty feet from the sand was never recorded coming out. As of this writing, authorities have not announced evidence of foul play, named any suspect, or committed publicly to any theory — drowning, misadventure, or anything else. Grand Anse is generally regarded as a calm, swimmable bay, which is part of why the case has drawn so much attention: it is not a stretch of coast where swimmers routinely vanish.

Cases involving Americans missing abroad also carry a structural complication we've seen before: the investigation belongs to the host country's police, while the family navigates from outside the system — coordinating through consular channels, hiring searchers, and working the media to keep the case alive.

Why this case file matters

This site mostly covers cases after the recorded evidence exists — bodycam, interrogation footage, trial testimony. Missing persons cases are the opposite: the recording that matters is a single camera at a beach bar, and everything turns on what happened just past its field of view. The disappearance of Gabby Petito showed how much sustained public attention can matter in the search phase. Liz Waddell's family is asking for exactly that now.

Anyone with information is urged to contact the Royal Grenada Police Force.

Sources & records

• The family's search site: findliz.com
• NBC News: disappearance at Grand Anse Beach
• WRAL Raleigh: surveillance footage and the search from Cary
• Fox News: search continues in Grenada
• NewsNation: family's plea for help

Case status as of this writing: missing since July 22, 2026, last seen at Grand Anse Beach, St. George's, Grenada; active search ongoing; no foul play announced and no suspects named. This article is based on official police alerts and contemporaneous reporting, and will be updated as verified developments emerge. Photo: surveillance frame circulated by the family's search effort (findliz.com).