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Investigators baffled by disappearance of Iowa student

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July 31st, 2018 by Ric Hanson

MONTEZUMA, Iowa (AP) — Investigators say they still don’t know what happened to a 20-year-old Iowa college student who vanished nearly two weeks ago. At a news conference Tuesday, a lead investigator said dozens of local, state and federal agents are working to determine what happened to Mollie Tibbetts.

Kevin Winker, director of investigative operations with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, says they are working every lead and tip that comes in. He says investigators have drawn no conclusions about what happened, but that her disappearing on her own is “not consistent with her past.”

Friends say Tibbetts had been planning to travel to the Dominican Republic this week for a wedding. Blake Jack says his brother Dalton and Dalton’s longtime girlfriend, Tibbetts, were supposed to be there when he married his fiancee, Aimee Houghton. He says he joked with his brother that he should propose to Tibbetts during the trip. Blake Jack says the cancelled wedding plans are nothing compared to what the town is going through.

Tibbetts was last seen jogging on the evening of July 18 in Brooklyn, a small Iowa town where the University of Iowa student had been living this summer with the brothers.