Aunt of Missing UNH Student Holds Little Hope

Rebecca Tyning held out little hope on Friday night that she would ever see her niece, Elizabeth Marriott, alive again as she waited for any information from Portsmouth, NH Police.

The Beverly woman stood in front of the police barricade that blocked off Peirce Island Road along with a few friends as police continued to search Peirce Island on the land and in the water.

Marriott, a UNH student who lives in Chester and originally comes from Westborough, was reported missing Tuesday night after she finished a class at the Durham campus and was headed to a friend's house in Dover. The search intensified on Friday and on Friday night, police received some information that there was something on the island that could help them locate Marriott.

But police would not confirm or deny that they were in the process of trying to recover Marriott's body, only that they were treating Peirce Island and Prescott Park as a crime scene that was related to Marriott's disappearance.

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Tyning said Marriott's family is doing all they can to help find her. They set up a Help Find Lizzi Marriott Facebook page that offers a $10,000 reward for any information about her whereabouts. Tyning said the family has also set up a FindLizzy.com site and are using the Twitter hashtag #FindLizzie.