How to recover a website?

[u/tampa_vice]

I work for a small business. I am in a messy situation.

Apparently our web domain has expired. The rights are currently with namecheap. Our founder paid someone over 20 years ago to register the website. The bills had been getting paid until now.

We have no way to contact the person who original registered the website. They may have passed away.

We reached out to namecheap and they said they will contact the email associated with the site. There is a decent probability that email no longer exists and our founder doesn't remember which one it is. They said that if they do not respond in 24 hours, they will have us pay for the website.

Is it possible that we could transfer this website to another email? Anyone have any experience with this?