Mollie Tibbets, Iowa College Student, Found Dead; Illegal Immigrant Arrested

Details

Category: Crime

Published on Tuesday, 21 August 2018 22:04

Written by Janet Walker

The remains of Mollie Tibbets, 20, of Brooklyn, Iowa, who went missing five weeks ago have been found in a cornfield in Poweshiek county, twelve miles southeast of where the University of Iowa junior was last seen.

Tibbets had been last seen on Wednesday, July 18, in the early evening hours jogging. Released surveillance tapes show a Chevy Malibu driving back and forth in the vicinity where the victim was last seen.

An illegal alien, Cristhian Bahena Rivera, has been arrested and charged with first degree murder. Rivera, has been, an employee of a local dairy farm has lived in the small community for four to seven years and was not known by law enforcement.

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The news of the disappearance sparked a massive manhunt, with numerous locals being eliminated as suspects. A local pig farmer was polygraphed and his phone and farm searched. Her boyfriend, Dalton Jack, had also been cleared.

Special Investigator Rich Rahn said Rivera had seen Ms. Tibbets running and according to his statements and driven by her apparently several times deciding whether to stop. He did and got out of his car and began to run beside her. At some point he toke r phone, when she threatened to call the police. It was then he hit her.

"I can't speak about the motive. I can just tell you that it seemed that he followed her, seemed to be drawn to her on that particular day, for whatever reason he chose to abduct her," Rahn told reporters at a news conference outside the sheriff's office in Montezuma, where Rivera was being held on $1 million cash-only bond," the Chicago Tribune reported.

After striking the 5'5" brunette, Rivera said he blacked out and when he became aware of his surrounding again, he was driving away from town an dumping Tibbets' body in a cornfield.

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Rahn indicated an autopsy would be preformed to confirm the extent of injuries suffered during the kidnapping and murder.