Iowa DCI Cristhian Bahena Rivera.
A 24-year-old man has been charged with first-degree murder in the disappearance and death of Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts, police announced Tuesday.
Cristhian Bahena Rivera was arrested more than a month after Tibbetts, a 20-year-old University of Iowa psychology major, vanished while jogging in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa.
“Dozens of law enforcement officials from local, state and federal agencies were involved in the investigation after the disappearance of Mollie Tibbetts, 20. A body was discovered in the early morning hours of August 21, in a farm field southeast of Brooklyn, Iowa. The identity has not been confirmed, but it is believed to be Mollie Tibbetts,” the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigations said in a statement.
Rivera, an undocumented immigrant originally from Mexico, is being held on $1 million bail. He has lived in the Poweshiek County, Iowa, area for four to seven years, police said at a press conference.
You can read the court documents below:
According to the criminal complaint, Tibbetts was reported missing on July 19. During the investigation, police obtained video footage from a resident in Brooklyn. “The video was from the evening of July 18, 2018,” police said in the affidavit. “After review of the video it was determined that Mollie Tibbetts was running near the area of Boundary and Middle Streets when a dark-colored Chevy Malibu was in the same vicinity. The dark colored Chevy Malibu was seen numerous times driving back and forth in the area.”
Police said they were able to connect the Malibu to Cristhian Rivera. When he was questioned on August 20, Rivera “admitted to making contact with a female running in Brooklyn and that he pursued her in his vehicle in an area east of Brooklyn” in Poweshiek County, Iowa. “Rivera stated he parked the vehicle, got out and was running behind her and along side of her. Rivera stated she grabbed her phone and said ‘Im gonna call the police.’ Rivera said he then panicked and got mad.”
Rivera told police he “blocked” his “memory” of what happened next. Police said he was “very upset” and doesn’t remember anything after that until he “came to at an intersection.” Rivera told police he “then made a U-turn, drove back to an entrance to a field and then drove into a driveway to a cornfield. He noticed there was an ear piece from headphones in his lap and that is how he realized he put her in the trunk.”
FacebookCristhian Bahena Rivera pictured on his Facebook page.
Rivera told police, “He went to get her out of the trunk and he noticed blood on the side of her head. … Rivera described the female’s clothing that she was wearing including an ear phone or head phone set and (Rivera) further described during the interview that he dragged Tibbetts on foot from his vehicle to a secluded location in a cornfield. Rivera described he put her over his shoulder and took her about 20 meters into the cornfield and he left her covered in some corn leaves and that he left her there, face up.”
Rivera said he was able to use his phone to determine teh route he traveled from Brooklyn. “Rivera then later guided law enforcement to her location from memory. Law enforcement located the remains of a deceased female in the area Rivera took them to. The physical surroundings of her location and other factors at the scene matched his earlier physical description of the area as that where he placed her body. Based on the interview with Rivera, the clothing found at the scene where the body was located and tentative identification by the medical examiner based on information about certain articles of her clothing, the deceased female is Mollie Tibbetts.”
FacebookMollie Tibbetts.
Mollie Tibbetts’ body was found in Powieshiek County, Iowa, police said at a press conference. Cristhian Bahena Rivera led them to Tibbetts’ body after he was interviewed about her, according to police. Her body was found in a corn field, where her remains were covered up by corn stalks, according to police. An autopsy is scheduled for August 22 and a cause of death has not yet been released.
The Mollie Tibbetts scene near Guernsey, Iowa. Media from across the state on Highway 21 just south of I-80.
Her body was located in a rural part of Powieshiek County, about 12 miles away from her hometown of Brooklyn. The body was found on 460th Avenue off Highway 21, southeast of Brooklyn, between Guernsey and Deep River. Police blocked off a gravel road in an area near five farms. The road had been closed since at least 5 a.m. local time, farmers told KCCI-TV.
Cristian Bahena Rivera faces life without parole if convicted.
“Our hearts go out to the Tibbetts family and to the Brooklyn community. It is a loss for all of us,” said Poweshiek County Sheriff Tom Kriegel said in a statement. “We appreciate the support for law enforcement community in their commitment to this investigation, and we thank the Brooklyn community for their support for the investigation.”
“We regularly had 30-40 investigators devoted to this investigation since Molly disappeared,” said DCI Special Agent in Charge Richard Rahn said in a statement. “Without that kind of support from our fellow law enforcement officers, we could not have made the progress we did. The Poweshiek County Sheriff and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were valued partners in leading the investigation, and many other agencies contributed resources throughout the past five weeks. We thank the Tibbetts family for their support to us, and we hope that they will continue to have the support of their community and the nation in the coming weeks and months.”
Brooklyn is a city of about 1,400 people in eastern Iowa, located midway between Des Moines and Cedar Rapids. The community rallied around the Tibbetts family as the search for Mollie stretched to over a month. Tibbetts spent part of her childhood in the Oakland, California, area, where her father still lives, and then moved to her mother’s native Iowa along with her two brothers. She graduated from Brooklyn-Guernsey-Malcom High School in 2017 and was about to enter her sophomore year at the University of Iowa, where she was studying psychology.
You can read more about Cristhian Bahena Rivera here:
