Cristhian Bahena Rivera Convicted Of Murder Of University Of Iowa Student Mollie Tibbetts
IOWA CITY, Iowa (CBS/AP) — Cristhian Bahena Rivera, an Iowa farm worker charged with kidnapping and killing University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts while she was out for a run in 2018, has been convicted of first-degree murder.
An 12-member jury convicted Bahena Rivera on Friday after a two-week trial at the Scott County Courthouse in Davenport. The jury, which included nine white members and three of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish descent, deliberated for seven hours on Thursday and Friday.
Tibbetts, who is remembered as a friendly 20-year-old who was studying to become a child psychologist, was found dead on Aug. 21, 2018, a month after she was first reported missing when she didn't return from a jog.
Bahena Rivera, who came to the U.S. illegally from Mexico as a teenager, will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Judge Joel Yates ordered Bahena Rivera, who has been in custody since his August 2018 arrest, to be held without bond pending a July 15 sentencing hearing.
The case fueled public anger against illegal immigration and concerns about random violence against women.
After Donald Trump Jr. wrote an op-ed in the Des Moines Register, accusing Democrats of being "more concerned with protecting their radical open-borders agenda than the lives of innocent Americans," in the wake of Tibbetts' murder, her father called on politicians to stop using his daughter to advance views "she believed were profoundly racist."
"Please leave us out of your debate," Tibbetts wrote in his own op-ed in the same paper. "Allow us to grieve in privacy and with dignity. At long last, show some decency. On behalf of my family and Mollie's memory, I'm imploring you to stop."
Tibbetts, who ran track and cross country in high school, never returned home after going for a routine run in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa on the evening of July 18, 2018. She was reported missing the next day after she didn't show up for her summer job at a daycare.
Her disappearance from the town of 1,700 was immediately deemed suspicious, and local, state and federal agencies joined hundreds of volunteers in a highly publicized search for her.
Investigators say they broke the case open nearly a month later after obtaining surveillance video from a homeowner that shows, for a split second, a shadowy figure that appears to be Tibbetts running in the distance. The video shows a black Chevy Malibu with chrome mirrors and door handles driving past 20 seconds later, and back and forth several times in the next 20 minutes.
A sheriff's deputy spotted Bahena Rivera, who worked at a local dairy farm, driving the distinctive vehicle the next day. During a lengthy interrogation that began Aug. 20, 2018, Bahena Rivera said that he drove past Tibbetts while she was running and turned around to get another look because he found her attractive.
He eventually said that he approached Tibbetts and fought with her after she tried to get away and threatened to call police. He claimed that he then "blacked out" but remembered driving with her body in the trunk of his car. He led investigators in the early morning hours of Aug. 21 to a remote cornfield where they found her badly decomposed body hidden under corn stalks.
An autopsy found that Tibbetts died of sharp force injuries from several stab wounds to her head, neck and chest. DNA testing showed that her blood was found in the trunk of the Malibu, but investigators never found the murder weapon.
Prosecutor Scott Brown said in a closing argument that Bahena Rivera killed Tibbetts out of anger after she rebuked him. He said Bahena Rivera also had a sexual motive, noting that Tibbetts was found partially naked with her legs spread when her body was found.
During dramatic testimony Wednesday, the 26-year-old Bahena Rivera denied that he killed Tibbetts. He claimed for the first time that two masked men took him at gunpoint from his trailer, forced him to drive as one of them killed Tibbetts on a rural road and directed him to a rural area where he left her body.
Bahena Rivera's defense suggested one of the men may have been Tibbetts' boyfriend, Dalton Jack, who admitted that he had an affair with another woman and past anger problems. But police said they cleared Jack, who had bought an engagement ring and planned to soon propose marriage to Tibbetts, after establishing that he was out of town for work when Tibbetts vanished.
Then-President Donald Trump, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and other Republicans had cited the vicious crime ahead of the 2018 midterm elections to call for harsher policies to deter illegal immigration. But their efforts eventually stopped after Tibbetts' parents said the slaying should not be used to advance a political agenda that Tibbetts would have opposed.
(© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)