Mollie Tibbetts’ suspected killer told investigators about her final moments
BROOKLYN, Iowa – For the past four years, Cristhian Rivera has spent his days caring for herds of meat and dairy cattle just outside Brooklyn, Iowa. On the evening of July 18, he told investigators, he spotted a young woman in workout clothes, jogging alone.
Rivera, a Mexican national who appears to have used a stolen ID to evade a federal system to screen illegal aliens, drove past the woman several times. As he drove, his Chevrolet Malibu went in and out of the frame of a surveillance camera aimed at the street.
“It seemed that he followed her and seemed to be drawn to her on that particular day,” Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Agent Rick Rahn told reporters Tuesday. “And for whatever reason, he chose to abduct her.”
At first, Rivera told authorities, he pursued the woman in his car. Then he got out and ran beside her. The woman was frightened, Rivera recalled. She pulled out her phone and told him, “I’m gonna call police.”
What happened next, Rivera claims, is blocked from his memory, something he said happens when he gets upset or angry. The next thing he recalled, he told investigators, was being in his car and finding a headphone earpiece in his lap that did not belong to him. That prompted him to open his trunk, where he saw the woman in workout clothes, bleeding from the head and motionless.
The woman was Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old psychology student at the University of Iowa whose disappearance sparked a month-long search by federal, state and local authorities, and whose death has now become a rallying call for those arguing for improved enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. On Tuesday, investigators revealed what had happened to her, as told by the man they say killed her, then hid her body. Rivera, 24, said he dragged, then carried Tibbetts’ body 60 feet into an isolated cornfield. Then he dropped her on the ground, face up, covered her with corn stalks and walked away. After the interview, he led investigators to Tibbetts’ body. On Tuesday, Rivera was charged with first-degree murder in Tibbetts’ killing. He is in jail, and on Wednesday, a judge set his bail at $5 million. Rivera was in the country illegally and appears to have used a stolen identification to satisfy a federal immigration background check by his employer through the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify system, a law enforcement official told The Washington Post. In a motion asking for a gag order, Rivera’s attorney, Allan M. Richards, claimed that Rivera was in the country legally, saying that his employer had verified Rivera’s status. Richards provided no evidence to back up his assertion in the motion and could not immediately be reached for comment.
On Wednesday White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders talked about Tibbetts’ death just a few moments into the administration’s press briefing.
“Sadly the individual believed to be responsible for the murder is an illegal immigrant, making this an unfortunate reminder of why we need to strengthen our broken immigration laws,” she said.
Tibbetts’ death is reminiscent of the case of Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old white woman whose was shot to death in 2015 in a popular area of San Francisco by an illegal alien, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, who was later convicted on a gun charge related to Steinle’s killing.
Three years later, Tibbetts, who had been housesitting for her boyfriend, went out for a jog on a narrow farm road that led out of Brooklyn, a small town of about 1,500 – then vanished.
Authorities and dozens of volunteers searched for her for more than a month, combing cornfields and barns and scouring her Fitbit data and social media accounts for clues.
Investigators interviewed some 1,400 people and received more than 4,000 tips, but the break in the case came within the past two weeks when they found someone with a security camera system while canvassing a neighborhood.
It showed Tibbetts jogging and Rivera’s car – and was a critical clue in identifying a suspect.
Investigators have not found anything indicating that Tibbetts and Rivera knew one another before the attack, according to Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of Iowa’s Division of Criminal Investigation.
The results of an autopsy are pending, and Rahn did not specify a cause of death.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement representative said that the agency lodged an immigration detainer on Rivera with local authorities after his arrest Tuesday. That means that if Rivera is ever released, he would be sent back to Mexico.