Man gets life sentence in 2018 killing of University of Iowa student

IOWA CITY, IOWA >> A man was sentenced to life in prison Monday in the stabbing death of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts, three years after she disappeared while out for an evening run.

Judge Joel Yates sentenced Cristhian Bahena Rivera to life without the possibility of parole, the mandatory sentence for first-degree murder in Iowa, which does not have the death penalty. The 27-yearold former farmhand, who testified that he came to the U.S. illegally from Mexico as a teenager, has been jailed since his arrest in August 2018.

Yates pointedly rejected defense claims that others had been involved in the crime.

“Mr. Bahena Rivera, you and you alone forever changed the lives of those who loved Mollie Tibbetts,” he said.

The sentence caps a case that inflamed anger over illegal immigration, fueled fears about random violence against solo female runners and took several noteworthy twists during and after Bahena Rivera’s

trial in May.

Tibbetts, 20, was remembered as a kind and bright young woman who was quick to help others and planned a career in child psychology.

Her mother, Laura Calderwood, addressed Bahena Rivera in a victim impact statement read by a representative to the court.

“Mollie was a young woman who simply wanted to go for a quiet run on the evening of July 18 and you chose to violently and sadistically end that life,” she wrote.

Tibbetts vanished on a rural road outside her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa, population 1,700, while out for one of her near-daily runs on July 18, 2018. Bahena Rivera led investigators to her body a month later.

Family members and co-workers feared something was wrong when Tibbetts did not show up for her summer job at a day care facility the next morning.

Hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement officers searched for her for weeks but came up empty.