Small town Iowa became the spotlight over the issue of illegal immigration following the murder of 22-year-old Psychology student, Mollie Cecilia Tibbetts. Tibbetts went missing while she went jogging around the town of Brooklyn in Iowa on July 18th.
Mollie Tibbetts murder shocked the small town community
Brooklyn, Iowa is right off highway 6 and north of I-80. This small town has a population of 1,500 residents. It was considered as a safe place to live. Before the murder of Mollie, those in the community felt safe enough that they didn’t lock their doors.
The day Mollie went missing, she was dog-sitting at her boyfriend’s house. That evening she went to go for a jog like she did every night. She took a selfie before she left and sent it to her boyfriend. The last time she was seen by locals was around 7:30pm. She was wearing a pink sports top, dark shorts and training shoes.
The next day Mollie didn’t show up to work for her scheduled shift, which was very unlike her. Family and friends tried contacting her on her phone and social media, but she never responded. Her family eventually contacted the police to report her missing and the search began.
First search turned up nothing
With hundreds of locals searching the area and helicopters in the air, nothing was found. Police searched the lakes and came up empty. They had no clues tied to Mollie’s disappearance. The search was extended to a five mile radius from the area she went missing. Police eventually came to a dead end.
Police first investigated Dalton, her boyfriend, who had had been dating for 3 years. He was the last person to see her before she disappeared. They eventually ruled him out as a suspect. It appeared that Mollie had went for a jog and simply vanished off the face of the earth.
Days had passed and Tibbetts did not make contact with her family or return home as they hoped she would. She was planning to fly to the Dominican Republic with Dalton to attend his brother’s wedding. However, that day came and went and still no sign of the missing girl.
Can you survive The Woods?Mollie Tibbetts case gained national attention
Missing people’s cases do not usually get the exposure they deserve, but missing Molly Tibbett received a lot of online attention and her story was even shared by local celebrities in the hope of bringing her home. A record breaking $366,000 reward for information leading to the safe recovery of Miss Tibbetts was offered to the public. A missing poster circulated heavily on Twitter, describing the 20 year old as 5”3, 120lbs with tanned skin and long brown hair. A photo of the baby-faced student, beaming a smile at the camera while in the stands at a college football game, accompanied the text. Despite mass coverage, no one had seen her and people were left to speculate about what happened on the day she went missing.
Mollies friends and family vowed never to give up the search, but without answers, they began to entertain the notion that perhaps she had been kidnapped.
Police believed that Mollie could have been abducted by someone she knew and so began interviewing coworkers and classmates, but even after an estimated 500 individual interviews they found no one they believed could be a suspect in the case.
Police finally found their suspect Cristhian Rivera
After weeks of canvassing the local area investigators happened upon a surveillance tape that showed a black Chevrolet Malibu cruising along Mollie’s usual jogging route. They traced the vehicle back to a 24 year old man named Cristhian Bahena Rivera. Rivera was a Poweshiek County resident who worked on a Yarrabee Farms and had been doing various farm work under the name “John Budd” for several years since moving from Mexico to the US when he was a teenager. He lived in a rural part of town and did not associate with the locals. He was later identified as an undocumented immigrant, a fact that was used in a tweet by president trump to support his plans to build a wall around Mexico. Mollie had been openly critical of Trumps stance on immigration and her father was unhappy that his daughter’s death had been politicized in the media.
Rivera did not resist arrest and explained to police that he saw Mollie Tibbetts running along 385th street and followed her. Rivera claimed that he began to run alongside her and she asked him to leave her alone and threatened to call the police if he did not. He claimed he became angry and upset and “blocked his memory”. He eventually came around and found himself at a crossroads. Rivera claims that he does not remember anything between getting angry and finding himself at the intersection. He later led police to Tibbett’s body.
Mollie Tibbetts’ body was discovered on farmland on the 21st of August concealed by cornstalks in a field just off 460th avenue. An autopsy revealed that she had multiple injuries from a sharp object.
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