A judge has rejected a convicted man's request for a new trial in the 2018 killing of Mollie Tibbetts. The University of Iowa student's body was found in a cornfield weeks after she disappeared while out for a run near her small hometown.
FILE - In this July 15, 2021, file photo, Cristhian Bahena Rivera appears during a hearing at the Poweshiek County Courthouse in Montezuma, Iowa. Bahena Rivera was convicted of killing University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts in 2018. The lead investigator in the death, Division of Criminal Investigation agent Trent Vileta expressed confidence Tuesday, July 27, 2021, that the right man was convicted, rejecting defense claims that her abduction could be tied to other local criminal suspects.
DES MOINES, Iowa — A judge on Monday rejected a convicted man’s request for a new trial in the 2018 killing of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts, whose body was found in a cornfield weeks after she disappeared while out for a run near her small hometown.to proceed Aug. 30 in the trial of Cristhian Bahena Rivera, who was convicted in May of first-degree murder in Tibbetts’ death. The former farmhand, who came to the U.S. illegally as a teenager, faces a sentence of life in prison.
During questioning by police, Bahena Rivera acknowledged that he encountered Tibbetts as she was running near her small eastern Iowa hometown of Brooklyn and he led investigators to the field where her body lay hidden under cornstalks.at gunpoint from his trailer, forced him to drive to where Tibbetts was running on a rural road, killed her, put her body in his trunk and made him dispose of it.
At a hearing last week, Bahena Rivera’s lawyers sought to link Tibbetts’ death to another young woman’s report of having been kidnapped and sexually assaulted at an area home used for sex trafficking in the summer of 2018, and the recent disappearance of an 11-year-old boy from the same county. A 50-year-old suspected methamphetamine dealer has been investigated in both cases but hasn’t been charged in either, and prosecutors say he has no ties to Tibbetts.
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