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Suspect in Mollie Tibbetts’ killing enters not guilty plea

By: Ray Sanchez & Marlena Baldacci

Link: https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/19/us/mollie-tibbetts-iowa-suspect-arraigned/index.html

“He later led authorities to a corn field, where they found a body covered in corn leaves. Tibbetts’

clothing was also found at the scene.”

When the news came out that the authorities had found Mollie Tibbetts’ body, people all

across the nation were shocked. The 20-year-old University of Iowa student had disappeared one

July evening after leaving her home to go on a jog. It would not be until months later in which authorities

would be led to a cornfield, where the body of a young woman laid, covered in corn leaves. The man

who lead them to the body was 24 year old Cristhian Bahena Rivera, the man suspected and later charged

for the kidnapping and murder Tibbets.

Bahena Rivera came to the U.S. illegally from Mexico when he was still a minor. When he turned 20,

he eventually found himself in Iowa, where he’d get a job as a worker at Yarrabee Farms, a dairy farm

not too far away from where Tibbetts lived. Bahena Rivera had admitted, when being questioned by authorities,

that he had followed her along a country road, and claimed to remember getting “mad” at her before

somehow, everything else that transpired was blocked from memory. The only thing Rivera

remembers after getting upset with Tibbetts is standing in front of her corn leaf covered body,

with no recollection of what happened in between those two moments. Rivera would later go on

to plead ‘not guilty’ at a court in Poweshiek County, Iowa.

While authorities have stated that Rivera has no previous criminal history, and while he claims to not

recall the events after getting angry with Tibbetts, it’s still very hard to believe Rivera didn’t abduct

and murder her. Regardless of whether it was his full intent to kill Tibbets, or if it was mental illness

that caused him to have diminished responsibility for the murder, there's a good chance that

Cristhian Bahena Rivera will be going to prison for a long time.