Mollie Tibbetts

Mollie Cecilia Tibbetts was born on May 8, 1998, in San Francisco, California, to Rob Tibbetts and Laura Tibbetts.

When she was in the second grade, her parents divorced, and she moved to Iowa with her mother and two siblings.

He had worked at another farm before coming to Yarrabee Farms near Brooklyn, Iowa, in August 2014.

Rivera self-identified and received his paychecks under the name John Budd.

Rivera became a target of investigators after they obtained footage from a nearby surveillance camera, showing a Chevrolet Malibu driving back and forth in the area where Tibbetts was jogging.

After linking the car to him, police approached him without incident.

They said that he confessed to kidnapping and killing her, and then dumping her body.

According to an affidavit filed by the Poweshiek County Sheriff's Office, he led them to the body in a secluded location within a cornfield.

A spokesman on the behalf of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said its systems did not indicate Rivera "has any lawful immigration status."

Later, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed this determination, by saying "law enforcement remains absolutely confident that we've correctly identified the suspect as an illegal alien from Mexico, based both on investigative interviews with him and on records checks."

Rivera worked at Yarrabee Farms, owned by the family of a prominent Iowa Republican leader, Craig Lang.

As part of his employment, the Lang family allowed Rivera to live rent-free on their land.

Yarrabee Farms initially claimed that they had vetted Rivera's immigration status through the federal E-Verify program.

On July 18, 2018, Mollie Cecilia Tibbetts, a 20-year-old University of Iowa student, disappeared while jogging near her home in Brooklyn, Iowa.

A month later, police identified 24-year-old Cristhian Bahena Rivera as a suspect in connection with the disappearance; surveillance footage showed Rivera's car following Tibbetts on her jog.

Rivera led police to the body of Tibbetts in a Poweshiek County cornfield on August 21.

He was charged with first-degree murder.

On May 28, 2021, Rivera was found guilty of first-degree murder.

On August 30, 2021, Rivera was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Rivera's immigration status became a politicized issue after police, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) indicated that he had been in the United States illegally.

The Trump administration and some Republicans, including Iowa governor Kim Reynolds, argued the murder could have been prevented with more restrictive immigration policies.

Her father kept a close relationship with the children, and he last saw Mollie at his wedding in June 2018.

At the time of her disappearance, she was a resident of Brooklyn, Iowa, a small town about 70 mi east of Des Moines, and a psychology major at the University of Iowa.

She worked at a children's day camp at Grinnell Regional Medical Center and was preparing for her sophomore year in college when she disappeared.

On July 18, 2018, Tibbetts, a former cross country runner, left the home of her boyfriend in Brooklyn for an evening jog.

She was last seen at approximately 7:30 p.m. CDT and was reported missing by her family when she did not show up for work the following day.

According to police, her last confirmed communication was with her boyfriend of three years, shortly before leaving for her jog.

Her boyfriend was out of town for work in Dubuque, Iowa, over 130 mi away.

He told investigators he received a Snapchat message from her later in the evening that appeared to show her indoors.

Over the next several weeks, police in multiple states investigated hundreds of leads in the case, including an unconfirmed sighting at a truck stop in Kearney, Missouri (later confirmed to have been false), but were not able to locate Tibbetts.

They received over 2,300 tips and conducted over 500 interviews during the course of the investigation.

As she was known to always wear her Fitbit activity tracker, police attempted to use its data to help find her.

About four weeks after Tibbetts' disappearance, police said that the search had been refocused to several specific areas in and around Brooklyn, including her boyfriend's home, a truck stop, a car wash, and two area farms.

Prior to the discovery of Tibbetts' body, monetary rewards for information leading to closure in the case had reached over $366,000, surpassing the previous record reward amount raised by the local Crime Stoppers branch.

As the money was to be used as a reward on the condition of her safe return, Crime Stoppers announced that the money would be returned to those who requested it, or dispersed to the general Crime Stoppers fund and/or to the Tibbetts family.

On August 21, police in Iowa announced that a body had been found in Poweshiek County, where Tibbetts' hometown of Brooklyn is located; the body was identified as Tibbetts' in an autopsy that was conducted two days later by the Iowa State Medical Examiner.

They had been led to the site by 24-year-old suspect Cristhian Bahena Rivera.

On August 23, the Iowa State Medical Examiner performed an autopsy and recorded the cause of death as "multiple sharp force injuries" and the manner as homicide.

Cristhian Bahena Rivera, age 24 at the time of the crime, lived and worked in the rural Poweshiek County area where Tibbetts vanished.

Originally from El Guayabillo, Guerrero, Mexico, he arrived illegally in the United States at age 17 and had lived in the area for several years.