Tibbetts’ murderer denied new trial

Motion denied.

Judge Joel Yates has rejected a convicted man’s request for a new trial in the 2018 killing of Mollie Tibbetts.

Yates’ rejection came in Montezuma on Monday, Aug. 2. The ruling cleared the way for sentencing on Aug. 30 of Christian Bahena Rivera.

Bahena Rivera, a former farmhand who came the United States illegally as a teen, faces a sentence of life in prison.

Rivera was convicted in May of 2021 of first degree murder in the death of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts of Brooklyn.

Tibbetts’ body was found in a cornfield weeks after she disappeared while out for a run near Brooklyn.

According to WQAD-TV, the defense team of Chad and Jennifer Frese filed a motion July 13 for the court to consider new evidence.

The motion was aimed to use information from two people who came forward while Bahena Rivera was being tried for the murder.

According to the Associated Press, Bahena Rivera told police he encountered Tibbetts while she ran. He later led investigators to the field where her body was located.

But during his trial, he claimed for the first time that two masked men kidnapped him at gunpoint from his mobile home, forced him to drive where Tibbetts was running. He said they killed her, put her body in the trunk of his vehicle and had him dispose of it.

According to the Associated Press, Bahena Rivera didn’t tell investigators about the two men earlier because they had threatened to kill his ex-girlfriend and young daughter.

Toward the end of the testimony portion of his trial, two new witnesses came forward independently of one another and told police that a local 21-year-old man told them he had killed Tibbetts.

Defense lawyers requested a new trial based on that and other newly-discovered information. Judge Yates agreed to postpone sentencing while he considered their request.

During a hearing last week, defense lawyers sought to make a link between Tibbetts’ death and another young woman’s report of having been kidnapped and sexually assaulted at home used for sex trafficking in the summer of 2018, and the more recent disappearance of 11-year old Xavior Harrelson of Montezuma.

A 50-year old suspected meth dealer has been investigated in both cases but has not been charged in either. Prosecutors say he has no ties to Tibbetts.

The prosecutors had said they are confident Bahena Rivera killed Tibbetts. They pointed out that his own account of what happened did not align with what the two new witnesses told police.

Accounts by the Associated Press and WQAD-TV were used in putting together this story.