The break that helped investigators solve the disappearance of Mollie Tibbetts began, Poweshiek County Attorney Bart Klaver said, with a “specter.”
Klaver delivered the prosecution’s opening statement Wednesday in the murder trial of Cristhian Bahena Rivera, the farmhand accused of killing the 20-year-old university student and hiding her body in July 2018. Speaking to the jury, Klaver recounted how hundreds of people turned out and scoured the countryside around Brooklyn, Iowa, after Tibbetts failed to arrive on Thursday, July 19, at the Grinnell day care where she worked for the summer.
He recalled how, after four weeks of fruitless searching, “they were no closer to finding Mollie than when they started.”
The thread that finally unraveled the mystery and led investigators to Bahena Rivera, he said, came from detectives who collected and reviewed footage from surveillance cameras in the area where Tibbetts was last seen. On one camera, from a home down the street from where Tibbetts was staying at her boyfriend’s home, “they saw a specter: a silhouette of what appeared to be a jogger in the time and area that Mollie was last seen.”
“As they scoured that video for any and every other clue as to Mollie’s disappearance, they noticed a certain vehicle appearing again and again and again on that video,” Klaver said. “A black Chevy Malibu.”
► More Wednesday:Bahena Rivera trial Day 1 recap: Mollie Tibbetts’ boyfriend ‘wholeheartedly’ believes suspected killer is guilty; court adjourns for the day
Police eventually spotted a car with the same distinctive chrome mirrors and door handles and spoke to Bahena Rivera, its driver. Klaver described how investigators questioned him on Aug. 20, and again at a remote farm field on the morning of Aug. 21, omitting any mention of a lengthy overnight interview that the judge ruled could not be used as testimony because Bahena Rivera had not fully been informed of his rights at the time.
But in the two interviews that were ruled admissible, Bahena Rivera made key admissions, Klaver said: that he had seen Mollie out running on Wednesday, July 18; that he thought she was “hot”; and that he turned around and went back for another look.
“He admitted that he followed her and he got out of his car,” Klaver said. “He admitted to jogging to catch up with her, that he wanted to get close to her. He admitted that Mollie didn’t want to have anything to do with him, that she threatened to call the police, and he admitted he became angry at that time. He admitted fighting with her.
“And then, he says, the next thing he remembers, he’s driving his car, the Malibu, and he notices Mollie’s earbuds, and he remembers that Mollie is in his trunk.”
Bahena Rivera told investigators he took Tibbetts’ limp, bloody body into a field and covered it with corn stalks, Klaver said. Police would later find a decomposing body, later confirmed to be Tibbetts’, and determine she had died as a result of 7 to 12 stab wounds, he said. They found blood in the trunk of Bahena Rivera’s car that contained DNA that was matched to the body, he said.
Klaver said the jury will be asked at the end of the case to focus on three major points: the video showing Bahena Rivera’s car in the area where Tibbetts vanished; the DNA evidence putting her blood in his car; and his admissions to police that he followed her, fought with her and hid her body.
“Ladies and gentlemen, when you examine this evidence together, there can be no other conclusion than that the defendant killed Mollie Tibbetts, and I’ll ask you to return a verdict, the only verdict that evidence demands, and you find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree,” Klaver said.
Bahena Rivera’s attorneys, Chad and Jennifer Frese of Marshalltown, elected to wait until after the state’s case to present their opening statement, and prosecutors presented their first six witnesses, including the first sheriff’s deputy to respond to the missing person report as well as Tibbetts’ supervisor at the day care, who first noticed her missing at 8:30 a.m. the day after she disappeared.
► From 2019: Cristhian Bahena Rivera’s attorneys explain the choice to represent him in Mollie Tibbetts’ death
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They also presented testimony from Tibbetts’ boyfriend, Dalton Jack, and his brother Blake, who owned the home where Tibbetts was staying. Dalton Jack testified he was working on a construction job in Dubuque the week Tibbetts vanished and learned late on Thursday, July 19, that she was missing. He and Blake took part in the month-long search, and a few months after she was found, he joined the army.
“I wanted to pretty much leave for a while,” he said. “I grew up there, she grew up there, it’s kind of where we built our relationship, and now she was gone.”
But Chad Frese challenged Jack’s story, suggesting evidence found on his phone put him on the road the night Tibbetts was killed, and not in his Dubuque hotel as he’d claimed. The defense has subpoenaed Jack to testify for its case, and Frese painted a picture of a troubled, failing relationship, digging into an affair Jack had had years before the murder and casting doubt on his frequent response that he didn’t remember specific questions or conversations from the investigation.
“This was the day the love of your life goes missing, and you don’t recall that?” he asked.
But Jack said he’s spent the past three years trying not to think about the case.
► From 2018: Mollie Tibbetts’ boyfriend talks about the last message he received from her
“Every detail of the case I’ve wanted omitted from me because I don’t want to know,” he said, adding later, “When I was asked if I wanted to be here voluntarily, I said ‘Absolutely not.’ “
The reason?
“I didn’t want to be in the same room as your defendant here,” Jack told Frese, adding later, “I wholeheartedly believe he’s guilty.”
Prosecutors also questioned a Brooklyn hairdresser believed to be the last person other than her killer to see Tibbetts alive, and Bahena Rivera’s cousin, who bought the Malibu for Bahena Rivera and confirmed he was the only one who drove it. The trial adjourned for the day at about 2:40 p.m., shortly after an ambulance was called to attend to a juror who was feeling unwell.
The trial will resume at 8:30 a.m. Thursday, and prosecutors have indicated they plan to call several more law enforcement and forensic examiner witnesses. It is scheduled to run through the end of next week.
► 2018 profile: She’s nurturing. She’s a Harry Potter fan. We all know Mollie Tibbetts’ face, but her friends and family say she’s so much more.
William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com, 715-573-8166 or on Twitter at @DMRMorris.