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Cristhian Bahena Rivera was found guilty on Friday of murdering Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old University of Iowa student who disappeared after going for a run in July 2018.
The disappearance drew national attention and launched a monthlong manhunt, followed by a two-week trial in a county court in Davenport, Iowa.
During their investigation, authorities identified that Bahena Rivera, a Mexican national, had been circling the area where Ms Tibbetts was last seen. In a police interview once he was apprehended, he admitted to following the young woman, whom he said he found “hot.”
After fighting with Ms Tibbetts, Bahena Rivera says he “blacked out” and realized he had her bloodied body in his trunk when he came to, which he hid in a cornfield. Forensic experts told the jury they found smears of blood matching Ms Tibbetts’s DNA in Bahena Rivera’s car.
“Five weeks, her body lay in that cornfield,” prosecutor Scott Brown said in his closing arguments this week. “And you know who knew about that? One man. One man knew. And he is here. His name is Cristhian Bahena Rivera.”
During the trial, Bahena Rivera’s defence had argued there were other potential suspects, including Ms Tibbetts’s boyfriend, Dalton Jack. Bahena Rivera himself took the stand on Wednesday and denied killing the woman, saying instead that masked men came to his home and forced him to drive into the country, where they killed Ms Tibbetts and make him hide the body.
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