Free Republic

IOWA CITY, IOWA — A jury reached a verdict Friday afternoon in the murder trial of a farm laborer charged with killing a University Iowa student in 2018. Jurors at the Scott County Courthouse in Davenport reached the verdict after about seven hours of deliberations on Thursday and Friday in the case of Cristhian Bahena Rivera. Court officials were expected to announce the verdict Friday afternoon. Bahena Rivera is charged with first-degree murder in the death of 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts, who disappeared while out for a run in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa, on July 18, 2018.

Bahena Rivera testified that two masked men wielding a gun and a knife appeared in his living room after he finished taking a shower and ordered him into his car, a black Chevy Malibu. He said one man got in behind him and the other next to him. He testified that he followed their orders to drive and then stop near a jogger, whom he now recognizes was Tibbetts. Bahena Rivera's demeanor remained mostly calm during the stunning testimony until he described how the two masked men said "they knew Iris [Gamboa, the mother of his daughter] and my daughter"...

An illegal immigrant charged in the murder of Mollie Tibbetts, a University of Iowa student found dead in August, requested his trial to be moved to a more diverse county in the state so his jury pool has more minority representation. Cristhian Bahena Rivera’s attorneys filed the motion Friday, arguing that existing tensions and opinions in Poweshiek County — which is the area where the crime occurred, Tibbetts grew up and Rivera lived and worked at a dairy farm — will make it hard to have a “fair and impartial trial,” the Des Moines Register reported. The attorneys asked the...

he man accused of pursuing and killing college student Mollie Tibbetts in Iowa pleaded not guilty during arraignment Wednesday. [cut] His trial is set for April 16, 2019.