She Vanished After Going Out For A Run In Her Small Town Then Was Found Dead In A Corn Field A Month Later And Her Killer Was Just Sentenced To Life
Brooklyn, Iowa. Mollie Tibbetts was a 20-year-old college student who was born in San Francisco, California. Mollie spent most of her childhood in a rural agricultural city in Iowa called Brooklyn.
Mollie’s parents got divorced and her mom decided to move them back to where she had grown up; Brooklyn.
The entire city has a population of less than 2,000, so you can imagine just how small Brooklyn really is.
Brooklyn is best known for its collection of flags and the fact that the famous actor John Wayne spent some of his childhood living there.
It’s a quiet and secure place to live. It’s the kind of place where everyone looks out for one another.
The kind of place where people don’t even think twice about leaving their front doors unlocked.
So when Mollie laced up her sneakers to go out for a run on July 18th, 2018, she had no reason to be concerned for her safety.
Instagram; pictured above is Mollie
After Mollie had graduated from high school (where she picked up a passion for cross country running and acting in the school plays) she went to the University of Iowa and studied psychology.
If true crime defines your free time, this is for you: join Chip Chick’s True Crime Tribe.
She dreamed of being a child psychologist after completing her degree, as she particularly wanted to make a difference in the lives of children struggling with mental health issues.
Until then, Mollie brightened the lives of the children she babysat or worked with at Grinnell Regional Medical Center Day Camp.
Mollie had a way of making fast friends with anyone she encountered. She loved writing and enjoyed bringing to light difficult topics like self-esteem and mental health.
She had a zest for life, and according to her obituary, “her passion for it radiated from those beautiful brown eyes and the smile that she was so quick to share with everyone she met.”
In the summer of 2018, Mollie was home from college. She had just celebrated her 20th birthday that May before wrapping up the semester.
Instagram; Mollie is pictured above with her boyfriend Dalton
That June, she celebrated her father’s wedding, where she served as his best man. She even posted several photos on her Instagram account explaining how excited she was.
By that July, Mollie would be missing. The night before Mollie disappeared, she spent the evening sleeping over at her boyfriend Dalton’s house.
The two had met while in high school, and continued their relationship while Mollie was away at college. Dalton was the love of Mollie’s life.
Dalton had to go out of town for work on July 17th, so he had asked her to come to his house to pet-sit his dogs while he was gone.
The following morning, a Wednesday, Mollie got up and went to work. She sent texts to Dalton and her mom as the day wore on.
She finished work, came back to Dalton’s house, and then decided to head out for a run. Mollie made running a daily routine, but she never ran the same route twice when she was back in Brooklyn.
She liked the change of pace in not following a set path.
Instagram; Mollie captured the above photo of her and Dalton with, “The bed of a pick up filled with pillows and blankets + a drive-in movie + a cute boy to cuddle= perfect Saturday night”
Mollie slipped on a pair of dark-colored shorts and a pink top, then put on her sneakers. She tied her hair into a ponytail, and then put on a headband.
She grabbed her Fitbit and her phone, and she was out the door slightly before 7:45 p.m.
Over the course of her run, local residents would later recall seeing Mollie in her pink top and dark shorts. Her brown ponytail bobbed along between her tanned shoulders as she set her pace.
Mollie’s route never took her back to Dalton’s that night though.
She also never made it to her mom’s house for dinner as she had planned earlier. She never texted her loved ones or her boyfriend back.
Though it was strange that Mollie seemed to have blown off dinner and failed to reply to messages sent to her phone, perhaps she had gone to bed on the early side.
Instagram; Mollie posted the above photo 7 days before she was murdered
Unfortunately, the reality of the situation was much more sinister than anything that crossed the minds of those that knew Mollie best.
This bright and cheery college student disappeared into the evening, but it would take a few hours for everyone to realize she was really gone.
The next day was a Thursday. Mollie failed to show up for work at the day camp. Mollie’s mom and brother sent her several texts, all of which went unanswered. Mollie’s boyfriend reached out to her, but he didn’t get a reply.
When Mollie’s family realized she never went to work that morning, they knew it was a sign that something was not right. They notified the local police that Mollie was missing.
The police started investigating Mollie’s disappearance, and locals came out by the hundreds to help comb the area for Mollie.
Where had this well-liked young woman gone?
Instagram; Mollie wears a smile and a grey t-shirt, above
Authorities and Brooklyn residents searched through all the fields around Dalton’s house. They searched along the road Mollie had been seen running down. They searched the areas near her mom’s house.
They searched high and low, but there was just no sign of Mollie. Authorities even used helicopters to conduct aerial searches, but still, nothing came up.
As the word got out that Mollie was missing, witnesses started coming forward to say where they had last seen her running.
Several people were also able to confirm the different routes that Mollie usually used.
Investigators began looking for any cameras that might have caught Mollie passing by on the night she disappeared, and sure enough, they found video footage of Mollie running by Middle Street and Boundary Street.
Also seen on the footage was something concerning to authorities…there was a distinctive dark-colored Chevy Malibu seemingly following Mollie.
Instagram; Mollie shared the above selfie to mark her 20th birthday
Investigators were able to track the owner of the Chevy Malibu down, and it turned out to be 24-year-old Cristhian Bahena Rivera.
He worked at a dairy farm called Yarrabee Farms and had been living in the area since moving illegally from Mexico in his teen years.
When Cristhian was brought in for 11 hours of questioning, he told investigators that he did see Mollie running the day she disappeared.
Not only did he see her, but he also followed her in his car.
Cristhian then explained to the police that he got out of his car and began chasing Mollie. He ran behind her and then caught up to her.
He started running right next to her, refusing to leave her alone. Mollie threatened to call the police and held her phone up.
Instagram; Mollie poses with her hand on her hip, above
Cristhian’s arrest warrant states that he said he “panicked and got mad” after Mollie told him she would call 911.
“He then “blocked” his “memory” which is what he does when he gets very upset and doesn’t remember anything after that until he came to an intersection,” the warrant continues.
As he was driving, he made a u-turn and ended up driving into a cornfield, where he looked down and saw one of Mollie’s earpieces from her headphones sitting on his lap.
“That is how he realized he put her in the trunk,” the warrant chillingly reads.
Cristhian then got out of his car, walked around to the trunk, and opened it up.
There, inside of his trunk, Mollie was lying with blood running down the side of her head. Cristhian pulled her body out of the trunk and dragged her through the cornfield, at one point switching to carrying her over his shoulder.
When Cristhian thought he had found a secluded enough spot, he dumped Mollie there, lying on her back. He took some leaves from the nearby corn stalks and used them to try to cover her body up.
Instagram; Mollie captioned the above photo, “Filters are for people who are too lazy to do their make up”
Authorities then had Cristhian take them to the cornfield on August 21st and show him where Mollie was.
Sadly, they found her there, dead.
When the medical examiner performed an autopsy on Mollie, it was determined that her cause of death was due to “multiple sharp force injuries.”
Cristhian was ultimately convicted this past May of murdering Mollie, and yesterday afternoon, he was sentenced to life.
“Mollie was a young woman who simply wanted to go for a quiet run on the evening of July 18 (2018) and you chose to violently and sadistically end that life,” Mollie’s mom Laura Calderwood wrote in a victim impact statement read aloud in court, ABC News reported.
“Because of your act, Mollie’s father, Rob, will never get to walk his only daughter down the aisle. Because of your act, Mr. Rivera, I will never get to see my daughter become a mother.”
Though Mollie is gone, she is not forgotten. A movement called Million Miles For Mollie has been created to honor her memory and help raise awareness for violence and abuse women face when out running.
Instagram; Mollie is pictured above with her dad on his wedding day
More About:True Crime
Read This Next
