(CN) — Cristhian Bahena Rivera, the 27-year-old undocumented Mexican immigrant convicted of the 2018 murder of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts, was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole on Monday and was ordered to pay a $150,000 fine to Tibbett's estate.
Tibbetts, 20, disappeared on July 18, 2018, while on an evening run. Her boyfriend Dalton Jack and other family members reported her missing after she didn't return to the house in Brooklyn, Iowa, where she had been staying with Jack and his family.
On Aug. 21, police found Tibbetts' body in a nearby cornfield with multiple stab wounds after being led to the location by Rivera himself. Rivera, who was first brought in as a suspect in the case after security footage identified him as the man who approached Tibbetts during her run, admitted to following her for some time. He later told police he blacked out after approaching her, and came to with her body in the trunk of his car.
Tibbett's DNA was found in the trunk of Rivera's car, though he said he had no memory of killing her. Rivera was found guilty of first-degree murder in May after the state told jurors he gave a confession when he showed Tibbetts' body to the police.
“I brought you here, didn’t I? I did it, didn’t I?” Rivera is reported to have said to authorities at the site where Tibbetts' body was found.
A charge of first-degree murder carries a mandatory life imprisonment sentence in Iowa, so Monday's sentencing hearing was a formality.
In his phrasing of the sentencing, Poweshiek County Judge Joel Yates implicitly rejected an argument put forth by Rivera's defense attorneys Chad and Jennifer Frese in July that he was set up as a patsy by a larger sex-trafficking ring.
The defense attorneys based the argument - with hopes of a new trial - on testimony by an inmate at the Iowa state jail that only came up after Rivera's conviction. The inmate claimed that Tibbetts was actually killed by a man named Gavin Jones, who initially planned to traffic her. This story was also corroborated by an ex-girlfriend of Jones,' who said he told her he killed Tibbetts.
This story also connected Tibbetts' disappearance with that of 11-year-old Xavior Harrelson, who vanished from Brooklyn's neighboring town of Montezuma only days after Rivera's conviction.
“Who better to pick than an undocumented immigrant who doesn’t speak the language, who has nobody here to speak of to help him out? And you cherry-pick the facts that fit your theory, and you close the case. Case closed. But the case is not solved,” Chad Frese argued at Rivera's trial in May.
Yates wasn't having it. He rejected the defense attorneys' motion for a new trial on July 16.
“Mr. Bahena Rivera, you and you alone forever changed the lives of those who love Mollie Tibbetts," the judge said Monday. "And for that, you and you alone will receive the following sentence."
A single victim impact statement from Tibbetts' mother, Laura Calderwood, was read before the court prior to Yates handing down the sentence.
“Mollie was a young woman who simply wanted to go for a quiet run... and you chose to violently and sadistically end that life,” Calderwood said in the statement.
Rivera's case attracted national attention since the time he was first approached by police in 2018. Multiple right-wing figures – including Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, former Congressman Steve King and former President Donald Trump – used Rivera as a supposed example of the danger posed by undocumented immigrants.
"We are angry that a broken immigration system allowed a predator like this to live in our community," Reynolds said in a statement after Tibbetts' body was discovered.
King went even further, claiming in an August 2018 tweet that Tibbetts was one of many "sacrifices" that supposed leftists had offered up on the "altar of political correctness."
These xenophobic statements were rejected by the League of Latin American Citizens of Iowa, grassroots immigration reform activists and even Tibbetts' father himself.
"I encourage the debate on immigration; there is great merit in its reasonable outcome. But do not appropriate Mollie’s soul in advancing views she believed were profoundly racist... To the Hispanic community, my family stands with you and offers its heartfelt apology. That you’ve been beset by the circumstances of Mollie’s death is wrong," Rob Tibbetts wrote in a September 2018 column published in the Des Moines Register. "We treasure the contribution you bring to the American tapestry in all its color and melody."
Rivera now has 30 days to file an appeal of his sentence to the Iowa Supreme Court. There is no word yet from his attorneys if he plans to do so.
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