Judge delays sentencing after twists in Iowa woman’s killing

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A judge agreed Wednesday to delay sentencing for the man convicted of killing University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts after defense lawyers said they needed time to investigate new information pointing to other potential suspects.

Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 27, was scheduled to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Thursday at the Poweshiek County Courthouse in Montezuma.

Judge Joel Yates issued an order Wednesday saying the sentencing would be delayed until after he holds hearings on the defense’s requests to compel prosecutors to release information about other suspects and to order a new trial.

Yates said he would hold the first hearing Thursday, but he didn’t set a date for the other request or for the sentencing.

Prosecutors remain confident in Bahena Rivera’s guilt, state attorney general’s office spokesman Lynn Hicks said Tuesday.

A jury in May found Bahena Rivera guilty of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Tibbetts, 20, who vanished while out for a run in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa, in July 2018.

Bahena Rivera, a dairy farm worker, claimed in his testimony that two masked men were responsible for the killing and had forced him to drive them around and dispose of Tibbetts’ body at gunpoint.

Defense lawyers Chad and Jennifer Frese say two witnesses recently came forward independently to partially support Bahena Rivera’s testimony. The witnesses told investigators that a 21-year-old man with a history of violence against women had bragged about killing Tibbetts and blaming it on a Hispanic man.

One of the witnesses said the man told him while they were at the Keokuk County jail that Tibbetts had been kidnapped and brought to a local “trap house” used for sex trafficking before she was killed, according to the defense, according to Bahena Rivera’s lawyers. The man said the house was owned by a 50-year-old who was running the trafficking ring.

The Freses said they learned Tuesday about a criminal investigation that centered on a 50-year-old man who allegedly met one of his sex trafficking victims in May 2018 at a gas station in Brooklyn, Tibbetts’ hometown of 1,700 people that is roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Iowa City.

The woman told investigators that the man lured her to a house in the nearby town of New Sharon, where she was repeatedly drugged, raped, and held against her will until August 2018. The woman said she sometimes would hear other women’s voices in the home.

Law enforcement officials used the information to obtain a warrant to search the home days after they interviewed her in March 2019, but it had already been vacated by the 50-year-old man. They did not charge him with any crimes, and Mahaska County’s sheriff said recently the kidnapping and sex trafficking allegations were never substantiated.

Still, defense lawyers said in a motion that prosecutors should have turned over details about the investigation under their duty to provide exculpatory information to Bahena Rivera. They said the potential existence of a local “trap house” corroborates the new witnesses’ claims.

During their closing arguments at Bahena Rivera’s trial, the Freses noted that the 50-year-old man had come under scrutiny in the investigation into the disappearance of an 11-year-old boy, Xavior Harrelson, who vanished from his trailer park in Montezuma on May 28.

The defense noted the 50-year-old man is the former live-in boyfriend of Xavior’s mother and that the two maintained a friendly relationship. Investigators searching for Xavior began looking for the man almost immediately and arrested him on an unrelated outstanding warrant in another county the day after the boy was reported missing. He has not been charged with any crimes related to the disappearance.

Ryan J. Foley, The Associated Press