Anatomy of Murder - The Run (Mollie Tibbetts)

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

A jogger disappears and all eyes turn to her Iowa town as they search to find her. After her body is found, a car would prove to be key in identifying her killer. View source material and photos for this episode at: anatomyofmurder.com/the-runCan’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

When you talk about true victims, there's no one that's more of a true victim than her. It's absolutely senseless. And for her to die the way she did, how do you even reconcile that? How do you come to grips with it? The community, I don't think, will ever quite be the same after this. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasiga Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder.

Today's story takes place in Brooklyn, but not the one you're probably thinking of or the one that I called home for decades. This Brooklyn sits in the American heartland of Poweshie County, Iowa, about an hour's drive east of Des Moines. Although it may look like one big cornfield, there are about 12 streets that make up the community of about 1,500 residents. It's a place where homes are left unlocked, and most people are on a first-name basis. But all of that changed in 2018. That year, Brooklyn became the scene of a reprehensible crime that shocked not only the town, but the entire nation.

On July 19th, Special Agent Trent Villita of Iowa's Division of Criminal Investigation got a phone call. My supervisor had called me and said, hey, Powsheet County has a missing persons case or something. They're going to do a big search tomorrow. Can you just stop by and see if there's anything they need? Trent was well acquainted with missing person cases. Iowa had recently seen a spike in the use of the drug methamphetamine, so he assumed the disappearance was related to that. Quite frankly, when a person, generally an adult or teenager, goes missing in Iowa, you know, a teenager's a runaway and an adult's usually a meth addict. When Trent arrived

in Brooklyn, he realized he couldn't have been more wrong. As you turn down the street, you saw lines of four-wheelers, you saw boats being pulled behind trucks, parking, and then you saw all the fire department doors open and a couple hundred people in line being assigned to search teams. And I'm standing there all by myself, looking around, thinking, yeah, this isn't going to be my typical missing person investigation. The missing person was a 20-year-old college student named Molly Tibbetts. She was majoring in child psychology at the University of Iowa and spending the summer back home working for a daycare center. Molly and her boyfriend Dalton lived together at his brother's house.

During the day, Molly stayed busy with work. Her evenings were taken up by her favorite hobby, running. She was training for a half marathon, I think, at the time. So she was pretty much jogging every night. Molly didn't just run through Brooklyn. She did it with a smile. When she jogged, anybody that she ran by, she would smile and wave at. Just an extremely pleasant person that was well-liked by the community.

She did not have any sort of negative impression by anybody. Trent set out to uncover what had happened to Molly. On the evening of Wednesday, July 18th, Molly had texted her mom asking if she'd made dinner. It was assumed that she was going for a run. After her run, she would stop over and have dinner at her mom's house. That was the last text she had sent anybody. The next day, her boyfriend Dalton sent the same text he always did before work. It read, good morning, beautiful.

Molly didn't respond. Dalton didn't think much of it until later in the day when Molly's co-worker said that she hadn't shown up for work. Molly was just one of those people that she didn't skip work. If she was sick, she would call in. She worked at a daycare. So she goes for her jog on Wednesday, July 18th, around 7 p.m. She doesn't show up for work the next day. Dalton spoke with her family and friends and learned that no one had spoken with Molly. That's when the police were alerted.

As they got to work looking for Molly, so did the town of Brooklyn. Based on the initial search, when you have, you know, probably roughly, what, a quarter or so of the town looking for her, pretty much all of Poweshiek County and even probably a couple of the surrounding counties knew something big was going on there. Two days after Molly disappeared, Trent partnered with local law enforcement and took charge of the investigation. With decades of experience under his belt, he knew the first place to look. You have to always look at the probabilities in an investigation. When you have a young girl that goes missing who's got a boyfriend, the first thing you got to look at is the boyfriend. Dalton was open to speaking with investigators who wanted to know more about his relationship with Molly.

The pair had started dating casually in high school and got more serious after the graduation. There was even a pending marriage proposal in the works. As it happened, he was planning on asking her to marry him about a week later. They were planning on taking a trip with his brother and his brother's fiance, and he was actually going to propose to Molly then. So that was about a week to 10 days after all this happened. That was the plan. So they were pretty serious at the time of all this. During the week, Dalton worked construction in a town a few hours away. That's where he said he was on the night that Molly disappeared. Dalton had several co-workers that confirmed his alibi.

He gets eliminated pretty quickly as a suspect. So what ends up happening is you have a giant whodunit with a lot of people wondering what happened. But for investigators, this was no time to wonder. Time wasn't their friend in the search for Molly. They quickly began speaking with Molly's family and friends. While those conversations didn't produce any major leads, they did get one important piece of information, the password to Molly's cell phone. They used that to make a clone of her phone,

which showed her text messages, calls, and other important data. We started doing the initial phone searches just to see if we could discover if she was having conversations about maybe running away, if she was cheating on her boyfriend, if she had made just even plans to go see a friend. Nothing on her phone raised major concern, but it did provide an important piece of information. Molly used a Fitbit device. A Fitbit, as many of you know, is an activity tracking device that you wear on your wrist. Molly wore hers while she ran, and it recorded information like pace and distance. Investigators subpoenaed Fitbit for the information on Molly's device.

Once we started getting that data, we were able to determine, you know, the speed that she would normally run at. We were able to determine, you know, the average miles that she was doing, that sort of thing. The data from her run the night she went missing showed a definite blip on the radar. Molly had been running at a pace of approximately 10 miles per hour, but then something changed. Her cell phone data had actually shown that she was moving, and then there was a few minutes of basically interruption where it was data where it looked like she had stopped, and then all of a sudden she's moving 60 miles an hour. From 10 miles per hour to 60. Unless you're superhuman, you aren't accelerating that fast.

The speed suggested that Molly was going at a pace of a car. Based on that data, investigators developed a few theories. The first was that Molly had been hit in a hit and run or by a drunk driver while she ran. And staying with that theory, maybe perhaps struck and killed by a drunk driver while running, and that panicked driver just deciding to place her body in the back of a vehicle and then driving off to discard the body somewhere, potentially at 60 miles an hour. We have that happen probably once or twice a year where I suppose it's probably like

anywhere where someone gets hit by a drunk driver and the drunk driver keeps on going. But with that, there was also another theory, though to investigators it seemed less likely it was that she had been kidnapped. Adults going missing or being kidnapped are pretty rare. I remember what the percentage is, but it's something like one in a thousand are actual real kidnappings. For the most part, that's not what happens. And for the time being, law enforcement would pursue all of those theories. They worked to locate the spot where Molly's data showed a pause in her movement. And for help, they turned to the residents of Brooklyn who remembered how Molly would smile and wave as she ran by.

A lot of the canvassing we did, especially a lot of the men would say, yeah, of course I remember Molly. She's very pretty. She smiles and waves at you. Of course we would remember when she ran by. People told police where they would see Molly running. That information was mapped to figure out her usual routes. Investigators then combined that with the pacing data from her Fitbit to try and figure out what happened and where. We actually had FBI agents running her routes at her speed so we could log locations. We could plug it into the night she disappeared and give us possible locations where she could have disappeared from. The locations and tentative map of Molly's run were helpful, but only up to a point.

The search parties continued to go out and comb the cornfields around Brooklyn. The FBI joined the effort by sending UAVs or unmanned aerial devices. These are like small airplanes that they flew actually from FBI headquarters out to Iowa. And they would just have them flying over the county. They set up a screen inside the room and they could do aerial searches all day long from the conference room. You know, Scott, for a second, we just have to stop there because I thought this was such a neat fact when he said it. Because, again, you learn something in every new case. I've always felt that way. And I've never had a case where we have a unmanned aerial device being used. But then again, I was never prosecuting in the cornfields

of Iowa. Yeah, this is just another example of how technology entered into the case. First, you have the Fitbit GPS monitoring. And now we have mapping drones from the FBI, giving them real-time aerial surveillance over a vast swath of land and miles of cornfields, which only from the ground would require dozens of members of law enforcement to search going through each of the rows. But DroneView, however, can easily see through the aisles and rows of corn. But even the air searches failed to produce any sign of Molly. Weeks passed without any developments. The investigation had failed to find a solid lead or a suspect. What no one really knew was we were struggling. We had no good suspects. We had 100 leads come in a day and 90

of them would be psychics. And we were getting all these crazy calls coming in and really nothing to work on. Investigators tried to shield substantive information from the media, which was having a field day with a story of a beautiful college student who went for a run and never came home. The story became so widespread, it even reached the White House. We weren't still all that aware of how big it had gotten until we got a call from the vice president's office. Then we knew we were really under the microscope. Then Vice President Mike Pence reached out and asked if it would be appropriate for him to meet with Molly's family. Investigators ran it by her parents, who agreed to the meeting. Molly's parents were very liberal, and Mike Pence was very conservative. And I remember

Molly's dad, Rob, saying, you know, he seemed like a genuinely nice guy who cared. There was no politics involved. At that point, it just kind of seemed like a couple of dads just meeting and one of the most powerful guys in the world saying he's going to help. So that had to uplift the family quite a bit. It goes without saying that the longer Molly was missing, the more Trent was feeling the pressure. More important than the White House, there was Molly's family to think about, her parents, her two brothers, and her extended family and friends. Their lives were all on hold until Molly was found. Her family held a press conference announcing a reward of $127,000 for information that might lead to Molly.

Here's Molly's father, Rob, speaking at that event. This is a fight for our daughter. And so we have all the tools that we can use. And I want to thank the media for coming here and helping us to share this story. Because we are told very little by the authorities for very good reason. They are incredible partners. They put together an incredible investigation. It's large. it's sophisticated,

it's aggressive, and they have been nothing but sensitive to our family. And to suggest otherwise is wrong. But they are not sharing information with us because they don't need to share information with someone who might be implicated in this. So Anastasia, I think that the relationship that Molly's family had with law enforcement at this moment is solid. You know, they explained in detail why information needs to be held close to the vest and promised, I'm sure, to the family that law enforcement would keep them posted on what they could and when they could. The mission here is to find Molly, and I believe the family could see that tremendous efforts were underway. Agreed, but I also look at it as like such a mature attitude, right? Certainly as a prosecutor, I had to have those difficult conversations multiple times with families, why they couldn't know more. But on the other hand, if you put yourself in their shoes just

for a moment, how incredibly hard that must be to not know every single thing that's going on when it is here, a search for your child. The reward for information was eventually increased to over $300,000. It was the largest the state of Iowa had ever seen. But even that didn't help the investigation. Investigators decided that if they were struggling to move forward, then they would move backwards instead. When Molly first went missing, surveillance footage was collected from the homes along her running route. They had looked for Molly in the footage and didn't see her. But Trent said, hey, let's go through this one more time.

And this time, let's just try to look for something different. There's a real chance that we have the suspect vehicle on video somewhere. Now, it may not show the actual incident. It may not show the car even near Molly. But let's just start logging every car we can find and see if we can figure out who the owner is. Trent assembled a group of what he called car people who could quickly identify a car's make and model. Agents started the tedious task of listing each car they saw in the footage. And we started logging on boards. Hey, I see a white car going this direction.

And then we would try to track at home. We would try to identify the driver, that sort of thing. While that footage was being reviewed, something caught an officer's eye. There was a flash that appeared for barely a second in the far corner of the screen. And that flash looked like a figure who appeared to be running. Based on the location and timestamp of the video, investigators believed the image on the screen was of Molly Tibbetts,

and that wasn't the only thing they noticed. In the very same shot, there was also a black Chevy Malibu, and they took note and pulled other footage from that area. As they went through it all, the black Malibu appeared in one shot, then another, and then another. Altogether, it was seen driving in different directions six times. The local sheriff, who was very familiar with the area, decided to track the car's route through the multiple videos law enforcement had obtained. He actually printed out a map of the city. He says, hey, Trent, you need to look at this.

And he had used colored pencils. So he marked where Molly was jogging, where she was likely heading to. And he showed that Malibu was literally circling her. Based on what he could see on the video and tracking the directions, he actually showed that Malibu was following her and repeatedly going past her. Now, the obvious next step was to find the Malibu. While it sounds simple enough to do in such a small town, the task was actually daunting. Then the next thing that occurs to you is, well, we're looking for a dark colored Malibu. And even in Poweshie County, Iowa, we're going to be looking at 100 different cars.

And that's just hoping that it's a local. If they were from a different county, then all of a sudden we're talking about hundreds of cars. Trent was skeptical that they would be able to locate the car, and he wasn't the only one. I remember saying, yeah, what are the chances we're ever going to find this car, guys? It was just kind of, we all looked at each other like, yeah, there's no chance, right? Investigators prepared themselves for what they thought would be a long haul search. But what happened next took everyone by surprise. Trent got a phone call from an off-duty deputy sheriff in Brooklyn who also happened to be a car guy. He calls me and he's like, hey, that car we're looking for, I'm right behind it.

And the reason why he knew he found the right car is because it had a chrome mirror and chrome wheels, that sort of thing. It was very distinctive in its modifications. So he's like, this is the car. The sheriff asked Trent what he should do, and initially Trent had no idea. It's always interesting because you spend all this time thinking about it. And we ran this operation after operation that was flawless. All our little plans that we ran just always worked for us. And when he called me, he said, what should I do? I really didn't have an answer right away because I'd had considered the possibility we'd actually find

the car. After quickly thinking it through, a plan was hatched. Ever since Molly had disappeared, police had been canvassing the town. When you have a missing person, especially someone like Molly, you're constantly canvassing. You're constantly going to this random house that's knocking on the door, seeing if they saw or heard anything. They decided to treat an interaction with the driver of that car as if they were still canvassing. I said, well, just follow him and see where he parks and just say, hey, we're logging cars that belong in the county and just use it as a canvas. And have you saw or heard anything? That sort of thing. The sheriff followed the car to a house in a nearby town. When the driver got out, the sheriff walked up and said hello.

The driver introduced himself as Christian Rivera. Rivera didn't speak a lot of English, but even with the language barrier, the sheriff was able to gather some key pieces of information. He actually took a picture of Rivera's ID. He took a picture of him standing next to the car with the modifications that would correlate with what we saw on video. And he actually even was able to get him to say where he worked. So, like I said, one of the great moments of the investigation was done by the sheriff's office, where all of a sudden we had this great suspect and now we just

needed to figure out what to do with him. Investigators got to work plotting their next move, and they made sure not to let on about their interest in Rivera. You don't want all of a sudden to have a bunch of police cars drive by his residence all the time. So passively, we got to check about once every 10, 12 hours, that sort of thing. And hope he stuck around. After the weekend, they decided to do a canvas of the farm where Rivera worked, disguising the fact that they were actually focusing on him. Investigators showed up at the farm on a Monday morning and started identifying and speaking with other workers.

When they got to Rivera, he was cordial and happy to chat. I'm getting texts from one of the people interviewing him saying he's very cooperative. And I said, well, I'll just see if he'll let us search his cars then. Rivera agreed and even signed a consent form allowing a search of his car. Investigators next asked him if he would let them tow his car to another location to do the actual search. Rivera, once again, said yes. There's a saying that three times a charm. Things were going so well, they decided to try their luck with just one more question.

We asked if he'd be willing to do an interview. And he said, yeah, but he would need a ride, obviously, if we were searching his car. So we offered him a ride, which he consented to. And we brought him into the sheriff's office. So, you know, Scott, there's really two ways that you could go here. It's that, well, he is just being helpful to law enforcement, aiding them in investigations. So he is amenable to whatever they're asking. But on the other side, I don't know, is it odd that he is saying, sure, take my car. Sure, I'll take hours out of my day to go down to the station, almost trying to insert himself in the investigation.

You know, it's really hard to tell what was in his mind at the time. And just the fact that he was being cooperative, I don't think at this point is enough to say that he's hiding something. He's just being cooperative. And we see that all the time. And that's exactly it. Investigators are trying to figure out, you know, what's what with Rivera. But they were surprised that he had consented to the search of the car, but in a good way. But after that, they were actually stunned that he agreed to an interview down at the sheriff's office. That was an exciting development, but it also came with a big hurdle. No one from the core investigation group spoke Spanish.

They needed to find an officer that did, and quickly. A Spanish-speaking agent was located in Iowa City, an hour's drive away from Brooklyn. The agent headed towards the station. But in the meantime, Rivera, the strongest lead so far in Molly's disappearance, was sitting in the lobby, free to go at any point. He had his phone. He could have called anybody to come pick him up, and we really had no reason to stop him. So I just remember every now and then I'd like peek out the door to make sure he's still sitting there.

It was this kind of nerve-wracking, a bit of an understatement. The officer that eventually arrived was a rookie who was still in field training. Her experience level was very new. She was older, so she had a lot of maturity and she's very well spoken and extremely smart. But this is literally her first real felony type interrogation situation. And it might be, you know, the biggest case in the nation at that point. So a little bit of pressure on her. Her name was Pamela, and she sat down in a room with Rivera along with her training officer. Most of the time, investigators sit there, they ask

the question and wait for the translation, then wait for the translation answer to come back. But the young officer quickly connected with Rivera. They spoke about Rivera's home country of Mexico, where Pamela also had family. And, you know, Scott, that really is a great, you know, connection tool, if you will. Not only is he now more comfortable because he is speaking to someone who can speak in his native tongue fluently. He doesn't have to worry about if there's any sort of language barrier or misinterpretation, but also that they're talking about his home. Yeah, it's one of the most important parts of having an opportunity to talk to Rivera

and who at this point is willing to talk to you. It's building that rapport, trying to advance your investigation basically with information that they may be willing to provide. And in many cases, that information could easily cross them off the list and they could potentially provide an alibi,

giving you information and then help you refocus, if necessary, the investigation and move on. So being able to have that one-on-one conversation, in this case, it was the training officer and Pamela, was a great start to this investigation, to at least this part of it. And their conversation was going so well that investigators made the decision to let Pamela, despite her inexperience, take the lead with interviewing Rivera. We gave her a notepad where we would write questions down, basically boxes or buckets for her to fill. She would take that in and she'd have her conversation trying to get the questions that we want answered, answered.

And then she'd come out a little bit later and give us an update of what was happening. So we tried to manage the interview, but a lot of it, she was on her own too. The officer slowly made her way to the topic of Molly. She asked Rivera if he had heard of her or what had happened. Molly Tibbetts comes up. Christian Rivera claims to have never heard of her, didn't know there was a missing person, didn't know anything about a missing jogger, didn't know anything about anything related to Molly Tibbetts. They went back and forth a bit, but Rivera was adamant. He claimed to have no idea even who Molly was.

As Trent listened to what was being said, he knew he had a choice to make. When I teach, I always teach that people confess for two reasons. It's emotional responses, right? Or strength of evidence. That's generally how we get people to confess. Trent decided to play the evidence card. He printed out a picture that showed both Rivera's car and Molly and gave it to Pamela. And it proved to be a breakthrough. I gave it to her and said, well, slide this in front of him and say, this is you in your car and see what he says. She does that and he goes, oh yes, yeah, you're right, that is me in my car. Pamela pointed to the figure believed to be Molly and asked once again if Rivera remembered seeing her. He goes, oh yeah, I remember her now. I thought she was hot and I remember her jogging

and I remember driving past her and I remember thinking I wanted to get another look at her. So I turned around and followed her. Rivera had gone from having no knowledge of Molly to remembering that he thought she was attractive and then turning his car around and following her. Trent knew at this point that they couldn't let Rivera leave. He may not have said much, but what he did say raised some really big red flags. But in order to hold Rivera,

Trent would have to play a card he hadn't planned on using. Rivera was an undocumented immigrant who was living and working in the U.S. illegally. Investigators decided to call Homeland Security Investigations and put a detainer on him so he was no longer allowed to leave. It was not a decision that Trent took lightly. We had that card to play. thing never really was on our plate until Rivera started just basically lying about everything. While the detainer prevented Rivera from leaving, investigators struggled to find out what to do next. We're just treading water. He's not budging. But there was one person who knew exactly what to do.

That person was the young field officer. She came out of the interview room to speak with Trent. She goes, look, she goes, I think he likes me. I think we're connected. Give me officer, Pamela, have one more go at interviewing Rivera. She went back into the room with him, and in their conversation, she started to give Rivera hypotheticals and related things he said to her own life, a tactic commonly used in interviews. Palmella was convinced that Rivera was on the verge of sharing something big, but he was holding himself back. She told Trent that she was stuck. She comes out, we have another like investigator meeting.

My almost 30 years of law enforcement, good cop, bad cop has never worked for me. We never even hardly try it anymore because it never works, right? With nothing left to lose, Trent and another agent entered their room with Rivera and Pamela, who translated what they said. We went back in and I thanked him for everything, was telling him that he was, you know, being very nice, cooperative, and talking about how the world was going to view him, all that stuff that we normally say.

Here is audio from that conversation. We sat across from people that we don't like because they lied to us. And that's why we were happy now, because we were being honest with them, so we can get along and we can work together to make sure that Ben is their daughter. Trent continued speaking with Rivera in a calm tone, commiserating with him, saying everyone makes mistakes, but whatever Rivera was hiding, he still wouldn't share. Then Trent's counterpart chimed in. He raised his voice and challenged Rivera's denials.

And then Trent spoke again. He is getting mad at you. I'm getting close to getting mad because I still want to believe, Mr. Trent, I can see in your eyes that there's something mad in your eyes. The approach worked. Rivera eventually said he was ready to speak,

just not to Trent or the other male agent. And he basically said, look, you're right. I'll tell her, But it was kind of funny. He goes, I'll tell her, but I'm not telling you guys. Pamela sat back down with Rivera. And this time she was alone. And in the video, you can clearly see Pamela pull up a chair, sit close, almost knee to knee with Rivera and look him in the eye. And I believe that was the key into Rivera opening up and laying out the ugly details of what he's accused of. Pamela comes back in by herself, and he tells her that he not only followed Molly, but he actually remembered fighting with her on the road.

Rivera said that he blacked out, which he claimed was something that happened to him when he got angry. He said that he next remembered seeing Molly's earbuds in his car and somehow knowing that she was in his trunk. He also said there was blood. But essentially then we knew he had murdered her. You know, Scott, here there's really two reactions. One is just like you want to just put your head down because it's verified that it's everyone's worst fears are realized. But then on the evidentiary front, well, they're building a case. You know, the first box to be checked here is the fact the video of his car and that person quickly seen in the distance, our victim is jogging. And that's all connected with this statement. And now we're able to confirm that. So the timeline is really falling into place. We have the Fitbit, the video, and now this statement. But obviously, we still don't know

where Molly is. Investigators were now basically certain who was behind Molly's disappearance. But even more importantly, Trent wanted to know the answer to where they could find her. At that point, then I go back in and I shake him and try to hug him and thank him for all that he's done. And I said, look, you know, that's all great that you've told us that, but now we got to give her back to the family and you need to take us to her body. Rivera once again agreed. It was the early morning hours at that point, and the sun had yet to rise. Parmella, Trent, and the rest of the team got into their patrol cars with Rivera in the back and headed out into the rain. We're going down these roads that aren't well-maintained, so it's like we're driving through mud.

It's just miserable outside. If you picture in the middle of nowhere, this is where we're driving for about 20 minutes. Rivera directed officers to a cornfield that had what's called a farmer's lane, which is an inlet where farmers leave heavy machinery during the harvest. Officers got out and began to look for Molly. I mean, we're walking through this corn, all the corn's really wet. There's like these bugs and stuff all over the place. It's muddy. I looked like I had like rolled through a mud puddle

when I came out of there. They had no luck finding her. They went back to the squad car and asked Rivera if he would show them where she was. Rivera just walks right over and maybe 10 feet away says she's right there. He'd knocked down some like corn stalks and stuff and left her laying there with corn stalks and stuff and left her

laying there with corn stalks covering her body. Molly's body was badly decomposed. She had been exposed to the elements for some time. It was also clear she had been sexually assaulted during the attack. Her bra was pulled up to her neck. Her shorts and underwear were lying about 20 feet away. It was a difficult sight, even for the officers. It was just terrible to find her that way. And we all knew she wasn't alive. None of us really expected to find her. That's a pretty terrible morning.

It was made all the worse by the fact that Rivera seemed to revel at the sight of Molly's body. Rivera had just kind of almost a smile on his face. So we actually had to get him back to the car because he was making everybody angry at that point. So we sent him back with Pamela to send the car. After a month of searching, Molly Tibbetts had been found. Rivera was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Autopsy technicians headed out to collect her body, and there were notes to be written and reports to submit. But before Trent could do any of that, he had a phone call to make. I had made a promise to Rob Tibbetts that I would call him when we found her.

And strong as I think I am sometimes, I didn't have the courage to do it. Instead of calling Rob, Molly's dad, Trent did something he had never done in the middle of an active investigation. And it was something he's never done since. He called his wife. So I called my wife and said, we found her.

And she goes, oh my God, I'm so sorry. And I hung up. And then I sat there for a bit and I called Rob and he just thanked me for telling him. But it was literally probably the hardest conversation I've had with someone in law enforcement. You know, Anasigal, we always talk about these notifications being the most difficult part of the job. And Molly's family and other families in these horrific situations always hold out hope until

the very last minute. Each time a phone rings or there's a door knock, the unfortunate reality becomes also real. And I also just think that hearing Trent talk about this really goes to the humanness in these professions, right? There's certain cases that you just get connected to. There are the ones that, whether it's the person that you are representing here, the Molly, he got to know her through her family during this time.

And it was just probably so hard for him as a person if he took off that investigator's hat for a moment to deliver that news to her family. So I think he had to call his first. Trent and the team of investigators had done, you know, everything they set out to do. They found Molly. Now it was time to pass off their work to the prosecutors who would prepare the case for trial.

Rivera's confession would be front and center of their plan. But a confession is only as good as its ability to be used in court. When Palmella, the young officer still in training, had first sat down with Rivera, she read him his Miranda warnings. Now, just as a brief refresher here, Miranda warnings make clear to people that are in police custody what their rights are. No one needs to speak to the police unless they want to. And that's exactly what happened with Rivera. The rookie officer who helped obtain a confession from Molly's accused killer had inadvertently forgotten to give Rivera one line in the Miranda warnings. What that meant was that nothing Rivera said during that interview would ultimately be

able to be used in court, not the part about him following Molly or fighting with her or taking her out of his trunk. Pamela, for all the magic that she had done up to this point, made a mistake, which it's fine. No one was upset with her. I know probably the only person upset with her was herself. She was an extremely experienced investigator who did this all the time. That's one thing. But this is an unbelievable amount of pressure that she's under.

I was not mad. I always took it under myself. That's my job to make this is an unbelievable amount of pressure that she's under. I was not mad. I always took it under myself. That's my job to make sure it's done correctly. It's not hers. Love to get your take on this, Anastasia, about how this turned out. Well, look, as a prosecutor, it's devastating, at least on its face, when you can't use the statement. But again, I also think it is the important reminder that these professions, we're dealing with humans and all of us make mistakes. And we hope that our mistakes are never too detrimental or detrimental

to a case, but we're human. And as long as not purposeful, I think then it's, you know, you have to chalk it up to something that you hope never happens again. I think Trent is taking some responsibility here. And I think that is fair. I also think it's fair, like from my experience, even going back to my interviews and interrogation class at the Police Academy, many of us carried Miranda cards around with us. And while we may have it memorized, it's a great practice to pull out the card and read from it. It also provides an opportunity to read it slower, something that can be easily repeated on the stand if Miranda warnings are being challenged like they are in this case. You know, I think it's a valuable practice, no matter how many times you've given the

warning or how well you may know it. But, you know, I said you hope that your mistakes are not too detrimental to a case. Well, here, fear not, because all was not lost. The mistake was realized before they drove with Rivera to find Molly's body, and Trent had quickly come up with a plan. One of the things I teach is what's better than a confession? Because, you know, Supreme Court said the best evidence is a confession, right? Well, the only thing better than that is two confessions from the same person.

He told Palmella how they were going to make it happen. I basically tell Palmella as we're driving out there, I'm like, this is what I want you to do. Since we're going to be out there, since we're going to be at her body, remirandize him and just have him go through everything again and just end every sentence with like, and, or what else happened. There's going to be more to it, right? Palmella did exactly that. On the way to the cornfield, she once again gave Rivera his Miranda rights, this time including the line she had missed. He again at that moment agreed to speak.

Then she asked Rivera to once again recount the story of what he did to Molly. He goes through the story again when she is doing exactly what I told her. And finally he gets frustrated with her and he said, look, I brought you to her body. That means I did it. So quit asking me for more. But before he had shut down, Rivera had said more than enough.

He's making himself credible by saying, I took you to the body, I'm proving to you that I did it. Rivera had said more than enough. He's making himself credible by saying, I took you to the body, I'm proving to you that I did it. It's better than a confession, I think, when you corroborate your own confession. That kind of sounded weird, but he did. And that second statement most definitely could and would be used in court. After his arrest, Rivera was sent to jail to await trial.

Molly's body, which had been sent for an autopsy, was returned to her family. On that very day, the town of Brooklyn came out to honor her. We brought her body back from autopsy and there was literally, it was almost like a military procession. There was like eight trooper cars with lights and sirens and stuff. And just the whole family broke down. Just seeing that stuff, that was just terrible. It was just terrible. Molly was laid to rest, giving her family some semblance of peace.

But then something happened to interrupt their time of grief. Word had gotten out and around that the person arrested from Molly's death was an undocumented immigrant living and working in the United States. It set off a political firestorm about the need for stronger immigration policy. Donald Trump was president at the time, and after Rivera's arrest made headlines, Trump weighed in. Molly's family was deeply upset and did not want her death to become part of a political debate. They privately and publicly asked politicians to stop using her death to promote their agendas. While everyone has an absolute right to their views, Mollie's family didn't want Mollie's death to be part of a political tug of war.

And while the debate raged on, the trial wasn't coming quickly. The COVID pandemic hit in 2020 and froze jury trials throughout the country, creating immeasurable delays. By the time the trial against Rivera began, it had been almost three years since his arrest. At trial, Rivera's defense team pushed forward the theory that there were alternative suspects, which they say created reasonable doubt. First and mainly in their sights was Molly's boyfriend, Dalton. During defense questioning, Dalton at times had a tough time keeping his composure. The defense tried to use this to their advantage.

He probably had a hard time focusing on some of the time just because how do you remain calm when you were going to ask someone to marry you and she was killed by a guy sitting right across from you. It was probably pretty terrible for him to go through. Rivera also took the stand in his own defense. He told an entirely new story about men with masks breaking into his home and forcing him to dispose of Molly's body. I thought the defense team should not have presented that because to me that's, it's so ludicrous. It was disrespectful, if that makes sense. Don't say something that stupid if you want us to take it seriously.

But one of the strongest pieces of evidence against Rivera was his own words, not to mention the fact that he knew exactly where Molly's body was and had led investigators to her. The prosecution introduced his statement taken after that second Miranda in the car, where he recounted how he took Molly's body from the trunk and carried her to the cornfield. The jury was shown pictures of the crime scene along with Molly's autopsy results. Molly's injuries spoke volumes. She died of multiple stab wounds. It's hard to tell always because of the decomposition of the body at the time,

but there were multiple stab wounds through articles of her clothing, through, you could see the stab wounds through some of her clothing, through, you could see the stab wounds through some of the flesh that remained, through the bones getting nicked, that sort of thing. So he had repeatedly stabbed her. There was another important piece of evidence recovered from Rivera's Black Malibu. When investigators searched his car, they found a blood stain in his trunk. The DNA comparison matched to Molly. Molly's blood was in his trunk. The DNA comparison matched to Molly. Molly's blood was in his trunk of his car. He had tried to clean it up,

but I've never seen yet where someone was able to completely clean up something. Their blood just goes everywhere. While the evidence seems strong, as any career trial attorney will tell you, there is no such thing as a slam dunk. And when the jury left to deliberate, it took longer than expected.

We had a president at the time that's saying he's going to deport every legal immigrant. We had no legal immigrant on trial. I think the jury wanted to be sure they got everything correct. They didn't want to have that kind of hanging over them. After two days of deliberations, the jury returned with their verdict. Rivera was found guilty of murder in the first degree. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. Trent, with everything he has seen and all of his years of experience, still feels affected by Molly's murder. When you talk about true victims, there's no one that's more of a true victim than her.

It's absolutely senseless. And for her to die the way she did, how do you even reconcile that? How do you come to grips with it? For all of us, it's just going to haunt us a little bit. During the investigation, Trent became close with Molly's family, including her father. They are no longer in touch, but to Trent, that's understandable. How could he ever want to talk to me? It's like a reminder of the worst day of his life. Obviously, nothing but respect for each other, but how on earth would you want to constantly be reminded of that?

And I just remember him telling me every day he wakes up missing Molly. Why would he want to reach out to me and talk about it some more? The horrific story of Molly's death can never be undone, but the story of her life, filled with generosity, friendship, and love, will forever shine brighter. Molly's family established a scholarship, a memorial fund in her name that supports the lives of children and adolescents. It serves as a reminder for all the work that supports the lives of children and adolescents. It serves as a reminder for all the work that Molly did while she was still alive. Every year on the eve of her disappearance, the town of Brooklyn honors Molly by taking part in her favorite activity, running.

Molly's father criticized politicians as heartless and despicable to use his daughter's death for political purposes, especially against immigrants. Speaking to the media, Rob Tibbetts said, quote, the Hispanic community are Iowans. They have the same value as Iowans. He denounced those who distort Molly's death to advance racist views. That's how Molly would have seen it. Molly became the poster girl for the abducted and murdered, a girl from America's heartland. I've been thinking about this a lot because many people may understandably react. I get this.

But why not my child? Because there are so many Mollies out there. They all look different from each other. They come from different places. But to the parents and loved ones of that person, each and every one of them was, is Molly. Molly's parents handled the politicalization of their daughter's murder with dignity and strength. In my opinion, there should never be that begrudging, why her? Why did this case get all the attention?

The question, in my opinion, more should be, why not the others, too? Every girl, boy, man, woman, person who goes missing or even worse, that is murdered, they are somebody's Molly. And these tragedies should resonate with us all exactly the same. And I think that is the takeaway from everything I've read about Molly and her family, that they would want and that Molly would want. That might be the best way for us to honor Molly's memory. Molly deserved every ounce of attention her disappearance garnered, as do the rest of America's missing, abducted, and murdered. Rest in peace, Molly Tibbetts. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original.

Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Tracy Levy. Researched by Kate Cooper. Edited by Ali Sirwa, Megan Hayward, and Philjean Grande. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?