331: She Went for a Jog and Never Came Home | The Case of Mollie Tibbetts

When 20-year-old University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts laced up her running shoes for her nightly jog through the small town of Brooklyn, Iowa, she had no idea she was being watched. When she vanished without a trace, the peaceful community was thrown into chaos. For weeks, search teams scoured cornfields and rivers, her smiling face plastered across every screen in America. What began as a desperate search for a missing college student soon unraveled into a twisted tale that would leave the nation reeling…If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow the show for weekly deep dives into the darkest true crime cases! To watch the video version of this episode, head over to youtube.com/@annieelise 🔎Join Our True Crime Club & Get Exclusive Content & Perks🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to both of my weekly true crime series 10 to Life & Serialously with Annie Elise wherever you get your podcasts on the Annie Elise Channel!🍎 Apple Podcasts | Where you can also unlock access to 100+ and growing extra exclusive deep dives.💚 Spotify🔴 YouTube🎙️ All Other Platforms🚩 Announcements Want to catch Annie LIVE on tour? 🎟 Grab your tickets now for a city near you! &Fall Merch is officially HERE!🛒 Don't miss out before your faves sell out!📸 Follow Annie on Socials Instagram: @_annieeliseTikTok: @_annieeliseSubstack: @annieeliseFacebook: @10toLife👗 Shop Annie’s Must-Haves! ShopMY: bit.ly/AnnieElise_ShopMy Amazon: bit.ly/AnnieElise_Amazon🫵🏻 Get Involved or Recommend a CaseAbout Annie: www.annieelise.comFor Business Inquiries: [email protected]📚 Episode Sources ABC 7 Chicago | ABC News | ABC30 Fresno | ABC7 Los Angeles | Fox News | FOX 35 Orlando | FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul | Inside Edition | KCRG | KJAN | Law & Crime | Oxygen.com | People.com | The Daily Iowan | The Des Moines Register | TIME Magazine | WQAD News 8••••••••••••••••••🚨Disclaimers1️⃣ Some links may be affiliate links, they do not cost you anything, but I make a small percentage from the sale. Thank you so much for watching and supporting me. 2️⃣ Sources used to collect this information include various public news sites, interviews, court documents, FB groups dedicated to the case, and various news channel segments. When quoting statements made by others, they are strictly alleged until confirmed otherwise. Please remember my videos are my independent opinion and to always do your own research. 3️⃣ The views and opinions expressed in this video are personal and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the creator(s). These views are subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time and are not to be held in perpetuity. We make no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, correctness, suitability, or validity of any information on this video and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis. It is the reader’s responsibility to verify their own facts.

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:15Speaker 03

  On July 18, 2018, 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts went on a jog in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa. This 20-year-old missing University of Iowa student who was last seen on July 18.

• 1:26Speaker 04

  This newly obtained video shows Mollie Tibbetts having fun and laughing, showing no signs that anything was unusual the day before she went missing from her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa.

• 1:35Speaker 03

  When the University of Iowa student didn't show up for her summer job at a local daycare the next day, family members and coworkers knew something was wrong.

• 1:43Speaker 05

  It has been four days since Mollie Tibbetts disappeared. Despite search efforts over the last few days, there is still no sign of that missing woman.

• 1:53Annie Elise?

  Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serial Insulin.

• 2:16Annie Elise?

  On the evening of July 18th, 2018, 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts laced up her running shoes and she set out for a jog in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa. Now, this was nothing unusual. It was part of her daily routine, something that she did almost every night. But this time, Molly never came home. Now, what started as a local missing persons report quickly turned into this national media storm. A college student, just gone without a trace in this very quiet, very tight-knit community. This investigation would lead to a shocking arrest, an emotional courtroom battle, and a case that still raises very unsettling questions. Because even with

• 2:59Annie Elise?

  a conviction, many people are still asking, what really happened to Mollie Tibbetts? Hey, True Crime BFF. It's me, Annie Elise, and we are back with an all-new episode of Serialously. Now, we have got a lot to unpack today. This is one of the crazier episodes that we've ever covered with a twist at the end that not even I saw coming. So, we are going to jump right in. Now, before we get started, I want to give you a quick reminder. Today is the very last day that you can order merch from our Fall Merch Shop. We are officially closing it today at 5:00 PM Pacific Time. So, we won't have merch again until probably the spring, maybe the summer. Now is the time to get those orders in, whether it's something

• 3:44Annie Elise?

  for yourself, a gift for somebody for the holidays, whatever it may be. We have sweatshirts, embroidery, stickers, all sorts of things. So, you can see all of that at annieelise.com. But remember, today is the last day. Mollie Tibbetts was born on May 8th, 1998, in San Francisco, California. Her parents were Rob and Laura, and she was the middle child, just sandwiched right between her older brother Jake and her younger brother Scott. Now, when Molly was in second grade, for whatever reason, her parents ended up separating. It just wasn't a good fit anymore. They decided co-parenting would be a better situation, so they separated. And that's when her mom Laura decided to move the kids away from the busy streets

• 4:26Annie Elise?

  of San Francisco and move them back to Iowa, a place where she had deep roots, where she grew up herself. So they settled in Brooklyn, Iowa, a tiny farming town about an hour east of Des Moines. Now, it was the kind of place where everybody really knew each other, and I know that that sounds cliche, but it really was true. Neighbors looked out for one another. Most people didn't even bother locking their doors. It was just classic, small-town Midwest. It didn't take long for Molly to find her place there either. Even as a little kid, Molly was just outgoing, friendly, and kind. For example, if anyone was ever sitting alone, Molly would just go, sit next to them, no questions asked. If somebody needed cheering up, she would be the first one to crack a joke or flash

• 5:09Annie Elise?

  a big smile just trying to make them feel comfortable. She made people feel important. She made people feel like they mattered.

• 5:16Speaker 07

  Everyone has their own talent, whether it's a sport you're good at, or you're good at dance, or if you're a great writer, even if you're just a good person, you have the best things you can be good at.

• 5:26Annie Elise?

  Now, fast forward to high school, and Molly was booked and busy. She sang in the choir, she ran cross-country, she spent summers working at a children's literacy camp. Just working with kids really came natural to her. She had this patient way about her that also made the children feel safe with her. Now, faith was also a very important part of Molly's upbringing as well. Her family was very deeply involved in their church, and Molly was too. She was confirmed in the Catholic Church in 2015. She carried her faith as this source of personal strength, just with her everywhere that she went. Now, even after her parents were separated, Molly's bond with her father, Rob, stayed very strong, and they were alike in so many ways.

• 6:10Annie Elise?

  Both passionate about reading, passionate about writing, public speaking, and Rob described Molly not just as his daughter, but as his best friend. But of course, Molly wasn't perfect, and her family never tried to pretend that she was. She could be moody, she could be messy, she was a notoriously bad driver, and she kind of had a little bit of a stubborn streak. But to the people who loved her, that's really just what made her her, almost made her more endearing because she had these flaws and faults. And here's a really sweet clip of her mom talking about her personality.

• 6:43Speaker 08

  She was, um...

• 6:47Speaker 08

  Both goofy, but could be very serious. She was, you know, she could have a temper. She was stubborn. Um, she wasn't the tidyest person. People could see her room, just kind of a pack rat. Um, but she was artistic and curious. Um, so, yeah, did you know, she was just, she was just a young woman. She was a young woman.

• 7:20Annie Elise?

  Now, as for Molly's friends, they all said that she was the mother of the group. And I'm sure in your friend group, growing up, you probably had one of those too. But Molly was the one who was always checking in on the friends, making sure everyone was okay. And she just had kind of this like nurturing way about her, just this softness, but welcomeness and openness, and so much so that she dreamed of working with people who had survived abuse. She wanted to help them heal, help them rebuild their lives. She was just so passionate about being a good person and trying to uplift others. And because of that, mental health was a cause that was very close to Molly's heart.

• 8:00Annie Elise?

  On her Twitter account, she often talked about the importance of talking openly about your struggles. In one example, she once had posted, quote, "We need to make people feel more comfortable talking about mental health. Be kind and understanding with everyone, including yourself." So needless to say, everyone loved Molly, right? But for one person, Molly was just unforgettable from the very beginning. In 2015, Dalton Jack was a senior on the football team at Molly's school. And that's when he met her for the very first time after one of the night games. They had seen each other around town, you know, small school, small town. But that night was very different. She was funny. She was easy to talk to. She made him laugh.

• 8:44Annie Elise?

  And before she left, he made sure to get her number. He was like moving in. He did not want her to be the one that got away. So they started dating soon after that, going to dinner, watching movies, or even just driving around, singing to whatever song was on the radio. Just kind of that innocent, young love, young fun, where you'll really have fun doing anything, wherever you are, you just want to be together. When life was so simple, right? So when Dalton graduated that spring, he decided he was gonna stay local. He ended up moving in with his older brother and he started working for a nearby construction company. Meanwhile, Molly finished high school too, and she ended up graduating in 2017. Then, that fall, she packed her things and she headed off to college.

• 9:27Annie Elise?

  She went to the University of Iowa, which was about a 45-minute drive from where she had been living, and her plan was to study psychology there. So Dalton and Molly continued to make their relationship work. Dalton's job did require him to travel, so they were used to being apart. It wasn't anything that was brand-new to them. Plus, Iowa City really wasn't that far from Brooklyn, remember? A 45-minute drive away. So they visited each other whenever they could, usually every other weekend. They also, of course, texted constantly, back and forth all the time, because remember, this was 2017. I mean, texting was like, what it is today, just so common, right? And they kept up the same types of routines that they had built over the years of, kinda just like, growing up together, right?

• 10:09Annie Elise?

  In their young-love phase, high school sweethearts, 15-years-old, now going into college. However, like any young couple, Molly and Dalton definitely had their ups and downs. Their relationship was not perfect, and they both knew it. Now, for Dalton's part, he had a bit of a temper. He was the kind of person who could just get worked up so quickly, while Molly was usually more patient with all of that. Like, it could wear on her, but she didn't just, like, get worked up super-fast. So regardless, something happened, and by late 2017, something between the two of them had shifted. Molly started to feel like Dalton wasn't being fully honest with her. He was acting differently, more distant. And when she brought it up, he kinda just, like, brushed it off and told her everything was fine.

• 10:55Annie Elise?

  There was nothing that she needed to worry about. But Molly could not shake this feeling that things weren't actually fine. Something was going on here. Call it a woman's intuition, call it just a girl kind of having a radar, I don't know, which I guess that would be the same thing, now that I say it out loud, but she just knew that something was off. So eventually, after trying and failing to get a straight answer, Molly did something that she... She normally wouldn't have done. One night while Dalton was asleep, she decided to go through his phone. And when she did that, she came across information that confirmed her suspicions. Dalton had been cheating on her. Now for Molly, this was an absolutely devastating discovery. She and Dalton had been together for a couple of years at this point.

• 11:37Annie Elise?

  And so many of the people who were close to them had described their relationship as true love, as destiny, as soulmates, whatever it was, you know? They knew each other's family, they were planning a future, and now all of that felt very, very unstable. It had shifted. He betrayed her. He was lying to her. However, they didn't break up, at least not officially. But there was a sort of, mm, relationship reset. So as they're working through all of this, eventually they decided to stay together. And to their credit, they did manage to patch things up on the surface. But if you're anything like me, and you've gone through a similar situation in a relationship, you know that even when you forgive, you don't forget.

• 12:21Annie Elise?

  And certainly, things do not go exactly back to how they were before. There's, it's, it's impossible, right? You can say you're gonna move forward, leave it in the past, but there always will either still be maybe that like, under the surface resentment or trust issue, but things will never go back 100% to how they were. So regardless, by the summer of 2018, Molly and Dalton were still together. But there was still some of that tension under the surface, and Molly felt like she couldn't fully trust Dalton, not like she did in the past anyway. Then, by late July that year, Molly ended up coming home from college for the summer. And her life was pretty typical for a college student who was on break. She was working at a children's day camp, which was something she did every single summer and just absolutely loved.

• 13:07Annie Elise?

  And she was also taking a couple of summer classes, kind of just keeping up with all her usual habits and routines. You know, spending time with friends, spending time with family, texting, hanging out with Dalton whenever she could, spending her evenings out jogging through Brooklyn, and it was a really nice summer break for her. Now meanwhile, Dalton was still working, and he was working very long. Hours that summer. He and his older brother Blake both worked for that construction company, the one that had them kind of traveling pretty often across the state. Now, at the time, they were in Dubuque, which is about 140 miles away from Brooklyn. And they were working on a pretty major project, too. It was like some sort of like bridge repair type situation. Now, because the job was so far away from home, the brothers were staying overnight at a hotel there with their crew during the week

• 13:52Annie Elise?

  while they were getting all of this work done. So before they left on this work trip, they had asked Molly if she'd be willing to house sit for them, take care of their dogs while they were gone and let the dogs out, let them in, feed them, all of those things, while they were going to be away for the week doing this bridge project, which she had no reason to say no, so she agreed. She had also spent time at that house several times before. She loved dogs. It was an easy way to help them out, also make a little money because they were paying her, so why not? So on Wednesday, July 18th, everything seemed normal. Molly had gone to work that morning. She had texted with Dalton all throughout the day. She had spent some time doing some homework. And that evening, just like she did on the majority of all of the other nights,

• 14:36Annie Elise?

  she decided to go out for a run. Now, I will say, running was definitely more than just exercise for Molly. It was a part of her routine. It helped her clear her head. She had a regular route she liked to take, too, just kind of winding through all of the familiar streets of the neighborhood. So around 7:30 PM, like so many nights before, she was about to head out for her run and grabbed her phone and sent Dalton a Snapchat, then just took off and headed out. But Dalton didn't open up the Snapchat message right away. He was busy with his crew that night, just kind of winding down after a very long day of grueling, physical work. He didn't even look at his phone until 10:00 PM, and that's when he finally saw Molly's message, her little Snapchat. So he responded to her after seeing it, but he didn't get a reply.

• 15:20Annie Elise?

  And this didn't immediately raise any alarms because maybe she was asleep. It was after 10:00 at this point. Maybe she got caught up reading a book, watching a movie, being, you know, binging a TV show, who knows? So it wasn't until the next morning that this silence from Molly started to feel a bit unusual. Nevertheless, though, Dalton went to work as usual on July 19th. But back in Brooklyn, other people were starting to worry because now Molly also did not show up to her job that morning.

• 15:56Annie Elise?

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• 16:40Annie Elise?

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• 17:18Annie Elise?

  It was completely out of character for Molly not to show up for work. Even worse, she hadn't called to let anybody know that she would be out. And Molly was the kind of person who followed through on commitments. So if something had come up, she definitely would have told somebody. And another person who grew concerned was Molly's cousin Morgan. See, they talked every single day, usually through Snapchat, which is a pretty popular method for young adults to text and send pictures back and forth and talk through. And they had been using it so much that they even had a 600-day Snapchat streak, meaning they had sent each other Snapchats for 600 days straight. That shows you how active they were on the platform, right? So that morning, Morgan sent Molly a snap like she always did, but Molly didn't respond.

• 18:03Annie Elise?

  Then, as the hours passed, the lack of response from Molly became more and more unsettling. Friends, family members, coworkers, not a single person had heard from her. Phone calls also were going unanswered, Snapchats not being read or responded to, text messages just sitting on "delivered" with no reply. Something did not make sense here. And yes, while it might sound small, it really was the broken Snapchat streak that solidified all of this growing fear. I mean, 600 days is a lot, right? That is a habit that is hard to break. And at that point, it reminds me of that episode of Friends where they're throwing the ball back and forth. If you ever watched Friends, I don't know if I'm dating myself, and they go for like days and days because they don't want to lose the streak.

• 18:47Annie Elise?

  It's not even just because you're so regularly consistent with it. It's like, when you get a streak that big, you don't want to break it. You make it a point to not break it, right? So here was a habit that Molly would not break unless something really bad had happened and forced her to break it. So Molly's family contacted Dalton, her friends, they checked the house where she was staying, they started searching all throughout the town, but they could not find her anywhere. Meanwhile, all of their calls and messages to Molly went unanswered. So, that afternoon, her mom Laura contacted the police, and she officially filed a police report. Now, as soon as Rob heard that his daughter was missing, he did not hesitate. He packed a suitcase, got on the first flight out of California, and he headed straight to Iowa.

• 19:32Annie Elise?

  And word spread fast in Brooklyn. I mean, with it being such a small town, if something happened, everybody knew about it. So, the day after Molly went missing, the entire town mobilized. Just volunteers searching everywhere, looking on backroads, cornfields, wooded areas, old barns. I mean, places that hadn't seen foot traffic in years. And these places were now suddenly just filled with people, looking at every single corner, you know, turning over every single stone, calling out Molly's name, just hoping that they would discover Molly somewhere. And Molly's family didn't take a moment to sit still. They printed out hundreds of flyers and they began plastering them all over town. Then, once the town was covered, they started moving outward.

• 20:16Annie Elise?

  Town to town, just putting up flyers in nearby communities, talking to store owners, talking with people who are just walking down the street, hoping that someone, anyone, had seen her. And when I say everybody was like fully frantically mobilized, I mean it. For example, at one point while Rob, Laura and Molly's brothers were putting flyers out all around town, they were driving so fast from town to town that the police ended up pulling them over for speeding. And as Rob pulled over and was talking to the officer, Laura jumped out of the car, sprinted into a nearby store and just started putting flyers up inside, just trying to cover as much ground as humanly possible as fast as possible.

• 20:58Annie Elise?

  Now, as she was jumping out of the car, Rob of course warned her like, "Yo chill, you're gonna get arrested, you need to calm down, like you're gonna freak this officer out." But she didn't even care. Her eye was just on trying to get this information out about her daughter. Then, after the officers talked to Rob and found out what they were all doing, they let them go without any sort of ticket, without any sort of issue, just like, "Go, just be careful, stop speeding, you know, good luck, and we will be on the lookout for Molly as well." And meanwhile, about 20 of Molly's friends had all split up into pairs and they were doing the exact same thing, spreading out all across the area, putting up posters, knocking on doors. Dalton had also rushed back from his construction job the moment he heard that Molly was missing and he started joining the search too.

• 21:42Annie Elise?

  His dad even flew his small crop dusting plane over the area, trying to just like, you know, look down and get a bird's eye view of things, hoping that maybe, you know, maybe by chance he could spot Molly from above. But cloud cover made visibility nearly impossible, so it was a good effort and it was a very, you know, warm, loving effort, but unfortunately did not yield much in terms of results. So as news of Molly's disappearance spread, it didn't stay local. It exploded all across the country. News of her disappearance was now everywhere. Missing posters were pinned up from Iowa to Illinois, major news networks were picking it up, and Molly's face and story was all over the place.

• 22:23Annie Elise?

  And her family, despite the fear and uncertainty, stayed publicly very hopeful. They went on TV, they gave interviews, they just always stayed positive that Molly would be found, that she would come home safely. Her dad also told reporters that he didn't think that she had been hurt. He didn't think that she had been taken by a stranger. In his view, this had to be some sort of misunderstanding, maybe even with somebody that she knew. And he never gave a clear reason why he believed that, but he felt very strongly that Molly had left willingly. And that whoever she was with probably didn't know how to fix the situation, fix what they had gotten themselves into, especially now with the whole country out looking for her.

• 23:04Annie Elise?

  And in an interview with the Des Moines Register, Rob even made a direct plea to the person that he believed was with Molly. He said, "End it now before it goes any further."

• 23:15Speaker 09

  Rob, let's talk a little bit about one of the reasons you have come on television so frequently in the last week or so. Is because you feel that there is somebody out there, whether it's in Brooklyn, Iowa, or somebody who was just passing through, that saw Molly that night and knows something.

• 23:35Speaker 10

  Whether they saw Molly, or whether they saw something that was out of place, that seems insignificant, and they're reluctant to come forward with that affirmation because they don't want to clog up the investigation. There is no information too insignificant. Or if they're suspicious about a loved one or a friend, that they're reluctant to turn into the authorities for something that they suspect. If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear. And so turn that information over to the authorities and let them sort out what's right and what's wrong.

• 24:10Annie Elise?

  Now, despite what Molly's dad thought, Molly's mom completely had her own take on the situation. She said that she could, quote, "feel Molly sitting on her shoulder" all throughout the search. And she says that it was that comforting presence that really gave her the strength to keep going.

• 24:27Speaker 08

  We believe that Molly is still alive. And if someone has abducted her, we are pleading with you to please release her.

• 24:35Annie Elise?

  Her brothers were also just as sure. They weren't saying things like, "if she comes home." They were always saying, "when she comes home." In their minds, Molly's disappearance was just very temporary. And I don't know if it was just optimism, or if maybe it was a little bit of denial. But the family also was trying to keep things very light through all of this, maybe even a coping mechanism. And what I mean by that is, for example, they joked about how once Molly finally came back, they were going to ground her for life. They also said that they would plaster all of her missing persons posters all over her car, that they would force her to watch every single news segment about her disappearance. Kind of like, "Oh, when she gets back, we are going to make her life hell," that kind of thing.

• 25:16Annie Elise?

  And in a town like Brooklyn, Iowa, people really did believe that Molly was going to walk back through the door any day now. It wasn't the kind of place where these things happen. Serious crimes like kidnapping or murder, those felt like something that belonged in movies, not there, not in Brooklyn. Still, though, the community responded very quickly. Vigils were held, search parties were organized. Molly's family also started receiving letters and messages from all over the world. I mean, strangers just writing in to say that they were thinking of Molly, that they were praying for her safe return. They had full support from everyone. Crime Stoppers of Central Iowa also started offering a reward for any information that might lead to Molly.

• 25:58Annie Elise?

  And at first, it was just a few thousand dollars, but it did not stay that way for long. The fund started growing and donations started pouring in, growing from $30,000 to $175,000. And before long, the reward had reached more than $400,000, one of the largest rewards ever offered in Iowa at that time. Meanwhile, investigators were still treating Molly's case as either a missing person or possibly an abduction. And there were up to 40 officers assigned to the case daily. But then, about a week into the investigation, the FBI stepped in, and that is what changed everything. Volunteer search efforts stopped, and the FBI pivoted their entire approach.

• 26:43Annie Elise?

  They weren't combing through the fields anymore, but instead, they were combing through Molly's digital footprint. They wanted to go through her phone records, her social media accounts, her Fitbit. Everything that they could use as some sort of digital trail, that is what they were going to start looking into. And let's talk about her Fitbit for a minute, because it tracked her runs, her steps, her heart rate, everything. And the hope was that it might hold some sort of clue, maybe a timestamp or even a location, something that would help them trace Molly's movements and find out where she went after that run on July 18. And investigators were able to confirm pretty quickly that Molly did in fact make it out for her run that night. Multiple people in town also remembered seeing her on her run.

• 27:28Speaker 11

  The latest on the search for missing college student Mollie Tibbetts. This morning, the eyewitness who says he saw her jogging before she disappeared is now telling his story exclusively to ABC. Whit Johnson is here with more. Good morning, Whit.

• 27:41Speaker 12

  Michael, good morning to you. Authorities have been tight lipped, revealing very little about who they've questioned. But we spoke to a man who believes he saw Mollie Tibbetts on the night she vanished with her hair in a ponytail and wearing an armband for her cellphone or music, an account he says he took straight to investigators.

• 27:58Speaker 13

  I've seen her, you know, it would probably be three, four times a week. She jogged on the street.

• 28:05Speaker 12

  For the first time, we are hearing from the man who believes he could be the last person to have seen Mollie Tibbetts before her mysterious disappearance. In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Devon Riley says the University of Iowa student went jogging past his house about 8:00 PM July 18.

• 28:23Speaker 13

  She jogged on the street, up the hill, and, you know, there was just nothing of it until I heard somebody was missing and then it like really hit me and it's like I haven't seen that runner since then.

• 28:35Speaker 12

  He called the police with the tip after seeing her picture on the news. Law enforcement would not confirm or comment about any potential witnesses. But Riley says he was questioned by investigators, who he says also conducted a thorough search of his home.

• 28:50Speaker 13

  They were really polite and didn't assume, I don't think. And they just, they walked in and out in less than 10, 15 minutes.

• 28:59Annie Elise?

  Another person who saw her was her longtime hairdresser. And she told the police that she saw Molly jogging around 7:45 PM on July 18. And sure enough, when the investigators pulled the data from her Fitbit, it showed that she had run her usual route between 7:30 and 8:30 PM, just like she always. But there was something about the data that stood out. Around 8:30 PM, her movement suddenly stopped. Then, within minutes, her location data started showing that she was heading south. And she was heading south fast, at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. So it was obviously clear, she was not running anymore. It looked now like she was in a car. And at 8:53 PM, her phone just went completely dark.

• 29:44Annie Elise?

  No more data, no more location tracking. Just gone, as if the battery died, or somebody turned it off, or maybe even destroyed it. And at that point, her phone was pinging about 15 miles south of Brooklyn. So this was a very chilling discovery. Something had clearly happened to her that night, right? And without much else to go on, you can imagine, the town started to do what most towns will do in a situation like this, and they started to speculate. Rumors started swirling, and some people were pointing fingers at Molly's brothers, even though there was never any sort of evidence linking them to her disappearance. But even more than that, most of the town's focus quickly turned toward Dalton, Molly's boyfriend.

• 30:28Annie Elise?

  Because people remembered that he had a bit of a temper. Some people also knew that he had cheated on Molly before. It wasn't exactly a secret, so the idea that he might have snapped didn't really seem impossible to some people. And look, the investigators did take a hard look at Dalton pretty early on. He was Molly's boyfriend after all, and statistically speaking, people close to the victim are often the first to be investigated, right? But what really caught their attention was some inconsistencies in Dalton's story. In his first interview, Dalton said everything in their relationship was fine. No issues, no tension. He told the police that he had spent the evening of July 18th in his hotel room. He was on that work trip, if you remember. So he says he was in his hotel room watching the movie Rush Hour,

• 31:13Annie Elise?

  then went to bed immediately following it. But in later interviews, that version changed. He eventually admitted that he had actually been outside that night, that he was drinking beers and playing yard games with the construction Crew, which I can understand a couple of variations here and there. Maybe you don't remember if it's rush hour one or the sequel. Maybe before going straight to bed, you went to the ice machine or the vending machine. I can understand that, but this was a stark difference from watching a movie in the hotel room and falling asleep to being outside, drinking with your coworkers and playing yard games like cornhole. I mean, very difficult to confuse the two or forget one of them, right?

• 31:55Annie Elise?

  So when the investigators kind of pressed him on that, saying, okay, well, why didn't you just say all that in the first place? Why'd you say you just went to bed and watched a movie? He acknowledged the inconsistency and said, the reason he didn't mention it is because he didn't think that it was important. But then the more that the police talked to him, the more detail started to come out. He admitted that earlier in the relationship, he had in fact cheated on Molly with another girl and that it had caused a lot of tension between the two of them. But Dalton said that ever since then, the relationship had stabilized. So there was all this speculation, the investigators were questioning him and look, between the cheating, the temper, the shifting timeline, police did have reason to be cautious,

• 32:37Annie Elise?

  right? But even with all of those red flags, Dalton's alibi checked out. His coworkers confirmed that he did work a 12-hour shift that day, then stayed overnight, and time cards and pay stubs all matched up. And perhaps most notably, on July 19th, the day that Molly was reported missing, you know, the following morning after her run, Dalton's coworkers remembered him being visibly upset on the job. He kept making comments throughout the day about how worried he was that he hadn't heard back from Molly. And then ever since he found out that she was in fact missing, he was helping to try and find her, doing searches, doing flyers, all of the things.

• 33:14Speaker 14

  Just, everybody has a Molly, a person that has changed your life in such a huge way. And that's in everybody's lives. Just imagine.

• 33:26Speaker 14

  If somebody had taken your Molly, put yourself in our shoes, you would do anything to get her back and you would just be desperate for anything to come forward to get her back.

• 33:36Annie Elise?

  So after verifying his alibi and finding absolutely no physical evidence tying him to Molly's disappearance, the police officially ruled Dalton out as a suspect. And once the police cleared him, they went back to the drawing board and they started canvassing the neighborhoods along with Molly's usual running route, trying to see if there was something that they missed. They knocked on doors, talked to neighbors, they asked if anybody had seen anything out of the ordinary on the night of July 18th. And sure enough, this is when they came across Logan Collins. Now Logan lived on West Des Moines Street, which was one of the roads that Molly often ran down. And luckily, he had security cameras facing the street outside of his house and he turned all of that footage over to the authorities.

• 34:20Annie Elise?

  So when they were looking through this footage, it showed a jogger, believed to be Molly, running past Logan's house at 7:45 PM. But then, just 28 seconds later, a black Chevy Malibu drives by, heading in the same direction. And that wasn't the only time that this car showed up. In total, that same vehicle was captured circling the area six times over the next 30 minutes. And that definitely was not normal. While a couple of other cars were seen on this footage as well, no other vehicle showed that kind of pattern, almost like a predator circling its prey, just going around and around, just casing it, stalking it, deciding when is the right moment to strike. So to be sure,

• 35:05Annie Elise?

  the police investigated all of the other cars that they had seen on that footage, but completely cleared their involvement. Now for this car, this car didn't belong to any of the neighbors and it was the only vehicle repeatedly passing by during that window of time. It also had some very distinctive features on it as well, chrome mirrors, shiny rims, unique door handles, all of these things that made it much easier to identify. The license plate, however, was not visible in the footage, but the make and the model of the car was clear enough. It also had these very unique features, right? So the investigators ran vehicle registrations for every black Chevy Malibu in the area. And after narrowing down the list, one name stood out.

• 35:48Annie Elise?

  The name Christian Rivera. Christian lived nearby and he worked at a local dairy farm called Yarabee Farms. He was 24 years old. He had a young three-year-old daughter and really, he wasn't on anyone's radar up until that point. There was seemingly no connection either between him and Molly. I mean, aside from the fact that his girlfriend Iris shared some mutual friends with Molly on Facebook. But nevertheless, at the beginning of August, the investigators started tailing Christian. Something wasn't right. Why was he circling Molly so many times that night? So as they started tailing him, they just continued to watch him drive that same Malibu that was seen in the footage. And on August 16th, nearly a month after Molly went missing,

• 36:32Annie Elise?

  investigators pulled Christian over for a routine traffic stop. Christian was very calm when the police approached him, but there was an issue. He primarily spoke Spanish and there were no qualified Spanish-speaking officers immediately available. So because of that, investigators just had to wait. Then, a few days later, when they knew that they would have a Spanish-speaking officer available, they made their move and they officially brought Christian in for questioning. This was now on August 20th. Now, at first, Christian denied having anything to do with Molly's disappearance. However, as the hours passed, his story started to change. He eventually admitted that he had seen Molly jogging and he started following her in his car.

• 37:17Annie Elise?

  He said he thought that she was hot. He wanted to get a better look at her, so he started following her. He's like, you know, she's a really hot girl. I wanted to just get a better look, so I started following her a bit. Then, in a very freaking creepy-ass move, at some point, he decided to pull his car over and get out of the car and just start running alongside her. As though she's gonna like look to her left and be like, "Oh, hey, what's your name? What are you doing jogging here in street clothes, not workout clothes?" Like, what a freaking creep, right? But that's not even the worst of it.

• 37:53Annie Elise?

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• 38:38Annie Elise?

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• 38:57Annie Elise?

  So after Christian now pulls over and gets out of his car and starts running alongside Molly, that's when Molly realized she was being followed. So she pulled out her phone and she yelled at Christian that she was gonna call 911. Christian said she started screaming at him, tried to slap him away, was just yelling, you know, "Leave me alone, get the hell out of here." And he claimed that because of that, he got angry. And that is when he blacked out. It's something he told investigators that he tends to do when he gets upset. He says the next thing that he remembered was just driving. And as he looked down, he saw Molly's earbuds, her AirPods, her little headphones, right there in his lap. So according to him, that's when he had the revelation, that's when it hit him that Molly's body was in the trunk of his car.

• 39:41Annie Elise?

  So Christian told the police that he drove to a nearby cornfield. He took off his shirt because it was soaked in blood, according to him. And he pulled Molly out of the trunk and put her over his shoulder, carrying her into this cornfield. He said he laid her down and that as he was carrying her, it quote, "felt like someone who had just fainted," which, I don't know how anybody knows what that feels like unless this has happened before, but basically describing this like dead weight where he then just sets her down. So he says he just lays her down in the cornfield, covered her face with cornstalks, and then left the scene. And sure enough, the morning after the interview, on Tuesday, August 21st, Christian led the investigators to a secluded cornfield. It was about 15 minutes away from Brooklyn, Iowa.

• 40:25Annie Elise?

  And right there, hidden beneath a blanket of cornstalks, they found Molly.

• 40:30Speaker 15

  Investigators found a body in rural Iowa, and it is believed to be missing University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts. Investigators are working right now on confirming the identity. New information will be released a little bit later on this afternoon. Tibbetts' family is not commenting this morning. The 20-year-old vanished more than a month ago after she had gone for a jog. We'll get much more on this coming up live on the news this afternoon at 4 o'clock.

• 40:53Annie Elise?

  Molly was found face up and partially clothed. She was still wearing her socks and her sports bra, but her running shorts, her underwear, and her headband were all found scattered farther into the field. Nearby, the police also recovered her Fitbit and her phone. So that same day, police officially arrested Christian, and they charged him with first-degree murder. He was booked into the county jail, and he was held on a $1 million cash-only bond. Now, once the police had Molly's body and Christian's interview, they took his car in for evidence. And during the second search of the vehicle, they found blood smears all over the trunk seal and the liner. And forensic tests confirmed that that blood belonged to Molly.

• 41:36Annie Elise?

  An autopsy would later reveal that Molly had been stabbed multiple times, at least up to 7 to 12 stab wounds. However, her body was so badly decomposed due to it being such a hot summer that it was hard to determine exactly how many stab wounds were there. But one of the stab wounds was deep enough to penetrate her skull. Another one was found on her hand, likely a defensive wound from trying to fight back. And despite the fact that she was found with most of her clothes off, there was no sperm found on her body or her clothing, and there was no direct physical evidence of any sexual assault taking place. And even without a murder weapon, the investigators believed they had enough to move forward with the charges against him and with a case.

• 42:19Annie Elise?

  They had a body, a confession, DNA in the trunk. A man who, by his own admission, had followed Molly that night, got angry when she pulled out her phone and then, you know, quote, "blacked out," later than finding her dead body in his trunk, according to him. But the thing that the police were still missing was a major piece of the puzzle. They still needed a motive. And no matter how they looked at it, they couldn't seem to find one. Christian had no criminal record. He didn't even know Molly personally. There was also no evidence of a sexual assault. So the question that everyone kept asking was why? Why would someone follow a stranger on her nightly run and end her life in such a violent, senseless way if they didn't know her?

• 43:03Annie Elise?

  If sex wasn't a motivator? If hatred wasn't a motivator? Like, why? Just for the thrill of it? A thrill kill? Now, Christian wasn't very well-known in Brooklyn. He mostly kept to himself. He lived alone in a trailer on a local dairy farm, and he worked long, quiet days just on his own with the cows. He also didn't go out much, didn't cause any trouble. To most people in town, he was just another guy working in agriculture. He blended in. He never raised any sort of red flags. He had been working at this farm since 2014, and the job had been arranged through a former girlfriend who also worked there. And over the years, Christian really had built a reputation on the farm as a dependable guy. He showed up, did his job, never caused problems.

• 43:48Annie Elise?

  And the farm manager said that there had been no noticeable change in his demeanor, even after Molly disappeared. He was calm, steady, and kept his routine like nothing had happened. And at the time of his arrest, Christian was only 24 years old. When he was 17, he crossed the border into Texas from Mexico by a raft and eventually made his way to Iowa. But he came from this very tiny, very rural town in Mexico that was home to just a few hundred people, and somehow came into the United States. So Christian had entered the country illegally, which then made people wonder how he was hired at this farm in the first place. The farm initially said that they had used EVIRIFY, which is the federal employment system. And that they had used that to confirm his eligibility to work.

• 44:33Annie Elise?

  However, that wasn't true. It came out later that Christian had given them false information and was hired under a different name. Still, though, the farm stood by their statement that they were stunned about what Christian did and that they never imagined that he would ever do such a terrible thing. So Christian made his first court appearance shortly after his arrest. He didn't enter a plea, though, and the judge set his bond at $5 million, cash only. ICE also placed a detainer on him due to his undocumented status, meaning that even if somehow he posted bond, he would still remain in jail until immigration authorities could step in. So now Molly's body had been found, and the days after Molly's body was found just felt heavier. Even with Christian in custody, the town of Brooklyn was shaken.

• 45:18Annie Elise?

  Molly had been missing for over a month at that point, and people had desperately held on to hope that she would come back, that somehow, against all odds, she was still alive. So now, when news broke that her body had been found just discarded in a cornfield right outside of town, it just hit like a wave of grief, shock, fear, and heartbreak, everything all at once. Her family was devastated, but they were also grateful to have an answer. As much as they wanted Molly to come home, they were now no longer stuck in limbo. They didn't have to keep wondering. And in some small way, knowing what happened to her gave them the space to actually begin grieving. Still, though, Molly's death cast a long shadow. Brooklyn was a place where people didn't even lock their doors at night.

• 46:03Annie Elise?

  They let their kids ride their bikes late into the evening. Now, people were keeping their kids indoors. They weren't trusting anything or anyone. Some also insisted that their teenagers start sharing their location on their phones at all times. Others started locking doors that had never been locked before, and people even started feeling suspicious of neighbors that they used to just casually chat with at the gas station. Things had changed in this town. Everyone was on edge. Even Molly's friends said they now felt strange doing normal things, going out, laughing, listening to music. It all felt like some sort of betrayal, like living life was somehow wrong when Molly couldn't be there to do the same.

• 46:44Annie Elise?

  And as if the pain and the fear weren't already enough, the case quickly became politicized. News that Christian was an undocumented immigrant, it sparked a national conversation.

• 46:56Speaker 16

  Christian Rivera stands charged for the murder of 20-year-old Iowa University student Mollie Tibbetts. Rivera's attorney sat down for an interview with Fox's Martha McCallum tonight, where he didn't seem to care that his client is an illegal immigrant.

• 47:12Speaker 17

  The United States Constitution provides, if you're not a citizen, you still are entitled to the jurisdictions of the courts and entitled to equal protection under the law.

• 47:22Speaker 18

  I don't think anyone said he wasn't. What everyone, what people are saying is that he arrived here illegally from Mexico four to seven years ago.

• 47:31Speaker 17

  That's your rhetoric on it.

• 47:32Speaker 18

  It's not rhetoric. That's what the immigration officials are saying their reports indicate. He used a false name to work for an employer. They thought he was somebody else. We know that as well. These are just, these are the facts that are being dug up in the case.

• 47:48Annie Elise?

  But this was not the kind of conversation that Molly's family wanted. Within days, her death was now being used as this political talking point by people who had never even met her. Her name became a hashtag in various arguments about immigration reform. And people were fighting with each other. There was arguing. It was just so messy. And her family, especially her father, Rob, just continued to ask people to stop. They didn't want her legacy to be about politics, not at all. Rob said, "I'm incredibly thankful for the love and support that we've received, but I also want to be very clear, Molly would not want her death to be used to advance a political agenda that she would have disagreed with."

• 48:29Annie Elise?

  Molly's cousin, Morgan, also backed him up by saying, "It feels like people stopped seeing her as a person. She was just a headline, a tool for someone else's narrative." Now in Brooklyn, people chose to remember Molly in their own way. Teal ribbons, which was the color that she loved the most, started appearing on mailboxes, fences, storefronts, just all over town. It was a very simple, yet powerful gesture. The community and the elementary school that Molly had once attended also started a program called Molly's Movement, which is a kindness initiative that encouraged people to do small acts of good in her name, such as helping a friend, including someone who felt left out, saying something kind to someone. Each action was a way to keep Molly's spirit alive. But even as the community tried to grieve and move forward,

• 49:14Annie Elise?

  there was still one massive piece of unfinished business. Why? Not long after his arrest, Christian entered a plea of not guilty to the charge of first degree murder. And from there, the case was delayed multiple times due to COVID. The trial finally began on May 17th, 2021, and it became very clear that it was not going to be straightforward. For one, part of Christian's original confession, the one that ended up leading the investigators to Molly's body, was not allowed in court. Officers hadn't fully read him his Miranda rights before the initial interview, so because of that, the judge ruled that that portion of the interrogation was inadmissible. However, the second half of the interview, which was recorded after proper procedures

• 49:58Annie Elise?

  were followed, was still permitted. And in that part, Christian admitted to following Molly, blacking out, realizing that her body was in his trunk. But by the time the trial started, Christian had recanted that version of events entirely. His defense team really was working hard to portray him as this very innocent, hardworking family man. They said that there wasn't enough evidence to tie him to this crime, that there was also unknown DNA found in his trunk, which could be linked to the real killer. They also said that the police never even found a murder weapon that could link Christian to this crime. So, so much circumstantial evidence. They also said that while Christian did not kill Molly, he did know who did.

• 50:41Annie Elise?

  He offered a completely different explanation that caught almost everyone completely off guard. Christian took the stand in his own defense, which I have to say is pretty rare in a case like this. And he testified through a Spanish interpreter, sharing a story that nobody had heard before. According to Christian, he was at home at his trailer on the farm property on the evening of July 18th. That's when two masked men, one tall and one short, broke in. One of them had a gun, the other one had a knife. He said they forced him into his own car and they told him to drive all around town. He said that they crouched really low in his backseat, hidden from view as He drove all through Brooklyn. Then, when they saw Molly, they directed him to circle her.

• 51:26Annie Elise?

  They ordered him to drive past her several times before finally pulling up alongside on a gravel road that she had just run past and parking the car. Then Christian claimed one of the men got out of his car, the one with the knife. He was gone for about 10 to 12 minutes. When the man returned, he told Christian to keep driving. Eventually, they pulled over again, a little ways up the road. He says the men got out, opened the trunk, placed something heavy inside of it, and then instructed him to drive to a cornfield. Then, once they were there, he said they just took off and ran off into the night. So that's when Christian said he opened up the trunk and he discovered Molly, barely alive, bleeding from her head and her neck. He claimed he was too scared to help her and he was too scared to call anyone, afraid

• 52:10Annie Elise?

  of what the men might do to his ex-girlfriend or to his young daughter. So he just decided to carry Molly into the field, laid her down, covered her with cornstalks. He even told the court, quote, "She was very heavy. I picked her up and I put her in the cornfield. I didn't want her to be too exposed to the sun." And then, he says, he just drove off. He didn't tell anyone about what had happened. And he says he never saw the two men ever again. He had no idea who they were. But one detail really stood out. Remember when the man with the knife had first gotten out of the car by that gravel road? Well, Christian had waited in the car with the other man, the one who had the gun and was still in the backseat.

• 52:52Annie Elise?

  And he said that he heard this other man mutter something to himself. And he claimed it sounded like he was saying, "Come on, Jack." And this comment stood out, especially because Molly's boyfriend Dalton's last name was Jack.

• 53:13Speaker 19

  Having lots of choices sounds like it would be great. Who doesn't want more flavors of ice cream? It turns out, the answer is us. Too many choices can make us anxious, overwhelmed. I'm Shankar Vedantam, host of the Hidden Brain Podcast and YouTube channel. Each week, Hidden Brain brings you fascinating, science-backed insights about human behavior. So the next time you have to choose, choose Hidden Brain on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or hiddenbrain.org.

• 53:51Annie Elise?

  Now, this was the first time that anyone had heard this version of events. It hadn't been brought up during Christian's hours of questioning with the police, not when he led them to her body, never in between any of that, never. It was just a complete pivot. And the timing, of course, raised a lot of questions. So the defense leaned hard into this new narrative. They argued that Christian had been coerced during the interrogation, pointing out, too, that he had been questioned for 11 hours and was visibly exhausted, even was falling asleep during parts of the interview. They played the footage of him sleeping in the court, hoping that it would show that his confession was not as reliable as it seemed. They also brought up the language barrier. Now, Officer Pamela Romero was one of the few Spanish-speaking officers involved, and she had led the interview.

• 54:37Annie Elise?

  But the defense questioned her experience level, suggesting that a more seasoned investigator might have handled it a little bit differently. At the same time, the defense tried to plant doubt by pointing fingers elsewhere. They argued that the police just had tunnel vision, that once Christian became a suspect, they didn't even take the time to seriously investigate other leads. They also brought up Dalton Jack again, Molly's boyfriend, calling attention to his past cheating, his temper, the inconsistencies in his statements to the police. They also questioned him on the stand, asking why he lied about things like cheating, why he lied about his timeline that night, all to which Dalton again said he felt like it wasn't important to the investigation right away. They also pointed out that Dalton had once mentioned

• 55:21Annie Elise?

  seeing a suspicious man dressed in black with baggy pants and a chain walking around Brooklyn around the time Molly went missing. That tip never led anywhere, and the defense used it to argue that maybe investigators had moved on to Christian too quickly, just purposefully ignoring all of these other possibilities so that they could blame everything on Christian. They even called attention to others who lived near the area where Molly's body was found, suggesting that more people should have been questioned, saying someone lived near the field where Molly was found, and maybe they had something to do with her death. But the prosecution's case? It was simple. They told the jury that evidence pointed in one direction and one

• 56:01Annie Elise?

  direction only: Christian Rivera. They laid out all of the facts. Molly's blood was found in the trunk of his car, surveillance footage showed a black Chevy Malibu repeatedly circling the area where Molly was last seen, the same vehicle was eventually traced back directly to Christian, and his story had changed more than once. And most importantly, he was the one who led investigators straight to Molly's body. And during an interview, he even said that he was the only person who could lead them to Molly. So to the prosecution? That was more than enough. They emphasized that from the very start of the investigation, Christian was the only suspect. There was no physical evidence tying anyone else to

• 56:44Annie Elise?

  this crime. No one else knew where her body was. And while the defense tried to suggest alternative theories, the state pushed back hard, calling all of those stories just distractions with no real backing. So after days of emotional testimony, expert analysis, and conflicting stories, the case was handed over to the jury. The jury consisted of five women and seven men, and they deliberated for more than seven hours across two days. And then finally, on May 28th, 2021, the jury returned with a unanimous verdict: guilty of first degree murder. Christian showed very little reaction when that decision was read. There was no outburst, no emotion, just a quiet acceptance of what was now a reality. And

• 57:28Annie Elise?

  when the guilty verdict was read, it brought a wave of relief to Molly's family. It didn't bring her back, and it didn't erase the pain, obviously, but it gave them something that they had been waiting for: justice. And after nearly three years of unanswered questions, the person responsible for her death was finally being held accountable. In Brooklyn, people gathered around live streams and news alerts just watching this verdict come in live, and nearly everyone in town had known Molly or her family in some way. So when this verdict was announced, there were tears, quiet nods of affirmation, even some applause. It was a shared moment of closure in a case that had rocked the This entire community.

• 58:08Annie Elise?

  Then, on August 30th, 2021, Christian returned to the courtroom for sentencing. The room was packed, filled with Molly's friends, family, relatives, community members, everyone who had supported the family every step of the way. And Christian was given the opportunity to speak before his sentence was handed down, but he declined. Instead, Molly's mother, Laura, delivered a victim impact statement, and it was read aloud by a representative from the Attorney General's office. She talked about the moment that she found out Molly's body had been discovered and how she raced to tell her family before the media could break the news to them. She also recalled the difficulty of telling Molly's grandmother, who had still been holding out hope that her granddaughter was alive. Laura also spoke about the ripple effect that this tragedy has had, not just on their

• 58:53Annie Elise?

  family, but on others. Even Christian's employer, she said, has now faced threats over this, and a family close to him had been forced to move away. And then she turned her words directly toward Christian, asking him to imagine how he would feel if someone did this to his own family, saying, "I do hope one day your daughter, Paulina, has an opportunity to become a mother, but how will she ever explain to her children who their grandfather is? This is the legacy that you left behind for your only child."

• 59:25Speaker 20

  Mr. Rivera, I come here today not because I feel the need to address you. However, I come here to give a voice to our daughter, granddaughter, sister, girlfriend, niece, cousin, and friend, Molly Cecilia Tibbetts. Molly was a young woman who simply wanted to go for a quiet run on the evening of July 18th, and you chose to violently and statistically end that life. I want to address the chain of events you set off on the morning of August 18th, after

• 1:00:08Speaker 20

  you led authorities to Molly's remains in a cornfield.

• 1:00:14Speaker 20

  Do you know what it's like, Mr. Rivera, to be woken up by your youngest son Scott telling you the sheriff needs to talk to us? Scott and I stood in the entrance of our home, where sheriffs Tom Kriegel and Matt Mushman stood with tears in their eyes. It took them a minute to find the words to say. We hoped for different results. However, we found Molly's remains today. I thanked them for their service and they left, because there was still a lot of work to be done. I led Scott, whose eyes were brimming with tears, to the living room and sat him down on the couch.

• 1:00:58Speaker 20

  "Scott, I said, I am so sorry. I'm gonna call Aunt Billy over to the house to be with you, because Mom has a lot of work to do." Next, I needed to tell my son Jake. Jake was in his apartment in Iowa City, and I did not want him to hear that his sister was not coming home on the news. Knowing my sister Kim was headed to Iowa City for work, I called her and said, "Kim? They found Molly's remains this morning, and I need you to pick Jake up and bring him home." It was a race against the clock to notify all the people who cared so deeply for Molly

• 1:01:42Speaker 20

  that she was not coming home. It was very important to notify the people who cared deeply about Molly, so they did not hear this on the news. Imagine what it's like to call Molly's father, Rob, who resides in Fresno, California, and say, "Rob, I am so sorry to have to tell you this, but they found Molly's remains this morning, and I need you to come back to Iowa." Can you imagine, Mr. Rivera, as a father, having Paulina's mother taken away from you and to have to tell your daughter that she will never come home?

• 1:02:24Speaker 20

  However, the most difficult person to tell was Molly's grandmother and my mother, Judy Calderwood. Judy truly believed her granddaughter would be found alive because who could harm such a beautiful, vibrant, young woman so full of life and promise? Who could harm Judy's precious granddaughter, let alone brutally murder her and dump her body in a cornfield? This was heartbreaking news that needed to be delivered in person. I entered my mother's home and she greeted me with a big smile and asked if I wanted a cup of coffee.

• 1:03:08Speaker 20

  There certainly was no easy way to tell her the news, however, it had to be done before her phone started ringing with loved ones sending their condolences. I very quietly and softly said, "Mom, I have some bad news. They found Molly's body this morning, but we know where she is now." Judy Calderwood's unwavering faith had been brutally shattered by your senseless act of violence. Can you imagine, Mr. Rivera, sitting across the table from your madre and telling her Paulina is never coming home?

• 1:03:49Speaker 20

  I am aware that you know Ulysses Felix Sandoval and his family. Uly, as I call him, was a classmate and a friend of my son Scott. Do you know Uly was at the press conference where authorities announced that you, Christian Mahana Rivera, had been charged with the murder of Mollie Tibbetts? Uly immediately started crying, but knew that he needed to call his madre before she heard it on the news. The Felix Sandoval family was devastated. How could this young man they fed and fostered be responsible for such a heinous crime?

• 1:04:32Speaker 20

  Do you know, Mr. Rivera, that Uly's parents had to leave Brooklyn because they were receiving death threats?

• 1:04:40Speaker 20

  Do you know Yuli lived in our home for his last year of high school so he could finish his senior year and play sports? However, Yuli's parents did not get to experience his senior year with him because of your senseless act. Because of your act, your then employer, Craig Lane, lost all his employees because those workers were afraid of what would happen to them. Because of your act, Dalton Jack will never get to give Molly the engagement ring he had purchased for her. Because of your act, Molly's father, Rob, will never get to walk his only daughter down the aisle.

• 1:05:24Speaker 20

  Because of your act, Mr. Rivera, I will never get to see my daughter become a mother. I do hope one day Paulina has the opportunity to become a mother, but how will she ever explain to her children who their grandfather is? This is the legacy you left behind for your only child, Mr. Rivera. I don't know whose situation is worse.

• 1:05:53Annie Elise?

  The judge then handed down the sentence: "Life in prison without the possibility of parole." It was the only sentence available for first-degree murder in Iowa. And for many people in Brooklyn and across the country, the guilty verdict and the sentencing felt like the end of a very long and painful chapter. Molly's family could finally breathe at least a little bit, but the case was not over. Christian's defense team began filing all sorts of motions in hopes of overturning the conviction, or in the hopes of getting a new trial. And on July 8th, 2021, just weeks after the jury's decision, they submitted a motion for a new trial, and also a motion asking the court to cancel the guilty verdict altogether. Their argument?

• 1:06:35Annie Elise?

  Well, they said that new evidence had come to light that could possibly exonerate Christian. A few days later, on July 13th, the defense asked the court to force the state to turn over more investigative records and information. They said that they had been Receiving tips that pointed toward other possible suspects. And one of those tips came from a prison inmate who claimed another inmate had confessed to killing Molly. According to this story, the person who confessed, someone named Gavin Jones, claimed that he and another man had carried out the murder as part of a plan that was orchestrated by a man involved in sex trafficking. The defense claimed that Gavin was tied to a local man named James Low and that they

• 1:07:18Annie Elise?

  tried to link Molly's case to the disappearance of Xavier Harrelson, an 11-year-old boy who had gone missing from the same county three years after Molly. They asked the court for access to any investigations involving James, Gavin, or other individuals connected to this alleged trafficking ring in or around the county. They argued that without this information, they couldn't fully explore other potential suspects, and therefore, they couldn't guarantee that Christian had received a fair trial. But the state, of course, pushed back. They accused the defense of now going on a fishing expedition, trying to unearth anything that might poke a hole in the case, even if it wasn't relevant. The judge ultimately ruled that the defense's requests were too far abroad and lacked a direct connection to Molly's case.

• 1:08:03Annie Elise?

  But still, the hearing for a new trial moved forward. And in that request, the defense laid out several arguments. Most importantly, they said that the jury was given an incorrect instruction about what reasonable doubt actually meant. They criticized the investigation, too, pointing to the lack of a murder weapon, also the absence of a clear motive, and the fact that much of the case had relied on a confession that had been extracted under duress and sleep deprivation. They also claimed that two people, who didn't know each other, both claimed to have heard someone else confess to Molly's murder. But in the end, the judge wasn't convinced. The court denied the motion for a new trial, stating that the evidence presented at trial, especially that confession, and Molly's blood in the trunk, and the location of her

• 1:08:48Annie Elise?

  body, was all overwhelming. So as of now, Christian remains incarcerated, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. But most importantly, Molly's family Still learning how to live with the weight of losing her. And the town of Brooklyn continues to feel the absence of a young woman who had so much more of her life ahead of her. But Molly has not been forgotten, I mean, far from it. Those teal ribbons still are hanging from trees, lamp posts, everywhere throughout Brooklyn. "Justice for Molly" signs are also still displayed in windows and her initials are painted on the track at her former high school. They even erected a statue in her name and started a memorial fund for child psychiatry at the University of Iowa, and this is in Molly's name.

• 1:09:31Annie Elise?

  Each year, the town also holds a five and a half mile run that goes along her same route that she would take on those evening jogs. It's a way to remember her, not by the violence that ended her life, but by the joy and the energy that she brought to the world, doing something that she loved too. Jogging was one of her favorite things to do, which I think that's such a positive way to remember her by. Now, I am curious what you think about this case. What do you think the motive was? The fact that the bottom half of her clothing had been removed does make me think that there was some sort of sexual assault motivation there. Maybe it never came to fruition because, as we know, they never found sperm or anything like that, but maybe that was the goal, but then he didn't want to do that postmortem

• 1:10:14Annie Elise?

  and he attacked her too hard that it killed her. Maybe he changed his mind, but why else would she be undressed from the waist down? Or do you think this was just a thrill kill? He was stalking his prey and then decided to pounce? What do you think the motivation was here? Because remember, he had absolutely no connection to Molly. She was a complete random on the street. So, curious to know your thoughts. All right, guys, now before we go, one last quick reminder. The merch shop is closing today at 5:00 PM Pacific time, so now's the chance to get those final orders in. It will not open back up. There will not be another time to grab it until next year, so now's the time. Any orders for yourself, for the holidays, the sweatshirts, the lounge sets, whatever

• 1:10:58Annie Elise?

  it is you want, at AnnieElise.com. All right. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to today's episode. I really appreciate it. I would love it if you would share this podcast with your friends and your group chat, on your social media, wherever it is, because it's a free way to support the podcast and get some other true crime besties talking and listening with us. All right. Thank you so much. And I will be back with you on Thursday with headline highlights where we are talking through everything happening this week in the true crime world. All right. Until the next one. Be nice. Don't kill anyone. Stay safe. If you go for a run, just watch your back. Maybe only have one AirPod in. Don't listen to music and fully tune it out. Just be aware of your surroundings. All right. Thanks again and take care. Bye.

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