IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The man on trial for the 2018 abduction and stabbing death of a University of Iowa student is testifying in his own defense, claiming two masked men were responsible for the crime but forced him to take part.
The defense called Cristhian Bahena Rivera to the witness stand at his first-degree murder trial Wednesday morning. He admitted that his black car was the one seen on surveillance video circling Mollie Tibbetts while she ran in Brooklyn, Iowa on July 18, 2018, that she ended up in its trunk and that he hid her body in a cornfield. But the farm worker laid out a far different narrative about what happened, denying that he was responsible for stabbing her to death.