An officer has testified that the man accused of killing college student Mollie Tibbetts in 2018 led investigators to the field where her body was found. Pamela Romero was an Iowa City police officer two years ago who interviewed suspect Cristhian Bahena Rivera.
“He showed me the corn field and he goes: ‘This is the corn field where I came, took her out of the trunk, carried her on my shoulder, went inside the corn field, dropped her on the ground, covered her with leaves and I left right away,'” she testified.
Romero said during an 11 hour police interview, Rivera admitted chasing Tibbetts and fighting with her when she threatened to call the police. She said Rivera told her he couldn’t remember how he killed Tibbetts.
“The next thing that he told me was that he remembered him driving and looking down into his legs and finding the ear buds that belonged to Mollie,” she testified, “and that is when he remembered that he had Mollie in the back of his vehicle, in the trunk.”
Based on the questions Bahena Rivera’s attorneys are asking witnesses, it appears they plan to argue Rivera was sleep deprived and coerced into making a confession.
(Reporting by Iowa Public Radio’s Kate Payne)