A first-degree murder charge was filed on Tuesday against an undocumented immigrant in the case of missing Iowa jogger Mollie Tibbetts, state officials said Tuesday.
The suspect, 24-year-old Christian Rivera, lives in the rural area where the college student vanished one month ago, according to Rick Rahn of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.
A body recovered Tuesday morning in a farm field is believed to be Tibbetts, Rahn said, but the identity has not yet been confirmed.
A critical break in the case was finding a local person with security cameras showing Tibbetts jogging, Rahn said.
“Through that we were able to identify a vehicle that we believed belonged to Mr. Rivera,” Rahn said. “From that we were able to track his patterns and the routes that he took. We were also able to find Mollie running on this video and we were able to determine that he was one of the last ones to have seen Mollie running.”
Rivera led authorities to Tibbetts’ body, according to Rahn.
Tibbetts, a 20-year-old rising sophomore at the University of Iowa, disappeared the evening of July 18 while jogging in the rural farming town of Brooklyn, a close-knit community of about 1,500 residents.
The disappearance was completely out of character for her, Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of field operations for the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigations, said at a news conference last week. The state agency formed a task force with the FBI and the Poweshiek County Sheriff’s Office to investigate.
Laura Calderwood, Tibbetts’ mother, told ABC News last month there are “no words to describe how you feel when you don’t know where or how your child is,” calling it “excruciating.”
One of Tibbetts’ brothers, Scott Tibbetts, told ABC News last month he believed his sister was “fighting her best to get back home.”
“I think the best thing, personally, to hang onto hope is … she’s a better fighter than anyone I know,” he said. “So whatever situation she’s in, it’s not like she’s going to sit there and give up.”
