Blood in suspect's car trunk "matched" slain Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts, DNA analyst testifies

Blood found in the trunk of a farmhand's car was an exact match for a University of Iowa student who was abducted and killed while out for a run in 2018, a DNA analyst told jurors Friday. Tara Scott, a criminalist in the DNA section of Iowa's crime lab, said she analyzed a swab taken from a blood stain found on the trunk seal of Cristhian Bahena Rivera's Chevy Malibu after investigators recovered the body of Mollie Tibbetts.

"The profile I had from Mollie Tibbetts and the profile from that blood matched," Scott testified. "They were exactly the same." Bahena Rivera, 26, is charged with first-degree murder in Tibbetts' stabbing death. Tibbetts, 20, vanished while out running on July 18, 2018, in Brooklyn, Iowa, and investigators recovered her partially naked, decomposing body from a cornfield a month later.