Key takeaways from opening day of Iowa farmworker charged with Mollie Tibbetts' murder

Key takeaways from opening day of Iowa farmworker charged with Mollie Tibbetts' murder

The trial in a murder case that rocked the American Heartland began on Wednesday with a prosecutor telling an Iowa jury that the evidence will show that farmworker Cristhian Bahena Rivera, a Mexican national, abducted University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts while she was jogging, stabbed her seven to 12 times and dumped her body in a cornfield. In his opening statement to the predominantly white Scott County jury of eight women and seven men, prosecutor Bart Klaver asked the panel to focus on three things: the defendant's car was captured on security video circling the 19-year-old Tibbetts around the time she vanished in 2018, her blood was discovered in the trunk of his vehicle, and his own statements to investigators implicated him. "Ladies and gentlemen, when you examine the evidence together, there can be no other conclusion than the defendant killed Mollie Tibbets," Klaver said. In an unusual move, Bahena Rivera's attorneys deferred giving an opening statement until the state concludes its case.