Suspect in Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts' slaying takes the stand, blames 2 masked men for murder

The man on trial for the 2018 abduction and stabbing death of a University of Iowa student claimed for the first time Wednesday that two masked men were responsible for the crime but forced him to take part at gunpoint.

In a surprise development, the defense called Cristhian Bahena Rivera as a witness at his first-degree murder trial. He admitted that his black car was the one seen on surveillance video circling Mollie Tibbetts while she was jogging in Brooklyn, Iowa, on July 18, 2018. He also acknowledged that she ended up in his car's trunk, that he hid her body in a cornfield and that he told investigators where to find it a month later. But the farm laborer presented a far different narrative about what happened than prosecutors did, denying that he was responsible for the stab wounds to Tibbetts' head, neck and chest that caused her death.