Mollie's Murder

0:08 Dispreshing business part mister. On May eighth, nineteen ninety eight, a family in San Francisco, California, welcomed their third child into the world and became complete. This was the Tibbitts family, and Rob and Laura Tibbitts now had two sons and a little baby girl, a girl who'd grow up to be warm and bubbly, a light in all of their lives. Mollie Cecilia Tibbets was fast friends with everyone she met. She was kind, loved her family and her friends, but maybe most of all, she was very funny.

1:11 Molly often made the people around her laugh with her sense of humor, and that drew people to her all the time. But her second grade in school was a time of great change for Molly. First, her parents got a divorce, and then Molly, her two older brothers, and her mother moved from the bustling, lively San Francisco to Brooklyn, Iowa. Tram cars and vivid culture were replaced by corn fields and a tightly knit community. But it was the community where Laura Tibbets had grown up and it seemed to suit her daughter as well. The distance separated Rob from his children, but he made every effort to stay in touch and see them as often as he could while his children settled into the quiet and sleepy life Brooklyn had to offer. They were only around fourteen hundred people living in Brooklyn, making it one of those places where everyone knows everyone. But it was when Molly was a junior in high school that she came across a new face. His name was Dalton Jack, a senior in the same high school that Molly was in, and he was sitting with one of his friends in his truck. When Molly and one of her friends approached, the four teenagers met. Molly's sense of humor broke the ice between her and Dalton, and the next thing anyone knew was that Molly and Dalton were inseparable. Anyone looking at them would know that they shared a love and connection that only seems to happen in the movies. But their relationship would be tested when Molly graduated high school and began her journey to college.

2:44 She enrolled at the University of Iowa to study psychology, but by then Dalton was a few years ahead of her. After graduating high school, he'd chosen to join the workforce and had found a job in construction at a local company. This meant that Dalton was staying in Brooklyn, but it also meant a little bit more than that. Sometimes Dalton would be in town, sometimes he'd be across the state on another job site. Basically, Dalton had to go where their work was, and very few opportunities put him in the same place as his girlfriend. To Molly. Where other high school sweethearts would have called it quits, Molly and Dalton held strong. The couple made every effort to see each other, oftentimes on the weekends and sometimes during the weekdays, whenever they could make it work. That was why when Molly returned home from the semester in the summer of twenty eighteen, she was coming home not only to her family, but to Dalton as well. For those precious warm summer months, it looked like the only time they'd missed spinning together would be when Dalton had to work, and this young couple made the most of it.

3:52 When Molly wasn't with Dalton, she was with her family or out on the town. The very small town. To keep her heelf busy during the day and to earn a little extra money, Molly found work at a local children's daycare, and managed to squeeze in a few hours of studying into her evenings to make sure she was ahead when she got back to school that fall. But something else Molly almost always managed to find time for was an evening run. The days were usually too hot and the sun too strong to have won during the day, but once the sun started to go down for the evening, Molly would put on her shoes and would be often seen running around town and enjoying herself. That's why on the evening of July eighteenth, no one was really surprised to see the twenty year old out and about in her running gear. Dalton was out of town for work that evening, and Molly had been staying at his house to dog sit and to study. She left his home around seven and headed east into town on her usual evening run. Neighbors remembered seeing her, and security cameras picked up a portion of her run, but they missed a very crucial part. There was no footage of Molly returning home. The next day, Molly's supervisor from the daycare called Dalton to ask where Molly was and to see if he knew why she was late, but Dalton had been working out of town and he didn't have any answers. Calls to Molly's phone went unanswered, and her social media accounts remained eerily quiet,

5:23 and Molly was nowhere to be found. By that evening, her family, Dalton, and the local police had begun a town wide search for Molly, leaving Missing Persons posters behind them wherever they went. Investigators managed to piece together that Molly had headed east during her run, but not much else. They set up a tip line, spread her poster, and raised awareness of her disappearance through several states in the Midwest, and they tried to pin her location through the fit bit Molly often wore. All leads came to a dead end. In a desperate attempt to help, the community came together and raised over three hundred and sixty six thousand dollars as a reward through their local Crime Stoppers branch, a reward that would sadly go unclaimed. Instead, a neighbor's security camera caught some disturbing footage that shows a small and blurry figure running down a street at approximately the right time and direction for that person to have been Molly Tibbets but it also shows something else. A black car can be seen first heading away from Molly's direction, then somewhere off camera, that car turns around and heads towards the running figure. With Brooklyn being the small community that it is, it didn't take long to track down the owner of that car, a man by the name of John Budd. John first claimed to know nothing about Molly or her disappearance, but the investigators dug deeper and uncovered a series

6:54 of startling truths. The first lie to be overturned was John Budd's identity. He was, in fact Christian Rivera, a twenty four year old immigrant from Mexico in the country illegally who was currently working on a farm owned by a Republican politician. After hours of interrogation, Christian began to tell on himself. After first saying he knew nothing about Molly's disappearance, he then confessed to having seen her running down the road. He'd approached Molly's car, asked to talk to her a few times, and then began driving beside her in an attempt to get rid of him. Molly had taken out her phone and threatened to call the police. Christian then claimed that in a fit of panic brought on by the thought of being caught by the police, he'd attacked Molly, killed her, and hidden her body in a cornfield, a cornfield that he then led the police to and brought the search for Molly to a bitter end.

7:51 Partially hidden under the leaves were the decomposing remains of a young woman. She'd been stabbed multiple times in the chest, neck, and face, and she was missing her shorts and underwear. DNA analysis confirmed everyone's worst suspicions, and Molly's missing person's case was changed to a homicide. It looked like an open and shutcase. Rarely does anyone confess to murder, take the authorities to their victim's remains, and get away with it. But this case's journey to court would take longer than anyone expected. Changes in his legal counsel, moving the case out of the county, and a backed up court system brought on by the pandemic bought Christian a few more years, But finally, in twenty twenty one, he faced the judge. To everyone's complete surprise, he pleaded not guilty. At court, Christian challenged his own confession and claimed that he'd been tricked into giving it. His defense came in with a sturdier rebuttal and proved that Christian had not been read his miranda rights correctly, making his con fashion inadmissible in court. This was a hit to the prosecution, but by then they had already collected forensic evidence that put Molly's blood in the trunk of Christian's car. But it was Christian himself who sealed his own fate yet again.

9:16 Taking to the stand, Christian claimed that he'd been attacked by a group of men that day. He said that they'd had knives and forced themselves into his car. They'd been the ones to make him stop alongside Molly as she was running that day, and they'd been the ones to attack and kill her. They'd then forced Christian to drive out to that cornfield and hide Molly's body, and they'd threatened Christian's daughter to make sure that he kept silent about the whole thing. It was safe to say that there were very few people who believed his new story, his new version of events, and Christian was sentenced to life in prison without parole. But instead of bringing Molly's family and the community of Brooklyn peace, media and political coverage of this case continued to divide the country. One side of the fence, including names like Donald Trump, used Molly's tragic story to double down on the need for stricter immigration policies. In a speech, the former president said, a person came in from Mexico illegally and killed her. We need the wall, We need our immigration laws changed, we need our border laws changed. The other side argued that Molly's murder was being used to spread racism and target immigrants. This was a sentiment that Molly's own father, Rob shared publicly. In response to Trump's speech, Rob replied, quote, the Hispanic community are Iowans. They have the same values as Iowans. As far as I'm concerned, They're Iowans with better food.

10:46 Molly, he said, would have agreed with him, and so he stood up against the people who'd appropriate Molly's soul in advancing views she believed were profoundly racist. But somewhere beneath the politicization of Mali case lies a family steal reeling from the loss, and a young woman whose life was unjustly and unceremoniously cut short. Maybe that's where the focus of her story should have always stayed.

11:26 That's ten Minute Murder for today brief and bingeable true crime. I'm Joe the host, and thank you so much for taking the time to listen. If you're brand new to this podcast, make sure you hit subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts, probably where you're listening right now. Follow on social media Facebook, Instagram, and also on TikTok for as long as as long as that's around. My guess it's gonna stick around. No one asked me, but I'm telling you, I'm pretty sure that TikTok is going to be with us. There's gonna be some drama, but I think it's here to stay, So go ahead and follow me on TikTok. If you have any questions about where to find things other places to listen, you can go to the website ten minute Murder dot com and you can also reach out to me Joe at ten minute Murder dot com is my email. You can ask me any question you want, tell me anything you need to tell me, or like Amy and tennessee here, ask me a question about allergies. Hello, Joe, you mentioned in a recent episode that you were dealing with allergies and you sounded stuffy, but the next episode you sounded normal. I have allergies too, So what was the secret? How did you get better? Amy?

12:35 And Tennessee and Amy, I'll tell you it's not a secret. I took some medicine. I took Clarendon, and that clears me up. I'm one of those weirdos that doesn't like to take things every single day unless I absolutely have to. Now, I know that you should probably take it when you have allergies like I do. You should probably take it daily, and they'd let it build up in your system and you'll be fine. I just don't like doing that. But Clarendon helps, and I take it, and I'm fine. Now. If I don't take it, I'm back to riding the struggle bus. But that's my secret. And thank you for emailing. That's going to do it. That is your episode for today. Thank you so much for listening. Take care,