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Mollie Tibbetts murder suspect 'was not who he said he was,' employer says

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The Mexican immigrant accused of murdering University of Iowa 
student Mollie Tibbetts used another person's name and 
identification to get a job on a family farm owned by a 
prominent Iowa Republican, the owners of the business said 
Wednesday.

The revelation came after murder suspect Cristhian Bahena Rivera 
made his first court appearance and was ordered held on $5 
million cash bond.

Molly Tibbetts murder suspect makes first court appearance
AUG.22.201802:47

"What we learned in the last 24 hours was that our employee was 
not who he said he was," Dane Lang told reporters gathered at 
Yarrabee Farms in Brooklyn, Iowa.

Lang co-owns the farm with his father, Craig Lang, who is a 
former GOP candidate for the state’s agriculture secretary. He 
said he knows Rivera by a different name — which he declined to 
divulge.

"It was not Cristhian," Lang said.

Lang said that when Rivera applied for a job four years ago at 
the farm, he produced an Iowa state ID and a Social Security 
card that they checked out by calling the Social Security 
administration — not the government-run E-Verify system as they 
had said in an earlier statement.

After it was revealed that they had employed an undocumented 
worker, Lang said they received more than 100 hostile messages, 
including death threats and "threats to kill my dog."

Rivera, 24, did not enter a plea during his brief appearance in 
the Poweshiek County courthouse one day after he was charged 
with first-degree murder in connection with the death of the 20-
year-old Tibbetts.

Wearing what appeared to be a bulletproof vest underneath his 
black- and white-striped prison outfit, as well as headphones to 
hear a Spanish-language interpreter, Rivera nodded his head and 
answered "Si" when asked if he understood the purpose of the 
hearing.

The judge then denied a motion by Rivera's defense attorney, 
Allan Richards, for a gag order — and to bar the media from 
proceedings. In a court document, Richards said comments about 
the case by President Donald Trump would "poison the entire 
possible pool of jury members."

Mollie Tibbetts suspect not previously known to local police, 
says Iowa special agent
AUG.22.201802:17

"The government has weighed in at the highest levels with a 
predisposition that my client is guilty," he said.

Rivera, who did not enter a plea, faces life in prison without 
parole if convicted of killing Tibbetts. Her body was found 
Tuesday in a field on a farm east of her Brooklyn, Iowa, 
hometown.

Richards told the court that Rivera was a minor when he moved to 
Iowa from Mexico.

In a court filing from Richards seeking a gag order in the case, 
Richards said that the government has been promoting the idea 
that Rivera is in the country illegally — Trump mentioned the 
case at Tuesday’s rally in West Virginia — and that "the 
Government's position of promotion of this idea will prevent any 
notion of Cristhian's right to a fair trial."

"Sad and Sorry Trump has weighed in on this matter in national 
media which will poison the entire possible pool of jury 
members," Richards wrote in the court document. The document 
appears to rely on an earlier statement from Craig Lang that the 
farm had verified Rivera was in the Iowa legally — but that was 
made before the Wednesday afternoon news conference.

In the earlier statement, the Lang brothers had said Rivera was 
an "employee in good standing."

"This individual has worked at our farms for four years, was 
vetted through the government’s E-Verify system," it said. "On 
Monday, the authorities visited our farm and talked to our 
employees. We have cooperated fully with their investigation."

Investigators used surveillance video to track down Rivera, who 
was seen following Tibbetts in his car as she jogged on a rural 
road.

"I can’t speak about the motive. I can just tell you that it 
seemed that he followed her, seemed to be drawn to her on that 
particular day, for whatever reason he chose to abduct her," DCI 
Special Agent Rick Rahn told reporters at a news conference on 
Tuesday.

"He told us he had seen Mollie in the past and on that 
particular day, July 18, 2018, he happened to see her, he was 
drawn to her, and as a result, kind of followed her around a 
little bit and ultimately confronted her," Rahn said. "And ended 
up tackling her and ultimately abducting her."

The case has sparked renewed calls for reforming an immigration 
vetting system that critics say does little to prevent 
undocumented workers from illegally getting jobs in the U.S.

E-Verify is run by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration 
Services, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. 
It's described on the site as a voluntary "web-based system that 
allows enrolled employers to confirm the eligibility of their 
employees to work in the United States" by matching information 
provided by workers on the I-9 form against Social Security and 
Department of Homeland Security records.

But critics like Alex Nowrasteh of the libertarian-leaning Cato 
Institute dismissed the E-Verify system as a "total joke" that 
enables undocumented immigrants to get jobs in the United States 
— and enables employers to keep from knowingly hiring them.

E-Verify accepts Social Security cards, passports and other 
documentation as proof of identity — but it relies on employers 
to determine whether the documents submitted by potential 
employees are legit and not borrowed or stolen, he said.

"E-Verify has been sold as this silver bullet solution to our 
immigration problems, but none of its supporters have dealt with 
the systematic inability to weed out illegal immigrants," 
Nowrasteh said in an interview with NBC News. "Cracking down on 
illegal immigration is very expensive and can hurt the economy, 
but politicians have to say they’re doing something about it. E-
Verify is a way for politicians to have their cake and eat it, 
too."

Some states like Iowa have strengthened their E-Verify 
procedures by enrolling in the RIDE program, which enables an 
employer to verify the identity of an applicant who presents an 
Iowa driver’s license or ID card.

But Rivera had neither, said Andrea Henry, a spokeswoman for the 
Iowa Department of Transportation.

Rivera's next court appearance is set for Aug. 31.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mollie-tibbetts-murder-
suspect-ordered-held-5-million-bond-n902941
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Mollie Tibbetts murder suspect 'was not who he said he was,' employer says "But But Sanctuary Cities! Blue Wave! Obama Democrats Murdering Americans!" <criminally-complicit@sfchronicle.com> - 2018-11-19 14:34 +0100

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