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BONUS: Evidence support for new claims in Mollie Tibbetts murder? · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

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  Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories with
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  Speaker 1: Nancy Grace. I'm executive producer Jackie Howard. Christian Behina Rivera,
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  Speaker 1: twenty seventy year old Mexican national who came to the
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  Speaker 1: US illegally, has been convicted of murdering twenty year old
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  Speaker 1: Molly Tibbots. Since his conviction, Behina Rivera's attorneys contend that
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  Speaker 1: two new witnesses have come forward blaming another man for
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  Speaker 1: tibbots murder. They have put forth the theory that Tibbots
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  Speaker 1: was allegedly kidnapped into a sex trafficking ring. Taken listen
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  Speaker 1: to our friends at ABC. He testified that on the
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  Speaker 1: day the twenty year old was killed, he got out
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  Speaker 1: of the shower to find two strangers in his living room.
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  Speaker 1: Behina Rivera, who speaks little English, says the men wanted
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  Speaker 1: him to drive them in his car, one man armed
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  Speaker 1: with a gun, the other with a knife. At Lasia,
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  Speaker 1: I knpped onto Polly that I shouldn't do anything stupid
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  Speaker 1: and everything was going to be okay. As they drove,
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  Speaker 1: Behina Rivera says they passed Tibbots running three to four times.
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  Speaker 1: He claims the men then asked him to turn the
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  Speaker 1: car around, and one of the men got out, heading
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  Speaker 1: towards Tibbets, disappearing for about twelve minutes. Behina Rivera testified
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  Speaker 1: that something was later put inside the trunk of the car.
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  Speaker 1: He says he then drove the men to a house
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  Speaker 1: next to a cornfield and was told that if he
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  Speaker 1: called police, his ex girlfriend and daughter would be hurt.
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  Speaker 1: Million because I remember that they said that if I
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  Speaker 1: will say something, they were going to do something to
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  Speaker 1: my family, my ex girlfriend, my daughter. Behina Rivera testified
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  Speaker 1: that once the men were gone, he opened the trunk
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  Speaker 1: and found Tibbets dead. He says he put her body
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  Speaker 1: in the cornfield and decided not to tell police out
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  Speaker 1: of fear. Joining me today, Joseph Scott Morgan for in six,
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  Speaker 1: professor at Jaxsonville State University and author of Blood Beneath
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  Speaker 1: My Feet, Joe, let's look at this case and go
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  Speaker 1: through what these allegations are, because you would think at
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  Speaker 1: the time of the investigations some of these facts would
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  Speaker 1: have come up. So let's start at the beginning. Behina Rivera,
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  Speaker 1: the person who has been convicted of killing Molly Tibbitts
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  Speaker 1: that says two men entered his home and made him
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  Speaker 1: take part in this. What kind of evidence would there
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  Speaker 1: have been for police to have found originally if Behina
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  Speaker 1: Rivera was accurate. You know, you got to think about
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  Speaker 1: this term. He's using the term made. All right, that's
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  Speaker 1: not coerced, that's not invited, that's not even I'm going
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  Speaker 1: to send you an engraved written invitation that's made. That
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  Speaker 1: implies force. That means that you would have had to
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  Speaker 1: have had these individuals that he alleges came in and
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  Speaker 1: took constructive control over his person and forced him and
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  Speaker 1: forced him to engage in this kind of lethal act
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  Speaker 1: that's going on. This this horrible, this horrible event that
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  Speaker 1: you know obviously ends in the death of Molly, and
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  Speaker 1: not just ends in the death of Molly, but also
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  Speaker 1: ends in the seclusion of her body. You know, this
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  Speaker 1: idea that she's going to be put away somewhere. So
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  Speaker 1: back at the scene where they entered, remember he said
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  Speaker 1: they entered his home, Well, it would at least seem
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  Speaker 1: that there would be some maybe evidence of four century
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  Speaker 1: maybe evidence of struggle at his home. You know, many
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  Speaker 1: times when we think about this, we think about people
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  Speaker 1: kicking the doors off the hinges, Maybe there was a
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  Speaker 1: footprint on the door. Maybe the front door knob was
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  Speaker 1: pride loose and they struggled with him once they gotten in. Well, gee,
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  Speaker 1: was there any broken furniture there? Where their footprints on
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  Speaker 1: the floor, where their scuff marks on the floor that
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  Speaker 1: would indicate, say, for instance, that you had a physical
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  Speaker 1: confrontation with these individuals where they're forcing him to leave
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  Speaker 1: his house, leave his domicile, the safety of this environment,
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  Speaker 1: and go with them to perpetrate this crime. So what
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  Speaker 1: would they leave behind? Well, obviously, you know we're going
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  Speaker 1: to be looking at some of the physical evidence I've
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  Speaker 1: just mentioned, but also was there any evidence at his
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  Speaker 1: own home when he's talking about were these two strangers
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  Speaker 1: out of nowhere who were engaging in this forced event?
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  Speaker 1: Did they leave any kind of semblance of DNA? Did
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  Speaker 1: they bleed there was there a forced struggle where it
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  Speaker 1: required or where blood emanated from their body? Or was
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  Speaker 1: there evidence that, say, for instance, there's some kind of
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  Speaker 1: touch DNA that comes about as a result of sluft
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  Speaker 1: dead skin cells. Hey, were there any foreign fingerprints there?
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  Speaker 1: You remember we talked about in forensics thinks like latent prints,
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  Speaker 1: latent means unseen. So I would think that the police,
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  Speaker 1: if they were given this narrative and they would have
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  Speaker 1: gone back, they would have looked at the home. We
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  Speaker 1: have very specific names. Remember keeping mind, it's not just
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  Speaker 1: like he said three strangers. He actually identified these individuals.
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  Speaker 1: Did they go back to his home and dust for
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  Speaker 1: latent prints that match up? All of these people that
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  Speaker 1: are involved in this that allegedly forced him to do this.
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  Speaker 1: They all have criminal records. Guess what that means. That
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  Speaker 1: means that they've got a card on file. They got
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  Speaker 1: a fingerprint card on file. It wouldn't be too hard
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  Speaker 1: in order to validate this if you found that at
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  Speaker 1: the scene, and you know, I would give some credits.
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  Speaker 1: I'd give some credits to him if I thought, in
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  Speaker 1: fact that we found one or maybe two of their
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  Speaker 1: latent prints at the scene. Okay, so we've got two
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  Speaker 1: more stories that come out here. Joe and the Hana
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  Speaker 1: Rivera testified. These men forced him to drive, and they
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  Speaker 1: are in his car and they see Molly and they
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  Speaker 1: take her. So, once again, taking what you just said
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  Speaker 1: about his home, what would we have expected in the car? Oh,
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  Speaker 1: my god, in a case like this, his vehicle is
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  Speaker 1: a rolling crime scene. I mean, you start talking about houses.
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  Speaker 1: You know, you go into a living room and everybody
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  Speaker 1: can identify with this. You go into a living room,
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  Speaker 1: It's kind of why it's spread, right. Even the smallest
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  Speaker 1: apartment's got space in it. Let's think about a car.
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  Speaker 1: Let's think about a four door sedan. We're limited in space.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, you can't get into a just think about this.
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  Speaker 1: You can't get into a vehicle without some portion of
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  Speaker 1: your body touching the interior of that vehicle in multiple spots.
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  Speaker 1: Just think about what it takes just to sit down
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  Speaker 1: in a car. I go through this exercise with my
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  Speaker 1: forensic students. I tell them, look, let's think about what
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  Speaker 1: it takes just to open the door of a car
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  Speaker 1: and then seat yourself. And I teach this, you know,
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  Speaker 1: relative to like Layton prints. You have to open the
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  Speaker 1: door handle, you have to move the door. You're putting
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  Speaker 1: your palm flat on the door. Then you kind of
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  Speaker 1: screwt yourself in. You're just in the seat belt, you're
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  Speaker 1: touching the dashboard. If you're driving, you're touching steer wheel,
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  Speaker 1: you're touching the gearshift, you're touching the keys. So even
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  Speaker 1: if you're a backseat passenger. It's not like you just
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  Speaker 1: PLoP down out of air and you're there and your
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  Speaker 1: backside's touching, nor your feet are touching. All of your
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  Speaker 1: clothing it's touching. Maybe you lean your head back, you
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  Speaker 1: leave hair in there, and all these sorts of things
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  Speaker 1: not to mention if there's a struggle that's ensuing inside
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  Speaker 1: of the vehicle, I gotta tell you, if I've got
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  Speaker 1: a couple of folks that are trying to force me
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  Speaker 1: to do something within this vehicle, I'm fighting back. I
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  Speaker 1: think a lot of people would fight back. So there,
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  Speaker 1: you have the opportunity to shed more skin cells, you
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  Speaker 1: have an opportunity to leave latent prints, you have more
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  Speaker 1: opportunity to perhaps leave some kind of biological sample like
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  Speaker 1: blood or saliva, which are specific biological tie backs to individuals.
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  Speaker 1: And it's a term that we use in forensics. It's
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  Speaker 1: a beautiful term. And the reason is that term is
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  Speaker 1: called individualization of evidence. That means that it is a
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  Speaker 1: specific identifier for particular types of evidence, whether it's fingerprints
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  Speaker 1: you know that are left behind by those fatty lipids
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  Speaker 1: on the tips of our fingers, or if it is
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  Speaker 1: a strand of DNA that we can recover from the
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  Speaker 1: scene either through you know, skin or blood or saliva
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  Speaker 1: or in some cases involving sexual trade, we can have
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  Speaker 1: we can have a siminar fluid that's left behind, so
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  Speaker 1: you've got all these multiple points of contact in there,
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  Speaker 1: and it would be what we refer to as an
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  Speaker 1: evidence rich environment crime stories. With Nancy Grace, what we
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  Speaker 1: have heard from the Hainter Rivera's attorneys is that Molly
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  Speaker 1: Tibbitts was kidnapped and taken for sex trade. According to
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  Speaker 1: now sealed documents held by the defense, it is alleged
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  Speaker 1: that Molly was seen being held captive bounding gag at
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  Speaker 1: a trap house. First of all, what is a trap house.
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  Speaker 1: You begin to think about this term, and it's kind
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  Speaker 1: of a newer term in kind of criminal parlance, street parlance,
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  Speaker 1: if you will. Trap house is roughly the same thing
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  Speaker 1: that the generation before is referred to as a crack house.
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  Speaker 1: And these are abandoned homes where individuals will go into, buy, sell,
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  Speaker 1: or use drugs. It's also a location where prostitutes have
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  Speaker 1: been known to go in and turn tricks, that is,
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  Speaker 1: they service johns and there have sex. It's also locations
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  Speaker 1: where the homeless will kind of go into these locations
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  Speaker 1: and keep in mind their abandoned homes, and they'll set
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  Speaker 1: up little encampments in there. I've actually gone into, you know,
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  Speaker 1: crack houses slash trap houses over the course of my
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  Speaker 1: career as an MME investigator, and it's it's really interesting.
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  Speaker 1: You'll actually see homeless individuals and drug addicts that will
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  Speaker 1: occupy specific areas of the house. They might go into
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  Speaker 1: one big room, but one individual has one corner of
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  Speaker 1: the room, and it's not like a bed, it might
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  Speaker 1: just be like a pile of clothing that's there. You'll
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  Speaker 1: see open candy wrappers and open partially eaten food stuffs
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  Speaker 1: that are everywhere, like canned foods and that sort of thing.
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  Speaker 1: And the other thing you're going to see are used needles,
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  Speaker 1: broken crack pipes, all those sorts of things. And there'll
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  Speaker 1: be a tremendous number of the say, for instance, used
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  Speaker 1: condoms that will be laying about as why as well. Now,
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  Speaker 1: the interesting thing about this is that Rivera stated, if
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  Speaker 1: I remember correctly, that it wasn't that there weren't just
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  Speaker 1: that there wasn't just a trap house in this little town. Now,
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  Speaker 1: keep framed this, this is this is pure American Gothic.
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  Speaker 1: This is a life out in the cornfields of Iowa.
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  Speaker 1: He's saying in a population of well below five thousand
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  Speaker 1: people in this little town. He's saying, there's more than
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  Speaker 1: one trap house in this location, like there's a several
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  Speaker 1: of these places around there where these individuals moved around,
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  Speaker 1: and that she was witnessed to have been inside of
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  Speaker 1: that home per his per his eyewitness. That's he's putting
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  Speaker 1: forward inside that home bound tied up. So what was
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  Speaker 1: she tied up with? Was was she gagged? Does she
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  Speaker 1: have tape over her face? I would expect to maybe
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  Speaker 1: find tape there that could in fact have DNA on it.
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  Speaker 1: I would maybe cut pieces of rope that are going
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  Speaker 1: to reveal tape mark. I mean cut marks where you
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  Speaker 1: can go back and track the rope. And if it's
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  Speaker 1: a trap house, guess what else? That means that you're
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  Speaker 1: attracting other people to it. It's not just one person,
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  Speaker 1: it's not just people that are trafficking in sextuate. You're
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  Speaker 1: going to have other people. You know, if Brooklyn, Iowa,
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  Speaker 1: which is where this was is, you know, is replete
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  Speaker 1: with all of these trap houses, that means that there
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  Speaker 1: are a whole lot of drug dealers, a whole lot
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  Speaker 1: of prostitutes, a whole lot of drug users that are
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  Speaker 1: coming in and out. Somebody else would have seen her there.
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  Speaker 1: It's not just like a one and done thing. The
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  Speaker 1: reason these places are used, the reason they're used is
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  Speaker 1: because they're abandoned homes. Nobody checks in on them. You
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  Speaker 1: don't have a regular occupant that at the end of
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  Speaker 1: the day they pull up in the driveway, that go
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  Speaker 1: in the front door with the key and they live
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  Speaker 1: their life. No, that's not the way it works. There's
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  Speaker 1: generally some kind of entrance to get into the house
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  Speaker 1: that has been jimmied. The door is never secured on
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  Speaker 1: these places. Any Body can come and go as freely
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  Speaker 1: as they want. You're telling me. What you're trying to
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  Speaker 1: tell me is that these individuals are running a sex
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  Speaker 1: trafficking ring in this little town, and they're choosing to
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  Speaker 1: do this in a location that is literally accessible by
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  Speaker 1: the rest of the public. No one else has seen anything,
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  Speaker 1: and this poor girl is bound, potentially gagged, laying there
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  Speaker 1: on the floor waiting for the next vehicle to whisk
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  Speaker 1: her off to God only knows where to sell her.
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  Speaker 1: Into the sex strait. I'm not buying. Okay, Then, according
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  Speaker 1: to these allegations, Molly Tibbots was in this trap house
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  Speaker 1: over a period of time. How is that going to
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  Speaker 1: match up with the fact that we know Molly tibbots
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  Speaker 1: body was put into a cornfield covered with cornstalks and
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  Speaker 1: left there for an extended period of time. How are
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  Speaker 1: we going to know which story is held up by
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  Speaker 1: the evidence? From a basic biology standpoint, this is a
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  Speaker 1: fascinating premise to explore, particularly for anybody that's interested in forensics.
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  Speaker 1: And let me kind of break it down for you.
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  Speaker 1: What Riveria is saying is that she Molly poor slaughtered.
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  Speaker 1: Molly was essentially held captive in this home for a
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  Speaker 1: protracted period of time. Well, I'm going to be kind
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  Speaker 1: of graphic here, I'm gonna tell you something. If she
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  Speaker 1: was held captive, they would have had to have kept
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  Speaker 1: her alive. And if they kept her alive, that would
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  Speaker 1: mean she would have had to have been fed, she
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  Speaker 1: would have had to have been hydrated. Well, what happens
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  Speaker 1: with any person that's fed and hydrated, Well, they have
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  Speaker 1: to evacuate, they have to have a bowel movement, they
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  Speaker 1: have to urinate, Essentially, where's that going to take place, Well,
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  Speaker 1: you don't want her to be seen it where it
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  Speaker 1: would actually have to take place in that house. There's
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  Speaker 1: also gonna be evidence of the sustenance. It's there, you know,
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  Speaker 1: this food and all the stuff they're having to feed
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  Speaker 1: her keep her alive. Remember, she, by his own admission,
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  Speaker 1: is a product. They're trying to get her out so
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  Speaker 1: that they can sell her into into the sex trait,
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  Speaker 1: or you want to keep her healthy at least to
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  Speaker 1: the point where she's viable. That means that there would
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  Speaker 1: be some kind of biological evidence of her presence in
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  Speaker 1: that specific house. The best of my knowledge, there's not.
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  Speaker 1: But when you look at her body, when you look
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  Speaker 1: at her body, that was literally blanketed and cornstalks in
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  Speaker 1: this lush Iowa cornfield, and many people have seen corn
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  Speaker 1: fields very very green. These corn stalks would have been
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  Speaker 1: pushed down on top of her, and this creates it's
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  Speaker 1: already hot in in Iowa anyway during the summertime. Now
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  Speaker 1: you've got her in turn soil, which is just replete
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  Speaker 1: with all kinds of microbial life. Her body is laid
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  Speaker 1: on top of that surface. Then you have decaying vegetable
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  Speaker 1: matter on top of her, and it's almost like her
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  Speaker 1: poor body is literally just kind of cooking in the
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  Speaker 1: sun out there. Her body begins to decompose, and what
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  Speaker 1: the m and what the forensic anthropologist is saying, Remember
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  Speaker 1: there's a forensic anthropologist involved in that case. What does
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  Speaker 1: this mean? That means that her body was to the
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  Speaker 1: point where she had begun to skeleton us. This isn't
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  Speaker 1: a fresh dead person. They actually had a forensic anthropologist
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  Speaker 1: on the stand talking about this. That gives you an
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  Speaker 1: indication how far down this linear timeline Molly's body was
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  Speaker 1: in the process of decomposition. It takes time to do that,
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  Speaker 1: and that's how we can mark this out. So by
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  Speaker 1: the time we get this trajectory scientific trajectory out in time,
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  Speaker 1: remember when they finally found her body, she's well far
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  Speaker 1: gone and it matches up biologically with the time when
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: she was last seen, and you can kind of bracket
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: that by two or three days. She's not in a house,
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  Speaker 1: she's not sequestered somewhere somewhere tied up and gagged and
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  Speaker 1: bound and being fed. No, she has been stabbed to
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: the point where it's like a bloody slaughter and you
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  Speaker 1: know what, the stab wounds that she sustained, even the
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  Speaker 1: forensic pathologists could not say with any great certainty that
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: there was a very specific number. They said it was
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: nine to twelve times. You know what that tells me.
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  Speaker 1: That tells me that she was so brutalized and she
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  Speaker 1: was so decomposed that this perpetrator actually butchered her and
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  Speaker 1: dumped her body and secluded it out there in that cornfield.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: So what we know right now is the allegations laid
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: out by Behaina Rivera's defense attorneys so far has no cooboration.
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  Speaker 1: The men named by the attorneys have denied any involvement.
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  Speaker 1: We wait as justice unfolds. This is Crime Stories with
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Nancy Grace