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Mollie's Murder · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:08
  Dispreshing business part mister. On May eighth, nineteen ninety eight, a family
• 0:40
  in San Francisco, California, welcomed their third child into the world and became
• 0:45
  complete. This was the Tibbitts family, and Rob and Laura Tibbitts now had
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  two sons and a little baby girl, a girl who'd grow up to be
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  warm and bubbly, a light in all of their lives. Mollie Cecilia Tibbets
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  was fast friends with everyone she met. She was kind, loved her family
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  and her friends, but maybe most of all, she was very funny.
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  Molly often made the people around her laugh with her sense of humor, and
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  that drew people to her all the time. But her second grade in school
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  was a time of great change for Molly. First, her parents got a
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  divorce, and then Molly, her two older brothers, and her mother moved
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  from the bustling, lively San Francisco to Brooklyn, Iowa. Tram cars and
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  vivid culture were replaced by corn fields and a tightly knit community. But it
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  was the community where Laura Tibbets had grown up and it seemed to suit her
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  daughter as well. The distance separated Rob from his children, but he made
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  every effort to stay in touch and see them as often as he could while
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  his children settled into the quiet and sleepy life Brooklyn had to offer. They
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  were only around fourteen hundred people living in Brooklyn, making it one of those
• 2:02
  places where everyone knows everyone. But it was when Molly was a junior in
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  high school that she came across a new face. His name was Dalton Jack,
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  a senior in the same high school that Molly was in, and he
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  was sitting with one of his friends in his truck. When Molly and one
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  of her friends approached, the four teenagers met. Molly's sense of humor broke
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  the ice between her and Dalton, and the next thing anyone knew was that
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  Molly and Dalton were inseparable. Anyone looking at them would know that they shared
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  a love and connection that only seems to happen in the movies. But their
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  relationship would be tested when Molly graduated high school and began her journey to college.
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  She enrolled at the University of Iowa to study psychology, but by then
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  Dalton was a few years ahead of her. After graduating high school, he'd
• 2:53
  chosen to join the workforce and had found a job in construction at a local
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  company. This meant that Dalton was staying in Brooklyn, but it also meant
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  a little bit more than that. Sometimes Dalton would be in town, sometimes
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  he'd be across the state on another job site. Basically, Dalton had to
• 3:10
  go where their work was, and very few opportunities put him in the same
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  place as his girlfriend. To Molly. Where other high school sweethearts would have
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  called it quits, Molly and Dalton held strong. The couple made every effort
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  to see each other, oftentimes on the weekends and sometimes during the weekdays,
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  whenever they could make it work. That was why when Molly returned home from
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  the semester in the summer of twenty eighteen, she was coming home not only
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  to her family, but to Dalton as well. For those precious warm summer
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  months, it looked like the only time they'd missed spinning together would be when
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  Dalton had to work, and this young couple made the most of it.
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  When Molly wasn't with Dalton, she was with her family or out on the
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  town. The very small town. To keep her heelf busy during the day
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  and to earn a little extra money, Molly found work at a local children's
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  daycare, and managed to squeeze in a few hours of studying into her evenings
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  to make sure she was ahead when she got back to school that fall.
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  But something else Molly almost always managed to find time for was an evening run.
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  The days were usually too hot and the sun too strong to have won
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  during the day, but once the sun started to go down for the evening,
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  Molly would put on her shoes and would be often seen running around town
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  and enjoying herself. That's why on the evening of July eighteenth, no one
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  was really surprised to see the twenty year old out and about in her running
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  gear. Dalton was out of town for work that evening, and Molly had
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  been staying at his house to dog sit and to study. She left his
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  home around seven and headed east into town on her usual evening run. Neighbors
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  remembered seeing her, and security cameras picked up a portion of her run,
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  but they missed a very crucial part. There was no footage of Molly returning
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  home. The next day, Molly's supervisor from the daycare called Dalton to ask
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  where Molly was and to see if he knew why she was late, but
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  Dalton had been working out of town and he didn't have any answers. Calls
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  to Molly's phone went unanswered, and her social media accounts remained eerily quiet,
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  and Molly was nowhere to be found. By that evening, her family,
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  Dalton, and the local police had begun a town wide search for Molly,
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  leaving Missing Persons posters behind them wherever they went. Investigators managed to piece together
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  that Molly had headed east during her run, but not much else. They
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  set up a tip line, spread her poster, and raised awareness of her
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  disappearance through several states in the Midwest, and they tried to pin her location
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  through the fit bit Molly often wore. All leads came to a dead end.
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  In a desperate attempt to help, the community came together and raised over
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  three hundred and sixty six thousand dollars as a reward through their local Crime Stoppers
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  branch, a reward that would sadly go unclaimed. Instead, a neighbor's security
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  camera caught some disturbing footage that shows a small and blurry figure running down a
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  street at approximately the right time and direction for that person to have been Molly
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  Tibbets but it also shows something else. A black car can be seen first
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  heading away from Molly's direction, then somewhere off camera, that car turns around
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  and heads towards the running figure. With Brooklyn being the small community that it
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  is, it didn't take long to track down the owner of that car,
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  a man by the name of John Budd. John first claimed to know nothing
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  about Molly or her disappearance, but the investigators dug deeper and uncovered a series
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  of startling truths. The first lie to be overturned was John Budd's identity.
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  He was, in fact Christian Rivera, a twenty four year old immigrant from
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  Mexico in the country illegally who was currently working on a farm owned by a
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  Republican politician. After hours of interrogation, Christian began to tell on himself.
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  After first saying he knew nothing about Molly's disappearance, he then confessed to having
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  seen her running down the road. He'd approached Molly's car, asked to talk
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  to her a few times, and then began driving beside her in an attempt
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  to get rid of him. Molly had taken out her phone and threatened to
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  call the police. Christian then claimed that in a fit of panic brought on
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  by the thought of being caught by the police, he'd attacked Molly, killed
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  her, and hidden her body in a cornfield, a cornfield that he then
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  led the police to and brought the search for Molly to a bitter end.
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  Partially hidden under the leaves were the decomposing remains of a young woman. She'd
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  been stabbed multiple times in the chest, neck, and face, and she
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  was missing her shorts and underwear. DNA analysis confirmed everyone's worst suspicions, and
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  Molly's missing person's case was changed to a homicide. It looked like an open
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  and shutcase. Rarely does anyone confess to murder, take the authorities to their
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  victim's remains, and get away with it. But this case's journey to court
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  would take longer than anyone expected. Changes in his legal counsel, moving the
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  case out of the county, and a backed up court system brought on by
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  the pandemic bought Christian a few more years, But finally, in twenty twenty
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  one, he faced the judge. To everyone's complete surprise, he pleaded not
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  guilty. At court, Christian challenged his own confession and claimed that he'd been
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  tricked into giving it. His defense came in with a sturdier rebuttal and proved
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  that Christian had not been read his miranda rights correctly, making his con fashion
• 9:00
  inadmissible in court. This was a hit to the prosecution, but by then
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  they had already collected forensic evidence that put Molly's blood in the trunk of Christian's
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  car. But it was Christian himself who sealed his own fate yet again.
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  Taking to the stand, Christian claimed that he'd been attacked by a group of
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  men that day. He said that they'd had knives and forced themselves into his
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  car. They'd been the ones to make him stop alongside Molly as she was
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  running that day, and they'd been the ones to attack and kill her.
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  They'd then forced Christian to drive out to that cornfield and hide Molly's body,
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  and they'd threatened Christian's daughter to make sure that he kept silent about the whole
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  thing. It was safe to say that there were very few people who believed
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  his new story, his new version of events, and Christian was sentenced to
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  life in prison without parole. But instead of bringing Molly's family and the community
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  of Brooklyn peace, media and political coverage of this case continued to divide the
• 10:01
  country. One side of the fence, including names like Donald Trump, used
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  Molly's tragic story to double down on the need for stricter immigration policies. In
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  a speech, the former president said, a person came in from Mexico illegally
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  and killed her. We need the wall, We need our immigration laws changed,
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  we need our border laws changed. The other side argued that Molly's murder
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  was being used to spread racism and target immigrants. This was a sentiment that
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  Molly's own father, Rob shared publicly. In response to Trump's speech, Rob
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  replied, quote, the Hispanic community are Iowans. They have the same values
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  as Iowans. As far as I'm concerned, They're Iowans with better food.
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  Molly, he said, would have agreed with him, and so he stood
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  up against the people who'd appropriate Molly's soul in advancing views she believed were profoundly
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  racist. But somewhere beneath the politicization of Mali case lies a family steal reeling
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  from the loss, and a young woman whose life was unjustly and unceremoniously cut
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  short. Maybe that's where the focus of her story should have always stayed.
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  That's ten Minute Murder for today brief and bingeable true crime. I'm Joe the
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  host, and thank you so much for taking the time to listen. If
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  you're brand new to this podcast, make sure you hit subscribe wherever you like
• 11:39
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• 11:48
  as that's around. My guess it's gonna stick around. No one asked me,
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  but I'm telling you, I'm pretty sure that TikTok is going to be
• 11:56
  with us. There's gonna be some drama, but I think it's here to
• 11:58
  stay, So go ahead and follow me on TikTok. If you have any
• 12:03
  questions about where to find things other places to listen, you can go to
• 12:07
  the website ten minute Murder dot com and you can also reach out to me
• 12:11
  Joe at ten minute Murder dot com is my email. You can ask me
• 12:15
  any question you want, tell me anything you need to tell me, or
• 12:18
  like Amy and tennessee here, ask me a question about allergies. Hello,
• 12:22
  Joe, you mentioned in a recent episode that you were dealing with allergies and
• 12:26
  you sounded stuffy, but the next episode you sounded normal. I have allergies
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  too, So what was the secret? How did you get better? Amy?
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  And Tennessee and Amy, I'll tell you it's not a secret. I
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  took some medicine. I took Clarendon, and that clears me up. I'm
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  one of those weirdos that doesn't like to take things every single day unless I
• 12:48
  absolutely have to. Now, I know that you should probably take it when
• 12:50
  you have allergies like I do. You should probably take it daily, and
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  they'd let it build up in your system and you'll be fine. I just
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  don't like doing that. But Clarendon helps, and I take it, and
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  I'm fine. Now. If I don't take it, I'm back to riding
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  the struggle bus. But that's my secret. And thank you for emailing.
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  That's going to do it. That is your episode for today. Thank you
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  so much for listening. Take care,