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BROOKLYN, Iowa — Cristhian Bahena Rivera, the Mexican farmworker
accused of killing a 20-year-old college student and concealing
her body beneath corn leaves, seemed to have built a quiet,
productive life in the seven or so years since he slipped across
the southwest border and found work in the fields of Iowa.

He tended to dairy cows on a farm owned by a prominent family
and returned home each evening to a modest brown trailer along a
gravel road outside town.

But Mr. Bahena Rivera’s quiet demeanor sometimes stood out in
jarring ways. A neighbor said he did not always follow the local
custom of acknowledging him when Mr. Bahena Rivera drove by in a
Chevy Malibu. And, more alarmingly, a woman said he made her
uncomfortable with a romantic advance and repeated Facebook
messages in the middle of the night.

“He would just stare. He wouldn’t really like talk,” said the
woman, Brooke Bestell, 20, who had turned Mr. Bahena Rivera down
when he asked her out on a date. “Something about him was off.”

Over the course of this week, Mr. Bahena Rivera, 24, went from a
quiet farmworker whose real name was unknown, even to his
employer, to a homicide suspect whose arrest inflamed the
national immigration debate.

President Trump has cited the first-degree murder charge against
Mr. Bahena Rivera as proof of the need for tougher border
security. Iowa politicians and conservative news outlets have
seized on the case as ammunition as November’s election nears.
And here in Brooklyn, population 1,400, residents have struggled
to understand how the man they saw at the grocery store could be
tied to the death of Mollie Tibbetts, a psychology student and
summer camp counselor who disappeared last month while out for a
jog.

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Mr. Bahena Rivera, who is jailed on a $5 million cash bond, was
one of many Mexicans who have made their way to Iowa’s pastures,
where farmers often struggle to find eligible workers to tend
their crops and cattle. Mr. Bahena Rivera grew up in El
Guayabillo, a village of unpaved roads some three hours’ drive
from Acapulco on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, and attended the only
elementary school in the village of about 400 people.

“A very good person, a simple guy with no vices,” Victor Manuel
Nuñez Carbajal, who attended school with Mr. Bahena Rivera, said
in a Facebook message. Neighbors told Univision network that his
father tended his small corn plot and also milked dairy cows in
the village, earning less than $10 a day.

Image
Mollie Tibbetts
CreditIowa Department of Criminal Investigation, via Associated
Press
Mr. Bahena Rivera came to the United States at age 17, his
lawyer said, with the equivalent of a middle school education.
After a few years at another farm, he went to work at Yarrabee
Farms outside Brooklyn, which is co-owned by Craig Lang, a
former Republican candidate for Iowa agriculture secretary.

“I would say he always did his work on time,” Mr. Lang said.
“But he wasn’t much for conversation.”

His lawyer, Allan M. Richards, said Mr. Bahena Rivera had been a
law-abiding employee since arriving in the United States. “He’s
here living the American dream and working seven days a week, 12
hours a day, and trying to do his best at his job,” Mr. Richards
said. He said Mr. Bahena Rivera’s family members were not yet
willing to speak publicly.

Federal officials said they have no record of Mr. Bahena Rivera
entering the country legally and said that he appeared to have
used false documents to obtain employment.

The sheriff’s department in Poweshiek County said it had not
interacted with him until this week. Neither had any state law
enforcement agencies in Iowa.

Mr. Lang said Mr. Bahena Rivera had been hired at the farm in
August 2014 after presenting a valid Social Security number,
which was checked with a federal database, and a state-issued
identification card. The new employee was known around town as
Cristhian Bahena Rivera, but around the farm by the fraudulent
name listed on those documents, a name the authorities did not
disclose.

Outside of work, Mr. Bahena Rivera started dating a Brooklyn
high school student, Iris Monarrez, whom he met in 2013. Around
2014, they had a daughter. And for about a year, they lived
together. Mr. Bahena Rivera once posted on Facebook that the day
he met his girlfriend was “el mejor día de mi vida,” or “the
best day of my life.” When she posted a photo of herself in
2015, he wrote in Spanish, “My beautiful cool princess.”

“He was really romantic,” said Aby Felix, a second cousin of Ms.
Monarrez, who she said has been separated from Mr. Bahena Rivera
for about two years. “He would bring her flowers.”

Residents said Mr. Bahena Rivera was an attentive father who was
often seen playing with his daughter in the city park.

His arrest has rattled Brooklyn, a small town where most
everybody knows everybody else, and where many had assumed
someone from outside the community was responsible for Ms.
Tibbetts’s disappearance on July 18.

Image
Friends and family of Ms. Tibbetts during a news conference on
Tuesday in Montezuma.CreditCharlie Neibergall/Associated Press
Ms. Tibbetts, a student at the University of Iowa known as a
talented writer, had attended high school in Brooklyn and was
known for her frequent jogs around her hometown. After weeks of
investigating and national news coverage, police found security
video that showed a dark-colored Malibu driving back and forth
as she ran on the day of her disappearance. The Malibu was later
tied to Mr. Bahena Rivera, who police said cooperated and led
them to her body after being taken into custody on Monday.

A medical examiner said Ms. Tibbetts, whose funeral is Sunday,
died in a homicide from “multiple sharp force injuries.”

Many here said they felt terrible both for the Tibbetts family
and for Ms. Monarrez, who could not be reached for an interview
and whose Facebook page has been flooded with vitriolic messages
from outside Iowa.

Some in Brooklyn were perplexed by the arrest of a man many knew
as a familiar, if unremarkable, face around town. Mary Jo
Seaton, a former owner of a Brooklyn grocery store, said he
often stopped by her store in the late afternoon or early
evening, usually with two other young men she presumed to be his
co-workers.

“They would be talking to each other, smiling, laughing, and if
you spoke to them or said hi, they would smile back at you,” Ms.
Seaton said.

Because they spoke Spanish and most store employees did not, she
said, they did not talk at length with staff. “I thought he
seemed like a very nice person — a clean-cut, American person,”
Ms. Seaton said.

Others found his behavior more troubling. Ms. Bestell, the
acquaintance who declined a date with him, said he would not
make conversation when she encountered him in person, but he
would send repeated social media messages over a period of
months.

“Just over and over, like every week or so, he would message me
again,” Ms. Bestell said, including as recently as June 13 at 3
a.m.

After he was arrested, two of Ms. Bestell’s friends told her
that he had also messaged them online over the years. “I don’t
know how many other girls he probably was trying to talk to,”
she said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/us/cristhian-rivera-iowa-
tibbetts.html



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