Mollie Tibbetts' Alleged Killer Worked on Farm Under Alias 'John Budd,' Employees Say

Mollie Tibbetts' accused killer was known on the dairy farm he worked on for years by a different name: John Budd.

Cristhian Bahena Rivera, a Mexican immigrant was in the country illegally, had been working for Yarrabee Farms in Brooklyn, Iowa, for the past four years under the alias, employees told CBS News.

Rivera reportedly presented out-of-state identification and a Social Security number when he was hired in 2014, CBS News reported, but he was not vetted by the federal E-Verify system.

Rivera, 24, was arrested on Aug. 21 after leading authorities to the body of the 20-year-old college student who had disappeared after going for a jog on July 18.

Rivera told police he stopped his car and ran alongside Tibbetts before she told him to leave her alone or she would call police, authorities said. 

Rivera claimed he “blacked out” after that and later found Tibbetts' body in the trunk of his car, officials said. He then hid her remains among corn husks in a remote field, where she was later found. Rivera led authorities to Tibbetts' body after she'd been missing for nearly a month.

After Rivera was arrested in connection with the murder, President Trump took to Twitter to speak out on her death

“Mollie Tibbetts, an incredible young woman, is now permanently separated from her family,” Trump said as he stood on the White House lawn. "We need the wall.”

In response, Tibbetts' father, Rob Tibbetts, penned an impassioned op-ed asking people not to politicize his daughter's murder. 

“Do not appropriate Mollie’s soul in advancing views she believed were profoundly racist,” he wrote in the piece published by the Des Moines Register. “The act grievously extends the crime that stole Mollie from our family and is, to quote Donald Trump Jr., ‘heartless’ and ‘despicable’.”

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