A lawyer for a Mexican man convicted in the 2018 murder of University of Iowa student Molly Tibbetts admits the immigration crisis is allowing people with “malicious intentions” into the United States, calling for his client to do so. He argued that there was “definitely” a possible connection between the two. Suspected murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
“Illegal immigration does have its problems,” Chad Frese told the Post this week in the wake of Riley’s similarly macabre murder.
Mr. Frese represented Cristian Bahena Rivera, who kidnapped and killed Ms. Tibbetts, a 20-year-old psychology major on the run, in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa, about 110 miles east of Des Moines.
More than a month after Tibbetts went missing, Rivera led authorities to her body in a cornfield, where they found her body with up to 12 stab wounds, the state medical examiner said.
A jury found Rivera guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison in August 2021.
“As long as there are immigrants, legal or illegal, some will come here with malicious intent,” Frese said.
An Iowa-based attorney said there are “uncanny similarities” between Tibbetts’ murder and that of Riley, an Augusta University student who was killed during a runaway on the University of Georgia campus on February 22. “It’s amazing,” he said.
And he said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if their killers were somehow connected.
“We have local residents who move to the central Iowa area, residents who come from the Georgia area, or residents who move to the Georgia area. So, for example, a Mexican living in central Iowa who previously lived in East Point, Georgia It is not uncommon for people to work in packing plants.
“Maybe there’s a connection? It’s definitely because they’re moving around, they’re going to familiar places, they’re comfortable,” Frese said.
Undocumented Venezuelan immigrant Jose Antonio Ibarra has been charged with the gruesome murder of a 22-year-old boy, which Georgia state police called a “crime of opportunity.”
Ybarra, 26, was arrested in the Big Apple on Aug. 31 and released after being charged with child endangerment.
Police in Athens, Georgia, charged him with shoplifting in October, but issued a warrant for his arrest after he failed to appear in court in December.
“I always wondered if there was something bigger at work than my client just randomly picking Molly Tibbetts and randomly killing her,” Frese recalled. . “I don’t think it’s as simple as a Mexican walking up to the side of a beautiful young woman and passively stabbing her.”
Tammy Nobles, whose daughter Kayla Hamilton was allegedly strangled to death by an illegal Salvadoran immigrant in her Maryland apartment last year, also sees similarities in the killings of the young women.
“Molly and Laken were just running around, doing their usual thing, and Kayla was sleeping in her bed at home. The girls weren’t doing anything wrong… They were themselves “I wasn’t putting it at risk,” she said.
The nobles were outraged that government officials were falling asleep at the wheel as they took steps to keep Americans safe, and called on the Biden administration to properly vet who is allowed into the country.
“We have to stop allowing [illegal immigrants] in, [or] We need to properly vet them and do background checks,” she said. “We cannot allow American citizens to be murdered by people who should never have been here in the first place.”
