Where is Cristhian Bahena Rivera now? Details explored ahead of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered on Oxygen

The upcoming episode of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered will focus on the 2018 murder of Mollie Tibbetts for which Cristhian Bahena Rivera was found guilty.

Tibbetts was a psychology student with a long list of achievements, including earning a doctorate and becoming a novelist. However, her life ended tragically in 2018, when she went for a run and never returned home.

Three years after Mollie Tibbetts's disappearance, Cristhian Bahena Rivera, a 27-year-old undocumented Mexican immigrant was found guilty of the murder of the 20-year-old student. He was sentenced to life without chances of parole. He remains incarcerated at the Iowa State Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison, as per VINELink's last update on October 26, 2021.

The episode that will focus on this case is titled The Last Mile. It will air on Oxygen on December 18, at 8 pm ET. The logline for the same episode reads as:

"Investigators discover surveillance video that captured Mollie being followed by a black car."

---

Cristhian Bahena Rivera was sentenced to life for the murder of Mollie Tibbetts

As reported by NBC News, Cristhian Bahena Rivera was sentenced to life behind bars without chances of parole on May 28, 2021. As per NPR, the Iowa resident was found guilty of the abduction and slaying of a student named Mollie Tibbetts, who was enrolled at the University of Iowa.

Judge Yoel Yates gave Bahera a life sentence. Although he did not plead guilty and claimed that others were involved in the murder of the Iowa student, the jury who deliberated for several hours found him guilty.

As per reports by NBC, Cristhian Bahena Rivera asserted that the “prosecutors suppressed evidence” and that there were two masked men who were behind Mollie's death and they forced Rivera to participate in the crime by holding a gun to his head and forcing him to kill her.

All of Rivera's claims were dismissed. Rivera attempted a new hearing in 2021, but it was again dismissed by Yates, who claimed that there was nothing new in this case. In 2023, Rivera appealed his conviction yet again and was once more denied as per the court statements on FINDLAW, which state:

"Finally, we conclude the court did not abuse its discretion when it denied Bahena's motion for a new trial. Accordingly, we affirm Bahena's conviction for first-degree murder."

---

Mollie Tibbetts was stabbed several times

As per NBC, Mollie Tibbetts who had gone jogging on July 18, 2018, mysteriously disappeared. When she did not show up for work the next morning, her family and coworkers feared about her whereabouts. Several law officers and volunteers were sent to look for her but there was no clue about where she had gone.

As per NPR, the investigators suspected Bahena Rivera, who worked at a dairy farm in the same locality where Tibbetts had disappeared. A video surveillance footage also showed Rivera's Chevy Malibu repeatedly driving past the victim, while she was running.

A month prior after Tibbetts went missing, her body was located in a cornfield in Iowa. NBC reported that her body was located by the investigators with the help of Cristhian Bahena Rivera, the same individual who was later convicted of her murder. As per NBC, she was stabbed “between 7 and 12 times in the chest, neck and skull.”

As per NPR, after Bahena Rivera was taken into custody, he revealed that he had stalked Tibbetts because he found her attractive however she threatened to call the cops on him, therefore he fought her. As per NPR, “He [Cristhian Bahena Rivera] then blacked out and came to as he was driving with her body in his trunk.”

The prosecutors claimed that Rivera had a "se*ual motive" because Tibbetts was just wearing socks and a sports bra. According to reports, the victim's legs were also parted when her body was discovered. According to NPC, the surveillance footage, Cristhian Bahena Rivera's confession, and Tibbetts' blood in his car's trunk were sufficient evidence to convict him.

---

Judge Joel D. Yates, who declared Rivera guilty, said at the trial that:

"You, and you alone, forever changed the lives of those who loved Mollie Tibbetts. And for that, you and you alone will receive the following sentence."

Before the sentencing of Cristhian Bahena Rivera, the victim's mother Laura Calderwood gave a victim impact statement, that read:

"Mollie was a young woman who simply wanted to go on a quiet run on the evening of July 18th, and you chose to violently and sadistically end that life."

---

To learn more about this case, watch season 14, episode 7 of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered titled The Last Mile, airing on Oxygen on December 18, at 8 pm ET.