IA - Mollie Tibbetts, 20, Poweshiek County, 19 Jul 2018 *Arrest* #37

[Trident]

Please dont be afraid to arm yourself and use it if need be. I tell my daughters..if you you're afraid you'll kill someone while defending yourself then just aim for the kneecaps and give em a limp for the rest of their life.

Kneecaps are good, very painful and debilitating. Although it is better not to shoot for them. You can hit the kneecaps with anything hard, kick them even. Knees are a very vulnerable spot.

 

[Rocco]

Just a little note to this because that is what I always thought, disable them at the legs.
Well I took some classes with some special force military guys and they told me to NEVER do that. Always aim for the chest to eliminate the threat.

Exactly! If you're going to shoot someone, you should aim for center mass. The chances of hitting someone in the legs is slim. You'll most likely miss and have the gun taken away from you.

 

[Gardenista]

Question: Did LE or FBI use dogs to try and locate MT? Dogs would surely have found a body lying in a corn field... I guess I thought dogs were always used. If they did use dogs, then MT wasn't in that corn field when the dogs searched there.

Dogs miss bodies all the time.

 

[duster1979]

SharonNeedles, do cattle workers use lassos? Like calf wrestling? How do they catch the little guys when separating them from the herd? Just wondering if CR would have access to ropes? tia

I work at a lumber yard. Anybody who can walk in the door and pull a few bucks out of his pocket has access to ropes.

But to answer your question, he worked at a dairy farm, not on a cattle ranch. It's highly unlikely he would use a rope for anything in the course of his workday.

 

[CuriousCricket]

Didn't they bring it to LE wondering if it might have something?

In one interview, Rick Rahn said they collected video from all over town and it took them a while to get to the one that had the good information on it. That was why he could not say exactly when it had come in nor how long they had it.

Thinking about this, I have wondered if -- once they found the helpful bit, could they then go to other video from others on the same roads and go back and forth up and down the street, piecing together the fact that CR was circling around and kept coming back to MT?

Would not each camera have a limited view? So, you see Mollie and a car on one; you maybe see the same car 2-3 times on that one camera, even after Mollie is long gone. So, he's circling around . . .

If you consider that LE has maybe dozens of videos from all over town, once they located something at Boundary and ??was it Middle??, then they hunt through the stacks of videos to find something a little farther up the road . . . . I think there's no way of knowing how much video they had and how much they had looked through before finding the gold nugget that started unraveling what had happened.

 

[ACG2x]

Well, bless his little red, white, and blue all American Boy heart.....Thank you for posting that.

Richards (CR's attorney) is a total clown. I watched him in the first hearing and have seen several interviews and ugh. He tried to argue that bail should be set extremely low because "there hasn't been any evidence presented that he did it" except for the admission that he attacked her and 'came to' with her bleeding in his car then placed her dead body in a cornfield which he led LE to from memory. You know, except all that.

I am strongly in favor of every person in the US legal system getting fair and due process, even illegal immigrants but come on man. His interview with Martha MacCallum on FOX was a complete joke. Link if interested.

 

[BobA]

Just a little note to this because that is what I always thought, disable them at the legs.
Well I took some classes with some special force military guys and they told me to NEVER do that. Always aim for the chest to eliminate the threat.

And I agree with that line of thought but I know my daughters...if they aim at the knees then their gonna hit em in the balls which is what im really hoping for.

 

[agilbe]

Just a little note to this because that is what I always thought, disable them at the legs.
Well I took some classes with some special force military guys and they told me to NEVER do that. Always aim for the chest to eliminate the threat.

I don't want to go off topic. This is something I had to do a lot of soul searching about. IF you are considering a gun.... YOU have to have the mindset that you are going to shoot, not just hold it out to try and scare someone. JMO

 

[Flowercb]

Something I've been wondering about but keep forgetting about when I post. Can anyone think of any good reason why he would have brought her cell phone with them or allowed her to? He obviously knew she had it since he says she pulled it out and threatened to call LE. If she was holding it when he attacked her, it seems like she'd be likely to drop it in the struggle. Would there be a good reason to pick it up and bring it with rather than either leaving it or throwing it out into the field there? Maybe I'm expecting too much to want to find some logic in this whole thing.

Hopefully he had his phone with him, even if it was off it would still ping off the cell tower. It looks as if a cell tower close to where Mollie was left. I saw this on a map from another site.

 

[The Farm]

Yes if I was in that situation, I would never aim for anything but the chest area (widest area most difficult to miss) Trying to take our their knees might do nothing more then just piss them off worse. lol

Yes they told me they are coming at you full of adrenaline and even if you do get them in the knees which is hard to do they might continue. The chest, the widest area is exactly what they said.

 

[Hraefn]

A theory that keeps going around in my head is this: And I know the confession is a lie.
She threatens to call the cops, he knocks the phone out of her hand and breaks it. Offers to pay or replace and she gets in the car in the expectation of getting her phone replaced. It would explain the why the phone shut off, why there was no fight and no neighbors heard or saw the struggle. He then drives to either his house or the corn field and kills her.

I appreciate the thought out scenario, but I cannot imagine her getting in his car willfully. JMO.

 

[Flowercb]

They would have said ‘multiple stab wounds’. That’s pretty rote.

I just watched HLN where an expert was saying that according to Iowa law they can not indicate to the public what weapon was used, so they would not have indicated a knife, even if a knife was used.

 

[rebel123]

Rick Rahn said they collected video from all over town and it took them a while to get to the one that had the good information on it. That was why he could not say exactly when it had come in.

He said they got it between 1 and 2 weeks ago. LE should have canvassed for door to door. I think he stated that a neighbour handed it in.

 

[1987]

All excellent! I want to definitely get security cameras at our final residence. Solved a crime in Mollie’s case and others!

they can really help in many ways. we had a car wreck and used our footage to show condition of car at the time it left home that morning. I like that it can show exact time of leaveing home and comeing back home if it ever needs to be proven what time you left or returned. had they been on her house there would have been no question if she did or did not return home.

 

[kpm]

Richards (CR's attorney) is a total clown. I watched him in the first hearing and have seen several interviews and ugh. He tried to argue that bail should be set extremely low because "there hasn't been any evidence presented that he did it" except for the admission that he attacked her and 'came to' with her bleeding in his car then placed her dead body in a cornfield which he led LE to from memory. You know, except all that.

I am strongly in favor of every person in the US legal system getting fair and due process, even illegal immigrants but come on man. His interview with Martha MacCallum on FOX was a complete joke. Link if interested.

Complete joke

Am I understanding him correctly, he thinks because CR believes he’s here legally that’s all that matters?

 

[Trident]

I appreciate the thought out scenario, but I cannot imagine her getting in his car willfully. JMO.

I can't imagine any of that sceanerio.

 

[jillycat]

Just my thoughts -

Since it seems they had absolutely no idea who had done this until they went through that video, and they couldn't find her until he led them there, it makes sense that they're now interested in a longer timeline. Now that they have his story, however dishonest, her body, the car, and items/evidence from where they found her, they have additional work to do and were essentially just beginning the day they found her. Interviewing other people who know him or may have witnessed or heard something and were afraid to talk, or unwittingly aided him, or even intentionally aided him, searching his home and the surrounding area (sounds like they've now done that and not sure why didn't happen Day 1 when he owned up), and who knows what else depending on what they found at the scene, and what else was revealed through autopsy.

I'm sure they're interested in whether or not she was transported to another location or locations before being taken to the cornfield. They know whether or not she was killed there or somewhere else. They may (hopefully) know what injuries were inflicted prior to the wounds that took her life and where (abduction site, in the vehicle, etc) and how long she'd been in the cornfield, in the event that she wasn't taken there that night.

Side note - I needed some science credits years ago for my degree program and I took an entomology class and one of the guest speakers during the semester was a forensic entomologist from the department. He's been an expert witness in a number of murder cases and what can be known by insect activity alone is astounding. (that's already been brought up I think) He worked on a case where the victim had been killed and moved across state lines and then left on a couch in a basement, staged to look like it all happened right there, and he was able to verify where the first crime likely was because insect activity on/in the body defied the staging and the species was not indigenous to this area. And that's just one area of forensics. So, whatever they found there in that cornfield and in the condition of her body, and perhaps his trunk or his home, may have given Mollie a very loud voice, even if other things were lost through the passage of time. I am interested to learn whether or not he took her to his home or that property, or spots close by that he may have used for other assaults. This was presumably a very bloody crime so any movement of her body and any blood on him would be very difficult for him to just wipe away. If she was bleeding in that trunk and he was moving her around, who knows what kind of information he stupidly and thankfully gave police.

I think this could have been a relatively quick crime where she ended up in the field soon after her abduction, or the cornfield was punctuation after other activity. If there aren't that many moving parts, maybe what they're now seeking is what was going on with him after the crime and what does that tell them. I shudder to think of what she endured, even if much of it was terror. I can't stand the sight of him and wish media would stop split screening her image with his. It's unfair to her and her family but it's always done.

 

[Al Hoffman]

Question. So if Mollie was raped (ugh). How long before they would know this? I realize the preliminary autopsy was done, would this be evident at this point or would they need to wait until DNA results are in? Sorry for my stupidity!

After several weeks in the summer heat, in the shade of the corn rows, with bacteral, insect, weather (rain) and animal activity maybe never. I'm sure that the ME will do the best they can, with what they have, and they will have some of the best on this case with Federal assistance. However, this is not a 60 minute episode of Quincy, Bones, or CSI; this is the real world.

 

[sloane7777]

Ok I need opinions , specifically because my daughter runs in our well populated neighborhood , we do know all of our neighbors (and she is 30 yo not a baby but very tiny a size 0) NOT Blaming Mollie not one bit either ....But does anyone really think its even remotely safe to jog anymore , I don't and I haven't for quite sometime , nor do I think its safe for my 12 y/o to walk home from school, I have found 7 registered sex offenders within a mile of her school and its a very nice area (which really does not play into things anymore ) I don't think Jogging with earphones especially is safe at all WHAT DO YALL THINK????? I really want to know

Mollie Tibbetts' slaying highlights safety concerns for women runners - CNN

 

[MsBetsy]

Not to get too in-depth or gross but there is postmortem testing that can be done to the genital area that can determine if a sexual assault had occurred, especially if the body hadn't decayed for a lengthy period of time. Typically tests can determine extreme stress or bruising there and tissue samples can have DNA testing done to match a perp. After only a month, there would still be some usable physical evidence.

The ones that are difficult if not impossible are those where the remains have completely skeletalized and no body tissue and little genetic material remains. Had it been 6+ months since her disappearance, we may be having a different conversation.

I'm not sure about 6 months, I believe after one month there would be a significant amount of decomposition, maybe stage 3, going by what I have learned about it from all the info I've seen posted here. Approaching stage 4 at least. That is IF the body was there for a whole month. With the climate and insect activity, I'm not sure they will ever know the extent of a SA .