Mollie Tibbetts' suspected murderer identified as 24-year-old Christian Rivera, in US illegally.
A suspect in connection with Mollie Tibbetts' murder is in custody and has been identified as a 24-year-old man in the U.S. illegally, investigators announced at a news conference Tuesday.
Christian Rivera was charged with first-degree murder in Tibbetts' death, officials confirmed Tuesday afternoon.
Two sources tell Fox News that the body of the missing Iowa student has been found; Matt Finn reports. Video
Mollie Tibbetts found dead: sources
Authorities said that Rivera, of the rural Poweshiek County area, is being held on a federal immigration detainer. He's believed to have been in the area for four to seven years.
The body of Tibbetts, a 20-year-old University of Iowa student, was found Tuesday, her father and two sources confirmed to Fox News. She was last seen around 7:30 p.m. on July 18 when she was running around a neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Tibbetts' family pleaded for her safe return and had remained hopeful she would be found alive. Rob Tibbetts was returning home to the San Francisco area after spending weeks looking for his daughter, The Des Moines Register reported Sunday.
"The bottom line is somebody knows something," Rob Tibbetts previously told Fox News, adding Brooklyn is a small city and “you can’t do anything there without someone seeing it.”
For the last month, investigators followed “hundreds” of leads — interviewing hundreds of people and canvassing a nearby hog farm, cornfields and other properties for traces of the college student. Two items Tibbetts typically took with her — a Fitbit and cellphone — remained missing.
Investigators announced last week they were focusing the search on five locations in and around Brooklyn, which included a car wash just a block away from the city’s main commercial strip and a TA truck stop next to Interstate-80, which runs across the entirety of Iowa.
Brooklyn, a town of just 1,400 people, was shaken by Tibbetts' disappearance. Blake Jack, the brother of Tibbetts’ boyfriend, told Fox News on Aug. 8 there was no sign of a struggle at the Brooklyn home she was staying in at the time.
Dalton Jack, Tibbetts' boyfriend of two years, said he believed the doors of the home where his girlfriend last stayed had been left unlocked.
“It’s Brooklyn. You don’t lock your doors,” Jack told Fox News. “We lock our doors now. Every night.”
This is a developing story; please check back for updates. Fox News' Katherine Lam contributed to this report.
Nicole Darrah covers breaking and trending news for FoxNews.com. Follow her on Twitter @nicoledarrah.
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A suspect in connection with Mollie Tibbetts' murder is in custody and has been identified as a 24-year-old man in the U.S. illegally, investigators announced at a news conference Tuesday.
Mollie Tibbetts' suspected murderer identified as 24-year-old Christian Rivera, in US illegally
The search for missing University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts has entered its third week, as investigators comb through evidence and tips related to the 20-year-old Iowa resident's disappearance.
Carol Kelly wrote:
Drive their buns out of here, should not be here at all.