Mollie Tibbetts case: Suspect Cristhian Rivera changes lawyers

Stephen Gruber-Miller | The Des Moines Register

Show Caption Hide Caption In Mollie Tibbetts case, bond set at $5 for Rivera Cristhian Rivera made his initial court appearance after being charged with murder in the death of missing Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts.

Cristhian Rivera, the man accused of first-degree murder in the death of Mollie Tibbetts, has changed lawyers.

Court documents filed Sunday and Monday show Rivera consented to the withdrawal of his attorney, Allan Richards of Tama, and the rescindment of several motions Richards had filed.

He will be represented instead by Chad Frese and Jennifer Frese, of the Marshalltown firms Kaplan and Frese LLP and Johnson, Bonzer and Barnaby PLC, documents show. They are married and work out of the same building in Marshalltown, although for different firms, Jennifer Frese said.

"The family reached out (to) us and we met with them first and then we met with Mr. Rivera on Friday evening and he decided to move forward with the change of counsel," she said.

The documents do not list a reason for Richards' withdrawal as counsel. Frese said she did not ask for a reason. Richards could not immediately be reached for comment.

More: 'Today, we need to turn the page. We're at the end of a long ordeal,' Rob Tibbetts tells crowd at daughter's funeral

Jennifer Frese said she and her husband have not worked a case like this together, but they decided it would be good to have two attorneys defending Rivera because it's a high-profile case.

Frese said she and her husband have been privately retained by Rivera's family.

Rivera, through his new attorneys, has withdrawn all pending motions filed by Richards and waived Rivera's right to a preliminary hearing. That means Rivera will not appear in court on Friday as previously scheduled.

Richards had filed motions to bar media from all court proceedings in the case and for a gag order prohibiting participants from discussing it.

"It’s not something Chad and I would have requested if we were on the case initially, so that’s the reason we’re withdrawing it," Frese said. She declined to give further details about their legal strategy.

ALL MOLLIE TIBBETTS COVERAGE: Stories, videos and photos

The day Tibbetts was found, and three days before speaking with Rivera about the possibility of representing him in court, Chad Frese wrote a public Facebook post about the case. In it, he criticized the media attention and online narrative surrounding Wayne Cheney, a Poweshiek County hog farmer who had been questioned by investigators and whose property had been searched while Tibbetts was missing.

"We all knew who did it, right? It was the hog farmer who had been interviewed a number of times, taken a polygraph and had his property searched. He had stalking convictions. The digital footprint put it all together.



"Nope..................," Frese wrote in the post.

Frese wrote that people's minds seemed to be made up about the case before any arrests were announced.

"But wait.... an illegal alien snatched her up and committed this heinous act? He admitted to it? He took the cops to the body? How can that be?

"They had the killer in custody. It wasn’t Wayne Cheney. We were all wrong," Chad Frese wrote in the post.

In an interview Monday, Frese said he wasn't giving his own opinion of the case, but saying that anyone accused of a crime "is deserving of a full and fair defense" as provided in the Sixth Amendment.

"I wasn't saying I thought he was the killer," Chad Frese said.

"I was just parroting the media narrative. I was just parroting what we were being fed at that point in time. Nowhere in that post do I spout my opinion as to what this gentleman had done or didn’t do," he added.

He said he didn't believe the post would prevent him from defending Rivera in court. He said he has not come to a conclusion about whether or not Rivera is guilty.

"The point of the post is that no one should rush to judgment in any situation like this and that it was a point about the Sixth Amendment — that individuals have the right to counsel and that anyone could find themselves in the crosshairs of being accused," Chad Frese said.

"I do believe that Mr. Bahena Rivera absolutely requires a full, fair and vigorous defense," he added.

The post, which was published at 10:44 p.m. Aug. 21, was available to anyone on Facebook as of Monday afternoon and had 448 shares, 684 reactions and 92 comments.

Chad Frese said he has practiced criminal law for nearly 25 years and primarily does criminal defense work. He said Jennifer Frese has been a criminal defense lawyer for close to 10 years. Each has experience as prosecutors, he said.

Rivera, 24, has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of the 20-year-old University of Iowa student who was missing for over a month. Authorities say he led them to Tibbetts' body Aug. 21 after being interviewed the night prior.

Investigators say Rivera told them he pursued Tibbetts in his car while she was jogging in her hometown of Brooklyn on July 18, before getting out of the car and confronting her. Tibbetts threatened to call the police, at which point Rivera claims he blacked out and remembers nothing until later.

More: Mollie Tibbetts: Complete coverage of Iowa woman's disappearance, death

Tibbetts' body was found covered in cornstalks in a field outside the town of Guernsey. An autopsy found she died of "multiple sharp force injuries."

Rivera is a Mexican immigrant and authorities say he is in the country illegally. His former employer, Yarrabee Farms in Poweshiek County, says he provided a different name and false identification before he started work.

The case has drawn national media attention and reignited the country's immigration debate, with politicians up to President Donald Trump weighing in.

Richards, in court filings and interviews, had spoken out against "sad and sorry Trump" for weighing in on the case before the legal process produced an outcome. He also suggested in a court filing that Rivera was in the country legally, but did not produce new evidence to back up the claim.

If convicted, Rivera faces life in prison without the possibility of parole. He is being held at the Poweshiek County Jail on a $5 million cash-only bond. No date has been set for his next court appearance.