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   From: criminally-complicit@sfchronicle.com   
      
   BROOKLYN, Iowa — Cristhian Bahena Rivera, the Mexican farmworker   
   accused of killing a 20-year-old college student and concealing   
   her body beneath corn leaves, seemed to have built a quiet,   
   productive life in the seven or so years since he slipped across   
   the southwest border and found work in the fields of Iowa.   
      
   He tended to dairy cows on a farm owned by a prominent family   
   and returned home each evening to a modest brown trailer along a   
   gravel road outside town.   
      
   But Mr. Bahena Rivera’s quiet demeanor sometimes stood out in   
   jarring ways. A neighbor said he did not always follow the local   
   custom of acknowledging him when Mr. Bahena Rivera drove by in a   
   Chevy Malibu. And, more alarmingly, a woman said he made her   
   uncomfortable with a romantic advance and repeated Facebook   
   messages in the middle of the night.   
      
   “He would just stare. He wouldn’t really like talk,” said the   
   woman, Brooke Bestell, 20, who had turned Mr. Bahena Rivera down   
   when he asked her out on a date. “Something about him was off.”   
      
   Over the course of this week, Mr. Bahena Rivera, 24, went from a   
   quiet farmworker whose real name was unknown, even to his   
   employer, to a homicide suspect whose arrest inflamed the   
   national immigration debate.   
      
   President Trump has cited the first-degree murder charge against   
   Mr. Bahena Rivera as proof of the need for tougher border   
   security. Iowa politicians and conservative news outlets have   
   seized on the case as ammunition as November’s election nears.   
   And here in Brooklyn, population 1,400, residents have struggled   
   to understand how the man they saw at the grocery store could be   
   tied to the death of Mollie Tibbetts, a psychology student and   
   summer camp counselor who disappeared last month while out for a   
   jog.   
      
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   Mr. Bahena Rivera, who is jailed on a $5 million cash bond, was   
   one of many Mexicans who have made their way to Iowa’s pastures,   
   where farmers often struggle to find eligible workers to tend   
   their crops and cattle. Mr. Bahena Rivera grew up in El   
   Guayabillo, a village of unpaved roads some three hours’ drive   
   from Acapulco on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, and attended the only   
   elementary school in the village of about 400 people.   
      
   “A very good person, a simple guy with no vices,” Victor Manuel   
   Nuñez Carbajal, who attended school with Mr. Bahena Rivera, said   
   in a Facebook message. Neighbors told Univision network that his   
   father tended his small corn plot and also milked dairy cows in   
   the village, earning less than $10 a day.   
      
   Image   
   Mollie Tibbetts   
   CreditIowa Department of Criminal Investigation, via Associated   
   Press   
   Mr. Bahena Rivera came to the United States at age 17, his   
   lawyer said, with the equivalent of a middle school education.   
   After a few years at another farm, he went to work at Yarrabee   
   Farms outside Brooklyn, which is co-owned by Craig Lang, a   
   former Republican candidate for Iowa agriculture secretary.   
      
   “I would say he always did his work on time,” Mr. Lang said.   
   “But he wasn’t much for conversation.”   
      
   His lawyer, Allan M. Richards, said Mr. Bahena Rivera had been a   
   law-abiding employee since arriving in the United States. “He’s   
   here living the American dream and working seven days a week, 12   
   hours a day, and trying to do his best at his job,” Mr. Richards   
   said. He said Mr. Bahena Rivera’s family members were not yet   
   willing to speak publicly.   
      
   Federal officials said they have no record of Mr. Bahena Rivera   
   entering the country legally and said that he appeared to have   
   used false documents to obtain employment.   
      
   The sheriff’s department in Poweshiek County said it had not   
   interacted with him until this week. Neither had any state law   
   enforcement agencies in Iowa.   
      
   Mr. Lang said Mr. Bahena Rivera had been hired at the farm in   
   August 2014 after presenting a valid Social Security number,   
   which was checked with a federal database, and a state-issued   
   identification card. The new employee was known around town as   
   Cristhian Bahena Rivera, but around the farm by the fraudulent   
   name listed on those documents, a name the authorities did not   
   disclose.   
      
   Outside of work, Mr. Bahena Rivera started dating a Brooklyn   
   high school student, Iris Monarrez, whom he met in 2013. Around   
   2014, they had a daughter. And for about a year, they lived   
      
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