Crimeatorium
Part 5: The State of Iowa vs Cristhian Bahena Rivera | The Murder of Mollie Tibbetts
11 Jan 2025
Full Episode
State may call its next witness. Our next witness is Dr. Dennis Klein. Dr. Klein, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Can you please state your name for the record? Yes, my name is Dennis Klein, K-L-E-I-N. And how are you employed? I'm the state medical examiner.
Dr. Klein, part of the duties of the medical examiner, maybe one of the chief duties of the medical examiner, is to perform a forensic autopsy. Is that true? Yes. Can you please tell the jury, describe for them, and define what is the purpose of a forensic autopsy?
The purpose of a forensic autopsy is to document medical findings, collect evidence, and provide information that determines cause and manner of death for deaths that occur under medical examiner jurisdiction. So any case that would be of interest to the state would be of interest to the medical examiner.
Dr. Klein, when did you first become involved in the recovery or autopsy of a person later identified as Molly Tibbetts? I was first informed by a telephone call from the county medical examiner, Dr. Paulson, in Poweshie County. My first encounter was on August 21st when I went out to the cornfield, the scene where the body that was ultimately identified as Molly Tibbetts was found.
So you and a team from your office went to the location where she was located? That's correct. All right, and that would have been in a cornfield near the town of Guernsey? That's correct. Whenever you arrived at that area, were you shown to the location where the body had been located? Yes. What were your initial observations?
The initial observation was there were human remains in a state of decomposition that were mostly covered by corn stalks. To your knowledge, had any of the corn stalks been removed from the body? Not to my knowledge at that time.
Commonly, you come across a crime scene team assigned by the Division of Criminal Investigation. Yes. Were any personnel from DCI there that were assigned as crime scene technicians? Yes. Was that Amy Johnson? Yes, it was. And Jonna Berry? Yes. Did you and your team then recover the remains that were underneath the corn stalks? Yes.
And how is it that you go about doing that with a body that's in the state of decomposition that we've seen here last week? Yeah, so we document with photographs in a layer-wise fashion. So we take pictures with the vegetation, corn stalks on the body. We carefully remove that vegetation, take additional photographs, observe the body, and then using multi-hands with my team,
We lift the body up and carefully place it into a body bag, and then we photograph and examine the area where the body was to see if there were any other pieces of evidence or body parts that we would need to recover. So whenever you lifted the body, later identified as Molly Tibbetts, up and put her into the body bag, was there anything of significance underneath her that you observed?
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