Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Final texts between Laken Riley and her mother revealed in court
Woman linked to 14 cyanide murders is convicted and sentenced to death in Thailand
A Thai woman believed to be among the worst serial killers in the kingdom’s history was convicted and sentenced to death Wednesday for poisoning a friend with cyanide, in the first of her 14 murder trials.
Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn, 36, an online gambling addict, is accused of swindling thousands of dollars from her victims before killing them with the chemical.
A court in Bangkok convicted her Wednesday for fatally poisoning her friend Siriporn Kanwong.
The two met up near Bangkok in April last year to release fish into the Mae Klong river as part of a Buddhist ritual.
Siriporn collapsed and died shortly afterwards and investigators found traces of cyanide in her body. Last year, police said they collected fingerprints and other evidence from Sararat’s Toyota Forerunner.
LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA/AFP via Getty Images
Police were then able to link Sararat to previously unsolved cyanide poisonings going back as far as 2015, officers said.
“The court’s decision is just,” Siriporn’s mother, Tongpin Kiatchanasiri, told reporters following the verdict. “I want to tell my daughter that I miss her deeply, and justice has been done for her today.”
Police said Sararat funded her gambling addiction by borrowing money from her victims — in one case as much as 300,000 baht (nearly $9,000) — before killing them and stealing their jewelry and mobile phones.
She lured 15 people — one of whom survived — to take poisoned “herb capsules,” they said.
Sararat faces 13 more separate murder trials, and has been charged with around 80 offenses in total.
Her ex-husband, Vitoon Rangsiwuthaporn — a police lieutenant-colonel — was given 16 months in prison and her former lawyer two years for complicity in Siriporn’s killing, the lawyer for the victim’s family said.
The couple, while divorced, had still been living together, the BBC reported. Police said Rangsiwuthaporn was likely involved in Sararat’s alleged murder of an ex-boyfriend, Suthisak Poonkwan, the BBC reported. Police said that after she killed him, Rangsiwuthaporn picked her up in her car and helped her extorte money from Suthisak’s friends.
Thailand has been the scene of several sordid and high-profile criminal cases.
Earlier this year, six foreigners were found dead in a luxury Bangkok hotel after a cyanide poisoning believed to be connected to debts worth millions of baht.
In 1967, Louisa Dunne was found murdered in her U.K. home by a neighbor. A suspect has just been arrested.
A 92-year-old man has been charged in the U.K. with the murder and rape of a woman almost six decades ago, British police said Wednesday.
Louisa Dunne, 75, was found dead by a neighbor inside her home in the southwestern English city of Bristol on June 28, 1967.
Her cause of death was recorded as strangulation and asphyxiation.
The case remained cold for 57 years until nonagenarian Ryland Headley, of Ipswich in eastern England, was arrested on Tuesday and subsequently charged.
The arrest came after Avon and Somerset police began reviewing the case last year, which included further forensic examination of items relating to the case.
“This development marks a hugely significant moment in this investigation,” the force’s detective inspector Dave Marchant said in a statement. “We’ve updated Louisa’s family about this charging decision and a specialist liaison officer will continue to support them in the coming days, weeks and months.”
Marchant said the public may see “operational police activity in the Ipswich area” as a result of the arrest, the BBC reported.
“We recognise this will also come as a shock to the community in Easton,” Marchant said.
Headley appeared in court in Bristol via video-link on Wednesday and was remanded in custody. He was not asked to enter pleas to the two charges. Headley spoke only to confirm his name, date of birth and address, according to the BBC.
ITV News noted the case is believed to be the oldest cold case murder arrest in British history.
Police did not give details about the new forensic analysis in the case but DNA and genetic genealogy tests are often keys to solving decades-old cold cases. Just last week, investigators in the U.S. announced that they used DNA evidence to solve a 65-year-old cold case involving a 7-year-old boy whose body was found in a culvert.
Laken Riley murder suspect was grilled by wife in jail phone call played in court: “What happened with the girl?”
A judge on Wednesday found Jose Ibarra guilty of murder in the death of Laken Riley. Read the latest here.
An FBI special agent testified Monday that electronic location data seems to place Georgia nursing student Laken Riley and the man accused of killing her in the same wooded area at the time of her death. Meanwhile, prosecutors also played a recording of Ibarra being grilled by his wife about the case during a jail phone call.
Jose Ibarra, 26, is charged with murder and other crimes in Riley’s death in February. He waived his right to a jury trial, meaning Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard is hearing the case and will alone decide on Ibarra’s guilt or innocence.
The killing of the 22-year-old woman added fuel to the national debate over immigration during this year’s presidential campaign when federal authorities said Ibarra illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 and was allowed to stay in the country while he pursued his immigration case.
FBI Special Agent James Burnie told the court Monday that he reviewed location data from Ibarra’s cellphone and Riley’s cellphone and smart watch. GPS data from Riley’s watch very precisely puts her inside the wooded area with running trails where her body was found on Feb. 22. Pings between Ibarra’s phone and cell towers and the fact his phone wasn’t making any Wi-Fi connections at the time indicate he was also likely in the woods, Burnie said.
Prosecutors also played a recording of a jail phone call from May between Ibarra and his wife, Layling Franco. FBI specialist Abeisis Ramirez, who translated the call from Spanish, testified that Ibarra told Franco that he had been at the University of Georgia looking for work, and that his wife repeatedly said she was fed up and that she wanted him to tell the truth.
Franco “continues to ask, ‘What happened with the girl?'” and said Ibarra “must know something,” Ramirez said. He responds: “Layling, enough.” Ramirez said Franco told Ibarra that it’s crazy that police only found his DNA.
Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool
Ibarra is charged with one count of malice murder, three counts of felony murder and one count each of kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, hindering an emergency telephone call, tampering with evidence and being a peeping Tom.
Ibarra took selfies of himself early on the day Riley was killed, according to testimony from an FBI agent who analyzed data from cellphones seized from the apartment where Ibarra lived with his two brothers and two other people. In the photos, Ibarra is wearing a black Adidas baseball cap and a dark hooded jacket.
A few hours before Riley was killed, a man in a black Adidas baseball cap was captured on surveillance video at the door of a first-floor apartment in a University of Georgia housing complex. A female graduate student who lived there testified Monday that she heard someone trying to get inside her apartment when she was in the shower. As she looked through the peephole, the person ducked and walked away, but then she saw the same person peering into her window, she said.
Police officers using a grainy screen shot from the surveillance video approached a man wearing a black Adidas cap the day after the killing. That turned out to be Diego Ibarra, one of Jose Ibarra’s brothers.
University of Georgia police Sgt. Joshua Epps testified that he was called to question Diego Ibarra outside the apartment where the Ibarras lived. Epps testified that the brother had no obvious recent injuries.
Outside the apartment, police also questioned Argenis Ibarra, Jose Ibarra and Rosbeli Elisbar Flores Bello. Epps and Corporal Rafael Sayan, who speaks Spanish and helped with the questioning, testified that they noticed scratches on Jose Ibarra.
When asked why his knuckles were red, Jose Ibarra told them it was because of the cold but didn’t really explain several scratches on his arms, Sayan said.
Security video from the apartment complex showed a man wearing a shirt with a distinctive pattern throwing something into a trash bin. A crime scene specialist from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation testified there was a lot of clothing in the one-room apartment but that she didn’t find that shirt in the apartment and didn’t find any bloody clothing.
A police officer testified Friday that he found a dark hooded jacket in the trash bin seen in the video and that testing revealed Riley’s blood on the hoodie.
Flores Bello identified the man in the video as Jose Ibarra and confirmed that identification on the witness stand Monday. She said she had previously seen him wearing the dark hooded jacket and thought it was strange that he threw it away.
Testifying through of an interpreter, Bello said she met Ibarra in Queens, New York. Ibarra’s brother, Diego, lived in Athens and had been urging Ibarra to move there, saying they would find work. She traveled with Ibarra to join his brother in Georgia. She said they went to the Roosevelt Hotel, which served as an intake center for migrants, to ask for a “humanitarian flight” to Georgia in September 2023. When they arrived in Atlanta, a friend of Diego Ibarra picked them up and drove them to Athens.
Riley was a student at Augusta University College of Nursing, which also has a campus in Athens, about 70 miles east of Atlanta.
Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump, blamed Democratic President Joe Biden’s border policies for her death. As he spoke about border security during his State of the Union address weeks after the killing, Biden mentioned Riley by name.
In March, FBI Director Christopher Wray offered unusually expansive comments on Riley’s murder.
“I want to tell you how heartbroken I am — not just for the family, friends, classmates, and staff who are grieving Laken’s loss,” Wray told a group gathered at the University of Georgia. “I’m saddened to see that sense of peace shattered by Laken’s murder and the subsequent arrest of a Venezuelan national who’d illegally entered the country in 2022.”
He said the FBI was doing “everything [it] can to help achieve justice for Laken.”
Last frantic texts sent by Laken Riley’s mother before student found dead revealed in court
A judge on Wednesday found Jose Ibarra guilty of murder in the death of Laken Riley. Read the latest here.
Georgia nursing student Laken Riley texted and called her mom as she headed out for a run to see whether she had time to chat — but then didn’t respond to her mother’s calls or increasingly frantic text messages.
Riley called her mother at 9:03 a.m. on Feb. 22, and by the time her mother called back about 20 minutes later, the student had encountered Jose Ibarra on a wooded running trail at the University of Georgia, according to trial testimony. Prosecutors said Ibarra killed Riley after a struggle, and data from Riley’s smartwatch shows her heart stopped beating at 9:28 a.m.
After Riley failed to answer the phone, her mother, Allyson Phillips, texted her several times, casually at first but then with increasing concern, according to data pulled from Riley’s phone.
At 9:37 a.m., her mother texted, “Call me when you can.” Phillips called twice, and when her calls went unanswered, she texted her daughter at 9:58 a.m., “You’re making me nervous not answering while you’re out running. Are you OK?” Phillips texted again at 11:47 a.m., writing, “Please call me. I’m worried sick about you.” She and other family members continued to call Riley.
Phillips cried in court as the text messages were read aloud by Georgia police Sgt. Sophie Raboud, who examined data from Riley’s phone, CBS News producer Jarred Eggleston reported. Raboud also testified about video from surveillance cameras near the wooded trail, and Phillips and some other family members and friends cried as video played showing Riley running on the trail the morning of her death.
Hyosub Shin / AP
Ibarra, 26, is charged with murder and other crimes in Riley’s death in February, and his trial began Friday. He has pleaded not guilty.
He waived his right to a jury trial, meaning the case will be decided alone by Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard. The case could go to the judge by the end of Tuesday.
The killing added fuel to the national debate over immigration when federal authorities said Ibarra illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 and was allowed to stay in the country while he pursued his immigration case. Riley, 22, was a student at Augusta University College of Nursing, which also has a campus in Athens, about 70 miles east of Atlanta.
Surveillance video also showed a man who prosecutors say is Ibarra walking around an apartment complex where a female graduate student said someone tried to get into her apartment and peered in the window early the day Riley was killed. The man is seen going up to the door of that apartment six times over a period of roughly an hour, twice opening the outer screen door, Raboud testified.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Lucas Breyer testified about reviewing the body camera video from the officer who found Riley’s body in the woods. He testified that her clothes were “heavily manipulated,” describing the waistband of her running tights as having been pulled down some and her jacket, shirt and sports bra having been pulled way up.
CBS News’ Eggleston reported that some of the crime scene testimony was so gruesome that members of Riley’s family left the courtroom.
Prosecutor Sheila Ross said during her opening statement that Ibarra had gone out “hunting for females” that morning in February and that he killed Riley after a struggle when she “refused to be his rape victim.” Law enforcement officers have testified there was no evidence that Riley was sexually assaulted.
Defense attorney Dustin Kirby said in his opening that Riley’s death was a tragedy and called the evidence in the case graphic and disturbing. But he said there is not sufficient evidence to prove that his client killed Riley.
Ross told the judge Monday that she expected to finish calling witnesses Tuesday, and defense attorneys said their witnesses should take half a day at most. Prosecutors had already called nearly two dozen witnesses over the first two days of testimony, Friday and Monday. That included law enforcement officers, Riley’s roommates and a woman who lived in the same apartment as Ibarra.
On Monday, prosecutors played a recording of a jail phone call from May between Ibarra and his wife, Layling Franco. FBI specialist Abeisis Ramirez, who translated the call from Spanish, testified that Ibarra told Franco that he had been at the University of Georgia looking for work, and that his wife repeatedly said she was fed up and that she wanted him to tell the truth.
Franco “continues to ask, ‘What happened with the girl?'” and said Ibarra “must know something,” Ramirez said. He responds: “Layling, enough.” Ramirez said Franco told Ibarra that it’s crazy that police only found his DNA.
Riley’s parents, roommates and other friends and family packed the courtroom Friday and again Monday and Tuesday.
Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump, blamed Democratic President Joe Biden’s border policies for her death. As he spoke about border security during his State of the Union address weeks after the killing, Biden mentioned Riley by name.
In March, FBI Director Christopher Wray offered unusually expansive comments on Riley’s murder.
“I want to tell you how heartbroken I am — not just for the family, friends, classmates, and staff who are grieving Laken’s loss,” Wray told a group gathered at the University of Georgia. “I’m saddened to see that sense of peace shattered by Laken’s murder and the subsequent arrest of a Venezuelan national who’d illegally entered the country in 2022.”
He said the FBI was doing “everything [it] can to help achieve justice for Laken.”
3 police officers, 4 cartel suspects killed in shootouts in Mexico across the border from Texas
Three state police officers and four drug cartel suspects were killed in a running series of shootouts in the northern Mexico border state of Tamaulipas, across the border from Texas, officials said Wednesday.
Another five police officers were wounded in the series of confrontations along highways around the town of San Fernando, Tamaulipas.
Drug cartel gunmen set up road blockades and attacked police patrols in the area Tuesday, and later in the day again attacked a funeral convoy of cars accompanying the body of one of the victims in the first attack.
The office of the state security spokesman confirmed the deaths on Wednesday, but there was no immediate information on the condition of the wounded officers.
San Fernando is a town about midway between the state capital, Ciudad Victoria, and the border cities of Matamoros and Reynosa.
San Fernando was the scene of some of the grisliest violence of Mexico’s drug war between 2010 and 2011. In those years, drug cartel gunmen massacred 72 migrants, many from Central America, and killed about 122 bus passengers. Those victims were pulled off passing buses and forced to fight each other to the death with sledgehammers.
Tamaulipas has long been dominated by the Gulf cartel and the old Zetas cartel, now known as the Cartel del Noreste.
Also Wednesday, cartel suspects in another border state, Sonora, killed a detective and wounded two others in an attack Wednesday that included the suspects ramming a police vehicle.
The confrontation played occurred early Wednesday on a road that leads to the border town of Sasabe, west of Nogales, Arizona. A Mexican marine was also injured in the attack. All the injured were listed in stable condition.
Authorities were chasing an SUV driving with its lights off on a rural road when the suspects rammed first the detectives’ patrol vehicles and then a Mexican marines’ unit before opening fire. Marines and detectives returned fire, killing three suspects.
The area is a hub for smuggling migrants and drugs.
The shootings come after other recent deadly incidents near the Mexico-U.S. border. Earlier this month, Mexico’s National Guard fatally shot two Colombians and wounded four others in what the Defense Department claimed was a confrontation near the U.S. border.
In October, gunmen apparently working for a drug cartel killed a U.S. Marine veteran in the border state of Sonora
Also last month, human rights activists and relatives in the violent Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas, blamed the army and National Guard troops in the deaths of a nurse and an 8-year-old girl. Nuevo Laredo has long been dominated by the ruthless Northeast Cartel, an offshoot of the old Zetas gang.
Susan Smith denied parole 30 years after drowning her 2 young sons: “I know what I did was horrible”
A parole board decided unanimously Wednesday that Susan Smith should remain in prison, despite her plea that God has forgiven her for infamously killing her two young sons 30 years ago by rolling her car into a South Carolina lake while they were strapped in their car seats.
It was the first parole hearing for Smith, 53, who is serving a life sentence after a jury convicted her of murder but decided to spare her the death penalty. She is eligible for a parole hearing every two years now that she has spent 30 years behind bars.
Smith made her case by video link from prison. She started by saying she was “very sorry,” then broke down in tears and bowed her head.
“I know what I did was horrible,” Smith said, pausing and then continuing with a wavering voice. “And I would give anything if I could go back and change it.”
Walter Ratliff / AP
In her final statements, Smith said God has forgiven her. “I ask that you show that same kind of mercy, as well,” she said.
Smith made international headlines in 1994 when she insisted for nine days that a carjacker drove away with her sons. Prosecutors have long argued that Smith killed 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex because she believed they were the reason the wealthy son of the owner of the business where she worked broke off their affair. Her attorneys blame her mental health.
A group of about 15 people urged against parole. They included her ex-husband and the father of the boys, David Smith; his family members; prosecutors; and law enforcement officials. Along with a few others, David Smith had a photo of Michael and Alex pinned to his suit jacket.
He struggled to get out words at first, pausing several times to compose himself. He said he has never seen Susan Smith express remorse toward him. “She changed my life for the rest of my life that night,” he said.
“I’m asking that you please, deny her parole today, and hopefully in the future, but specifically today,” he said, adding that he plans to attend each parole hearing to make sure Michael and Alex aren’t forgotten.
A decision to grant parole requires a two-thirds vote of board members present, according to the state. Parole in South Carolina is granted only about 8% of the time and is less likely with an inmate’s first appearance before the board, in notorious cases, or when prosecutors and the families of victims are opposed.
Before Smith testified, she listened stoically to a statement from her attorney, Tommy Thomas. He called her situation one about “the dangers of untreated mental health.” He also noted she had no criminal history before her conviction, making her “low risk” to the public.
The board’s decision was the one David Smith had hoped for, Smith said in a news conference following the hearing. “In two more years, we’ll go through this again,” he said. “But at least I know, for now, she’ll still be behind bars.”
The family and prosecution had been “cautiously optimistic,” former prosecutor Tommy Pope said, because Susan Smith has continually demonstrated that it’s “always been about Susan.”
A true-crime touchstone
Smith had claimed in October 1994 that she was carjacked late at night near the city of Union and that a Black man wearing a toboggan hat drove away with her sons. The claims by Smith, who is white, played into a centuries-old racist trope of Black men being a danger to white women and stoked concerns about crime that were prevalent in 1990s America and remain so today.
For nine days, Smith made numerous and sometimes tearful pleas asking that Michael and Alex be returned safely. The whole time, the boys were in Smith’s car at the bottom of nearby John D. Long Lake, authorities said.
MARY ANN CHASTAIN / AP
Investigators said Smith’s story didn’t add up. Carjackers usually just want a vehicle, so investigators asked why they would let Smith out but not her kids. The traffic light where Smith said she had stopped when her car was taken would only be red if another car was waiting to cross, and Smith said no other cars were around. Other bits and pieces of the story did not make sense.
Smith ultimately confessed to letting her car roll down a boat ramp and into the lake. A re-creation by investigators showed it took six minutes for the Mazda to dip below the surface, while cameras inside the vehicle showed water pouring in through the vents and steadily rising. The boys’ bodies were found dangling upside-down in their car seats, one tiny hand pressed against a window.
The 1995 trial of the young mother became a national sensation and a true-crime touchstone.
Smith’s lawyers said she was remorseful, was suffering a mental breakdown and intended to die alongside her children but left the car at the last moment. They were successful at sparing her life.
“I just felt strongly that had the Black man with the toboggan committed the crime, people would expect the death penalty,” Pope said at Wednesday’s hearing. “If David Smith had committed the crime, people would have expected the death penalty.”
Pain to family, state and nation
The parole board asked Smith about the law enforcement resources used to try to locate her children. In reply, she told the board she was “just scared” and “didn’t know how to tell them.”
Smith’s crime traumatized not only her family, prosecutor Kevin Brackett said, but also people in South Carolina and around the country who “fixated” on this “global sensation.” Her allegation that a Black man kidnapped her children also led to other Black men being wrongfully pulled over as police searched for a “fictitious man,” he said.
From prison, Smith can make phone calls and answer text messages, many from journalists and interested men. Those messages and phone calls were released under South Carolina’s open records act, something Smith didn’t initially realize could happen. She said the invasion of her privacy upset her, along with the public revelation that she was juggling conversations about the future with several men.
South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP
Some men know why she is famous. Others are more coy. One told her he was going to use the dates of her birthday and those of her dead sons when he played the Powerball lottery. Others chatted about their lives and sports. Many promised her a home on the outside and a happy life.
Smith also had sex with guards. And she violated prison policies by giving out contact information for friends, family members and her ex-husband to a documentary producer who discussed paying her for her help, according to Pope, the former prosecutor. CBS affiliate WLTX-TV reported Smith was found guilty at an internal hearing on October 3 and lost her phone, tablet, and canteen privileges for 90 days.
Pope, who’s now a representative in the South Carolina legislature, told WLTX-TV earlier that he didn’t expect Smith to get parole — or want her to.
“She has been continually focused on Susan, not on Michael and Alex, I think Susan’s remorseful, but remorseful that she’s in her circumstances — not remorseful for the pain she caused Michael and Alex, or equally importantly David Smith (the boy’s father) and his family,” he said.
Florida man arrested in alleged plot to bomb New York Stock Exchange
FBI agents have arrested a Florida man in connection with an alleged plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange, according to charging documents unsealed on Wednesday.
South Florida resident Harun Abdul-Malik Yener was charged with attempted use of an explosive to damage or destroy a building used in interstate commerce, according to court documents filed in the U.S. District Court Southern District of Florida.
The FBI began investigating Yener in February after receiving a tip he was storing bomb-making schematics in an unlocked storage unit in Coral Springs, Florida. Agents obtained a search warrant and found numerous watches with timers, electronic circuit boards and other electronics in the unit, according to court documents. Court Watch was the first media outlet to report on the arrest.
Yener told a confidential informant he wanted to join a militia. He then met with undercover FBI agents, court documents said, and asked them for photos of the New York Stock Exchange and other items, including explosive materials, to help him target the right locations to plant a bomb.
“There is one place that would be hella easy… the stock exchange, that would be a great hit. Tons of people would support it. They would see it and think dude, this guy makes sense, they are [profanity] robbing us. So that’s perfect,” he allegedly told an undercover operative last month.
“I’d even take a trip up there to like, set it up, New York,” he allegedly said. The affidavit said he “planned on wearing a disguise” and was going to distribute a recorded message to the press outlining the reasons behind the planned attack.
According to the affidavit, he told agents the bombing would be “like a small nuke went off” and that “[a]nything outside” the building “will be wiped out” and “anything inside there would be killed.”
Investigators say Yener conducted numerous online searches and shared at least 10 videos detailing how to construct explosives and fireworks from household items, as well as videos on how to make triggers associated with traps and explosives.
FBI agents said Yener’s “motivation for bombing the NYSE was to attain a ‘reboot’ and/or ‘reset’ of the United States government.”
Yener also allegedly told agents he considered joining ISIS but decided not to in 2015 because he believed “ISIS would not ultimately succeed in achieving their objectives.”
By Nov. 12, investigators say Yener made audio recordings of the demands and reasons behind the attack. “I feel like Bin Laden,” he allegedly said.
There have been several other arrests in recent months involving various alleged schemes to attack U.S. officials and landmarks.
In October, the FBI arrested a man from Afghanistan who was allegedly planning an Election Day terrorist attack in the U.S.
The FBI arrested a Pakistani national in August with alleged ties to Iran for allegedly plotting a murder-for-hire scheme targeting U.S. government officials and politicians.
Robert Legare
contributed to this report.
Man convicted of murder in slaying of Laken Riley
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Man convicted of murder in death of Laken Riley, Georgia nursing student killed on jogging trail
A judge has convicted the man on trial for the killing of Laken Riley, a nursing student in Georgia whose death in February shook the college town where she studied, as well as the country.
Jose Ibarra, 26, was found guilty Wednesday morning of murder and other charges related to Riley’s death. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Ibarra, an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant, entered the United States illegally in 2022, officials said, but he was allowed to remain in the country to pursue his immigration case. His status helped bring the national debate over border laws to a boiling point earlier this year, as prominent Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump, blamed President Biden’s policies for Riley’s death.
ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP via Getty Images
The verdict handed down by Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard marked the end of four days of emotional hearings that began last week. Ibarra waived his right to a jury trial after pleading not guilty to a 10-count indictment brought against him in the wake of Riley’s killing, which meant the case would be heard and decided solely by the judge. He also declined to testify during the trial.
The state had charged Ibarra with one count of malice murder, three counts of felony murder and one count each of kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, hindering an emergency telephone call, tampering with evidence, and being a “peeping Tom.” That final charge stemmed from prosecutors’ allegation that Ibarra peered into the window of an apartment in a university residential building on the day Riley was murdered. Prosecutors said he was “hunting for females on the University of Georgia’s campus” when he encountered Riley.
Ibarra was found guilty on all 10 counts. Audible wails were heard in the courtroom when Haggard announced the verdict, citing a portion of the prosecution’s closing argument that emphasized the evidence against Ibarra was “overwhelming and powerful.” The defendant, receiving the news in Spanish through a translator, maintained the stoicism he displayed in court throughout the trial.
Haggard heard impact statements from Riley’s loved ones after reading the verdict. Her parents, sister, roommates and friends spoke through tears while they described Riley as a cheerful, ambitious and generous young person who valued her faith and prioritized helping others. Many called Ibarra a monster and the crime an act of evil, and Riley’s classmates said separately they now fear for their safety at school. The prosecution also shared excruciating video of the moment police told Riley’s family she was dead.
Everyone who gave statements pressed the judge to impose the maximum sentence. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty in this case.
“There is no end to the pain, suffering and loss that we have experienced or will continue to endure,” said Riley’s mother, Allyson Phillips, in her remarks. “This sick, twisted and evil coward showed no regard for Laken or human life. We are asking the same be done to him.”
Riley was found dead on Feb. 22 in a wooded part of the University of Georgia campus in Athens, where she was enrolled in the Augusta University College of Nursing. The 22-year-old had gone for a run that morning through the school’s intramural fields, which was routine for her, and a concerned friend called University of Georgia police at around noon once Riley failed to return. She often talked to her mother on the phone while out running in the mornings, so when Riley’s friends and family did not hear from her, they worried something was wrong.
Phillips called and texted her daughter several times after missing an initial call from Riley just after 9 a.m., according to logs and messages pulled from the student’s phone and shown in court Tuesday, as the state’s case wound down. Phillips and other family members continued to reach out to Riley for several hours when she did not reply.
Phillips cried at the Tuesday hearing as her text messages were read aloud on the stand by Georgia Police Sgt. Sophie Raboud, one of the lead investigators in Riley’s case. In one of her final messages to Riley at 11:47 a.m., her mother wrote, “You’re making me nervous not answering while you’re out running. Are you OK?”
Riley’s mother, along with family and friends in attendance, became emotional at a different point in Raboud’s testimony where she answered questions about the video being played of Riley running the morning of her death.
Miguel Martinez-Jimenez / Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP
Ibarra was arrested the following day and booked without bond in the Athens-Clarke County Jail. Police have said Riley’s killing appeared to be a random attack. But the indictment returned by a Georgia grand jury in May detailed a gruesome confrontation in which Ibarra allegedly asphyxiated the student, hit her over the head with a rock to the point of disfiguring her skull, and pulled up her clothing, intending to rape her.
In court, attorneys for the state also described a disturbing scene. Prosecutor Sheila Ross said Friday that Ibarra killed Riley violently after a prolonged struggle.
“When Laken Riley refused to be his rape victim, he bashed her skull in with a rock repeatedly,” Ross told the judge. She said evidence — including surveillance footage, traces of Ibarra’s DNA under Riley’s fingernails, and his thumbprint left behind on her phone screen — would show the student “fought for her life, for her dignity” over almost 20 minutes.
Data from Riley’s watch indicated she stopped suddenly in the middle of her run at around 9:10 a.m. the day she died and called 911 about a minute later. The watch showed Riley’s heart was still beating until 9:28 a.m., Ross said.
Ibarra’s defense attorney, Dustin Kirby, had argued the prosecution’s evidence against his client was circumstantial and did not prove his guilt. Ibarra has appeared in court with shackles around his ankles and headphones to follow a translation of the trial proceedings in Spanish.
Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool
“The evidence in this case is very good that Laken Riley was murdered,” Kirby said. Still, the defense has tried to challenge the strength of the prosecution’s evidence, saying even the DNA sample may not completely rule out other suspects. Ibarra’s legal team raised questions, for example, about whether one of his brothers could have committed the crime. The defendant’s brother Diego Ibarra worked a shift at the University of Georgia’s dining hall on the day of the murder.
Witness testimony for the prosecution continued into Monday, when an FBI Special Agent James Burnie told the court that electronic location data seemed to place Riley and Ibarra in the same wooded area at the time of her death. GPS coordinates from Riley’s cellphone and smartwatch confirmed her precise location in the area where officers found her body, and pings between Ibarra’s phone and cell towers suggested he was likely in the woods, too, Burnie said.
Prosecutors during that hearing also played a recording for the court of a May phone call between Ibarra’s wife, Layling Franco, and Ibarra while he was in jail. On the call, Ibarra told Franco he had been looking for work at the University of Georgia, and his wife urged him multiple times to tell her the truth about what happened to Riley, FBI specialist Abeisis Ramirez said during his testimony. The recording of their conversation was translated from Spanish for the court.
The jail call was not admitted into evidence in Ibarra’s trial and could not be considered in the case, Judge Haggard announced Tuesday morning.
“After hearing the translations I do find that it was more than contextual, and therefore violates the confrontation clause of the 6th Amendment,” the judge said. The clause protects the rights of an individual accused of a crime to confront witnesses.
contributed to this report.