The father of slain Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts said he was targeted by a racist robocall that white nationalists have been using to push their hateful agenda in the state.
“It was unbelievably painful,” Rob Tibbetts told the Des Moines Register of the moment last Tuesday when his wife, Mollie’s stepmother, Kacey Auston-Tibbetts, picked up his cellphone.
Upon hearing a voice recording claiming that if Mollie were brought back to life, she would say, “Kill them all” about immigrants, Auston-Tibbetts became physically sick.
“It was everything that’s dark and wrong in America right now,” the grieving dad said about the call his wife heard.
The 20-year-old college student’s family were also branded traitors to their race in the call — possibly for begging that their loved one’s death not be politicized.
Authorities charged 24-year-old farmhand Cristhian Rivera with first-degree murder in the case last month and say he is an illegal immigrant from Mexico. He allegedly confessed to abducting Mollie as she was on a run July 18 outside her 1,400-person town of Brooklyn, Iowa.
After Rivera’s arrest, some politicians used Mollie’s death to push anti-immigration agendas.
Rob Tibbetts has since publicly implored people not to use his daughter’s death to promote “profoundly racist” views.
Tibbetts believes he was “singled out” by the robocall, especially as he has a Latina stepdaughter and two Latino grandchildren — whom he said Mollie adored.
“It was twisted and grotesque,” he said.
Residents of Brooklyn, Iowa, also reported getting the disturbing calls last week.
They were paid for by The Road to Power, a group with a white nationalist podcast that has been linked to Scott Rhodes, also known as Scott Platek, of Sandpoint, Idaho, according to the report.



