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Episode: The Murder of Laken Riley

Author: The New York Times
Duration: 00:24:20

Episode Shownotes

Warning: This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and death.On Wednesday afternoon, a guilty verdict was reached in the death of the Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. A 26-year-old migrant from Venezuela was convicted.Rick Rojas, the Atlanta bureau chief for The Times, discusses the case, and how it became a

flashpoint in the national debate over border security.Guest: Rick Rojas, the Atlanta bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: Ms. Riley, 22, was attacked in February while running on a trail on the University of Georgia campus in Athens. Her killer was sentenced to life in prison.Lawmakers in Georgia approved tougher rules on immigration after the killing.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Summary

The murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley while jogging near the University of Georgia by Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan migrant, has spurred national discussions on immigration policy and border security. The investigation uncovered disturbing evidence, leading to Ibarra's conviction and life sentence. The case has been politically exploited by figures like Donald Trump to advocate for stricter immigration laws, with Georgia lawmakers responding by advancing tougher immigration policies in light of Riley's death. The incident highlights the complex interplay of crime, immigration, and national security in current political discourse.

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Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_05
Hey, it's Michael. Just a quick note. Today's episode contains some graphic depictions of violence.

00:00:10 Speaker_01
May it please the court, counsel. On February 22nd, Jose Ibarra put on a black hat, a hoodie-style jacket, and some black kitchen-style disposable gloves and he went hunting for females on the University of Georgia's campus.

00:00:37 Speaker_01
And in his hunt, he encountered 22-year-old Lakin Riley on her morning jog. And when Lakin Riley refused to be his rape victim, he bashed her skull in with a rock repeatedly. That is what this case is all about.

00:01:06 Speaker_05
From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bilboro. This is The Daily. On Wednesday afternoon, inside a courtroom in Athens, Georgia, a guilty verdict was reached in what prosecutors have described as a cut-and-dried case of cold-blooded murder.

00:01:30 Speaker_05
But outside that courtroom, the case has become something far bigger. Today. national reporter Rick Rojas on how the death of Lakin Riley has become a flashpoint in the national debate over border security, illegal immigration, and mass deportation.

00:02:00 Speaker_05
It's Thursday, November 21st. Rick, tell us about the woman at the center of this entire story, Lakin Riley.

00:02:16 Speaker_04
So Lakin Riley is a 22-year-old nursing student living in Athens, which is a bustling college town here in Georgia. It's about an hour, hour and a half away from Atlanta, and she's just leading a very kind of normal college life.

00:02:33 Speaker_04
She lives in a house close to the University of Georgia campus with a group of roommates. They talk about each other like they're family. They have meals together. They have movie nights.

00:02:43 Speaker_04
They share each other's locations from their phones so they can keep an eye on each other. And Lakin is an avid runner. She regularly suits up and takes a long jog. And that's exactly what she did on the morning of February 22nd.

00:02:58 Speaker_04
At about 9 a.m., she heads out for a run. And then she heads into the woods, running on what is usually a very placid, peaceful, widely considered safe place. The first sign of trouble comes about 10 minutes later.

00:03:15 Speaker_04
She activates the emergency function on her iPhone and it calls 911. Clark County 911.

00:03:19 Speaker_00
Hello, this is Clark County 911.

00:03:29 Speaker_04
A dispatcher picks up the phone and keeps asking if anyone's there, but the line is silent.

00:03:39 Speaker_01
Can anyone hear me?

00:03:42 Speaker_04
For almost a minute, there's no response. And then you hear a faint voice saying, yo tengo, or I have in Spanish. And then the call ends. After about an hour, from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. and then to 11 a.m., Lakin's roommates start to get worried about her.

00:04:04 Speaker_04
Like, where is she? What happened? And so that's when they use the location sharing function on the phone to try to track her down. It did not give a precise location, but it gave them a rough sense of where she was.

00:04:19 Speaker_04
And in the course of looking for her, one of her roommates actually finds one of her AirPods on the ground. And that's like a very chilling sign that, you know, something's going on with Lincoln. That's when they call in the police.

00:04:34 Speaker_04
And so a campus police officer from the University of Georgia sets out looking for her. And they find her shortly after noon that day. Her body has been dragged about 60 feet from the trail. She's been covered with leaves.

00:04:52 Speaker_04
Her top has been lifted over her head. She's bloodied, clearly beaten, and it's clear from that moment that there's been a vicious attack that ended in Lake and Riley's death.

00:05:08 Speaker_04
So not long after Lakin's body is discovered, investigators start finding all kinds of evidence. They find a bloody jacket that's been thrown away in a dumpster. They find security camera footage showing someone throwing that jacket away.

00:05:22 Speaker_04
They find her phone with a thumbprint on it. They find DNA evidence under her fingernails that they believe shows who her attacker was. And they quickly find an arrest for a suspected killer.

00:05:35 Speaker_04
And as far as the authorities are concerned, like, it's a pretty open and shut case. Like, it's very straightforward who they believe did this and that they have the evidence to back that up.

00:05:46 Speaker_04
As awful as this case is, as gruesome as the details are, it's also not the sort of case that would necessarily rise to a national news story until we find out who the police have arrested.

00:05:59 Speaker_05
What do you mean?

00:06:00 Speaker_04
So we quickly learned that the suspect had come into the United States illegally, and suddenly this is no longer simply a local murder case. It becomes something much bigger, and it becomes a political symbol.

00:06:13 Speaker_05
Which we're going to get to, but Rick, first tell us about this suspect and how he ended up in these woods near the University of Georgia.

00:06:26 Speaker_04
So Jose Antonio Ibarra is a 26-year-old migrant from Venezuela who had this circuitous path that led him to Athens, Georgia. He entered the United States illegally on the border near El Paso, Texas in September of 2022.

00:06:43 Speaker_04
And he's arrested by immigration authorities, and then he is released while his case is being reviewed.

00:06:52 Speaker_04
It's happening at a time when the border and the Biden administration in particular has just been overwhelmed by a surge in border crossings, and particularly with migrants coming from Venezuela, migrants like Mr. Ibarra.

00:07:07 Speaker_04
So what happens to him once he's released into the United States? He heads to New York City. First, he goes to Queens. He stays at a Crown Plaza hotel there that had been converted into a migrant shelter.

00:07:20 Speaker_04
And while he was in New York, in August of 2022, he was arrested for driving a scooter without a license with a child who was not wearing a helmet. He was not prosecuted or jailed in that case.

00:07:33 Speaker_04
A few weeks later, he goes to the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, which had become the city's official welcome center for migrants. And he goes through a process that's known as reticketing, where the city pays for migrants to move elsewhere.

00:07:48 Speaker_04
And so he gets a ticket to leave for Atlanta on September 28th. And that's how he ends up in Athens. in Georgia where his brother already is and has found work.

00:08:01 Speaker_05
So, he briefly becomes part of this wave of migrants that those of us who live in New York City remember really well.

00:08:09 Speaker_05
There are so many coming so quickly that the city sets up a bunch of hotels and shelters to deal with them and ultimately allows some, perhaps even encourages some, it sounds like including Ibarra, to leave New York City and go someplace else to relieve the pressure.

00:08:26 Speaker_05
on city resources.

00:08:28 Speaker_04
Right, and so at that point, he moves to Athens and lives in an apartment complex that's just a short walking distance from the University of Georgia campus that's home to working class immigrants who have ended up here in this Georgia city from all over the place, including Asia and Latin America.

00:08:46 Speaker_04
And so then in October, just a few more weeks after he arrives in Georgia, he and his brother are both arrested in connection with a shoplifting case at a local Walmart. But he's not detained.

00:09:00 Speaker_04
The authorities run his name through state and national databases at the time, but don't find any warrants for him. And so he's released. So I just want to be sure I understand.

00:09:11 Speaker_05
At this point, he's been arrested three times. First time when he enters the country unlawfully, but then he is released. A second time in New York City for the scooter incident, now a third time for shoplifting.

00:09:26 Speaker_05
And at no point it sounds like is there any effort to detain him for some meaningful period or perhaps deport him.

00:09:34 Speaker_04
Right. And so because of all of this, his immigration status, his previous arrests, his repeated releases, when he's arrested for murdering Lincoln Riley, the case just blows up. You know, I said earlier it became a political symbol.

00:09:49 Speaker_04
And remember the timing. It's February in a presidential election year. This is Georgia, a swing state, and illegal immigration is a huge priority for voters.

00:09:59 Speaker_05
Right.

00:10:00 Speaker_04
So Republicans all the way up to Donald Trump decide that this is the case to focus on. This, for them, is the case that encapsulates all the dangers of illegal migration.

00:10:10 Speaker_04
And they're going to talk about it and talk about it and talk about it as much as humanly possible.

00:10:25 Speaker_05
We'll be right back. So Rick, what exactly do Republicans do with this case back in February once Jose Ibarra is arrested and his immigration status becomes widely understood?

00:10:47 Speaker_03
They waste no time speaking out about it. Our hearts are breaking this morning for the family of Lakin Riley.

00:10:53 Speaker_04
Just two days after Lakin Riley is killed, Brian Kemp, Georgia's Republican governor, sends a letter to President Biden demanding answers about Jose Ybarra's immigration status.

00:11:05 Speaker_03
Lakin's death is a direct result of failed policies on the federal level and an unwillingness by this White House to secure the southern border. And he even delivers a speech about it, where he just rips into Biden.

00:11:18 Speaker_03
— And because of the White House's failures, every state is now a border state. And Lake and Riley's murder is just the latest proof of that.

00:11:27 Speaker_04
— And then… Two weeks later, Georgia Republicans bring the issue to President Biden even more directly, at his State of the Union address.

00:11:38 Speaker_02
— Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States!

00:11:42 Speaker_04
As President Biden enters the House of Representatives, he is confronted by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican representative from Georgia. She's wearing a T-shirt that says, say her name. She's wearing a pin with Lake and Riley's face on it.

00:11:58 Speaker_04
And then during the speech, As President Biden starts to talk about legislative efforts to address immigration issues, Representative Greene speaks up.

00:12:15 Speaker_04
She begins heckling President Biden during his address, goading him to say her name and to directly address this case. And so he does, or at least he attempts to.

00:12:27 Speaker_02
Lincoln, Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal.

00:12:34 Speaker_04
In the process of trying to say her name, he mispronounces it, which has given more fodder to conservatives. But at the same time, he says that this is an innocent young woman who has been killed by an illegal.

00:12:49 Speaker_04
a term that is deeply offensive to many people on the left and immigration, advocates for immigrants who see this term as just dehumanizing and pejorative. And so, in a way, he ends up just... Pleasing no one. Right.

00:13:03 Speaker_04
He just wades right into this mess and just makes it even worse in some ways. He just offends everyone across the board.

00:13:10 Speaker_05
So, by this point, the death of Lincoln Riley has gone national into the most watched presidential speech of the year. Where does it go from there?

00:13:21 Speaker_04
It goes right to the center of President Trump's campaign this year.

00:13:26 Speaker_04
From 2016 on, Trump has focused a lot of his attention on illegal immigration, and he's tried to portray undocumented immigrants as violent and used a lot of incendiary language, even playing on racial stereotypes and anxieties, to try to describe them in a sense that he says they have been to the country.

00:13:47 Speaker_04
And now suddenly, as his campaign is heating up again, and he returns to this theme of illegal immigration, he has a villain that he can point to as representative of everything that he has been arguing for years.

00:14:01 Speaker_02
Lakin was a brilliant young student.

00:14:04 Speaker_04
And so Trump and his allies just bring this case up exhaustively.

00:14:08 Speaker_02
He was assaulted, beaten, and horrifically murdered by an illegal alien.

00:14:15 Speaker_04
They bring it up at rallies. They bring it up in advertisements and in conservative media.

00:14:21 Speaker_00
Lakin Riley should have been able to go on a run in broad daylight without being murdered by an illegal immigrant.

00:14:29 Speaker_04
All in an effort to paint this case as something widespread or common.

00:14:34 Speaker_00
How many more killers has Biden set free?

00:14:38 Speaker_04
In their view, it is representative of this bigger failure on the part of the Biden administration to crack down on illegal immigration and to crack down on the southern border. And they frame this case as just the tip of an iceberg.

00:14:57 Speaker_05
Right. And it felt like the Biden campaign was struggling when Biden was the nominee to respond to this because this incident had occurred on his watch, and there had been a meaningful rise in illegal immigration when he was president.

00:15:13 Speaker_05
But I want to just pause, Rick, and ask, based on your reporting, how representative what José Ibarra is accused of doing here really is of undocumented immigrants. According to Trump and Republicans, this is common. This is a real threat.

00:15:33 Speaker_05
What's the actual reality of it?

00:15:36 Speaker_04
I mean, this is very clearly an aberration. What Jose Ybarra is accused of doing is in no way reflective of the intentions or the actions of the vast majority of the people who are undocumented and who enter the United States.

00:15:55 Speaker_04
Studies have repeatedly shown the opposite, that this is a population that is doing everything they can to avoid detection, to keep their head down, and their intention is not to come here and sow unrest and to perpetrate violence.

00:16:13 Speaker_04
It's really to get away from something else and seek economic opportunity. While this case is very much real, it's not necessarily an indictment of undocumented people more broadly.

00:16:27 Speaker_04
But President Trump and other conservatives have highlighted this case because it so neatly makes the point that they want to make, even if the evidence more broadly doesn't bear this out.

00:16:39 Speaker_05
Right. Of course, for many Americans, one murder by somebody who is in the United States unlawfully is going to be one murder. too many, but even if the end of Jose Ibarra's journey in the United States is rare, a violent act of murder.

00:16:59 Speaker_05
It feels like the rest of his journey feels much more common for somebody who comes here illegally.

00:17:06 Speaker_05
He enters the country, he's given taxpayer-funded resources in multiple locations, and he is not deported even when he does have encounters with law enforcement. And that part of the story on its own, for a lot of people, is very problematic.

00:17:25 Speaker_04
Yes, one murder is too many for sure. But I think, as you said, Ibarra's entire journey touches on many people's frustrations, where the system is falling short and how migrants in these situations are treated.

00:17:38 Speaker_04
And I think there's just this underlying sense of fairness that I think drives a lot. of the opposition.

00:17:44 Speaker_04
You know, before the election, when I talked to voters, I heard about that, about the resources, about the taxpayer dollars that have gone to supporting these migrants, that they're getting access to support and a pathway to a secure place in this country that doesn't exist for other people.

00:18:02 Speaker_04
They look at Jose Barra and say, why did this person get a hotel room in New York City paid for by the government? Why was he flown to Georgia on the taxpayer's dime?

00:18:12 Speaker_04
And whether you think this is a good use of money or not, those are the questions that are being asked. Why is someone who is here unlawfully getting something that U.S. citizens aren't? You know, how does that make sense?

00:18:26 Speaker_04
And then on top of all these questions of fairness, now you have this murder.

00:18:31 Speaker_05
Right. And after this presidential campaign from Donald Trump, in which he makes immigration and at times this case, which he has invoked such a big part of his message,

00:18:46 Speaker_05
Trump wins the election, he wins Georgia, where this crime happened, among other swing states, and millions of voters, tens of millions of voters, effectively endorse his call for mass deportation.

00:19:02 Speaker_05
on a scale we have never seen before in the United States. He's calling for millions of people to be deported, and in his telling, somebody like Jose Ibarra is exactly who should be deported when that mass deportation starts.

00:19:17 Speaker_05
And then, as fate would have it, right after this election, in fact, I think just two weeks after this election, this murder trial of Jose Ibarra begins in Athens, Georgia.

00:19:32 Speaker_04
Right. And the trial moves fast. The defense was concerned about being able to find a jury in Athens, a city that was just rattled by this killing, who could dispassionately hear the evidence and render a verdict.

00:19:46 Speaker_04
So they asked for a bench trial instead, meaning it's the judge who decided whether or not he was guilty. And so after four days of testimony, the judge reaches his verdict.

00:19:57 Speaker_04
And he delivers it just 15 minutes after the lawyers had finished their closing arguments. Right.

00:20:03 Speaker_05
He did not hesitate.

00:20:05 Speaker_04
No. He found him guilty. And then later in the afternoon, he sentenced Ibarra to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

00:20:14 Speaker_05
And Rick, now that Jose Ibarra has been convicted and sentenced, how do we think that this case will live on in a post-election world in which the president-elect

00:20:28 Speaker_05
soon-to-be-inaugurated President Trump, is talking so much about illegal immigration and mass deportation. I think he, just a day or so ago, mentioned a plan to invoke a national emergency and use the military to carry out mass deportation.

00:20:47 Speaker_05
What happens to this case, given how it has now been resolved in that context?

00:20:54 Speaker_04
So this guilty verdict is already being embraced as validation by the people who have raised the profile of this case from the very beginning.

00:21:03 Speaker_04
You know, the people who have wanted to focus on this case as a justification for cracking down on illegal immigration. Not long after the verdict on Wednesday, Trump came out and celebrated it. and linked it to his plan for deportation.

00:21:19 Speaker_04
He said, it's time to secure our border and remove these criminals and thugs from our country so nothing like this can happen again. And so clearly this case is going to be a part of how this new administration makes the case for mass deportation.

00:21:40 Speaker_04
The outcome of this election and the outcome of this trial all but ensured that this case is going to live on in some way for a very long time.

00:21:50 Speaker_05
Well, Rick, thank you very much. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

00:22:29 Speaker_05
On Wednesday, the Republicans who control the House Ethics Committee blocked the release of a report into allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use by former Representative Matt Gaetz, President-elect Trump's pick to be attorney general.

00:22:47 Speaker_05
Senators from both parties have asked to see the report as they try to vet Gaetz. But the Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, a close Trump ally, has pressured the Ethics Committee not to make the report's findings public.

00:23:07 Speaker_05
The Department of Justice is asking that Google be forced to sell its popular web browser, Chrome. The request was made to a federal judge who ruled back in August that Google has maintained an illegal monopoly in online search.

00:23:25 Speaker_05
If the judge accepts the plan, it could radically reshape Google's business. Today's episode was produced by Alex Stern, Sidney Harper, Luke Vanderploeg, and Mooj Zadie. It was edited by Liz O'Balen and Maria Byrne, with help from Rachel Quester.

00:23:50 Speaker_05
Contains original music by Diane Wong, Mary Lozano, Dan Powell, and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. That's it for the daily. I'm Michael Boboro. See you tomorrow.