Woman’s Body Found at a Cemetery — Ex-Boyfriend, Who Was Recently Released From Jail, Is Arrested
Someone from Mississippi was caught running away from a graveyard where police found the body of his ex-girlfriend, who was 22 years old, wrapped in a sheet and a car.
Local police told the Sun Herald, WLOX, and News Channel 5 that Lauren Johansen’s body was found in a Gulfport, Miss., cemetery, cut up and wrapped in a sheet. This happened while police were there to check on her safety.
According to the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office, Bricen Rivers, 23, Johansen’s ex-boyfriend, hid from police for hours before being caught after a manhunt on Wednesday, the Sun Herald claimed.
The news sources say that he was put into the Harrison County jail on a murder charge.
Police in Nashville, Tennessee, said that Rivers had been freed from jail a few days before Johansen’s death. Rivers had been there on assault charges.
Police in Metropolitan Nashville said at the time that he was charged with aggravated kidnapping and interfering with an emergency call in December for a different event. There is no information about whether he has made a plea to these charges.
As the kidnapping charge was being brought, the police said in a statement that Rivers was on vacation with his girlfriend in Nashville when “she called [her family] screaming, afraid that her boyfriend may kill her.” The department says that Rivers beat her so badly during the attack that she almost passed out.
Police in Nashville were called by her family. When they got there, they “could hear the victim banging on the vehicle as she tried to escape the attack,” according to the police.
The police force said that the victim was “able to get out of the car upon officer’s arrival.”
At the time, the police didn’t say what the girlfriend’s name was, but WLOX and News Channel 5 said it was Johansen.
Rivers was caught and put on $251,000 bond for the crime. However, his bond was lowered to $150,000 months later, according to jail records seen by WLOX and News Channel 5.
The father of Lauren Johansen, Lance Johansen, told WLOX, “I sat in the Nashville courtroom and told the judge that if they let him out, he was going to kill her.”
Lance added, “He had abused her. This was probably the fifth or sixth time they got into a fight and he would beat her.” “He would find a way to sneak back in after we took her away from him for a while.”
The Sun Herald, WLOX, and News Channel 5 all say that Rivers is now being held on a $1 million bond. It wasn’t clear right away if he had made a plea or hired a lawyer.