A 22-year-old university student in the United States was found beaten to death and wrapped in a sheet in the back seat of her car – just days after her boyfriend was released from prison. New York PostLauren Johansen’s body was found wrapped in garbage bags and sheets in a Mississippi cemetery on July 3. Her father said he begged the judge not to release her ex-boyfriend from prison, warning that he would “kill” her if he was released. However, the judge ignored his warnings and five days later, the 22-year-old’s body was found mutilated in her own car and police say her boyfriend was the one who committed the crime.
According to PostMs Johansen’s former partner, Bryson Rivers, 23, has been arrested and charged with her murder. He was released on bail just five days before the 22-year-old’s death. He was previously in custody on kidnapping charges for brutally beating and holding Ms Johansen hostage during a trip to Nashville in December.
Ms. Johansen was on track to get her nursing degree. She was first reported missing on July 2, when her sister woke up alone in their shared apartment with the front door open and their security camera broken. That same morning, her father said he awoke to a notification that her location-tracking app had been turned off. He then reported her missing, and the next day, authorities informed him they had located her car in a nearby cemetery.
Ms. Johansen was found dead in her car parked in the middle of a cemetery in Harrison County, Mississippi. Her mutilated body was wrapped in garbage bags in the back seats.
“She had been beaten to death. Her face was crushed, her head was crushed, she was beaten so brutally that when she died she couldn’t see out of both eyes and she had multiple holes in her head,” Ms Johansen’s father said.
He added, “I helped the autopsy officer take her body out of the car. She was just mutilated.”
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The father also said he warned the judge that if her boyfriend was let out of jail, he would kill her. He alleged that Rivers held his daughter hostage in December and beat her while they were vacationing in Nashville. He also said that in the moments before Rivers’ arrest in December, police officers found Lauren Johansen badly beaten and trying to flee in a rental car when Rivers pulled out a gun.
The grieving father criticized the criminal justice system in Tennessee, saying it had let his family down. “I feel like the criminal justice system in Nashville, Tennessee has let my daughter and our family down. The world shouldn’t work that way,” he said. “She was really beautiful, super, super smart. Her dreams and hopes were bigger than life. Everything she did, everything she touched, she changed everything,” he said.
Now, Rivers, who was arrested after a six-hour manhunt, is charged with murder and is being held on a $1 million bond.