Mollie Tibbetts Murder: Iowa Police Investigated Desolate Hotel Before Body Found
Aug. 21 2018, Updated 8:27 p.m. ET
The owner of the only hotel in the small Iowa town Mollie Tibbetts called home before she disappeared says he provided information to authorities who searched for the missing college student before her body was allegedly discovered, RadarOnline.com can exclusively report.
Dinesh Prasad, 59, told RadarOnline.com in an exclusive interview that investigators from the Poweshiek County Sheriff arrived to his hotel, Pleasant Inn & Suites, on the outskirts of Brooklyn, Tibbetts' hometown of less than 1,500 residents, two days after she went missing.
“When I was visited by the local sheriff, they wanted some information regarding all the guests staying in the hotel,” Dinesh told RadarOnline.com.
“They gave me specific time windows and I provided them the information.”
Tibbetts went missing after she went for an early evening jog on July 18, drawing national attention over her baffling disappearance from a quiet agricultural and working-class community 70 miles east of Des Moines.
Authorities searched cornfields and questioned both residents and business owners while tracking down leads in the hopes of finding the missing Iowa University student.
Law enforcement sources told RadarOnline.com that a body found on local farmland is believed to be that of the missing 20-year-old.
Tibbetts' parents told RadarOnline.com that they believed she was being held by someone she knew. He declined to comment after the body’s discovery this morning.
Meanwhile, investigators are to release more information at a press conference this afternoon.
Prasad said investigators asked him for information from the registry at his hotel, the Pleasant Inn & Suites off Interstate 80.
“They wanted to know who were the people who stayed here, and I provided them that list” he recalled.
Prasad couldn’t say if the information yielded the name of a suspect, but said the possibility was still “alarming.”
“I’m a highway hotel. Obviously people of all walks of life, all parts of America come here and stay with me. But I never had any such problem since I’ve owned the hotel, which is 8 years.”
He said he hoped helped play a part in finding Tibbetts, but wished that it could have been a happier outcome.
“It’s sad and heartbreaking,” said the father of two grown boys.
“It’s sad because she was very young. She was a college student. This thing is not expected here, a girl of that age, intelligent, going missing.”
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“I feel sorry. I’m a father. I feel sorry for her parents,” he said. “This is emotionally troubling for all of us.”
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