Bricen Rivers (left) in a December 2023 mug shot (Metropolitan Nashville Police Department), (right) Lauren Johansen as seen on the local news (WLOX/screengrab)
Days after a woman’s ex-boyfriend bonded out of jail in Nashville, Tennessee, without an ankle monitor, despite her family’s insistence in court that her life would be in danger unless he remained in custody, 22-year-old Lauren Johansen was found dead Wednesday in her own car in a Mississippi cemetery, “mutilated” and wrapped in sheets and trash bags.
This is the series of events that was recounted by Lauren’s father Lance Johansen in an emotional interview with local ABC and CBS affiliate WLOX. The reported orthopedic surgeon said that family begged a Nashville judge not to let 23-year-old Bricen Rivers out of jail, but the court allowed it, and then his daughter was murdered as a result.
Lance said that he appeared in court and urged Judge Cheryl Blackburn not to let Rivers out of jail during a pending aggravated kidnapping, aggravated stalking and coercion of a witness case from December 2023, because he was certain the defendant “was going to kill” Lauren.
Blackburn, whose competency has been questioned in recent months by local defense lawyers, lowered Rivers’ bond from $250,000 to $150,000, records show. It’s unclear exactly when the defendant was released, but it was a matter of days before Johansen’s death, and prosecutors reportedly said they objected to the bond lowering.
Rivers allegedly ignored a requirement to stay in Davidson County, Tenn., ignored a requirement to get an ankle monitor, and was subsequently arrested and charged with Lauren Johansen’s murder across state lines.
The WLOX news segment aired a message that Lance Johansen said he received from the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office on July 1 telling him that Rivers was out of jail.
“This is Bailey calling from the district attorney’s office in Nashville. Bricen Rivers was released from custody. He was supposed to report straight to a GPS company and be put on a GPS monitor and he was not to leave Davidson County,” the recording aired on the news said. “But as soon as he was released, he did not report to that GPS monitoring company, and he has not been heard from. I wanted to make sure Lauren is safe.”
By that point, it seems, it was already close to too late to save Lauren. The father said that he texted Lauren and got a response that didn’t sound like her. Then, in the early morning hours of July 2, he saw that the tracking feature on Lauren’s Life360 location sharing app was no longer active.
The story only got worse from there.
Lance told WLOX that he reported his daughter missing to police in Hattiesburg soon after he learned that a security camera at a home where Lauren lived with her sister was no longer functioning, that the front door to the residence was open, and that Lauren and her car were not there.
The grieving father said that by the time Lauren’s car was found via OnStar on Wednesday in “the middle of the cemetery” in Harrison County, he knew that “she was dead.”
But he could not have been prepared for what he saw next.
“When we got there, her car was in the middle of the cemetery and she was in the back of the car wrapped up in sheets and trash bags. She was basically beaten to death,” Lance Johansen reportedly told WLOX. “Her face was smashed in, her head was smashed in, she was brutally beaten to the point she couldn’t see out of either eye when she finally died and there was multiple holes in her head. I helped the coroner lift her body out of the car. It was just mutilated.”
“Everything she did, everything she touched turned to gold — except for this guy,” he added.
Jail records reviewed by Law&Crime show that Rivers was booked with a $1,000,000 bond not long after midnight on July 4.
Bricen Rivers pictured in a Harrison County Jail, Miss., mug shot (Harrison County Sheriff’s Office)
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