Body of Mississippi nursing student, 22, is found mutilated in a cemetery after surgeon father warned Nashville judge her life was in danger

Respected surgeon Lance Johansen pleaded with the judge not to release his daughter’s boyfriend or he would kill her. Lauren Johnsen, 22, would later be found mutilated in her car, parked in a cemetery.

Bricen Rivers, 23, was in prison for holding his girlfriend Lauren captive and brutally beating her while they were vacationing in Nashville.

“I sat in the courtroom in Nashville and told the judge that if they let him go, he would kill her,” he said.

“He had attacked her – this was probably the fifth or sixth time they’d gotten into a fight and he’d hit her. We’d take her away from him for a little bit, but he’d always find a way to sneak back in.”

Dr. Johansen drove from Biloxi, Mississippi, to the Nashville courthouse to make an impassioned plea after Rivers’ arrest in December. For a while, it worked.

But after serving seven months in jail, Rivers’ attorney convinced Judge Cheryl Blackburn to lower his bail from $250,000 to $150,000, allowing him to be released.

He was supposed to go straight to a company that would install a GPS ankle bracelet as a condition of his bail, but instead he disappeared.

“They released him and didn’t tell us, and didn’t put an ankle bracelet on him. They just let him walk out of jail,” Johansen said. WLOX.

The father had no idea Rivers was out of jail until he got a voicemail from the Davidson County Prosecutor’s Office on Monday.

“This is Bailey calling from the Nashville District Attorney’s office. Bricen Rivers has been released from custody,” the message shared with WLOX began.

“He was ordered to report to a GPS company immediately and be placed on a GPS monitor. He was also not allowed to leave Davidson County.

“But once he was released, he didn’t report to that GPS monitoring company and he hasn’t been heard from since. I wanted to make sure Lauren is safe.”

But Lauren wasn’t safe.

Johansen tried desperately to call her, but she didn’t answer. He also said that the text messages he received from her “didn’t really sound like the way she talks.”

At around 4pm on Tuesday, he received a notification that her Life360 tracker had been disabled.

Then his youngest daughter, who lived with Lauren, said she found the security camera broken and the door open, but Lauren was nowhere to be seen.

Johansen filed a missing person report with the local Hattiesburg police department in Biloxi, but when he called the next morning, he claimed very little had been done.

“We assumed they would track the vehicle down and try to find her, but they didn’t do that until 3 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon. That’s when I insisted they find out where the car was,” he said.

Lauren’s car pinged at Wolf River Cemetery in a remote part of Gulfport, Mississippi, and police rushed to the scene.

Rivers was in the car, but immediately fled into the woods when police arrived, leading to an hours-long chase.

Johansen said that as soon as he arrived on the scene, he knew Lauren was dead.

Her mutilated body was found in the car, wrapped in sheets and garbage bags and lying on the backseat.

“She was basically beaten to death. Her face was bashed in, her head was bashed in, she was brutally beaten to the point where she couldn’t see out of either eye when she finally died and there were multiple holes in her head,” her father said.

“I helped the coroner lift her body out of the car. It was just mangled.”

Rivers, who lists on social media as a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, was finally tracked down around 11:30 p.m. after a nearly nine-hour manhunt.

“We quickly realized the suspect still had his cell phone with him,” said Harrison County Sheriff Matt Haley.

“So undercover officers were able to trick Rivers into believing he was communicating with a friend through text messages, and that’s how we were able to lure him out of trouble.”

About 50 officers also used drones, helicopters and dogs in the search.

Rivers was booked into the Harrison County Jail at 1 a.m. Thursday, where he remains held on $1 million bail. He is accused of murder.

“I believe the criminal justice system in Nashville has failed my daughter and our family,” Johansen said.

“The world shouldn’t work this way. She was really beautiful, super, super smart. She had dreams and hopes that were bigger than life.”

‘Everything she did, everything she touched, turned to gold.’

The orthopedic surgeon said Lauren was studying at the University of Southern Mississippi to become a nurse.

An autopsy will be performed on Lauren’s body next week.