A woman’s face was beaten off by her domestic abuser ex-boyfriend after he was released from a Nashville jail despite viciously-beating her.
Lauren Johansen is said to have been fatally-mutilated by her domestic abuser ex Bricen Rivers, 23, after he was wrongly allowed to leave a Tennessee lock-up and travel to Mississippi to attack her earlier this month.
He was in jail for attacking his ex late last year, it is alleged.
‘He beat her so badly that her skull and her face pretty much became fractured from the rest of her body,’ Johansen’s father Dr. Lance Johansen told WDAM.
‘He basically beat her until the front of her head came off. No human being deserves to have this happen to them.’
Rivers, who was charged in the brutal death of his ex-girlfriend, faced Forrest County Judge Gay Polk-Payton on Friday.
He was denied bond and will remain in jail, giving his alleged victim’s grieving father some relief.
Lauren Johansen’s face is said to have been beaten off by her ex-boyfriend, who has now been charged with her murder
An emotional Dr. Lance Johansen spoke about his daughter’s gruesome killing and said ‘no human being deserves to have this happen to them’
Rivers was arrested in Nashville in December 2023 after viciously beating the nursing student while the couple were on vacation after going into a jealous rage.
Seven months after being locked up, he was ‘mistakenly’ released from jail, and returned to Mississippi where he reportedly carried out his ex-girlfriend’s murder.
Nashville prosecutors have conceded Rivers should not have been freed by a judge during a bail hearing.
During Friday’s 30-minute court proceedings, Forrest County Assistant District Attorney Clay Cranfold listed Rivers’ current charges as first-degree murder, grand larceny auto and tampering with evidence.
Forrest County District Attorney Lin Carter told WDAM 7News that ‘we made a strong argument against bond.’
The court went along with our argument, and he received no bond on the murder, and then he received a $20,000 bond on the grand larceny auto and the tampering with evidence.’
When the judge asked Rivers if he was out on bond at the time of the murder, the suspect told him ‘no, not to my knowledge,’ but the ADA intervened and told the judge – Rivers was out on bond for beating his then-girlfriend nearly to death when the couple were in Nashville together.
Lauren’s father called Rivers a ‘pathological liar.’
Dr. Lance said, that he ‘misled the judge here (Friday). He misled the judge there before, and I think the bottom line is, you cannot take a criminal’s word for saying the right thing.’
In 2022, Rivers’ had a drug trafficking charge in Harrison County, and a year later was faced with kidnapping and stalking charges that were revoked on Friday, as per the news outlet.
Bricen Rivers, 23, brutally beat his then-girlfriend Lauren Johansen while the couple were away in Nashville, Tennessee in December 2023. He is pictured in a mugshot by the Metro Nashville Police Department
Rivers mugshot taken by the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office on July 4 after he was accused of killing his ex-girlfriend Lauren Johansen
Rivers and Lauren had dated in high school. Rivers allegedly killed her nine days after his release from prison
Prosecutors said new evidence reveals that Rivers committed the murder in Forrest County, and tried to clean the car to shield the evidence before driving the car to Harrison County, a report said.
Lauren’s physician father discovered his daughter’s body in the backseat of the car on July 3rd. He described it as ‘brutally mutilated.’
The distraught father spoke about the miscarriage of justice that led to his daughter’s savage murder but felt some comfort on Friday knowing that Rivers will stay locked up in a detention facility.
He said, in part, that he already feels ‘some relief knowing that’ and said, ‘this is some justice for me.’
‘And I’m confident that he’s never going to see the light of day again,’ Johansen said. ‘This man’s not done killing people, and if he has a chance, he’ll kill somebody in in jail.’
Exclusive photos obtained by DailyMail.com show the petite young woman riddled with bruises and her face so bloody and swollen she was barely recognizable.
Lauren’s wounds were cataloged by her father, an orthopedic surgeon, who wanted the courts to see what Rivers was capable of as he awaited trial on kidnapping and stalking charges.
Lance was so worried for his ‘wonderful, kind’ daughter’s safety that he attended the preliminary hearing to warn a Davidson County judge that Rivers would ‘finish the job’ if he ever got out of jail.
Judge Cheryl Blackburn, a longtime Democrat jurist, later decided to lower the alleged attacker’s bond from $250,000 to $150,000, paving the way for his June 24 release.
Just nine days after he posted bond and walked free, Lauren was found beaten to death in Gulfport, Mississippi, and Rivers was arrested on suspicion of murdering her.
‘You can see what happened when he hit her 100 times back in December so just imagine what he did to her when nobody was around to save her,’ Lance told DailyMail.com, fighting tears.
The heartbroken dad-of-four, a respected orthopedic surgeon, added: ‘I realize people have rights but you can’t just let loose a wild animal.’
Gruesome photos published for the first time by DailyMail.com show Mississippi nursing student Lauren Johansen’s brutal injuries after she was beaten by ex-boyfriend Bricen Rivers in December
‘They knew he was a psychopath; they knew he was going to kill her if he got out. I warned them how this was going to play out and they went ahead and did it anyway.’
Lauren described as popular and bubbly grew up in Gulfport where she started dating Rivers, the star player on his high school football team.
Their relationship was plagued by violent episodes and by the time she headed off to the University of Southern Mississippi she was determined to call it quits.
Her family claim ‘obsessed’ Rivers stalked her on and off for years, breaking into her apartment and starting fights with any men she tried to date.
They were shocked to learn late last year that Lauren had reconciled with Rivers and gone on vacation with him to Nashville, a decision Lance puts down to his daughter suffering from ‘battered woman syndrome’.
The pair played Topgolf and attended a museum before Rivers flew into a drunken rage on December 11 and accused Lauren of having sex with a bartender, according to a police report.
Rivers snatched Lauren’s phone so she couldn’t call for help and drove to a parking lot where he allegedly clubbed her with a pistol and pulled out chunks of her hair.
He held her captive inside the vehicle for an hour until his mom, Chelsa Rivers, overheard screaming in the background on a call to her son and tipped off cops to their location, according to court filings.
Officers arrived to find ‘traumatized’ Lauren in just her bra and panties, screaming and banging on the window for help and calling for her father.
She was ‘severely beaten, her eye was swollen shut and she also had a severe laceration to her forehead,’ according to cops.
A gun was found on the floor of the couple’s rental car which can be seen spattered with blood in exclusive DailyMail.com images.
Lauren and Lance attended a preliminary hearing on December 18 where he testified that his eldest daughter had been ‘hit over 100 times’ and he feared for her life if Rivers ever got to her again.
The gun-obsessed bully languished in jail for four months before his lawyers filed a motion in March asking Judge Blackburn to reduce his bond.
She noted in an April 3 order there was a ‘high likelihood of conviction’ due to police body camera footage and audio recordings from inside the car.
Nonetheless the judge concluded that a ‘bond of $150,000 is appropriate in this case’ noting that ‘it does not appear that Mr. Rivers has any prior criminal history.’
DailyMail.com has located records and a mugshot indicating Rivers was arrested in January 2021 in Hancock County, Mississippi for DUI.
He was also arrested in October 2022 for auto burglary in nearby Harrison County and again in December 2022 for possession and trafficking of a controlled substance.
Stephen Hayslip, Director of Communications for the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office told DailyMail.com that it contested the reduced bond but didn’t flag up any prior arrests.
He said this was because Assistant District Attorneys working the case were not aware of any criminal convictions and that arrests that did not result in convictions wouldn’t be considered evidence of prior criminality.
Despite Lauren and her father’s pleas to keep Rivers behind bars, Judge Cheryl Blackburn would ultimately agree to lower is bond, noting that ‘it does not appear that Mr. Rivers has any prior criminal history’
Judge Blackburn graduated from the Nashville School of Law in 1979 and has been on the city’s bench since 1996.
She was expected to retire in 2021 after suffering a stroke but stayed on and won re-election a year later.
The judge has not commented publicly on the Rivers case and when DailyMail.com asked if she would be willing to do so, an assistant snapped: ‘It’s a no comment. The office as a whole has no comment.’
Authorities face further questions over exactly how Rivers was monitored after his family paid $15,000 to secure his release via a company named Brooke’s Bonding.
Judge Blackburn’s order, which was signed by the defendant, said he was barred from leaving Davidson County and should be ‘placed on electronic monitoring’.
Freedom Monitoring Services, the company involved in keeping tabs on Rivers, didn’t appear to know he was supposed to stay in the Nashville area, however, according to reporting by News Channel 5.
DailyMail.com understands that the local accommodation lined up for Rivers fell through and he went back to Mississippi to live with family instead.
Lance wasn’t notified that Rivers was at large until June 28 and it wasn’t until July 2 that a hearing was hastily convened to figure out what had happened. By then it was too late.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk