The Iowa pig farmer who was being grilled by cops about the disappearance of 20-year-old college student Mollie Tibbetts was asked to take a polygraph exam on Monday, but he reportedly refused.
“I don’t need to,” said Wayne Cheney, speaking to the Des Moines Register.
“It’s stupid,” he added, noting once again how he had “nothing to hide.”
The Poweshiek County pig farmer has uttered the statement repeatedly since being thrust into the spotlight last week after cops revealed that they had questioned him multiple times.
Tibbets, a University of Iowa student, went missing on July 18 after going for a jog through Brooklyn, IA.
Cheney, a Deep River resident, was taken down to a local fire station on July 31 and questioned by authorities for two hours about her disappearance. Investigators also searched his 70-acre farm, residence and cellphone.
“I just thought it was a waste of time,” Cheney told WHO-TV. “But oh well.”
Police officials have remained tight-lipped about their interest in Cheney, and they continued to do so on Monday.
“As I had mentioned previously, we’re not in a position to say who is a suspect, who isn’t a suspect or that there are suspects,” explained Kevin Winker, director of investigative operations at the Iowa Department of Public Safety.
FBI agents reportedly visited Cheney on Monday at his home and asked him to take the polygraph, though it’s unclear what prompted the visit.
“I don’t know,” he told the Des Moines Register, noting how he was surprised to see them.
Cheney has lived in Deep River his entire life and has had several run-ins with the law over the years. Court records show that he has been arrested for harassment and stalking — entering guilty pleas on two separate occasions.
Speaking to reporters last week, Cheney claimed that he didn’t know the Tibbetts family and hopes Mollie is eventually found alive. Her loved ones believe she may be held captive somewhere.
“If someone out there is holding Mollie…you can end it now before it goes any further,” her father, Rob Tibbetts, said in a statement last Thursday.
The distraught dad told Fox News on Monday that he believed Mollie went “willingly with someone she knows.”
“It’s totally speculation on my part,” Rob Tibbetts said, “but I think that Mollie is with someone that she knows, that is in over their head, that there was some kind of a misunderstanding about the nature of their relationship, and at this point, they don’t know how to get out from under this.”
More than $260,000 has been raised by people across the country as a reward for information leading to Mollie’s safe return. Authorities plan to hold a press conference later this week to provide an update on their search.