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 let his daughter's boyfriend out of jail, 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 jail for holding his longtime girlfriend Lauren captive and viciously beating her while the were on vacation together in Nashville.

'I sat in the courtroom in Nashville and told the judge that if they let him out, he was going to kill her,' he said.

'He had assaulted her — this was probably the fifth or sixth time where they would get into a fight and he would beat her. We would get her away from him for a while, but he would find a way to weasel back in it.'

Dr. Johansen drove from Biloxi, Mississippi, to make the impassioned plea to the court in Nashville after Rivers' arrest in December, and for a time, it worked.

But after rotting in jail for seven months, Rivers' lawyer convinced Judge Cheryl Blackburn to lower his bail from $250,000 to $150,000 so he could get out.

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

'They let him out and didn't tell us, and didn't put the ankle monitor on him. They just let him walk out of jail,' Johansen told WLOX. 

The father had no idea Rivers was out of jail until he got a voicemail from Davidson County District Attorney's Office on Monday.

'This is Bailey calling from the district attorney's office in Nashville. Bricen Rivers was released from custody,' the message shared with WLOX began.

'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. 

'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.'

But Lauren was not safe.

Johansen desperately tried to call her, but she didn't answer, and he said texts he received from her number 'didn't really look like the way she talks'.

About 4pm on Tuesday, he got a notification that her Life360 tracker was turned off.

Then his younger daughter, who lived with Lauren, said she found the security camera smashed and the door sitting open. Lauren was nowhere to be found.

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

'We assumed they were going to track the vehicle and try to find her, but they never did it until Wednesday at 3 pm when I insisted they find out where the car was,' he said.

Lauren's car pinged at the Wolf River Cemetery in an isolated part of Gulfport, Mississippi, and police rushed to the scene.

Rivers was in the car, but fled into the woods as soon as police showed up, leading them on an hours-long chase.

Johansen said as soon as he arrived at the scene he knew Lauren was dead. 

Her mutilated body was found inside the car, wrapped in sheets and rubbish bags and lying across the back seat. 'She was basically beaten to death. 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,' her father said.

'I helped the coroner lift her body out of the car. It was just mutilated.'

Rivers, whose social media claims he is a US Marine Corps veteran, was finally tracked down about 11:30 pm after an almost nine-hour manhunt.

'We realized early on that the subject still had his cell phone on him,' Harrison County Sheriff Matt Haley said.

'So undercover officers were able to, through text message, have Rivers believe that he was corresponding with a friend, and we were able to lure him out of the woods.'

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

Rivers was booked into the Harrison County jail at 1 am on Thursday, where he remains on a $1 million bond, charged with murder.

'I think the criminal justice system in Nashville 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 larger than life.'

'Everything she did, everything she touched turned to gold.' 

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

Lauren's body will undergo an autopsy next week.