The family of a slain nursing student is suing the Tennessee bond companies that helped spring her violent ex-boyfriend from jail, claiming they looked the other way as he violated his bond agreement to allegedly hunt her down and kill her.
The mutilated body of 22-year-old Lauren Johansen, from Mississippi, was found in the trunk of her car in 2024 – after her ex, Bricen Rivers, made bond following his arrest and jailing for allegedly kidnapping and beating her in Nashville months earlier.
Johansen’s father had begged the judge not to release Rivers, but he was allowed to walk free on bond just days later and is accused of killing the college student soon after.
Now, the girl’s family wants $150 million from the bond companies that helped set him free.
The lawsuit, filed Saturday in US District Court in Nashville, claims the companies didn’t do enough to stop Rivers from violating the terms of his bond agreement — which was partly their responsibility under Tennessee law.
Despite tracking Rivers with an ankle monitor, the companies alerted neither authorities nor Johansen’s family when he twice broke his bond agreement and crossed state lines into Mississippi, where Johansen was attending college for a nursing degree.
Days after Rivers traveled to Mississippi for the second time, Johansen vanished.
Her body, beaten to a pulp, was later found wrapped in trash bags and sheets in the trunk of her car, which turned up at a cemetery, investigators said.
Johansen’s father, Lance Johansen, said the bondsmen and their partners knew Rivers was a threat to his daughter, but did nothing.
“Just to see my daughter — the most kind woman in the world — just mutilated and thrown away like a piece of trash was the most overwhelming thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he told WKRN.
“Why in anybody’s right mind would they let this person out?” he added.
The girl’s father also had choice words for the Davidson County court.
“You basically let an animal out of a cage. It’s like letting a tiger out of a cage on a piece of meat and he’s going to go right for it and start eating it,” he said.
Rivers now faces a murder charge and is being held on a new bond of $1 million, according to the outlet.
Before allegedly killing Johansen, he had spent seven months in jail on accusations of trapping her in his car and beating her unconscious while on vacation in Nashville.
His bond was later lowered from $251,000 to $150,000, which was eventually posted by two Nashville companies: Brooke’s Bonding and On Time Bonding — both of which the family is suing.
The Johansen family lawsuit also names a private monitoring firm and two companies that provided collateral for Rivers’ bond.
