According to US prosecutors, two Iowan teens killed their high school Spanish teacher last year out of resentment over a failing grade (local time).
The documents were filed ahead of a Wednesday hearing where a judge will hear arguments to suppress any evidence against Willard Miller and Jeremy Goodale, who are charged with murdering their high school Spanish teacher Nohema Graber, in the town of Fairfield.
Miller’s attorney is requesting that the court throw out four search warrants and suppress data gathered from Miller’s house, his statements to police, his cellphone, and the Snapchat social networking app.
On November 3, 2021, Graber’s body was discovered in a Fairfield park, concealed by a tarp, a wheelbarrow, and railroad ties. With a baseball bat, she had been beaten to death. Miller and Goodale were 16 at the time.
Investigators discovered that on the afternoon of November 2, 2021, Miller and Graber met at Fairfield High School to talk about his subpar grade in her course. Authorities claim that Graber later drove her van to a park where she was known to go for daily walks after school. Witnesses saw her van leaving the park less than an hour later with two males in the front seat.
At the end of a country road, the vehicle was abandoned.
After getting a phone call from Goodale, a witness later picked up Goodale and Miller as they walked to town on that road, investigators say.
Miller expressed his displeasure with Graber’s method of teaching Spanish and how the grade in her class was harming his GPA during an interview with the police.
According to court filings submitted by Assistant Iowa Attorney General Scott Brown and Jefferson County Attorney Chauncey Moulding, “the bad grade is thought to be the motivation behind the murder of Graber which directly connects Miller.”
According to court records, Miller first claimed he had no knowledge of Graber’s disappearance but “later testified he had knowledge of everything but did not participate.”
He informed authorities that he was forced to use his wheelbarrow to help transfer her body and to drive her van out of the park by the real killers, a “roving bunch of masked adolescents.”
According to the paperwork, a witness offered screenshots of a Snapchat discussion “that identify Goodale’s confessions that he acted in collaboration with another person to cause Graber’s murder.” The witness said that Miller and Goodale were both implicated in statements made by Goodale.
The search warrants, according to Miller’s attorney Christine Branstad, were fraudulently obtained in part because “law enforcement neglected to give material… to establish the informant is reliable.”
Miller’s trial is set for March 20 and Goodale’s slated for December 5.
Both of the now-17-year-old minors will be tried as adults. A first-degree murder conviction carries a life sentence in prison in Iowa.
Apparently due to a poor grade, some Iowa teenagers killed a Spanish teacher.
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