Jefferson County Attorney General Handout
Two teenage high school students accused of killing their their 66-year-old Spanish teacher with a baseball bat apparently did so because she gave one of them a bad grade, according to court documents filed in court Tuesday.
Willard Miller and Jeremy Goodale, both of Fairfield, Iowa, were charged last year with murdering Nohema Graber in Chautauqua Park on Nov 2, 2021—shortly after she refused to amend Miller’s poor grade in Spanish. The boys, both 16 at the time, were seen driving the teacher’s van away from the park. Graber’s battered corpse was found hidden under a tarp held down with a wheelbarrow and railroad ties some time later.
The young men might have gotten away with their alleged crime, but they reportedly bragged about it on Snapchat, and were ratted out by a friend. Miller’s lawyer Christine Branstad petitioned the court to remove evidence from four search warrants and comments he made without a lawyer to police including blaming the murder on “a roving group of masked kids” who forced him to participate in the cover-up. The court will decide on Wednesday whether to allow the evidence in the young men’s separate murder trials. Goodale’s trial begins Dec. 5 in Davenport, Iowa, and Miller is scheduled to be tried in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on March 20. Both are charged with first-degree homicide and first-degree felony conspiracy to commit homicide.