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The first of two Iowa teenagers who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder after stabbing a Spanish teacher to death with a baseball bat was sentenced Thursday to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 35 years.
Willard Miller, now 17, and Jeremy Goodale, now 18, were both 16 when they were charged in the Nov. 3, 2021, slaying of Fairfield High School teacher Nohema Graber, 66, whose body was discovered in a city park, hidden under a tarpaulin, wheelbarrow and railway ties. Both teenagers pleaded guilty in April.
“Your horrific actions led to Nohema Graber’s death and her family will never be able to fill that void,” Judge Shawn Showers said. The judge told Miller he would have considered sentencing him to life without parole if state law allowed such a sentence for a juvenile.
The killing rocked the southeastern Iowa city of Fairfield, which has a population of less than 10,000 and is about 100 miles outside of Des Moines. Prosecutors said the teenagers attacked Graber in a park where she regularly went after school. The motive for the killing was because she gave Miller a bad grade.
Prosecutors wanted life in prison for Miller, who was charged as an adult with Goodale, with the possibility of parole after 30 years as part of a plea deal. Goodale is due to be sentenced in August, but his lawyers have tried to delay the case. Prosecutors will seek 25 years to life for Goodale under a plea deal.
The couple will also be liable for $150,000 in restitution to Graber’s family.
“This was a cruel, despicable act by two defendants,” Assistant Iowa Attorney General Scott Brown said during the sentencing Thursday. “I can’t imagine anything worse than being attacked the way she was, for what? A character.”
“This defendant deserves every day he goes to jail. Every single one,” Brown said.
Miller said in court Thursday that he accepts responsibility for his role in Graber’s murder and apologized to her family and community and his own family.
“I want to apologize for my actions. First and foremost to the family, I am truly sorry for the distress I have caused you and the devastation I have caused your family,” he said.
What happened to Nohema Graber?
Prosecutors said Graber met with Miller to discuss his grade in her class on the afternoon of Nov. 3, 2021. After school, she went for a walk in Fairfield’s Chautauqua Park, as was her daily habit. Miller and Goodale assaulted her there, the state said.
Witnesses saw two men in the front seat of her van as it drove away from the park less than an hour later; it was later found abandoned. The two were detained after classmates showed police a Snapchat conversation in which Goodale apparently implicated himself and Miller in the murder.
The Snapchat messages were “very graphic” and described the details of the murder, Trent Vileta, a special agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, testified Thursday during Miller’s sentencing.
The teenagers told different stories about their involvement in the attack. In testimony given in April, both claimed to have acted as lookouts while the other struck the first blow. They both said they knew the other intended to kill Graber. Miller denied throwing any punches herself, while Goodale said Miller punched first and then Goodale punched her again after seeing that the first punch didn’t kill her. Goodale testified that they had been planning the murder for two weeks.
Miller’s defense attorneys admitted that he participated in the planning and execution of the murder during the sentencing hearing Thursday, but argued that he did not use the bat in the attack.
What was the motive for the murder?
A November 2022 trial revealed that Miller told investigators he had felt “frustration” because Graber had given him a grade that hurt his grade point average. He also referred to her with a derogatory term during an interview. At the time, Miller denied knowledge of the murder, but later claimed that “a roving gang of masked kids” had forced him to help hide Graber’s body and drive her van away from the scene.
Goodale’s Snapchat messages also said the attack happened because Graber had given a failing grade, Vileta testified Thursday. In the messages, Goodale said Graber “had failed the wrong student,” Vileta said. Miller received an F grade at the time of Graber’s death, he said.
Family: The teacher’s was deprived of the rest of her life
Graber’s ex-husband, Paul, with whom she remained close until her death, also died a few days ago at the age of 68, prosecutors said Thursday. He died of metastatic cancer that would have been caught and treated sooner if Graber were still alive, said her brother-in-law Tom Graber.
“Not only was Nohema robbed of 30 – some of the best years of his life, her murder robbed Paul Graber of the love of his life and certainly hastened Paul’s own untimely death,” said Tom Graber.
Graber, who was born in Mexico, was a well-respected educator in the city and a leader of a small but growing Latino community. She had taught Spanish at Fairfield High School since 2012. Fairfield Principal Lauri Noll said she “touched the lives of many students, parents and staff.”
“We had students who were afraid to attend class, we had teachers who didn’t want to teach for their own safety,” Julie Kinsella, a Fairfield police officer, testified Thursday about the impact on the community. “I don’t think our society will ever be the same again. I think it has destroyed us.”
Contributors: William Morris, Des Moines Register; Associated Press
