An Iowa teenager who murdered his Spanish teacher with the help of a classmate apologised as he was jailed for at least 35 years.
Willard Miller, 17, and Jeremy Goodale, 18, were both 16 years old when they beat Fairfield High School teacher Nohema Graber, 66, to death with a baseball bat on 3 November 2021.
Her body was found in a park under a tarp, a wheelbarrow, and railroad ties. Both of them pleaded guilty in April.
Miller was sentenced first of the two teens. On Thursday, he received life in prison with the possibility of parole after 35 years, according to USA Today.
Judge Shawn Showers told Miller, “Your horrific actions led to the death of Nohema Graber, and her family will never be able to fill that void,” adding that he may have considered handing down a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if that had been allowed within the parameters of state law. A 2016 law in Iowa bans sentencing without parole for juvenile defendants.
Fewer than 10,000 people live in Fairfield, about 100 miles from Des Moines. Prosecutors argued that the teens attacked Ms Garber in the park, which was a regular walking spot for her after work.
The killing came after she gave a bad grade to Miller, who was charged as an adult along with Goodale. They both entered plea agreements with Goodale set to be sentenced next month.
Prosecutors are seeking 25 years to life for Goodale. Both of them will also be ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution to the Graber family.
Willard Miller is led into a courtroom, March 29, 2023, in Fairfield, Iowa— (2023 OTTUMWA COURIER/CNHI)
During the sentencing hearing on Thursday, Assistant Iowa Attorney General Scott Brown said, “This was a cruel, heinous act by two defendants”.
“I cannot imagine anything really worse than to be attacked in the manner that she was, for what? A grade,” he added. “This defendant deserves every day he gets in prison. Every single one.”
Miller apologised to the Graber family and to his won as well as the community at large.
“I would like to apologise for my actions. First and foremost to the family, I am sincerely sorry for the distress that I caused you and the devastation that I caused your family,” he said in court.
This photo provided by the Fairfield (Iowa) Police Department shows Nohema Graber— (AP)
The prosecution said that Ms Graber met with Miller to speak about his grade in the afternoon on 3 November 2021. After her workday, Ms Graber took her daily walk in Chautauqua Park, where she was ambushed by the teenagers.
Witnesses stated that they saw two men in the front of her van as it left the park within the hour. The van was subsequently discovered abandoned. Miller and Goodale were arrested after police were shown a Snapchat conversation in which Goodale appeared to implicate both himself and Miller in the murder.
A special agent at the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, Trent Vileta, testified at the sentencing hearing that the messages were “very graphic in nature” and detailed how the murder had occurred.
The teenagers’ accounts of what happened went apart as they outlined their actions – both claimed in April to have been the lookout as the other struck Ms Graber first and both said they knew that the other had the intention to kill the teacher.
Jeremy Everett Goodale, center, enters the courtroom— (CEDAR RAPIDS GAZETTE)
Miller said he didn’t strike Ms Graber, but Goodale said Miller hit her first and then Goodale struck her after noticing that the first blow didn’t end her life. Goodale said the killing had been planned for a fortnight.
Defence lawyers for Miller argued he wasn’t wielding the baseball bat during the attack.
Miller told investigators that he’d been frustrated because a grade from Ms Graber had harmed his grade point average, according to a court filing in November of last year. He also used a pejorative during an interview when speaking about the teacher.
Miller denied being aware of the murder at the time but subsequently claimed that “a roving gang of masked kids” had forced him to help hide the teacher’s body and to drive her van away from the area.
Mr Vileta said on Thursday that Goodale’s messages on Snapchat revealed that the attack occurred because Ms Graber had handed down a failing grade.
Goodale said the teacher “had failed the wrong student,” according to Mr Vileta. When Ms Graber was killed, Miller was getting an F grade.
Ms Graber had stayed close to her ex-husband Paul. He died recently, aged 68, prosecutors said on Thursday. The cause of death was metastatic cancer.
The teacher’s brother-in-law Tom Graber said the disease could have been caught sooner had Ms Graber been alive.
“Not only was Nohema robbed of 30-some of the best years of her life, her murder deprived Paul Graber of the love of his life and certainly hastened Paul’s own premature death,” Mr Graber said, according to USA Today.
Ms Graber was born in Mexico and was a leading member of a small Latino community. She began as a Spanish teacher at Fairfield High School in 2012.
The Fairfield schools Superintendent, Lauri Noll, said Ms Graber, “touched the lives of many students, parents and staff”.
Fairfield police officer Julie Kinsella spoke about the impact on the community during the Thursday hearing.
“We had students that were scared to death to attend class, we had teachers that didn’t want to teach for concerns of their own safety,” she said. “I don’t think that our community will ever be the same again. I think it’s devastated us.”
