Teacher Allegedly Murdered By Iowa Teenagers Over Bad Grade

Disturbing court documents have been released this week in which prosecutors alleged that two teenage boys from Iowa brutally murdered their Spanish teacher over a bad grade.

Teenagers Arrested For Teacher’s Murder

The New York Post reported that Willard Miller and Jeremy Goodale have been arrested and hit with murder charges over the killing of 66-year-old teacher Nohema Graber in Fairfield on November 2, 2021. Located around 100 miles from Des Moines, Fairfield is a small town with a population of around 9,400 people, according to CBS News. 

Police found that Miller had met with Graber at Fairfield High School on the afternoon of her death to discuss a bad grade that she had given him. After the meeting, Graber drove to a nearby park where she was known to enjoy taking walks after school. Less than an hour later, witnesses saw two males driving her van out of the park. The vehicle was later found at the end of a rural rode where two teenage boys were then picked up by another car, according to a witness.

The next day, Graber was tragically found dead in this park, with her brutally beaten body being discovered under a tarp, wheelbarrow and railroad ties. 

Police believe that Miller and Goodale, who were each 16 at the time of the murder, used a baseball bat to beat Graber to death. Miller told officers that he thought Graber was bad at teaching Spanish, and he was upset that the low grade she had given him had caused his GPA to go down.

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‘The Poor Grade Is Believed To Be The Motive’

“The poor grade is believed to be the motive behind the murder of Graber which directly connects Miller,” Jefferson County Attorney Chauncey Moulding and Assistant Iowa Attorney General Scott Brown said in the court documents.

Miller has claimed that he didn’t kill the teacher, but “later stated he had knowledge of everything but did not participate,” claiming that a “roving group of masked kids” murdered Graber and forced him to dispose of her body. 

The boys were caught after Goodale bragged to another friend about the murder on the app Snapchat, with screenshots showing that he implicated Miller as well. The court documents state that these screenshots show a conversation “that identify Goodale’s admissions that he acted in concert with another person to bring about Graber’s death,” according to USA Today. 

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‘To Know Nohema Was To Love Her’

Graber had been teaching Spanish at Fairfield High School since 2012. 

“To know Nohema was to love her — she was the kind of person every community longs to have in its midst and we were blessed to have her in our lives,” her family said in a statement after her murder.

“She lived for her children, her family and her faith,” they added. “Her next priorities were her job as an educator and the children she taught, her local Parish, and the Spanish-speaking community in Fairfield.”

Now that they are both 17, Miller and Goodale will each be tried as adults. Goodale’s trial is set to begin on December 5, while Miller’s is scheduled for March 20. It’s horrific to think that a teacher could be murdered simply for giving a bad grade to a student, so we hope that if these two young men are ultimately found guilty, the judge throws the book at them in sentencing.