Two teenage boys pleaded guilty to a Spanish teacher’s baseball bat murder, though they continued to contradict each other on how they carried it out.
Jeremy Everett Goodale, 17, previously agreed to testify against Willard Noble Chaiden Miller, 17. He told a court in Jefferson County, Iowa, on Tuesday that both of them fatally beat the victim, Nohema Graber, 66, at Chautauqua Park on Nov. 2, 2021. He served as a lookout while Miller struck her first in the back of the head, then they moved her off trail, where Goodale struck her. She died from the attack.
Goodale said Miller had brought the bat and other items. He knew Miller planned on killing Graber, he said.
Miller on Tuesday, however, continued to deny that he ever struck Graber. He told the court he acted as a lookout while Goodale struck Graber.
As far as the state and court were concerned, however, both of them were culpable. The 17-year-olds pleaded guilty to murder in the first degree. They face up to life in prison with the possibility of parole. The difference is in their minimum sentences. Prosecutors said they plan on asking the court that Miller serve at least 30 years behind bars. They want Goodale to spend a minimum of 25 years in prison.
Goodale and Miller were charged as adults.
They stalked Graber during her daily walk, authorities previously said. The two of them carried out the murder because Miller got a bad grade in the victim’s class, prosecutors said.
#JeremyGoodale, one of the Iowa teens who murdered #NohemaGraber, detailed how he and Willard Miller savagely beat the Spanish teacher to death in November 2021. pic.twitter.com/2gElahtu5u
— Law&Crime Network (@LawCrimeNetwork) April 18, 2023
Miller’s defense tried to suppress his statements to law enforcement, including saying that he was not afforded an attorney at the time of his questioning. Moulding maintained that the teenager voluntarily spoke to authorities with signed permission from his mother.
As previously reported, court documents allege that a witness who knew Goodale showed law enforcement the defendant’s Snapchat messages that indicated Goodale and Miller “were involved in the planning, execution, and disposal of evidence” related to their teacher’s death. According to the search warrant, the Snapchat messages reflected how the duo surveilled Graber, elaborated on how exactly she was killed, where her body was dumped, and how the evidence was concealed.
“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, according to CBS News in a 2021 report. “She lived for her children, her family and her faith. Her next priorities were her job as an educator and the children she taught, her local Parish, and the Spanish-speaking community in Fairfield. The family deeply appreciates the outpouring of support during this unimaginable tragedy.”
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