Two Iowa teenage boys accused of beating their Spanish teacher to death will stand trial as adults after a judge denied their requests to move their cases to juvenile court this week.
Jeremy Goodale and Willard Miller are each charged with a first-degree murder for fatally beating Fairfield High School teacher Noheme Graber, 66, on Nov. 2, 2021, when both suspects were 16 years old.
On Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, district Judge Shawn Showers denied Goodale’s and Miller’s requests to move their cases to juvenile court. According to the Associated Press, Goodale and Miller couldn’t be held in the system beyond six months after their 19th birthday if either or both were convicted in juvenile court.
Goodale, now 17, is accused of assisting Miller, 16, beat Graber to death using a baseball bat and then dumping her body in a park “under a tarp, a wheelbarrow and railroad ties,” court records show. The teacher’s battered body was found with trauma to the head, according to the criminal complaints against the teenage suspects.
Investigators set their sights on the pair when a friend turned over social media messages from Goodale that showed he and Miller “were involved in the planning, execution, and disposal of evidence,” a police search warrant noted.
Goodale allegedly described how he and Miller conducted surveillance on their teacher and described how they killed her and disposed of the body.
“The details included … the motive for killing Graber, the planning and execution of the means to kill Graber, as well as deliberate attempts to conceal the crime,” criminal complaints against the suspects said.
The motive for the vicious crime hasn’t been made public. Graber had reportedly been a teacher since 2012 at the school, in a city about two hours southeast of Des Moines.
