Two Iowa teenagers accused of killing their Spanish teacher will face trial as adults after a judge denied their motions to bring their cases to a juvenile court this week.
Jeremy Goodale and Willard Miller are each charged with first-degree murder for allegedly beating Fairfield High School teacher Noheme Graber, 66, to death on November 2 when both suspects were 16.
District Judge Shawn Showers separately denied Goodale’s and Miller’s motions on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. If one or both were convicted by a juvenile court, they could not live more than six months after they turned 19th birthday, the Associated Press reported.
Showers said in each verdict that there was not enough time for the defendant to be rehabilitated for “a crime of such proportions.”
Goodale, now 17, is accused of helping Miller, 16, kill Graber with a baseball bat and then dumping her battered body in a park “under a tarp, a wheelbarrow and railroad ties,” according to court documents. The teacher’s body was found with trauma to the head, according to the criminal complaint against the teenager.
Investigators targeted the pair when a friend handed over social media messages of Goodale showing that he and Miller “were involved in the planning, execution and disposal of evidence,” according to a police search warrant.
Goodale allegedly described monitoring her 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, and premeditated attempts to cover up the crime,” criminal complaints filed against the suspects said.
A possible motive for the heinous crime has not been released.
Graber was reportedly a teacher at the school in a town about two hours southeast of Des Moines since 2012.
With mail wires