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The 66-year-old high school teacher was taking his daily walk.
Two students followed her into the park.
She was later found murdered under a wheelbarrow.
The murder of Spanish teacher Nohema Graber, 66, was a shock to the residents of quiet Fairfield, Iowa.
She was found under a tarp by the railroad tracks. Over the tarp lay an overturned wheelbarrow.
The shock was not lessened by the fact that the killers turned out to be two of her 16-year-old students.
Killed for a grade
Jeremy Goodale, now 18, and Willard Miller, now 17, guarded and pounced on the 66-year-old as she went for her daily walk in the park, writes CBS News.
She was killed with a baseball bat.
Then the 16-year-olds used the wheelbarrow to transport and hide the body.
The young people confessed to the murder, which took place in November 2021, last spring.
They killed Graber because Miller got a bad grade in Spanish.
He thought the grade meant he would not be eligible to study abroad.
Life in prison
Willard Miller was sentenced this summer to life in prison with the possibility of release after 35 years.
Now Jeremy Goodale has also received his sentence.
He cried and had a nosebleed for several minutes when he received his sentence, writes The New York Post.
Goodale is also sentenced to life in prison. However, he has the possibility of release after 25 years.
– I’m sorry, really sorry. What I have done can never be undone. “Every day I wish I could go back and stop myself and prevent the pain I’ve caused everyone,” he said sobbing.
Before the verdict, ten of Nohema Graber’s family members spoke to the court and testified about their loss.
Be a flight attendant
Graber worked as a flight attendant before training to become an airline pilot.
In the early 90’s she got married and moved to Fairfield where she became a Spanish teacher at Fairfield High School.
She and husband Paul had three children. Shortly after the murder, the husband died of cancer.
His brother Tom Graber said in court that his wife’s death aggravated the disease and caused him to die prematurely.
– You are over 18 years of age and have your defender next to you who claims that you should escape punishment for this terrible crime. That doesn’t sound like remorse to me, he told the young killer according to CBS News.
– Murdering a teacher to avoid an F. Apparently that was enough for you to participate in the crime.