This was my submission to my new favorite podcast My Favorite Murderer. However, this is definitely my least favorite murder.
On November 2nd, 2021 in my hometown of Fairfield Iowa. Nohema Graber who was a high school Spanish teacher was brutally murdered by two of her high school students, Jeremy Goodale and Willard Miller. She has been a Spanish Teacher in my hometown of Fairfield Iowa since 2012 and a resident of the town for the last 30 years. She was born in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, on November 10, 1954. She studied to be a commercial airline pilot and became one of the first women in Mexico trained to fly passenger jets. She had three children, two who now live abroad and one with special needs who still resides in Fairfield with his father.
Nohema and my own paths crossed in a few ways. The home I grew up in was right across the street from Chautauqua Park. This was a place I spent my childhood and a place Nohema walked daily. It was a quiet park, one perfect for adventures, building forts, and going there on a daily basis allowed me to deal with the harsh realities of life at my own speed. It’s a place I still treasure and look forward to exploring every time I go back home. It was also unfortunately the place of Nohema Graber’s untimely death.
My mother knew Nohema because she worked for the Department of Public Health and during her time assisted many new parents who either had children with special needs or who needed to find access to affordable healthcare and services. She worked closely with Nohema when her son with special needs was born. My mother said she was easily the most honorable, hard-working, and dignified woman she had ever met.
In short, Fairfield is an interesting town. It’s primarily divided into two sections: The public and the Maharishi University of Management. In 1973 Parson’s college, where my father went to college, closed and was quickly bought out by the Maharishi to continue enlightening people through the practice of meditation and mindfulness. Their schooling ranges from Kindergarten all the way through college and attracts people from all over the world who are interested in better mental health through meditation. This makes the diversity in Fairfield quite unique to the state and has even attracted many celebrities. Transcendental Meditation or TM, was big with the Beatles and the Beach Boys who had been known to frequent the area in my youth. And the Beach Boys even took the Maharishi on tour with them which failed miserably. More recently, Jim Carrey has frequented our town and once even jumped on a school bus a few years back with baseball players from a neighboring town Washington. He said, “you might have lost the game, but at least you guys got to meet Jim Carrey!” Also, Oprah has an episode of Fairfield on her show where she called it “America’s Most Unusual Town” and referred to the students at MSAE as the “future of America.” Russell Brand and Katy Perry were in Fairfield for a month while Russell wrote his second book which highlighted his ability to quit his many additions through TM. It’s a town of fewer than 10,000 people where I can get authentic, Indian, Caribbean, Vietnamese, Thai, Ethiopian food without ever needing to wait at a stoplight. There are over 400 local businesses in Fairfield ranging from an organic kombucha factory, Stained Glass Business, Alternative Energy Plant, the Cambridge Investment Firm, and of course the widest diversity of cuisine per capita in the United States.
The private schooling at MSAE (Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment) is quite expensive and rigorous, so many parents cannot afford it and a few students can’t handle it. Sometimes parents need to send their children to public school for a semester or two when money gets low or their children don’t meet the criteria. When I was a student, at the start of every new semester at Fairfield Public High School it would not be uncommon to see one or two students from the private school enrolled until their parents could get enough money to afford for them to return to MSAE. It was always exciting to see who the new student was going to be as they were usually quite intelligent and effortlessly calm and collected. MSAE is also less forgiving about students with poor behavior. So when Jeremy Goodale and Willard Miller were kicked out for poor behavior they were sent to the public school in Fairfield much to their parent’s chagrin.
This is where they met their new teacher Senora Graber who at that point, had over 10 years of teaching experience under her belt and was well-loved by staff and students alike. She is quoted by her son who found her personal diary saying “We the teachers must be a positive role model for our students. And even if my students forget about my Spanish classes I hope they remember how and why to smile about life.” Which is disappointing to hear for a couple of reasons. One, because two of those monsters took her life, and the other, because I have been a teacher for 10 years and all my diary entries have been about the highs and lows of my dating life.
So far, we know the students had premeditated this plan well in advance, stalked her through the park, hit her over the head with a shovel, and dragged her body under a bridge where they hid it with a tarp, wheelbarrow, and railroad ties. They quickly posted about it on social media and were quickly arrested that day after her body was found. My good friend from high school who is a member of the fire department saw the boys running through the park that day while he was walking with his dog and son. He told me all he remembers thinking was that the cross-country team had really gone to shit. However, he could still identify what the boys were wearing and the time that he saw them. I’m impressed with my friend and with the law enforcement officers who have never dealt with anything like this before. The police still have the two boys on million-dollar bail and they are residing in Jefferson County Jail. So far they will be charged as adults and their hearing is set for April 2022. However, on January 27th the courts will decide whether or not the boys will be charged as adults or as juveniles. If they are charged as juveniles they will be free when they turn 18 in a year and a half.
Stay sexy, watch out for your students, and don’t always believe what parents say at parent-teacher conferences.
Here is an in-depth article about the boys and does an even better job of explaining and showing what a dynamic human Nohema was with her beautiful life and family.
Traveling Amazon 