Court filing reveals more details in death of Fairfield teacher

Additional details surrounding the death of Fairfield High School Spanish teacher Nohema Graber were revealed in documents filed in Jefferson County District Court.

In a filing of resistance to defendant Jeremy Everett Goodale’s request to move the murder case to Juvenile Court, Jefferson County Attorney Chauncey Moulding asserted that the murder was premeditated.

“ … the Defendant is accused of a pre-planned and pre-meditated homicide, an act which included surveilling the victim’s pattern of life, ambushing her along her daily walk and dragging her into the woods, then returning later to better hide her lifeless body,” Moulding wrote in the three-page filing opposing moving the case to Juvenile Court.

Graber was reported missing on Nov. 2 and her body was discovered later that day in Chautauqua Park in Fairfield, a place where she was known to take daily walks. Her body was covered with a tarp, wheelbarrow and railroad ties.

Goodale and Willard Noble Chaiden Miller, both 16, were charged with her murder.

Attorneys for both defendants filed motions to move the cases to Juvenile Court.

In the resistance filing in Goodale’s case, Moulding argued that Iowa criminal code makes District Court the “only appropriate forum” for the case.

Moulding wrote that the state does not believe there are “reasonable prospects for rehabilitating the Defendant in the Juvenile Court System …”

“ … this prosecuting attorney cannot fathom any combination of programming at any Iowa juvenile facility which could appropriately treat or rehabilitate the Defendant if adjudicated as a juvenile,” Moulding wrote.

Moulding filed a similar resistance in Miller’s case on Dec. 8.

“There could be no reasonable prospects for rehabilitating the child in the Juvenile Court system before the Defendant turns eighteen and ‘ages out’ of that system,” Moulding wrote in a resistance to Miller’s motion. “If the 16-year-old defendant is processed under the Juvenile Court system and adjudicated on a charge of murder in the first degree, the adjudicating court would lose jurisdiction over the Defendant at eighteen, and justice would not be done. The State believes there is no reasonable prospect of rehabilitating a premeditated murderer in less than 24 months.”

Both defendants are scheduled for hearings on their motions to move the cases to Juvenile Court on Jan. 27.

Comments: james.jennings@southeastiowaunion.com