The two teens accused of murdering their Iowa high school Spanish teacher last year were frustrated by their poor grades, prosecutors said Tuesday in a court document revealing for the first time the possible motive.
The document was filed ahead of a hearing Wednesday in which a judge will hear arguments about the evidence against the minors accused of killing
Nohema Graber
in Fairfield, a city of 9,400 about 100 miles from Des Moines.
Graber's body was found in a Fairfield park on November 3, 2021, hidden under a tarp, a wheelbarrow and some railroad ties.
She had been beaten to death with a baseball bat.
The suspects were then 16 years old.
Noticias Telemundo does not name the minors accused of the crime even though they will be tried as adults.
Nohema Graber Facebook / Via NBC News
A lawyer for one of the defendants asked the court to invalidate four search warrants and suppress evidence found at the home, comments he made to police and information taken from his cell phone and the Snapchat social media platform.
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Investigators discovered that one of the teens met Graber at the high school on Nov. 2 to discuss his failing grades.
Later, Graber drove his van to a park where he used to take daily walks after school, according to authorities.
Witnesses saw his van drive out of the park less than an hour later with two males in the front seat.
The vehicle was abandoned at the end of a rural road.
After receiving a call from one of them, someone picked up the youths as they walked toward town on that road, according to police.
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In police questioning, one of the suspects described frustration with Graber's teaching of Spanish and how his class grade was lowering his average.
“The poor grade is believed to be the motive for the murder,” court documents from Jefferson County District Attorney Chauncey Moulding and Iowa Assistant Attorney General Scott Brown say.
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The student who described his frustration initially denied any involvement but "later stated that he was aware of what happened but was not involved," according to the documents.
He told police that the killers — a “roaming group of masked boys” — forced him to provide his wheelbarrow to move his body and to drive their van from the park.
The documents say a witness provided photos of a Snapchat conversation "identifying the other teen's confession that he acted in concert with another person to kill Graber."
The witness identified this teen as making statements implicating both of them by name.
The lawyer who asks the court to invalidate the search warrants and suppress the evidence found in one of the houses assures that they were issued illegally in part because "the security forces did not provide information to the judge to prove that the informant was reliable or that the information should be considered reliable.
The trial of one of the minors is scheduled for March 20 in Council Bluffs, and that of the other for December 5 in Davenport.
Both, now 17, will be tried as adults.
In Iowa, the penalty for a first-degree murder conviction is life in prison.
The Iowa Supreme Court rulings require that minors convicted of even the most serious crimes have the opportunity for parole.
