Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Killed His Teacher - The Willard Chaiden Miller Story

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Willard Chaiden Miller was a 16 year old Iowa high school student who, along with his classmate Jeremy Goodale, was charged with murdering their Spanish teacher, Nohema Graber, in 2021.

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Watch the Hulu original series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bonus subscribers. Terms apply. So this high school student commits murder and Snapchat gets him caught. Now, the kid's name is Chaden, and Chaden is 16, living in Iowa, going to high school like a normal kid his age. And in 2021, Chaden decides something that's ultimately going to change his life forever. He decides that he really wants to go study abroad in Spain. However, he also realizes he's got a big problem, his Spanish teacher.

His Spanish teacher is this woman, who we'll just call Spanish teacher. Now, according to the students at the school, Spanish teacher is beloved and very good with her students. But she's also known to be an extremely tough grader. A lot of the kids complain about how hard her class is. So, of course, Chaden really struggles in her class. In fact, he's essentially on the verge of flunking it. Now, I'm not sure if he's doing poorly on his assignments and whatnot, and he deserves to be failing the class. or if Spanish teacher really was just that tough.

Regardless, Chaden feels like he has put in the work and he doesn't deserve to have a failing grade. And to him, this is crucial that he pass. Otherwise, he won't be accepted into the exchange program and he won't get to go to Spain. So Chaden becomes obsessed with this failing grade. And pretty quickly, his obsession turns to anger. And he starts blaming all of this on Spanish teacher.

Like how dare she fails? him after all the work he's put in. And he'll like go and vent to his friends about his grade. Sometimes he'll go and talk to her Spanish teacher about it, and he'll argue with her claiming that he doesn't deserve the grade. And at one point, he even goes to the school with his mom to have her talk to Spanish teacher about the grade. And I'm not sure what is specifically said in this meeting,

but Spanish teacher ends up holding firm and she doesn't change his grade at all. So over time, he continued. to get more and more angry over this, and he starts to believe that she is out to get him. Like, she's personally trying to ruin his life. And that is when he starts telling his friends that he wants to murder her.

One of those friends he talks to is this kid, Jeremy. And Jeremy is also 16, and he goes to school with Chaden, and he's also in Spanish teacher's class. So one day, Chaden tells Jeremy, I really hate this Spanish teacher. Want to help me kill her? And I guess Jeremy's like, all right. So they get to work,

trying to figure out how they're going to successfully pull off this murder without getting caught. And they meticulously plan everything out. They start stalking Spanish teacher, trying to figure out where she's going to be and learning her daily routine. They make a list of supplies to get, and they get them. Chaden starts Googling things like, what happens to students work if the teacher dies in the middle of the term? and do students receive credit for a class if the professor is seriously injured or dies more than halfway through the course?

And so two weeks go by. And during this time, they learn that every day, Spanish teacher goes for a walk at the local park, where she always follows a trail that passes through an isolated area, meaning when she walks that part of the trail, she'll be alone and vulnerable. So Chaden and Jeremy decide that this is going to be the perfect place to attack her. They'll wait until she's on her walk, and once she gets alone, they'll ambush her with a baseball bat. So one day, I guess Chaden talks to Jeremy, and they decide that today is the perfect day to go through with this. So Chaden and Jeremy, they go to school, and they go to all

their classes like, like it's any other normal day. Then, after school, they head over to the park, and they hide out, and they wait. Sometime later, Spanish teacher shows up, and she's going through her daily walk and whatnot, and at some point she sees them out there passing by. And she has no reason to be suspicious of them. I mean, it's a public park. So they exchange greetings and they move on. But then Jeremy runs ahead on the trail loop to get in front of her again, while Chaden doubles back so that he's now following behind her. And Spanish teacher doesn't realize anything's wrong, so she keeps walking. So Jeremy puts on a ski mask and he starts walking toward her. And she sees him. And I assume this scares her a little because the only person

around is a guy coming toward her wearing a ski mask. But this keeps her distracted and all her attention on him. And this allows Chaden to successfully sneak up behind her with the baseball bat. And suddenly, pow, he hits her in the back of the head. And then pow, he hits her again and again. Then he passes the bat to Jeremy. And Jeremy takes it and pow, he hits her too. And of course, She unfortunately doesn't survive this attack. Then the guys drag her body away from the trail and into a woodsy area of the park and they leave her there. But not before stealing the money out of her wallet and the keys to her van. Then they take her van and they drive it to the outer edges of town to a rural area.

And they ditch it hoping that no one will find it. Hours later, around midnight, they go back to the crime scene because they want to clean up any evidence that they accidentally left behind, and they want to hide the body a little better. So they clean up the scene, and they move her body even further away from the trail. After that, they both go back to Jeremy's place, and they get drunk. The next morning, Spanish teacher's husband comes home. Apparently, he had been out of town for a few days, and he has no idea what happened to her. He just knows that she's not home.

And so he gets worried, and he calls the police, and he reports her missing. And so police start investigating, and a community-wide search for her begins. That same day, Chaden and Jeremy go to school like normal, except that they're super tired from staying up all night trying to hide a body and hung over from all the drinking they did. But even so, they have no problem talking about what they did with the other students. Like when Spanish teacher doesn't show up for class, all the kids are naturally wondering where the heck she is.

while Chaden is all flexing to his friends that he caught a body with a baseball bat. Oh, and Jeremy is much worse. His dumb ass has been Snapchatting some of his friends about it. Like during the process of hiding the body, he's been Snapchatting. Here he is with a bottle of bleach saying, Time to hide a body. Here he is holding the shovel that they use to rehide the body. Here are some more tools that they use to rehide the body.

and the most disgusting one is the Snapchat he made making a joke about the murder. P-O-V, you're my Spanish teacher, and this is the last thing you see. And so anyway, he sends all these Snapchats to his friends, and some of his friends freak the fuck out, naturally. Like, did they really just kill our teacher? And so they go to police,

and they're basically like, uh, my friend has been posting on Snapchat that he killed our teacher. And around the same time, police find, Spanish teacher's body in the park. So now they know that she's dead and that someone killed her. Probably the guy confessing to it on Snapchat. And so, bam, they go and they arrest Jeremy. Here's his mugshot. Also, bam, they arrest Chaden too. Here's his mugshot. Both teenagers charged with killing a Fairfield High School Spanish teacher will be tried as adults. And so ultimately, Chaden takes a plea deal and he gets sentenced to light.

in prison while Jeremy also takes a plea deal and he gets sentenced to life in prison.