“Murder is the apex of megalomania, the ultimate in control” — Lucy Freeman
Nohema Graber, 66, has been called “an angel of a woman” and a kind soul. She’d taught high school Spanish for nearly a decade in Fairfield, Iowa, a city with a population of just under 10,000, about a hundred miles southeast of Des Moines.
Graber was reported missing last Tuesday, Nov. 2. A few hours later, her body was found under a tarp in a park. Two of her students have been arrested and charged in connection with the murder — one of them apparently having bragged about it on social media.
Graber’s son Christian had this to say about the two 16-year-old boys:
“I forgive them and feel sorry that they had that anger in their hearts,” he wrote. “There’s no point in being angry at them. We should hope that they can find peace in their lives.”
You can read more about the crime here:
https://nypost.com/2021/11/05/two-iowa-teens-charged-with-murdering-spanish-teacher/
The Graber story hit me on several levels. As a reader, I was rattled: “What motive could two teens have to kill their Spanish teacher?” As a retired journalist, I thought: “This story will have legs” — meaning it will grab readers, hold their attention, and continue to do so until there’s some sort of resolution about why these kids (charged as adults) did why they did.
Then I thought of the movie “Compulsion,” starring Brad Dillman and Dean Stockwell, based on a novel by Richard Fleischer. (You can see photos of the two actors at the top of this story, along with a mini-poster touting their award-winning 1959 film.)
“Compulsion” has been described as a fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb murder trial. Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb (ages 19 and 18, respectively, at the time of the cime) were two wealthy college students who kidnapped and murdered a 14-year-old boy in Chicago. It was dubbed in the media as “the crime of the century.” The two friends thought they’d committed “the perfect crime.”
People kill people for all kinds of reasons, I suppose. Dr. Peter Morrall, Head of Mental Health, Learning Disabilities & Behavioural Sciences, University of Leeds, listed four in an article titled “Murder and Society: Why Commit Murder?”
The reasons he listed are: “Lust. Love. Loathing. Loot.”
You can read Dr. Morrall’s article here:
https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/crimeandjustice.org.uk/files/09627250608553401.pdf
Based on what we know so far, I’m guessing the teens in the Graber case will fall under the category of “Loathing” — which Dr. Morrall also referred to as “lethal hate.”
What did they hate?
Who knows: Authority? School? Teachers? Spanish? You name it.
The final paragraph in Dr. Morrall’s article is most revealing:
“… despite the suffering, murder is also fascinating. Our lust for gore is voracious. Real and fictional murder abounds on television, cinema, the Internet, books, plays, magazines, and ‘murder mystery weekends’ that can be taken as holidays. However, the reasons for the fascination of murder are as complex and obscure as those that purport to explain why murder is committed.”
Lucy Freeman, a reporter who wrote about psychiatry and mental health for The New York Times, had this to say about the subject:
“Murder is the apex of megalomania, the ultimate in control.”
Sounds about right to me.
The first recorded murder, as far as I know, is in the Bible: Cain killed Abel. Here’s the WIKI version:
“Cain, the firstborn, was a farmer, and his brother Abel was a shepherd. The brothers made sacrifices to God, but God favored Abel’s sacrifice instead of Cain’s. Cain then murdered Abel out of jealousy…”
Sounds like “lethal hate” to me.
At the top of this article, there are five of what cop-shot reporters call “mug shots.” Look at the faces of first two. The perps. Do they look like murders to you? They look bland to me. Like kids on an after-school special. Or a Disney show. What about the face of Nohema Graber? She looks kind to me. Gentle. Thoughtful … But maybe I’m projecting.
You don’t have to look at the photos of Brad Dillman and Dean Stockwell. They’re movie stars. They got paid for acting like fictional killers who were based on real murderers.
Dr. Morrall is right: “Our lust for gore is voracious.” That includes me. I want to know how the Nohema Graber story turns out. Just like I wanted to know who killed Tim Kono (and why) in Steve Martin’s “Only Murders in the Building.”
Maybe “Dateline” will focus on the Graber murder as an episode. Or “20/20.” Or even “60 Minutes.”
I’d watch it. Wouldn’t you?
Jim Lamb is a retired journalist living in Florida.
