October 25, 2024 • 45 mins
We tend to cover strange cases on our show. We seek them out, because we find that there are always interesting lessons to be learned there. But when it comes to weird, some cases are in a category all their own. Like a pair of high school students so upset about a grade that they plot the brutal murder of their Spanish teacher…and a mother so obsessed with protecting her child from pain that she loses all sense of right and wrong. They’re two very different cases on the face of things, but underneath they have one major thing in common—the motive is just bizarre.
Case 1: Final Bell: The Murder of Nohema Graber
Case 2: Dark Magic: The Murder of Joey Fischer
Sources:
Interrogation of Willard Chaiden Miller by Fairfield PD
Interrogation of Jeremy Goodale by Fairfield PD
Law & Crime network, YouTube
Couch Detectives, YouTube
NBC: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/slain-iowa-teacher-nohema-graber-remembered-best-us-rcna4710
The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/09/13/murder-on-the-border https://blog.chron.com/narcoconfidential/2013/09/twenty-years-later-recollections-of-wilder-than-fiction-south-texas-murder/
https://myrgv.com/featured/2021/12/11/motion-for-early-release-denied-dora-cisneros-to-serve-out-life-sentence/
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Case 1: Final Bell: The Murder of Nohema Graber
Case 2: Dark Magic: The Murder of Joey Fischer
Sources:
Interrogation of Willard Chaiden Miller by Fairfield PD
Interrogation of Jeremy Goodale by Fairfield PD
Law & Crime network, YouTube
Couch Detectives, YouTube
NBC: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/slain-iowa-teacher-nohema-graber-remembered-best-us-rcna4710
The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/09/13/murder-on-the-border https://blog.chron.com/narcoconfidential/2013/09/twenty-years-later-recollections-of-wilder-than-fiction-south-texas-murder/
https://myrgv.com/featured/2021/12/11/motion-for-early-release-denied-dora-cisneros-to-serve-out-life-sentence/
Follow us, campers!
Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfire
https://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/
Facebook: True Crime Campfire
Instagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079
Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfire
Email: truecrimecampfirepod@gmail.com
MERCH! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, campers, Grab your marshmallows and gather around the True
Crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney,
and we're here to tell you a true story that
is way stranger than fiction. Or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the True crime campfire.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
We tend to cover strange cases on our show. We
seek them out because we find that there are always
interesting lessons to be learned there. But when it comes
to weird, some cases are in a category all their own,
like a pair of high school students so upset about
a grade that they plot the brutal murder of their
Spanish teacher, and a mother so obsessed with protecting her
(00:43):
child from pain that she loses all sense of right
and wrong. They are two very different cases on the
face of things, but underneath they have one major thing
in common. The motive is just bizarre. This is Stranger
Than Fiction. Volume five, Petty Motives, Edition Case one, Final Bell,
(01:14):
the Murder of Noemah Greeber. For this one, we're in Fairfield, Iowa,
November third, twenty twenty one. The family and friends of
high school Spanish teacher Noema greebor were worried she'd never
come home last night from her daily walk in Chautauqua Park,
and she'd been a no call, no show at work
that morning. That was way out of character for Noima.
(01:36):
She was dedicated to her students. Noema and her husband, Paul,
had divorced in twenty seventeen, but they were still close friends,
so much so that they still lived together. Paul reported
her missing right away, and it didn't take long for
police to find her. Unfortunately, though, it wasn't the happy
ending her loved ones were hoping for. In Chautauqua Park,
(01:57):
where she took her daily walks, found underneath a red
wheelbarrow with a tarp covering her body. She was dressed
only in her top and underwear, and she'd been brutally
beaten with some kind of blunt object, probably a baseball bat.
Autopsy would reveal her cause of death as blunt forced
trauma to the head. Still missing was Noema's car. It
(02:21):
seemed like the killer or killers had stolen it. Police
would eventually find it abandoned on a dead end road
not far from the park. So Hm the motive didn't
seem to be financial gain. The killer didn't keep the car,
and the amount of violence done to Missus Greeber was
a clue as well. When we see overkill like this way,
(02:41):
more violence than necessary to end someone's life, it tends
to point to a more personal motive rage, jealousy, revenge.
But who would have reason to rage against Missus Graeber.
Noema was sixty six years old, still healthy and energetic
and full of life. She was a special, much loved person,
(03:02):
and she lived an adventurous life. She grew up in Mexico.
That was where she met her husband Paul in high
school when he arrived as an exchange student from the US.
Noema always wanted to see as much of the world
as she could, so after high school she became a
flight attendant. She loved the job, but she had higher
aspirations too, so she put herself through flight school, which
(03:24):
was a hell of a thing for a woman to
do in nineteen seventies Mexico. She was a natural, and
when she got her pilot's license, she became one of
the first women in the country to fly commercial aircraft.
Just so cool. She and Paul lived in Mexico City
for a while before coming to the US to raise
their family, but they always loved to travel, and their
(03:44):
kids grew up in a house full of music and
dancing and love. Noema became a leader in her church
and a much loved figure in the local Latino community.
When Paul became disabled, Noema went back to school to
get her teaching certificate so she could support the family
financial Her students loved her sense of humor, her enthusiasm
for the job, and her never ending support for them
(04:06):
and their interests. If you loved art, she'd want to
see your latest painting. If you played the clarinet, she'd
ask you to play for the class and get everybody
clapping for you. If you were in the school play,
she'd make sure to be there to cheer you on.
That kind of teacher rarer than platinum and more valuable too,
the kind of teacher you remember for the rest of
your life, the kind you go visit when you come
(04:28):
back to town as a grown up. One of her
old friends from her flight attendant day is told NBC,
we were trained how to deal with very difficult people,
but Noema got along with everybody. Everybody, that is, except
one troublesome student. Sixteen year old Chadon Miller. Actually, his
full name is Willard Noble Chadon Miller, which I can
(04:49):
only assume is why he's full of so much pent
up rage. Just oh my god. Well, Chadon was disgruntled
about his grade in Missus Graeber's Spanish class, and he
had not been quiet about it. He'd even been to
the principal to complain about her teaching. She was too
old school, she didn't make the homework clear. One of
(05:10):
his friend's moms was from Guatemala and she couldn't believe
some of the stuff Missus Greeber was making us learn,
and on and on and on. Shayden was hoping to
apply to a special boarding school in Spain, and he
knew if failing grade in Spanish was not going to
look great on his resume. Plus, his mom had been
on his ass about it, taking away his phone and
other privileges to motivate him to do his homework. Forget
(05:32):
about the fact that most people were doing just fine
in the class. Shaydon felt he'd been terribly wronged by
the crappy Spanish grade he was getting. Just two weeks earlier,
he'd gotten in a heated argument with missus Greeber in
front of the class, and on the.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Day the teacher wren missing, Chayden and his mom had
a meeting with her at the school to discuss his grades.
Missus Graeber said she wasn't going to change his grade.
He was going to get the grade he'd earned. It
was only November, she pointed out, there's plenty of time
left in the school year if he wanted to improve
his performance.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, and that was Noima's reputation, tough but fair. She'd
go out of her way to help and support you,
but she expected you to do your part too.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
To their surprise, detective started hearing the name Chaden Miller
immediately as they spoke to the other teachers and students
at the high school. The guy had been running his
mouth for weeks about Missus Greeber. The other kid said
somebody had vandalized her house a week or so before
the murder, broken a window, and people suspected Chaden was
behind it. Most startling of all, he'd asked one kid
(06:33):
if he'd help him kill her. I just thought it
was a joke, the guy said, Now I'm not so sure.
Other friends came forward about Chandon's creepy fixation on missus Graeber.
In the weeks leading up to her murder, he kept
saying he was going to make her pay. They said
he talked about popping her with a baseball bat. He
said if she went missing in the next two weeks,
(06:53):
they shouldn't call the cops. The detective's ears perked up
at this. Some witnesses had reported seeing two teenage boys
driving Neuema's car on the evening she went missing, and
then a kid named Jonathan came forward with some bombshell evidence,
a series of snapchats he'd gotten on the night of
November two from his friend Jeremy good Ale. Tall, blonde
(07:16):
and smart, Jeremy was hoping for a tennis scholarship to
college next year. He'd had some ups and downs at home.
His mom had left the family years earlier, and Jeremy
hadn't had any contact with her in a while. He
lived with his dad, his sister, and her little boy.
He'd been in trouble here and there for small stuff
like fighting and weed. He was mostly a good student.
(07:37):
He liked skateboarding. Jeremy didn't seem like the kind of
kid who would be involved in a murder, But these
snapchat messages he'd send his friend were blood curdling. The
first one showed a hand holding a bottle of Clorox
bleach with the text time to hide a body. You
can see a swipe of blood on his shirtcuff. Another
one showed Jeremy in a hooded sweatshirt, a dark mass
(08:00):
covering the bottom half of his face. The text said, POV,
you're my Spanish teacher and this is the last thing
you see.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
The next showed a gloved hand holding the handle of
a shovel. In the background, you can see a green
plastic bag full of rope. The text said, no, I'm
actually ready, Here we go. The last snap was of
a red wheelbarrow, just like the one police had found
no Him's body under There was a shovel in it,
an electric lantern, and the same green plastic bag from
the other snapchat. The text said new wheelbarrow.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Who dis Oh wow, he's got jokes hilarious.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
There's something so chilling about the memification of this murder,
like I don't like it at all. I know it's
so creepy as bizarre as this was the idea of
a high school kid killing his teacher over a grade.
This was pretty damn incriminating, and it got even more
so when they found out who Jeremy's best buddy was,
none other than Shade and Miller, the guy who'd been
(09:00):
running around asking people for help murdering the Spanish teacher.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
It was time to bring Jeremy and Chaydon in for interviews.
Jeremy came in with his dad, and unlike his buddy Chadon,
he had the good sense to keep his mouth shut
and ask for a lawyer. Chaydon, on the other hand,
is the kind of guy who thinks he can talk
his way out of anything, and he didn't do himself
any favors. In the interrogation room, he seemed grumpy about
(09:25):
being there before the detectives came in. He complained to
his mom about having to be there so early in
the morning. He was hungry, he whined, he was parched, parched.
He wanted his mom to be sure and tell the
cops he'd been with her all day on the day
of the murder, to which she responded by saying, so
did you go straight home after you left my office?
(09:47):
To the detectives, Chadon waxed on about what a shitty
teacher missus Graeber was, how she picked favorites, and how
everybody wanted her fired, which is total bullshit. Her students
adored her, they had a candle like vigil. People were
se like it's total nonsense. I'm sure it didn't take
the detectives long to figure out that our boy was
a blooming narcissist. At one point, Shadon talked about how
(10:10):
exhausting it was to be around his less intelligent classmates,
how hard it was to argue with a stupid person,
Oh the irony. The lead detective was immediately struck by
how calm and casual Chadon seemed. Most of the kids
they'd talked to were nervous and upset, which is how
you'd expect them to feel under the circumstances, but this
(10:32):
kid was chill at first. Chadon's story, let's say it
evolved over the next hour or two. First it was
just I don't know what happened. I can't imagine who
would hurt missus Graeber. And interestingly, when asked to list
his closest friends, he left out Jeremy Goodall. Hmm, wonder why.
(10:54):
But as the detective slowly revealed more and more of
what they knew. Chadon started squirming like a under a
magnifying glass, and instead of using that alleged big brain
of his and asking for an attorney, he started spinning
an elaborate yarn. Okay, okay, he did see something go
down in Chautauqua Park two nights ago, some people in
(11:15):
masks and hoodies carrying something heavy looking. How many people?
Six or eight? Shadon said, which you should know that.
Chaden later takes Jeremy aside at the juvenile detention center
and describes this story as very convincing. Trying to get
Jeremy to back it up with the cops. Eight kids
(11:36):
in masks murdering the Spanish teacher is to him, very convincing,
bless your heart. At first, Chaden tried to get out
of naming anybody specifically, Oh, they were all in masks.
I don't know who it was. But eventually he caved
to pressure and started name and names, perfectly willing to
throw his innocent friends under the bus to save his
(11:56):
own ass. Later the story evolved to where the game
of killers intimidated Shadon into helping them dispose of evidence.
It was ridiculous, and the detectives told him so. They
already had a pretty good idea of who all was
involved in the murder, Shade Miller and his best bud,
Jeremy good Ale. They were searching Shadin's in Jeremy's houses
(12:17):
and they found blood stained clothing in both, and that
wasn't all they found. Haden had left the bloody baseball
bat in his bedroom, just propped up against the wall,
a bloody souvenir. I guess, as teenage killers are so
fond of doing. Jeremy and Shaden had written down their
murder plan in detail for police to find later. On
Shaden's computer, so helpful. There was a list of materials
(12:41):
plastic trash bag, ziplock bag, wet wipes, backpack, gloves, hammer, cover,
transport vehicle and there was a concise paragraph labeled procedure
stunn It read move off trail, empty compartments, load cargo.
I assume the cargo here is missus graeber blanket, cargo,
(13:02):
deactivate compartment contents, leave bag by exit, transport empty transport
safety stun switch glove, deactivate article to bag, finalize the wind,
secure victory load into storage spot, don't forget to close
the door to the ground, switch glove, move the sticks,
wipe down tools, dispose article, and grab bag by exit. Done. Yeah,
(13:27):
great job, kid, That's an uncrackable coat if I ever
saw one. Like, if you stumbled upon that paragraph in
somebody's notebook, wouldn't you immediately assume it was a murder plot?
Like I would, like, what else are you wiping stuff
down for and switching gloves? And like I love how
they think they're being crafty.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Here, and I love that they didn't do it like
they can't no ho, hell no, they kept the murder weapon.
Like absolutely, This is what happens every time somebody writes
their murder plot. Okay, yep, it always just becomes abundantly
clear how fucking stupid they are because they can't even
(14:03):
follow their own instructions and it's just it's just it's
just baffling.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Man.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
I don't know. I don't like that. I don't like
the finalized the win in parentheses secure victory, especially because
that just me like, oh, I killed a sixty six
year old woman, I know, victory. Congratulations, you little twerps.
You took it, took down a woman three times your age.
Go fuck yourself. God. They also had another witness, a
(14:31):
friend of Chadon's and Jeremy's, who said they'd called him
for a ride home on the night of the murder.
He'd picked them up on the same road where Noamah
Grayber's car had been ditched. So real, real, mensa, members,
we've got here, Okay, literally, we'll play both. Chayden and
Jeremy were arrested on November fourth, about a day and
(14:51):
a half after the murder. Each was held on a
million dollar bond, and before long, detectives got word that
Jeremy good All and his attorney would like to have
a chat. He wanted to tell them exactly what happened,
and it was one hell of a story. Chayden had
been stewing about his shitty Spanish grade for weeks, presumably
instead of studying for Spanish.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Oh yeah, oh absolutely.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
He was worried about that boarding school, his college application,
and a vacation he was supposed to take that summer.
His parents might not let him go if he flunk
to class. Sometimes it seemed like it was all he
wanted to talk about. Then one afternoon, Chayden sidled up
to Jeremy in the lunch room and said, Hey, would
you help me kill missus Graeber. From the tone in
(15:37):
his voice, Jeremy said, it was clear he wasn't joking.
Jeremy didn't have a dog in this fight at all.
He liked missus Graeber fine, He'd done well in her
class the previous year, thought she was a pretty good teacher.
But Chayden was his buddy, his good time boy, his
rotten soldier. How could he say no? In his confession,
(15:57):
Jeremy told the prosecutor he didn't even really think about
telling Chaden no. Couldn't let him think. I was scared,
he said, I didn't want to be seen as a pussy. Yeah,
A pro tip, kiddo, being scared that you're gonna look
scared and then going through with a murder of an
innocent woman to save face with your loser friend. That
makes you a pussy. Telling Chaden, sure, man, I'll help you,
(16:20):
then secretly recording the conversation and taking it to the cops.
That would have been a badass move.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, it is terrifying to me how easy it was
for Chaden to talk Jeremy into this murder. Like the
way Jeremy himself tells it, it was as simple as
just asking. Yeah, he told the detectives. He didn't even
think about the consequences.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Unbelievable, which is crazy because like Jeremy had more to lose,
like Chaden. Oh, yes, had all these quote unquote plans,
but we saw how his plans have played out so far.
Like he was going to get a tennis scholarship, he
was going to go to college, he was gonna, you know,
shake off his child, that'd make something of himself, and
he just decided to throw all that away.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And it wasn't even his beef. That's really just stunning
about it.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Yeah, So, like a good little toady, Jeremy left most
of the planning to Chaden. He decided the upcoming four
day weekend in early November would be the best time
to do the murder. They did a little low key
surveillance on missus Greeber for a few days, lurking around
and taking note of her daily routines. They knew about
her walks in Chautauqua Park, they knew where car she drove.
(17:25):
They went back and forth with emails and texts planning
it out. Though it doesn't seem like they planned it
super carefully, they were winging it to some extent. They
really didn't think much about what they were going to
do after the murder. For example, the day finally rolled
around and Chaden and Jeremy were like a couple of kids.
On Christmas morning, after smoking some weed with his girlfriend
(17:46):
at the park, Jeremy met up with Chaden and they
headed onto the walking trail that Missus Greeb used. The
girlfriend later testified both guys seemed keyed up and excited,
but they wouldn't tell her why. Chayden had come prepared
with a bat, a screwdriver, a hammer, and a pocket knife.
They knew Missus Greeber was there, her car was in
the parking lot, and on their first lap around the trail,
(18:09):
they actually bumped into her, said hi, Missus Greeber, and
went on their way.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
And now that they knew which direction she was walking,
they each posted up in a different spot to wait
for her to come around again and to look out
for anybody else who might see or interfere. Chaden hid
in a little clump of trees. In a few minutes,
Jeremy looked up to see Chadon poking his head out.
He gave Jeremy a little nod, like here she comes,
and Jeremy started toward her. Did she see him again
(18:38):
and smile? We don't know, but we know that Shadon
Miller was creeping up silently behind her with the baseball
bat in his hands, and as Jeremy watched, he brought
it down as hard as he could on Missus Greeber's head.
She fell to the ground. Make sure she's dead, Jeremy said,
and Shadon hit her a few more times, then scurried
away to make sure nobody was coming. Missus Greeber was down,
(19:01):
but she was still alive. Jeremy picked up the bat
and hit her a few more times. Later, he told
the detective she was making pained noises and he just
wanted to put her out of her misery. Aw give
you a Nobel prize. So Jeremy was actually the killer
in the end, He was the one who dealt the
fatal blows. Later on, Chaden would claim he never hit
(19:24):
Missus Greebor, but Jeremy insists he made the first hit.
They dragged their teacher's body off the trail to a
strip of woods, and dumped it. They'd talked about maybe
dragging her to some nearby train tracks to try and
make it look like a suicide by train, but they
realized now that wouldn't work. They'd done too much damage
to her body, so they looted her pockets for her
(19:45):
keys and hauled ass out of the park in her car,
dumping it on Middle Glasgow Road and calling their buddy
to come pick them up. They both went home and
had a bite to eat. Jeremy took a little nap,
and later around midnight they set about phase two of
the plan. Shaden had a red wheelbarrow which they loaded
up with rope, bleach wet wipes, a shovel and a tarp.
(20:07):
They met up back at the murder scene and cleaned
up most of the blood with the wet wipes. They
loaded Noema's body into the wheelbarrow and rolled it all
the way down to the train tracks. Then they covered
her up with the tarp weighed down with some railroad
ties they found, then laid the wheelbarrow on top of
her to hide their handiwork. Then they went back to
Jeremy's house and got black out drunk to celebrate in
(20:31):
Shayden's case. Probably Jeremy, on the other hand, was a
bit of a mess. He sent the snapchats to his
friend along with a text that said he was probably
going to kill himself soon. He never got the chance.
The murder was on Tuesday evening. He and Chayden were
arrested and charged before the sun went down on Thursday.
(20:52):
The dynamics of these two will be familiar to any
of y'all who've listened to our episode about the Dartmouth murders.
The Master and the Blaster, the dominant one with the
stronger personality and the deeper pathology, and the less dominant
one who desperately wants to please and impress. Those dynamics
played out not just in the murder itself, but in
the aftermath as well. Jeremy didn't get a plea deal
(21:15):
for his confession, but his attorney knew it would look
good to the court, and he was right. Jeremy pled
guilty to the murder and received a twenty five year
sentence with a chance for parole. He cried all through
his court room apology, and it felt genuine, although I'm
sure the tears were mostly for himself and his family.
More than for Noema and hers and this was kind
(21:36):
of eerie. At the end of his statement, a thin
stream of blood dripped out of Jeremy's nose, like a
reminder of the blood he and Shayden had spilled.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Chayden claimed he had just played lookout and never actually
touched missus Graeber, which I don't buy for a second.
He smirked all the way through his courtroom apology. It
was one of the grossest things I've ever seen. He
was sentenced to thirty five years in prison with a
chance of parole. Of the two of them, I think
Chayden is the coldest.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Oh yeah, I absolutely agree. I think this kid needs
to stay right where he is. A narcissist and manipulator
to the core. And you can watch both his and
Jeremy's interrogations on the YouTube channel Couch Detectives, and they're
both fascinating for different reasons. They really give you a
sense of the differences between these two killers.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Noima's loved ones made heart wrenching victim impact statements. In one,
her brother in law revealed Noema wasn't the only casualty
of Chayden and Jeremy's murder plot. Neima's husband, Paul, had
been sick before the murder, and after he lost her,
he just kind of stopped taking care of himself, stopped
going to the doctor. He was heartbroken and it ended
(22:46):
up killing him. Noima left behind a whole village of
people who loved her and now had to grapple with
the enormity of this petty, mundane evil that took her
away from them.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah, it's the petty for me. It's just this the
absolute senselessness of this one. And as a teacher, this
case is my worst nightmare. Like I think we all
worry about it, but we never expect it's actually gonna happen.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, And one of the things I think Chaden was
most upset about was like she preferred like handwritten assignments.
She didn't really like using computer assignments. And it's because
he couldn't cheat or he was too lazy to just
write out what Google translates said like he was. He
was just a little towarp. He couldn't cheat.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And yeah, I think she bruised his ego mm hmm. Yeah,
you know, she picked favorites. He said he wasn't one
of the favorites because he's always mouthing off to her
in class.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Surprise, surprise, you know, I have some news for some
any high school school kids, is like, your actions do
have consequences. Teachers don't unconditionally love you like your parents.
You can you can be a dick to a teacher
and they won't like it. So get real, okay, campers.
(24:28):
Moving on to case two. This one is Dark Magic,
the Murder of Joey Fisher. For this one, we're in Brownsville, Texas,
a border town just a few miles from the Gulf
of Mexico. March third, nineteen ninety three. It was early
in the morning in the golf course suburb of Rancho Viejo. An.
Eighteen year old Joey Fisher was having a hard time
(24:49):
getting his younger brother Eric ready for school. He drove
Eric there in their mom's car every morning, and every
morning he'd back it out of the garage onto the
driveway and hose all the dust off of all the windows.
Their neighborhood was well to do, but not wealthy, a
street of meat ranch homes with palm trees and backyard pools.
It was before seven a m. And still quiet as
(25:11):
Joey hosed down the car. Just a few early commuters
headed for the highway, and then a car he didn't
recognize slowed to a stop outside his house. Joey's mom, Karen,
was in the kitchen and heard two sharp sounds, one
right out together. She thought maybe a couple of heavy
palm fronds had fallen on the roof of her car,
(25:32):
or maybe a neighbor's vehicle had backfired. She went to
the door to the garage to see what was going on,
and her world fell to pieces. Joey lay motionless on
the driveway, face up. His hands still held the garden hose,
and the flow of water past his body was stained
red with blood as it washed over the driveway. Oh
my gosh, currant Screen then frantically called to Eric and
(25:55):
the boy's older sister, Kathy, Call nine one one, Call
your father. She and their father, Buddy, had been divorced
for six years, but he lived pretty close. He raced
to Karin's house, and by the time he got there,
there were already flashing lights from the Rancho Viejo PD.
I can't imagine things were much different back in nineteen
ninety three, but right now, this department only has seven
(26:18):
officers and they mainly have to deal with people driving
golf carts where they shouldn't. Statistically, the murder rate in
Rancho Viejo is a big fat zero. It's one of
the safest communities in the country. To have a kid
shot down and his driveway was shocking, and that was
what had happened. Joey had been shot twice at close
(26:38):
range with a thirty eight caliber handgun, once in the
chest and once in the head. He died immediately. There
was no sign of a struggle, and his killer hadn't
hung around at all once Joey was dead. This looked
like a hit, a deliberate, targeted assassination on a teenage
boy who would want to kill Joey Fisher a smart,
(27:00):
good kid without an enemy in the.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
World, and Joey was a slim, neat kid with a
sharp mind and occasionally a sharp mouth, not in a
mean way, but he was one of those kids who
wasn't afraid to challenge his teachers and have a little
fun with them, to treat them like peers. His teachers
liked him, and he had a four point zero GPA
at Saint Joseph Academy, the private school he went to.
(27:22):
He and two others were voted by their class as
most sarcastic, so they posed together for their class photo
with a sign that said, what us sarcastic? That's so cute.
One time he'd come to class with a couple of balloons,
and his teacher made him put them in a closet.
A couple days later, Joey asked for his balloons back,
and when the teacher opened the closet, about twenty balloons
(27:43):
fell out. That's what happens when you leave two balloons alone,
Joey said, like a lot of Brownsville teens. As soon
as they had their driver's licenses, Joey and his buddies
made a few trips over to Madam Moorros, the big
industrial city right across the border from Brownsville. They'd go
to bars and hit on local girls, a kind of PG.
(28:03):
Thirteen version of going wild that has probably been going
on for about as long as Brownsville has existed. Author
Marie Brenner, whose New Yorker article Murder on the Border
was one of our main sources for this story, describes
Metamoros as long the equivalent of a theme park for
Texas teenagers, but by the start of senior year, Joey
was focused more on school work than the surveaces. He
(28:25):
was ambitious and already had his sight set on college
and then a high flying career as an engineer. So
he was a smart, well liked kid right on the
cusp of what promised to be a great life. Who
would want to kill him? Cameron County Sheriff Alex Perez
looked like a production had been a little too on
the nose in the casting for Texas Lawman, a burly
(28:47):
dude and cowboy boots who wore gold aviator shades, had
a tie pin shaped like handcuffs, and wore a big
gold ring with a pistol picked out in Rhinestone's Wow.
He said, I was asking myself, why would a young
man like this, just starting life, a brilliant student get shot.
Usually it's either drugs or love. There wasn't even a
(29:09):
whisper of drug use in Joey's life, so that left
door number two, la passion. In the spring of nineteen
ninety two, he asked out a classmate, Christina Sisnaros, a
pretty girl with long, dark hair who was kind of
shy initially, but who was a lot of fun when
you got to know her. They got on really well,
but this certainly wasn't a grand dramatic romance. Joey's stepmother, Connie,
(29:32):
didn't even know they were dating. She thought Christina was
just a friend. She and Joey would play tennis or
swim together, and then while Joey did his homework, Christina
would play video games, which I'm guessing meant either Sonic
the Hedgehog or Super Mario World Good times. Connie didn't
remember ever seeing the two of them even hold hands,
but things progressed as teenage romances do. They snuck away
(29:56):
together to the condo Christina's parents had on South Padre Island.
They went to junior prom together, and then Joey broke
things off. They just weren't clicking in any way beyond
his physical attraction to Christina, and he wanted to end
things before they got too complicated. He'd given her his
class ring and asked for it back, but Christina wouldn't
give it up. She was heartbroken, even though they'd only
(30:18):
dated for a few weeks. We've all been there, and
either from personal experience or just from being a human
being alive on planet Earth. You probably know that having
a broken heart at seventeen can be brutal. It can
feel like the entire world is collapsing into a sucking
black hole of hopelessness. Of course, as adults, we know
(30:39):
that this is not going to last, that the sun
is going to shine again, and that going through all
this is a normal part of growing up. At least
adults should know that. Not long after he'd broken up
with Christina, Joey got a call from her mom, Dora.
She was very friendly and polite. She just wanted to
know why Joey had broken up with Christina. This was,
(31:00):
of course, an excruciatingly awkward conversation for Joey, but he
put on his best manners and answered politely and honestly,
maybe a little bit too honestly, well, ma'am, I think
she's very nice, but I just want to see other girls.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Next, Dora called up Joey's dad, Buddy and asked him
the same question, why had Joey broken up with Christina.
Buddy gave the sensible answer, this is really between joe
and Christina. It has nothing to do with us. Dora
kept calling Joey asking him why he broke up with Christina,
asking him to go out with her again and again.
(31:37):
And I want you to mentally time travel back to
when you were seventeen years old and imagine your mom
calling up the person you like and asking them to
go out with you.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah. I think I'd have to move to a different
town or possibly a different country. That would be awful.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, I'd apply to go to the space station. God,
it got even worse seeing that she wasn't getting anywhere.
Dora tried to sweeten the deal. If Joey would go
out with Christina again, Dora would pay him five hundred
dollars a month. And that's the kind of thing that
if your mom tries it, every school in the county
(32:15):
is going to hear about it, and it'll follow you
for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
God, that poor girl. Oh my lord.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah, humiliating. This was the limit for Joey. He said
to a friend. I've never told an adult off before,
but yeah, I told her off. When Joey started back
to school after summer, there was a beautiful new girl
from San Luis Potosi, Marianella Caballero, and he fell for
(32:41):
her hard. But although they flirted sometimes Marianella wouldn't bite. Apparently,
in the early nineties, the Anglo boys at Saint Joe
had a love them and Leave them, a reputation that
made some girls wary, and Joey's flippant charm didn't exactly
promise anything else. But in February of that year, they
(33:03):
were both at a friend's Kinsaniera, and Maryanella's attention was
on another boy. Joey realized that the standard nineties teen
thing of acting like you didn't care about anything wasn't
going to get him anywhere, so he wrote Maryanella a
sweet letter and told her how he felt about her.
The next night, they talked on the phone for three hours.
(33:23):
A couple of Joey's buddies were arounded his house studying
during this call and reacted to him being all moon
eyed over a girl with the sensitivity you'd expect from
teenage boys, meaning they'd held him down and started shaving
his legs with an electric razor because teenage boys are
savages and it doesn't matter how you burn your friends,
as long as you burn them. It's nice that Joey
(33:49):
had such a good night because it was his last
night on earth. After Joey was shot and killed his mom,
Karen immediately moved herself and her other kids when with
her her own mom. No one had any idea why
Joey had been shot or if his family was still
in danger, and Carinn had known right away that she'd
never be able to spend another night in the Rancho
(34:10):
Viejo house. Six hundred people came to Joey's funeral, including
Marianella and her mother, who both sat weeping in the pews.
Christina was there too, also crying, but not Dora.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Police work isn't usually like its portrayed in classic detective stories.
It's not all chasin down clues found at the scene,
but this particular case opened up as police chased down
a clue found at the scene. The clue in question
was a yellow business card found on the driveway close
to Joey's body from a bail bond company up in McKinney,
just outside of Dallas. Investigators thought it had fallen out
(34:49):
of the killer's pocket as he struggled with Joey or
as Joey fell forward after being shot. There was a
handwritten phone number on the card with a Dallas area
code two one four. The number four was written in
a very distinct, exaggerated style. Investigators called up the bond
company and asked if they'd had any recent bail applications
(35:09):
from South Texas. When the company faxed down one such application,
there was that same weird number four. They pulled the
startled guy in. He had nothing to do with Joey Fisher,
but he did say he'd given the card to a
buddy so he'd know who to call if he got arrested.
This buddy was Daniel Garza, who had a landscaping business
(35:30):
that was a cover for his main career as a
little league drug runner. When he was brought in for questioning,
it didn't take Garza long to crack and own up
to arranging Joey Fisher's murder. Daniel had been having a
little trouble at home. His wife of twenty two years
just didn't love him any more and was asking for
a divorce, and Daniel wasn't keen on any solution to
that problem that required much effort on his part. No,
(35:53):
what he wanted was to have somebody cast a spell
that would make his wife love him again. This took
him to say seventy three year old Maria Mercedes Martinez,
a local fortune teller who would read your fate in
the tarot cards for five bucks out of a dark
room in the back of a second hand clothing store.
Maria told Daniel she could help him win back his
wife's heart, but he'd have to do something for her first.
(36:16):
There was a young man who needed to be taken
care of, a young man named Joey Fisher. When police
arrested Maria a little later, she folded immediately and gave
up the name of the client who wanted Joey taken
care of. Dora Cisneros, Christina's mom. Dora was an odd
duck and had gotten odder after nineteen seventy four, when
(36:38):
her oldest son, a high school senior named David, had
died in a car crash. To people who knew her,
it seemed like Dora, then thirty six, was obsessed with
having one more child after David's death, and that child
was Christina. Dora was kind of a nightmare mom with
all of her kids. One son was a dentist, and
once Dora called his office and was told he was
(37:01):
in the middle of a root canal. Well, I don't care,
he knows he needs to be here, Dora said. Another
son was underachieving in school, so Dora marched down there
and blamed his teachers because her boy could do no wrong.
All her children lived in her alternately demanding and protective shadow,
but Christina was special. Outside of her family, Dora was
(37:24):
known as a quiet, neat woman, a surgeon's wife who
lived a normal, upper middle class life. She was in
a mall Walker's Club, a group of ladies who got
their exercise marching through the air conditioned interior of the
Sunrise Mall to escape the South Texas heat. After David's death,
she'd become more religious, which to Dora meant she not
only went to Mass more often, it meant she frequently
(37:45):
visited local coronnderas wise women, who included Maria Mercedes Martinez.
By the time of Joey's death, Dora and Maria had
known each other for years. By the fall after Joey
and Christina Spring romance, things had for dressed in the
normal natural way for high schoolers. Joey had fallen from
Marianella Cavalero, and Christina was dating somebody new. Being dumped
(38:09):
and felt like the end of the world. At the time,
but it turned out it wasn't. She was over it.
Her mom, though, was not. Dora initially wanted a couple
of things from Maria. She wanted to curse Joey with
bad luck, and she wanted for Christina to magically get
her virginity back. M h, god, you know, like extra
(38:30):
virgin olive oil. If you can do it to an olive,
why can't you do it to a girl. But Dora's
demands soon got darker. She wanted Maria to put a
curse on Joey that would kill him outright. And I
think you have to wonder here how much this still
had to do with Christina and how much it had
to do with Joey tellin' Dora off over the phone.
(38:51):
For some people, if they obsess over a slight, real
or imagined, it can boil them up to her rage
with no external help at all see Jay Miller.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Maria declined to put the touch of death onto Joey
for the obvious reason that you know, that's not a
thing that people can do, So Dora asked for a
more practical solution. Did Maria know anybody who'd killed Joey Fisher?
For her Joey, remember, had broken up with Dora's daughter
after a few weeks of dating and had one unpleasant
(39:22):
phone call with Dora months ago. That was it. That
was what Dora was willing to have him killed for,
and Maria went right along. Yes, she did know someone
who would probably do that. A little later, Dora handed
over three thousand dollars for a hitman, along with a
photo of Joey and Christina from the Junior prom so
they'd recognize him. Daniel Garza claims that when Maria asked
(39:46):
him to arrange a hit on Joey Fisher, he agreed
and took the money in the picture, but only intended
to hire a couple of low lives to beat the
kid up.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, for whatever it's worth, I don't believe that at all.
I think the two guys he hired from Metamore ros
Ary Beartopizana and Israel Olivares did exactly what Garza asked
them to do, which is ambush Joey in his driveway
early in the morning and shoot him dead.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
They were career criminals in a drug running and car
theft ring, but this was one hell of a step
up in criminal activity for them. They got one thousand
dollars each for shooting a boy dead in front of
his home. Daniel Garza agreed to wear a wire and
called on Maria Martinez to tell her the hitman were
demanding more money. Maria handed over the cash. This wasn't
(40:31):
her own money, of course. The recordings were enough to
arrest Maria, and she also agreed to wear a wire.
Some wires all the way down, why everywhere. Yeah, imagine
if they had done this at the beginning. You know,
That's what makes me so mad about hitman cases. It's
like if they would have just been like, Yo, this
crazy bitch wants me to kill some young boy.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
We've seen it happen. Nobody gets hurt.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
She set up a meeting with Doris A. Snarrows to
get more money for the hitman, and when Dora ya
I handed over five hundred dollars, the police pounced and
took her ass to jail. In nineteen ninety four, Doris
Desnaros was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison,
but just a couple years later she was free after
an appellate court ruled the prosecution wrongfully instructed the jury
(41:16):
to convict Dora for direct involvement in the murder. After
only showing evidence of her involvement in a conspiracy. She
was acquitted and Joey's family was furious.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
But after spending two years in prison, Dora would only
get another two years of freedom in sunlight. Because the
case involved Mexican nationals, federal authorities were able to charge
Dora with the use of interstate commerce facilities and the
commission of a murder for hire. In nineteen ninety eight,
Dora was convicted in federal court and sentenced to life
in prison, where she remains today at the age of
(41:49):
eighty six, having recently been denied compassionate early release. Daniel
Garza was also sentenced to life in prison with the
possibility of parola for thirty years, which would be this year,
but we haven't heard anything about him getting out. We
also don't know how things worked out with his wife,
but I bet she dumped his sorry ass like radioactive waste.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Hope.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
So fortune teller Maria Mercedes Martinez was sentenced to twenty
years but released after six By odd coincidence, District Attorney
Louise Sands got to know Maria's son pretty well. She
always told her son to pass on her respects to
the man who had put her away. She died a
few years after her release.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
The two men accused of actually killing Joey Fisher, Ariberto
Pizzana and Israel Olivarez, were never charged in relation to
his death. They went back to Mexico, and because this
was a capital case, with the death penalty potentially on
the table, there was essentially no chance that Mexico would
ever extradite them to the US. I'm having trouble thinking
(42:51):
of any other case we've covered that is simultaneously as
tragic and as ridiculous as this one. Joey was a bright,
beloved kid who was gunned down right on the cusp
of what promised to be an amazing life over something
as banal and every day as a high school breakup.
It's just astonishing. And the girl he broke up with
(43:11):
had nothing to do with it. It was just her weird,
obsessed mom. And I can only imagine what Christina went
through after this in that town. I can only imagine,
because you know how people are, and I bet she
went through absolute hell. You know, not only did she
lose her mother, but I'm sure people blamed her, it
must have just been awful and won her fault at all.
(43:34):
You know, if there's somebody in your life who drives
you to this kind of unhinged rage, it's a good
idea to take a step back and try and see
if circumstances really justify putting yourself through all that, because
I can pretty much guarantee you they do not. If
you happen to have kids in your life, sit down
with them, watch Frozen for the thirty fifth time, and
take note, for the love of God, let it go.
(43:58):
So those were couple of wild ones, right, campers. You
know we'll have another one for you next week, but
for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay
safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire.
And as always, we want to send a grateful shout
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qcum pare I love it, Rachel and Anita. We appreciate
(44:22):
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(44:42):
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(45:03):
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Hello, campers, Grab your marshmallows and gather around the True
Crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney,
and we're here to tell you a true story that
is way stranger than fiction. Or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the True crime campfire.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
We tend to cover strange cases on our show. We
seek them out because we find that there are always
interesting lessons to be learned there. But when it comes
to weird, some cases are in a category all their own,
like a pair of high school students so upset about
a grade that they plot the brutal murder of their
Spanish teacher, and a mother so obsessed with protecting her
(00:43):
child from pain that she loses all sense of right
and wrong. They are two very different cases on the
face of things, but underneath they have one major thing
in common. The motive is just bizarre. This is Stranger
Than Fiction. Volume five, Petty Motives, Edition Case one, Final Bell,
(01:14):
the Murder of Noemah Greeber. For this one, we're in Fairfield, Iowa,
November third, twenty twenty one. The family and friends of
high school Spanish teacher Noema greebor were worried she'd never
come home last night from her daily walk in Chautauqua Park,
and she'd been a no call, no show at work
that morning. That was way out of character for Noima.
(01:36):
She was dedicated to her students. Noema and her husband, Paul,
had divorced in twenty seventeen, but they were still close friends,
so much so that they still lived together. Paul reported
her missing right away, and it didn't take long for
police to find her. Unfortunately, though, it wasn't the happy
ending her loved ones were hoping for. In Chautauqua Park,
(01:57):
where she took her daily walks, found underneath a red
wheelbarrow with a tarp covering her body. She was dressed
only in her top and underwear, and she'd been brutally
beaten with some kind of blunt object, probably a baseball bat.
Autopsy would reveal her cause of death as blunt forced
trauma to the head. Still missing was Noema's car. It
(02:21):
seemed like the killer or killers had stolen it. Police
would eventually find it abandoned on a dead end road
not far from the park. So Hm the motive didn't
seem to be financial gain. The killer didn't keep the car,
and the amount of violence done to Missus Greeber was
a clue as well. When we see overkill like this way,
(02:41):
more violence than necessary to end someone's life, it tends
to point to a more personal motive rage, jealousy, revenge.
But who would have reason to rage against Missus Graeber.
Noema was sixty six years old, still healthy and energetic
and full of life. She was a special, much loved person,
(03:02):
and she lived an adventurous life. She grew up in Mexico.
That was where she met her husband Paul in high
school when he arrived as an exchange student from the US.
Noema always wanted to see as much of the world
as she could, so after high school she became a
flight attendant. She loved the job, but she had higher
aspirations too, so she put herself through flight school, which
(03:24):
was a hell of a thing for a woman to
do in nineteen seventies Mexico. She was a natural, and
when she got her pilot's license, she became one of
the first women in the country to fly commercial aircraft.
Just so cool. She and Paul lived in Mexico City
for a while before coming to the US to raise
their family, but they always loved to travel, and their
(03:44):
kids grew up in a house full of music and
dancing and love. Noema became a leader in her church
and a much loved figure in the local Latino community.
When Paul became disabled, Noema went back to school to
get her teaching certificate so she could support the family
financial Her students loved her sense of humor, her enthusiasm
for the job, and her never ending support for them
(04:06):
and their interests. If you loved art, she'd want to
see your latest painting. If you played the clarinet, she'd
ask you to play for the class and get everybody
clapping for you. If you were in the school play,
she'd make sure to be there to cheer you on.
That kind of teacher rarer than platinum and more valuable too,
the kind of teacher you remember for the rest of
your life, the kind you go visit when you come
(04:28):
back to town as a grown up. One of her
old friends from her flight attendant day is told NBC,
we were trained how to deal with very difficult people,
but Noema got along with everybody. Everybody, that is, except
one troublesome student. Sixteen year old Chadon Miller. Actually, his
full name is Willard Noble Chadon Miller, which I can
(04:49):
only assume is why he's full of so much pent
up rage. Just oh my god. Well, Chadon was disgruntled
about his grade in Missus Graeber's Spanish class, and he
had not been quiet about it. He'd even been to
the principal to complain about her teaching. She was too
old school, she didn't make the homework clear. One of
(05:10):
his friend's moms was from Guatemala and she couldn't believe
some of the stuff Missus Greeber was making us learn,
and on and on and on. Shayden was hoping to
apply to a special boarding school in Spain, and he
knew if failing grade in Spanish was not going to
look great on his resume. Plus, his mom had been
on his ass about it, taking away his phone and
other privileges to motivate him to do his homework. Forget
(05:32):
about the fact that most people were doing just fine
in the class. Shaydon felt he'd been terribly wronged by
the crappy Spanish grade he was getting. Just two weeks earlier,
he'd gotten in a heated argument with missus Greeber in
front of the class, and on the.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Day the teacher wren missing, Chayden and his mom had
a meeting with her at the school to discuss his grades.
Missus Graeber said she wasn't going to change his grade.
He was going to get the grade he'd earned. It
was only November, she pointed out, there's plenty of time
left in the school year if he wanted to improve
his performance.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, and that was Noima's reputation, tough but fair. She'd
go out of her way to help and support you,
but she expected you to do your part too.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
To their surprise, detective started hearing the name Chaden Miller
immediately as they spoke to the other teachers and students
at the high school. The guy had been running his
mouth for weeks about Missus Greeber. The other kid said
somebody had vandalized her house a week or so before
the murder, broken a window, and people suspected Chaden was
behind it. Most startling of all, he'd asked one kid
(06:33):
if he'd help him kill her. I just thought it
was a joke, the guy said, Now I'm not so sure.
Other friends came forward about Chandon's creepy fixation on missus Graeber.
In the weeks leading up to her murder, he kept
saying he was going to make her pay. They said
he talked about popping her with a baseball bat. He
said if she went missing in the next two weeks,
(06:53):
they shouldn't call the cops. The detective's ears perked up
at this. Some witnesses had reported seeing two teenage boys
driving Neuema's car on the evening she went missing, and
then a kid named Jonathan came forward with some bombshell evidence,
a series of snapchats he'd gotten on the night of
November two from his friend Jeremy good Ale. Tall, blonde
(07:16):
and smart, Jeremy was hoping for a tennis scholarship to
college next year. He'd had some ups and downs at home.
His mom had left the family years earlier, and Jeremy
hadn't had any contact with her in a while. He
lived with his dad, his sister, and her little boy.
He'd been in trouble here and there for small stuff
like fighting and weed. He was mostly a good student.
(07:37):
He liked skateboarding. Jeremy didn't seem like the kind of
kid who would be involved in a murder, But these
snapchat messages he'd send his friend were blood curdling. The
first one showed a hand holding a bottle of Clorox
bleach with the text time to hide a body. You
can see a swipe of blood on his shirtcuff. Another
one showed Jeremy in a hooded sweatshirt, a dark mass
(08:00):
covering the bottom half of his face. The text said, POV,
you're my Spanish teacher and this is the last thing
you see.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
The next showed a gloved hand holding the handle of
a shovel. In the background, you can see a green
plastic bag full of rope. The text said, no, I'm
actually ready, Here we go. The last snap was of
a red wheelbarrow, just like the one police had found
no Him's body under There was a shovel in it,
an electric lantern, and the same green plastic bag from
the other snapchat. The text said new wheelbarrow.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Who dis Oh wow, he's got jokes hilarious.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
There's something so chilling about the memification of this murder,
like I don't like it at all. I know it's
so creepy as bizarre as this was the idea of
a high school kid killing his teacher over a grade.
This was pretty damn incriminating, and it got even more
so when they found out who Jeremy's best buddy was,
none other than Shade and Miller, the guy who'd been
(09:00):
running around asking people for help murdering the Spanish teacher.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
It was time to bring Jeremy and Chaydon in for interviews.
Jeremy came in with his dad, and unlike his buddy Chadon,
he had the good sense to keep his mouth shut
and ask for a lawyer. Chaydon, on the other hand,
is the kind of guy who thinks he can talk
his way out of anything, and he didn't do himself
any favors. In the interrogation room, he seemed grumpy about
(09:25):
being there before the detectives came in. He complained to
his mom about having to be there so early in
the morning. He was hungry, he whined, he was parched, parched.
He wanted his mom to be sure and tell the
cops he'd been with her all day on the day
of the murder, to which she responded by saying, so
did you go straight home after you left my office?
(09:47):
To the detectives, Chadon waxed on about what a shitty
teacher missus Graeber was, how she picked favorites, and how
everybody wanted her fired, which is total bullshit. Her students
adored her, they had a candle like vigil. People were
se like it's total nonsense. I'm sure it didn't take
the detectives long to figure out that our boy was
a blooming narcissist. At one point, Shadon talked about how
(10:10):
exhausting it was to be around his less intelligent classmates,
how hard it was to argue with a stupid person,
Oh the irony. The lead detective was immediately struck by
how calm and casual Chadon seemed. Most of the kids
they'd talked to were nervous and upset, which is how
you'd expect them to feel under the circumstances, but this
(10:32):
kid was chill at first. Chadon's story, let's say it
evolved over the next hour or two. First it was
just I don't know what happened. I can't imagine who
would hurt missus Graeber. And interestingly, when asked to list
his closest friends, he left out Jeremy Goodall. Hmm, wonder why.
(10:54):
But as the detective slowly revealed more and more of
what they knew. Chadon started squirming like a under a
magnifying glass, and instead of using that alleged big brain
of his and asking for an attorney, he started spinning
an elaborate yarn. Okay, okay, he did see something go
down in Chautauqua Park two nights ago, some people in
(11:15):
masks and hoodies carrying something heavy looking. How many people?
Six or eight? Shadon said, which you should know that.
Chaden later takes Jeremy aside at the juvenile detention center
and describes this story as very convincing. Trying to get
Jeremy to back it up with the cops. Eight kids
(11:36):
in masks murdering the Spanish teacher is to him, very convincing,
bless your heart. At first, Chaden tried to get out
of naming anybody specifically, Oh, they were all in masks.
I don't know who it was. But eventually he caved
to pressure and started name and names, perfectly willing to
throw his innocent friends under the bus to save his
(11:56):
own ass. Later the story evolved to where the game
of killers intimidated Shadon into helping them dispose of evidence.
It was ridiculous, and the detectives told him so. They
already had a pretty good idea of who all was
involved in the murder, Shade Miller and his best bud,
Jeremy good Ale. They were searching Shadin's in Jeremy's houses
(12:17):
and they found blood stained clothing in both, and that
wasn't all they found. Haden had left the bloody baseball
bat in his bedroom, just propped up against the wall,
a bloody souvenir. I guess, as teenage killers are so
fond of doing. Jeremy and Shaden had written down their
murder plan in detail for police to find later. On
Shaden's computer, so helpful. There was a list of materials
(12:41):
plastic trash bag, ziplock bag, wet wipes, backpack, gloves, hammer, cover,
transport vehicle and there was a concise paragraph labeled procedure
stunn It read move off trail, empty compartments, load cargo.
I assume the cargo here is missus graeber blanket, cargo,
(13:02):
deactivate compartment contents, leave bag by exit, transport empty transport
safety stun switch glove, deactivate article to bag, finalize the wind,
secure victory load into storage spot, don't forget to close
the door to the ground, switch glove, move the sticks,
wipe down tools, dispose article, and grab bag by exit. Done. Yeah,
(13:27):
great job, kid, That's an uncrackable coat if I ever
saw one. Like, if you stumbled upon that paragraph in
somebody's notebook, wouldn't you immediately assume it was a murder plot?
Like I would, like, what else are you wiping stuff
down for and switching gloves? And like I love how
they think they're being crafty.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Here, and I love that they didn't do it like
they can't no ho, hell no, they kept the murder weapon.
Like absolutely, This is what happens every time somebody writes
their murder plot. Okay, yep, it always just becomes abundantly
clear how fucking stupid they are because they can't even
(14:03):
follow their own instructions and it's just it's just it's
just baffling.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Man.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
I don't know. I don't like that. I don't like
the finalized the win in parentheses secure victory, especially because
that just me like, oh, I killed a sixty six
year old woman, I know, victory. Congratulations, you little twerps.
You took it, took down a woman three times your age.
Go fuck yourself. God. They also had another witness, a
(14:31):
friend of Chadon's and Jeremy's, who said they'd called him
for a ride home on the night of the murder.
He'd picked them up on the same road where Noamah
Grayber's car had been ditched. So real, real, mensa, members,
we've got here, Okay, literally, we'll play both. Chayden and
Jeremy were arrested on November fourth, about a day and
(14:51):
a half after the murder. Each was held on a
million dollar bond, and before long, detectives got word that
Jeremy good All and his attorney would like to have
a chat. He wanted to tell them exactly what happened,
and it was one hell of a story. Chayden had
been stewing about his shitty Spanish grade for weeks, presumably
instead of studying for Spanish.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Oh yeah, oh absolutely.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
He was worried about that boarding school, his college application,
and a vacation he was supposed to take that summer.
His parents might not let him go if he flunk
to class. Sometimes it seemed like it was all he
wanted to talk about. Then one afternoon, Chayden sidled up
to Jeremy in the lunch room and said, Hey, would
you help me kill missus Graeber. From the tone in
(15:37):
his voice, Jeremy said, it was clear he wasn't joking.
Jeremy didn't have a dog in this fight at all.
He liked missus Graeber fine, He'd done well in her
class the previous year, thought she was a pretty good teacher.
But Chayden was his buddy, his good time boy, his
rotten soldier. How could he say no? In his confession,
(15:57):
Jeremy told the prosecutor he didn't even really think about
telling Chaden no. Couldn't let him think. I was scared,
he said, I didn't want to be seen as a pussy. Yeah,
A pro tip, kiddo, being scared that you're gonna look
scared and then going through with a murder of an
innocent woman to save face with your loser friend. That
makes you a pussy. Telling Chaden, sure, man, I'll help you,
(16:20):
then secretly recording the conversation and taking it to the cops.
That would have been a badass move.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, it is terrifying to me how easy it was
for Chaden to talk Jeremy into this murder. Like the
way Jeremy himself tells it, it was as simple as
just asking. Yeah, he told the detectives. He didn't even
think about the consequences.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Unbelievable, which is crazy because like Jeremy had more to lose,
like Chaden. Oh, yes, had all these quote unquote plans,
but we saw how his plans have played out so far.
Like he was going to get a tennis scholarship, he
was going to go to college, he was gonna, you know,
shake off his child, that'd make something of himself, and
he just decided to throw all that away.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And it wasn't even his beef. That's really just stunning
about it.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Yeah, So, like a good little toady, Jeremy left most
of the planning to Chaden. He decided the upcoming four
day weekend in early November would be the best time
to do the murder. They did a little low key
surveillance on missus Greeber for a few days, lurking around
and taking note of her daily routines. They knew about
her walks in Chautauqua Park, they knew where car she drove.
(17:25):
They went back and forth with emails and texts planning
it out. Though it doesn't seem like they planned it
super carefully, they were winging it to some extent. They
really didn't think much about what they were going to
do after the murder. For example, the day finally rolled
around and Chaden and Jeremy were like a couple of kids.
On Christmas morning, after smoking some weed with his girlfriend
(17:46):
at the park, Jeremy met up with Chaden and they
headed onto the walking trail that Missus Greeb used. The
girlfriend later testified both guys seemed keyed up and excited,
but they wouldn't tell her why. Chayden had come prepared
with a bat, a screwdriver, a hammer, and a pocket knife.
They knew Missus Greeber was there, her car was in
the parking lot, and on their first lap around the trail,
(18:09):
they actually bumped into her, said hi, Missus Greeber, and
went on their way.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
And now that they knew which direction she was walking,
they each posted up in a different spot to wait
for her to come around again and to look out
for anybody else who might see or interfere. Chaden hid
in a little clump of trees. In a few minutes,
Jeremy looked up to see Chadon poking his head out.
He gave Jeremy a little nod, like here she comes,
and Jeremy started toward her. Did she see him again
(18:38):
and smile? We don't know, but we know that Shadon
Miller was creeping up silently behind her with the baseball
bat in his hands, and as Jeremy watched, he brought
it down as hard as he could on Missus Greeber's head.
She fell to the ground. Make sure she's dead, Jeremy said,
and Shadon hit her a few more times, then scurried
away to make sure nobody was coming. Missus Greeber was down,
(19:01):
but she was still alive. Jeremy picked up the bat
and hit her a few more times. Later, he told
the detective she was making pained noises and he just
wanted to put her out of her misery. Aw give
you a Nobel prize. So Jeremy was actually the killer
in the end, He was the one who dealt the
fatal blows. Later on, Chaden would claim he never hit
(19:24):
Missus Greebor, but Jeremy insists he made the first hit.
They dragged their teacher's body off the trail to a
strip of woods, and dumped it. They'd talked about maybe
dragging her to some nearby train tracks to try and
make it look like a suicide by train, but they
realized now that wouldn't work. They'd done too much damage
to her body, so they looted her pockets for her
(19:45):
keys and hauled ass out of the park in her car,
dumping it on Middle Glasgow Road and calling their buddy
to come pick them up. They both went home and
had a bite to eat. Jeremy took a little nap,
and later around midnight they set about phase two of
the plan. Shaden had a red wheelbarrow which they loaded
up with rope, bleach wet wipes, a shovel and a tarp.
(20:07):
They met up back at the murder scene and cleaned
up most of the blood with the wet wipes. They
loaded Noema's body into the wheelbarrow and rolled it all
the way down to the train tracks. Then they covered
her up with the tarp weighed down with some railroad
ties they found, then laid the wheelbarrow on top of
her to hide their handiwork. Then they went back to
Jeremy's house and got black out drunk to celebrate in
(20:31):
Shayden's case. Probably Jeremy, on the other hand, was a
bit of a mess. He sent the snapchats to his
friend along with a text that said he was probably
going to kill himself soon. He never got the chance.
The murder was on Tuesday evening. He and Chayden were
arrested and charged before the sun went down on Thursday.
(20:52):
The dynamics of these two will be familiar to any
of y'all who've listened to our episode about the Dartmouth murders.
The Master and the Blaster, the dominant one with the
stronger personality and the deeper pathology, and the less dominant
one who desperately wants to please and impress. Those dynamics
played out not just in the murder itself, but in
the aftermath as well. Jeremy didn't get a plea deal
(21:15):
for his confession, but his attorney knew it would look
good to the court, and he was right. Jeremy pled
guilty to the murder and received a twenty five year
sentence with a chance for parole. He cried all through
his court room apology, and it felt genuine, although I'm
sure the tears were mostly for himself and his family.
More than for Noema and hers and this was kind
(21:36):
of eerie. At the end of his statement, a thin
stream of blood dripped out of Jeremy's nose, like a
reminder of the blood he and Shayden had spilled.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Chayden claimed he had just played lookout and never actually
touched missus Graeber, which I don't buy for a second.
He smirked all the way through his courtroom apology. It
was one of the grossest things I've ever seen. He
was sentenced to thirty five years in prison with a
chance of parole. Of the two of them, I think
Chayden is the coldest.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Oh yeah, I absolutely agree. I think this kid needs
to stay right where he is. A narcissist and manipulator
to the core. And you can watch both his and
Jeremy's interrogations on the YouTube channel Couch Detectives, and they're
both fascinating for different reasons. They really give you a
sense of the differences between these two killers.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Noima's loved ones made heart wrenching victim impact statements. In one,
her brother in law revealed Noema wasn't the only casualty
of Chayden and Jeremy's murder plot. Neima's husband, Paul, had
been sick before the murder, and after he lost her,
he just kind of stopped taking care of himself, stopped
going to the doctor. He was heartbroken and it ended
(22:46):
up killing him. Noima left behind a whole village of
people who loved her and now had to grapple with
the enormity of this petty, mundane evil that took her
away from them.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah, it's the petty for me. It's just this the
absolute senselessness of this one. And as a teacher, this
case is my worst nightmare. Like I think we all
worry about it, but we never expect it's actually gonna happen.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, And one of the things I think Chaden was
most upset about was like she preferred like handwritten assignments.
She didn't really like using computer assignments. And it's because
he couldn't cheat or he was too lazy to just
write out what Google translates said like he was. He
was just a little towarp. He couldn't cheat.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And yeah, I think she bruised his ego mm hmm. Yeah,
you know, she picked favorites. He said he wasn't one
of the favorites because he's always mouthing off to her
in class.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Surprise, surprise, you know, I have some news for some
any high school school kids, is like, your actions do
have consequences. Teachers don't unconditionally love you like your parents.
You can you can be a dick to a teacher
and they won't like it. So get real, okay, campers.
(24:28):
Moving on to case two. This one is Dark Magic,
the Murder of Joey Fisher. For this one, we're in Brownsville, Texas,
a border town just a few miles from the Gulf
of Mexico. March third, nineteen ninety three. It was early
in the morning in the golf course suburb of Rancho Viejo. An.
Eighteen year old Joey Fisher was having a hard time
(24:49):
getting his younger brother Eric ready for school. He drove
Eric there in their mom's car every morning, and every
morning he'd back it out of the garage onto the
driveway and hose all the dust off of all the windows.
Their neighborhood was well to do, but not wealthy, a
street of meat ranch homes with palm trees and backyard pools.
It was before seven a m. And still quiet as
(25:11):
Joey hosed down the car. Just a few early commuters
headed for the highway, and then a car he didn't
recognize slowed to a stop outside his house. Joey's mom, Karen,
was in the kitchen and heard two sharp sounds, one
right out together. She thought maybe a couple of heavy
palm fronds had fallen on the roof of her car,
(25:32):
or maybe a neighbor's vehicle had backfired. She went to
the door to the garage to see what was going on,
and her world fell to pieces. Joey lay motionless on
the driveway, face up. His hands still held the garden hose,
and the flow of water past his body was stained
red with blood as it washed over the driveway. Oh
my gosh, currant Screen then frantically called to Eric and
(25:55):
the boy's older sister, Kathy, Call nine one one, Call
your father. She and their father, Buddy, had been divorced
for six years, but he lived pretty close. He raced
to Karin's house, and by the time he got there,
there were already flashing lights from the Rancho Viejo PD.
I can't imagine things were much different back in nineteen
ninety three, but right now, this department only has seven
(26:18):
officers and they mainly have to deal with people driving
golf carts where they shouldn't. Statistically, the murder rate in
Rancho Viejo is a big fat zero. It's one of
the safest communities in the country. To have a kid
shot down and his driveway was shocking, and that was
what had happened. Joey had been shot twice at close
(26:38):
range with a thirty eight caliber handgun, once in the
chest and once in the head. He died immediately. There
was no sign of a struggle, and his killer hadn't
hung around at all once Joey was dead. This looked
like a hit, a deliberate, targeted assassination on a teenage
boy who would want to kill Joey Fisher a smart,
(27:00):
good kid without an enemy in the.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
World, and Joey was a slim, neat kid with a
sharp mind and occasionally a sharp mouth, not in a
mean way, but he was one of those kids who
wasn't afraid to challenge his teachers and have a little
fun with them, to treat them like peers. His teachers
liked him, and he had a four point zero GPA
at Saint Joseph Academy, the private school he went to.
(27:22):
He and two others were voted by their class as
most sarcastic, so they posed together for their class photo
with a sign that said, what us sarcastic? That's so cute.
One time he'd come to class with a couple of balloons,
and his teacher made him put them in a closet.
A couple days later, Joey asked for his balloons back,
and when the teacher opened the closet, about twenty balloons
(27:43):
fell out. That's what happens when you leave two balloons alone,
Joey said, like a lot of Brownsville teens. As soon
as they had their driver's licenses, Joey and his buddies
made a few trips over to Madam Moorros, the big
industrial city right across the border from Brownsville. They'd go
to bars and hit on local girls, a kind of PG.
(28:03):
Thirteen version of going wild that has probably been going
on for about as long as Brownsville has existed. Author
Marie Brenner, whose New Yorker article Murder on the Border
was one of our main sources for this story, describes
Metamoros as long the equivalent of a theme park for
Texas teenagers, but by the start of senior year, Joey
was focused more on school work than the surveaces. He
(28:25):
was ambitious and already had his sight set on college
and then a high flying career as an engineer. So
he was a smart, well liked kid right on the
cusp of what promised to be a great life. Who
would want to kill him? Cameron County Sheriff Alex Perez
looked like a production had been a little too on
the nose in the casting for Texas Lawman, a burly
(28:47):
dude and cowboy boots who wore gold aviator shades, had
a tie pin shaped like handcuffs, and wore a big
gold ring with a pistol picked out in Rhinestone's Wow.
He said, I was asking myself, why would a young
man like this, just starting life, a brilliant student get shot.
Usually it's either drugs or love. There wasn't even a
(29:09):
whisper of drug use in Joey's life, so that left
door number two, la passion. In the spring of nineteen
ninety two, he asked out a classmate, Christina Sisnaros, a
pretty girl with long, dark hair who was kind of
shy initially, but who was a lot of fun when
you got to know her. They got on really well,
but this certainly wasn't a grand dramatic romance. Joey's stepmother, Connie,
(29:32):
didn't even know they were dating. She thought Christina was
just a friend. She and Joey would play tennis or
swim together, and then while Joey did his homework, Christina
would play video games, which I'm guessing meant either Sonic
the Hedgehog or Super Mario World Good times. Connie didn't
remember ever seeing the two of them even hold hands,
but things progressed as teenage romances do. They snuck away
(29:56):
together to the condo Christina's parents had on South Padre Island.
They went to junior prom together, and then Joey broke
things off. They just weren't clicking in any way beyond
his physical attraction to Christina, and he wanted to end
things before they got too complicated. He'd given her his
class ring and asked for it back, but Christina wouldn't
give it up. She was heartbroken, even though they'd only
(30:18):
dated for a few weeks. We've all been there, and
either from personal experience or just from being a human
being alive on planet Earth. You probably know that having
a broken heart at seventeen can be brutal. It can
feel like the entire world is collapsing into a sucking
black hole of hopelessness. Of course, as adults, we know
(30:39):
that this is not going to last, that the sun
is going to shine again, and that going through all
this is a normal part of growing up. At least
adults should know that. Not long after he'd broken up
with Christina, Joey got a call from her mom, Dora.
She was very friendly and polite. She just wanted to
know why Joey had broken up with Christina. This was,
(31:00):
of course, an excruciatingly awkward conversation for Joey, but he
put on his best manners and answered politely and honestly,
maybe a little bit too honestly, well, ma'am, I think
she's very nice, but I just want to see other girls.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Next, Dora called up Joey's dad, Buddy and asked him
the same question, why had Joey broken up with Christina.
Buddy gave the sensible answer, this is really between joe
and Christina. It has nothing to do with us. Dora
kept calling Joey asking him why he broke up with Christina,
asking him to go out with her again and again.
(31:37):
And I want you to mentally time travel back to
when you were seventeen years old and imagine your mom
calling up the person you like and asking them to
go out with you.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah. I think I'd have to move to a different
town or possibly a different country. That would be awful.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, I'd apply to go to the space station. God,
it got even worse seeing that she wasn't getting anywhere.
Dora tried to sweeten the deal. If Joey would go
out with Christina again, Dora would pay him five hundred
dollars a month. And that's the kind of thing that
if your mom tries it, every school in the county
(32:15):
is going to hear about it, and it'll follow you
for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
God, that poor girl. Oh my lord.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah, humiliating. This was the limit for Joey. He said
to a friend. I've never told an adult off before,
but yeah, I told her off. When Joey started back
to school after summer, there was a beautiful new girl
from San Luis Potosi, Marianella Caballero, and he fell for
(32:41):
her hard. But although they flirted sometimes Marianella wouldn't bite. Apparently,
in the early nineties, the Anglo boys at Saint Joe
had a love them and Leave them, a reputation that
made some girls wary, and Joey's flippant charm didn't exactly
promise anything else. But in February of that year, they
(33:03):
were both at a friend's Kinsaniera, and Maryanella's attention was
on another boy. Joey realized that the standard nineties teen
thing of acting like you didn't care about anything wasn't
going to get him anywhere, so he wrote Maryanella a
sweet letter and told her how he felt about her.
The next night, they talked on the phone for three hours.
(33:23):
A couple of Joey's buddies were arounded his house studying
during this call and reacted to him being all moon
eyed over a girl with the sensitivity you'd expect from
teenage boys, meaning they'd held him down and started shaving
his legs with an electric razor because teenage boys are
savages and it doesn't matter how you burn your friends,
as long as you burn them. It's nice that Joey
(33:49):
had such a good night because it was his last
night on earth. After Joey was shot and killed his mom,
Karen immediately moved herself and her other kids when with
her her own mom. No one had any idea why
Joey had been shot or if his family was still
in danger, and Carinn had known right away that she'd
never be able to spend another night in the Rancho
(34:10):
Viejo house. Six hundred people came to Joey's funeral, including
Marianella and her mother, who both sat weeping in the pews.
Christina was there too, also crying, but not Dora.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Police work isn't usually like its portrayed in classic detective stories.
It's not all chasin down clues found at the scene,
but this particular case opened up as police chased down
a clue found at the scene. The clue in question
was a yellow business card found on the driveway close
to Joey's body from a bail bond company up in McKinney,
just outside of Dallas. Investigators thought it had fallen out
(34:49):
of the killer's pocket as he struggled with Joey or
as Joey fell forward after being shot. There was a
handwritten phone number on the card with a Dallas area
code two one four. The number four was written in
a very distinct, exaggerated style. Investigators called up the bond
company and asked if they'd had any recent bail applications
(35:09):
from South Texas. When the company faxed down one such application,
there was that same weird number four. They pulled the
startled guy in. He had nothing to do with Joey Fisher,
but he did say he'd given the card to a
buddy so he'd know who to call if he got arrested.
This buddy was Daniel Garza, who had a landscaping business
(35:30):
that was a cover for his main career as a
little league drug runner. When he was brought in for questioning,
it didn't take Garza long to crack and own up
to arranging Joey Fisher's murder. Daniel had been having a
little trouble at home. His wife of twenty two years
just didn't love him any more and was asking for
a divorce, and Daniel wasn't keen on any solution to
that problem that required much effort on his part. No,
(35:53):
what he wanted was to have somebody cast a spell
that would make his wife love him again. This took
him to say seventy three year old Maria Mercedes Martinez,
a local fortune teller who would read your fate in
the tarot cards for five bucks out of a dark
room in the back of a second hand clothing store.
Maria told Daniel she could help him win back his
wife's heart, but he'd have to do something for her first.
(36:16):
There was a young man who needed to be taken
care of, a young man named Joey Fisher. When police
arrested Maria a little later, she folded immediately and gave
up the name of the client who wanted Joey taken
care of. Dora Cisneros, Christina's mom. Dora was an odd
duck and had gotten odder after nineteen seventy four, when
(36:38):
her oldest son, a high school senior named David, had
died in a car crash. To people who knew her,
it seemed like Dora, then thirty six, was obsessed with
having one more child after David's death, and that child
was Christina. Dora was kind of a nightmare mom with
all of her kids. One son was a dentist, and
once Dora called his office and was told he was
(37:01):
in the middle of a root canal. Well, I don't care,
he knows he needs to be here, Dora said. Another
son was underachieving in school, so Dora marched down there
and blamed his teachers because her boy could do no wrong.
All her children lived in her alternately demanding and protective shadow,
but Christina was special. Outside of her family, Dora was
(37:24):
known as a quiet, neat woman, a surgeon's wife who
lived a normal, upper middle class life. She was in
a mall Walker's Club, a group of ladies who got
their exercise marching through the air conditioned interior of the
Sunrise Mall to escape the South Texas heat. After David's death,
she'd become more religious, which to Dora meant she not
only went to Mass more often, it meant she frequently
(37:45):
visited local coronnderas wise women, who included Maria Mercedes Martinez.
By the time of Joey's death, Dora and Maria had
known each other for years. By the fall after Joey
and Christina Spring romance, things had for dressed in the
normal natural way for high schoolers. Joey had fallen from
Marianella Cavalero, and Christina was dating somebody new. Being dumped
(38:09):
and felt like the end of the world. At the time,
but it turned out it wasn't. She was over it.
Her mom, though, was not. Dora initially wanted a couple
of things from Maria. She wanted to curse Joey with
bad luck, and she wanted for Christina to magically get
her virginity back. M h, god, you know, like extra
(38:30):
virgin olive oil. If you can do it to an olive,
why can't you do it to a girl. But Dora's
demands soon got darker. She wanted Maria to put a
curse on Joey that would kill him outright. And I
think you have to wonder here how much this still
had to do with Christina and how much it had
to do with Joey tellin' Dora off over the phone.
(38:51):
For some people, if they obsess over a slight, real
or imagined, it can boil them up to her rage
with no external help at all see Jay Miller.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Maria declined to put the touch of death onto Joey
for the obvious reason that you know, that's not a
thing that people can do, So Dora asked for a
more practical solution. Did Maria know anybody who'd killed Joey Fisher?
For her Joey, remember, had broken up with Dora's daughter
after a few weeks of dating and had one unpleasant
(39:22):
phone call with Dora months ago. That was it. That
was what Dora was willing to have him killed for,
and Maria went right along. Yes, she did know someone
who would probably do that. A little later, Dora handed
over three thousand dollars for a hitman, along with a
photo of Joey and Christina from the Junior prom so
they'd recognize him. Daniel Garza claims that when Maria asked
(39:46):
him to arrange a hit on Joey Fisher, he agreed
and took the money in the picture, but only intended
to hire a couple of low lives to beat the
kid up.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, for whatever it's worth, I don't believe that at all.
I think the two guys he hired from Metamore ros
Ary Beartopizana and Israel Olivares did exactly what Garza asked
them to do, which is ambush Joey in his driveway
early in the morning and shoot him dead.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
They were career criminals in a drug running and car
theft ring, but this was one hell of a step
up in criminal activity for them. They got one thousand
dollars each for shooting a boy dead in front of
his home. Daniel Garza agreed to wear a wire and
called on Maria Martinez to tell her the hitman were
demanding more money. Maria handed over the cash. This wasn't
(40:31):
her own money, of course. The recordings were enough to
arrest Maria, and she also agreed to wear a wire.
Some wires all the way down, why everywhere. Yeah, imagine
if they had done this at the beginning. You know,
That's what makes me so mad about hitman cases. It's
like if they would have just been like, Yo, this
crazy bitch wants me to kill some young boy.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
We've seen it happen. Nobody gets hurt.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
She set up a meeting with Doris A. Snarrows to
get more money for the hitman, and when Dora ya
I handed over five hundred dollars, the police pounced and
took her ass to jail. In nineteen ninety four, Doris
Desnaros was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison,
but just a couple years later she was free after
an appellate court ruled the prosecution wrongfully instructed the jury
(41:16):
to convict Dora for direct involvement in the murder. After
only showing evidence of her involvement in a conspiracy. She
was acquitted and Joey's family was furious.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
But after spending two years in prison, Dora would only
get another two years of freedom in sunlight. Because the
case involved Mexican nationals, federal authorities were able to charge
Dora with the use of interstate commerce facilities and the
commission of a murder for hire. In nineteen ninety eight,
Dora was convicted in federal court and sentenced to life
in prison, where she remains today at the age of
(41:49):
eighty six, having recently been denied compassionate early release. Daniel
Garza was also sentenced to life in prison with the
possibility of parola for thirty years, which would be this year,
but we haven't heard anything about him getting out. We
also don't know how things worked out with his wife,
but I bet she dumped his sorry ass like radioactive waste.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Hope.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
So fortune teller Maria Mercedes Martinez was sentenced to twenty
years but released after six By odd coincidence, District Attorney
Louise Sands got to know Maria's son pretty well. She
always told her son to pass on her respects to
the man who had put her away. She died a
few years after her release.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
The two men accused of actually killing Joey Fisher, Ariberto
Pizzana and Israel Olivarez, were never charged in relation to
his death. They went back to Mexico, and because this
was a capital case, with the death penalty potentially on
the table, there was essentially no chance that Mexico would
ever extradite them to the US. I'm having trouble thinking
(42:51):
of any other case we've covered that is simultaneously as
tragic and as ridiculous as this one. Joey was a bright,
beloved kid who was gunned down right on the cusp
of what promised to be an amazing life over something
as banal and every day as a high school breakup.
It's just astonishing. And the girl he broke up with
(43:11):
had nothing to do with it. It was just her weird,
obsessed mom. And I can only imagine what Christina went
through after this in that town. I can only imagine,
because you know how people are, and I bet she
went through absolute hell. You know, not only did she
lose her mother, but I'm sure people blamed her, it
must have just been awful and won her fault at all.
(43:34):
You know, if there's somebody in your life who drives
you to this kind of unhinged rage, it's a good
idea to take a step back and try and see
if circumstances really justify putting yourself through all that, because
I can pretty much guarantee you they do not. If
you happen to have kids in your life, sit down
with them, watch Frozen for the thirty fifth time, and
take note, for the love of God, let it go.
(43:58):
So those were couple of wild ones, right, campers. You
know we'll have another one for you next week, but
for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay
safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire.
And as always, we want to send a grateful shout
out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you
so much to Stevie, Millie, Joe, Tony with an I
qcum pare I love it, Rachel and Anita. We appreciate
(44:22):
y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not
yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show
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sometimes even two plus tons of extra content like patrons
only episodes and hilarious post show discussions. They're about to
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even more cool stuff a free sticker at five dollars,
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at ten virtual events with Katie and Me, and we're
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(45:03):
website at Truecrimecamfirepod dot com
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