A recently filed indictment accuses two people of “cutting up and burning” the body of a woman who disappeared seven years ago, just weeks after moving to the Atlanta area to chase her dream of living in a big city.
Jonathan Warren and Katelyn Goble have been charged with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, tampering with evidence and concealing the death of Morgan Bauer, who vanished in February 2016. Warren faces an additional charge of necrophilia.
Bauer was last seen at Tease, a strip club on Cheshire Bridge Road in DeKalb County, where she briefly worked. The 19-year-old had moved to the area from her hometown of Aberdeen, South Dakota, to “spread her wings,” her mother, Sherri Sichmeller, told “Dateline” in 2016. Sichmeller said her daughter was living with a man she met through Craigslist, but that arrangement fell apart following a disagreement.
It’s not clear who that man was or if Warren or Goble were connected to him or the house where Bauer had been living.
According to Sichmeller, her daughter found a hotel where she could stay, and that was what led her to become a dancer.
Since then, police from several jurisdictions in Georgia, Illinois and California, as well as the GBI and FBI, have been involved in the investigation. In July, officials descended on the small town of Porterdale in Newton County. It is about 50 miles from the club where Bauer worked.
There, authorities searched a property on South Broad Street adjacent to the Yellow River. An arrest warrant for Goble stated that she admitted to finding Bauer’s body on the floor of a bedroom in a house on South Broad Street. Bauer was not breathing and was cold to the touch, the warrant states. Goble told investigators she wanted to call 911, but Warren “told her that he would take care of it.”
According to their indictments, Goble and Warren are both accused of strangling Bauer and then disposing of her body by cutting and burning her, but not before Warren allegedly performed a sexual act on her lifeless body.
The two were arrested in August. Warren was taken into custody in Los Angeles and Goble was located in Peoria, Illinois. They were extradited to Georgia, and by Tuesday both had been booked into the Newton County jail. They are being held without bond.
In Goble’s case, she has already had a bond hearing during which a longtime friend asked the judge to grant the request so that she could care for her two young children. That request was denied.
