A Tennessee woman was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after she admitted she murdered a North Georgia mother because she wanted a baby.
Catherine Goins was facing the possibility of a death sentence if she had gone to trial and been convicted of murder. So in a Catoosa County courtroom Friday morning, the 36-year-old woman pleaded guilty to malice murder, felony murder, armed robbery and kidnapping for killing Natalia Roberts and taking her two daughters — one 3 years old and the other 3 weeks old.
Just before Judge Ralph Van Pelt sentenced her, Roberts’ mother, Leah Sharp, reading from her “victim impact statement,” described her daughter as a gift from God.
Then Sharp said to Goins, “I forgive you. I forgive you. For taking my precious daughter, I forgive you.”
Roberts met Goins for the only time on Sept. 19, 2014, when the 30-year-old mother answered an ad offering free baby clothes.
Catoosa County Sheriff Gary Sisk said Goins had been pretending she was pregnant, fooling many of the people in her life by wearing a prosthetic pregnancy belly. Goins had told people who answered her ad that she had received too many clothes for the son she was expecting, so she wanted to share.
“Catherine Goins killed Natalia Roberts because she wanted her baby,” Sisk told reporters at a news conference a few days after the murder.
Goins used a spare key to get inside the home of a friend, Tony Richards, who was at work at the time and not involved in the crime. Then she lured Roberts to Richards’ house with a promise of the baby clothes.
Goins shot Roberts in the back of the head with a .380 caliber pistol as she walked down some steps inside Richards’ house and then called him to claim she had shot an intruder.
Then Goins fled with the dead woman’s children for a while, until Richards persuaded her to come back with the children.
Police let Goins go initially but then arrested her five days later at the Hixon, Tenn., trailer park where she lived.
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