Aug 25, 2026

PORTERDALE, Ga. (Court TV) — Defense attorneys for a woman charged with murder conceded that their client helped to dispose of the victim’s body, but maintained that she had no involvement in the killing.

Katelyn Goble appears in court on Aug. 25, 2026. (Court TV)

Katelyn Goble, 30, has pleaded not guilty to malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, tampering with evidence and concealing the death of another. She is charged with the strangulation death of Morgan Bauer, who was 19 when she was killed.

Bauer was killed in 2016, but she was considered a missing person until Goble came forward to admit that she had been involved in covering up the victim’s death. In 2023, Goble was going through a divorce when her estranged husband revealed to investigators that the defendant had confessed to helping dispose of Bauer’s body.

In opening statements on Monday, prosecutors said that Goble, then 19, and her boyfriend, Jonathan “Alex” Warren, had lured Bauer to their home with the promise of a safe place to stay before killing her and then mutilating her body over the next three days. The pair allegedly disposed of Bauer’s dismembered body by burning it on the property. In 2023, Goble directed investigators to the area after her arrest; investigators were able to locate some of the victim’s charred remains.

A photo of Morgan Bauer is shown in court. (Court TV)

“The things you’re gonna hear about, they sound like the things of horror movies,” prosecutor Bailey Wilkinson warned the jury. “They seem unbelievable. But unfortunately, throughout this trial, you’re gonna learn that she did these truly terrible things.”

Wilkinson told the jury that Goble and Warren worked together to kill Bauer and dispose of her body. Although Warren previously pleaded guilty in the case, Wilkinson said he would not appear in court as part of the state’s case. “We’ve decided that we don’t need him to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed these crimes. We are not going to give him a platform to talk about the things that he did to Morgan, that he enjoyed, that they did together. We’re not going to turn this case into a circus.”

Preempting an anticipated argument that it was Warren who killed Bauer, Wilkinson said, “The evidence will show that although it doesn’t matter who exactly killed Morgan Bauer, that it was their plan together. This was something that they wanted to enjoy together.”

Wilkinson said that social media would be a central part of the prosecution’s case, arguing that the defendant had been “telling the truth” online about what happened to Bauer. Videos played in court during the prosecution’s opening statement showed Goble talking about death while holding a fake decapitated head and wearing fake blood. Other social media posts included a cartoon that said, “This is Bob. Bob kills people for fun.” Goble had an “obsession and interest with death, decay and murders,” Wilkinson said, which played out on her social media channels.

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A social media post seen on Katelyn Goble’s account. (Court TV)

“I’m here to tell you that a lot of the things you just saw was smoke and mirrors,” Goble’s attorney, Mide Olaloye, said in his opening statement. “You can cosplay as an athlete, you can cosplay as cartoon characters, you can cosplay as fairies or even cosplay as people who are dark. Does it make you a killer? The state wants you to believe that because Katelyn [Goble] painted her face and had props and used fake blood, that all of a sudden that was her message, that was her saying, ‘Look at what I did,’ but that couldn’t have been any further from the truth.”

Olaloye said that after bringing Bauer back to her home with Warren, Goble briefly left the room; when she returned, the victim was dead. When Goble said she wanted to call the police, Warren allegedly told her not to. “Katelyn was a 19-year-old who had just witnessed her boyfriend kill someone. She tried to make an attempt; she tried to do the right thing, but she was scared. She was scared of her boyfriend; she was scared of the only person she knew; she had nowhere to go; she had no family. So Katelyn did what she thought she had to do in that situation.”

Olaloye told the jury that the social media posts were just art. “You may look at it and say it’s a bit dark. All right. It’s a bit weird to some, all right. But does that make her a killer?” He urged the jury to consider the role that Goble allegedly played in Bauer’s death. “When you go through all the evidence, you’ll see that Katelyn did not kill Morgan Bauer. Katelyn was the reason that she was found. Katelyn was the one who came forward. Katelyn was the one who told the cops where she was. That was all Katelyn.”