Morgan Bauer arrived in Atlanta on Feb. 12, 2016.

The 19-year-old from South Dakota had no friends or job prospects and struggled to find a place to stay at first, but after a few days managed to secure a room at a local hotel and a job working as an exotic dancer.

Then, less than two weeks after she arrived in Georgia, she went missing.

What followed was a seven-year search and a case that keep going cold — until officials got their big break when agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation discovered “items of evidentiary interest” in July 2023.

Now, more than 10 years after Morgan went missing, the young woman she befriended soon after she arrived in Atlanta has been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Morgan Bauer and Katelyn Goble.ATLANTA POLICE DEPARTMENT;Peoria County, IL Jail
The Gainesville Police Department launched an investigation into Bauer’s disappearance on March 15, 2016 after she was reported missing by her mother.

Police quickly confirmed that she had arrived in Atlanta on Feb. 12 and began to interview the handful of associates she had met in the city while working as an exotic dancer at a local club.

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On the same day she was reported missing, Bauer’s mother and a local private investigator met with a couple who had been seen with Bauer on Feb. 25, according to an email received by the lead investigator on the case that was obtained by PEOPLE.

Katelyn Goble initially claimed that she had met Bauer when the two were working together at a local strip club, and that on the night that the teenager disappeared she and her boyfriend Jonathan Alexander Warren had picked her up from the hotel where she was staying at the time.

Then, at the end of the night, Goble said that Bauer was picked up by a man in a car and she did not see her again.

The private investigator later spoke with a co-worker of Bauer’s who recalled her leaving with a woman matching Goble’s description on the night she disappeared, despite Goble denying that she had ever been to that club.

“During this conversation, her boyfriend became very agitated and told her to hang up,” the email said.

Bauer’s mother then went to the club on March 18, where multiple employees reported that Bauer left with Goble on the night of Feb. 25.

The email the investigator sent police also said that Bauer had become close friends with Goble and even offered to pay the $370 she needed for a work permit to dance prior to her disappearance.

Bauer’s mother also went to the second club where Goble claimed to have met her daughter, and was told that Bauer had never worked there, though Goble danced there as “Lilith.” They also said that her boyfriend “was extremely psychotic and had been kicked out of the club.”

Despite these lies and the many questions about Goble, there was never a body and the case then slowly went cold as it was assumed Bauer just picked up and moved away.

Goble and Warren eventually split too, and she moved to Illinois and he headed to California, but they both returned to Georgia in 2023 when investigators found Bauer’s bones and charged them.

Warren entered a guilty plea to murder that same year and was sentenced to life in prison without parole despite asking to be sentenced to death in January 2024.

At his arraignment, Warren said that the decision to murder Bauer was his then-girlfriend’s idea.

“Katey said, ‘I want kill her. She said, ‘I want to cut her up,’” Warren said.

He also said that it was Goble who carried out the crime after he tackled Bauer.

“I got the wind out of her. She probably would have been brain dead the rest of her life, but Katey actually killed her,” Warren said.

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As soon as she was dead, Warren said that Goble instructed him to get a kitchen utensil so that she could cut up Bauer and see her insides, telling him: “I want to cut somebody up.”

Goble decided to stand trial and was convicted by a jury of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, tampering with evidence and concealing the death of another after a weeklong trial.

The judge then sentenced her to life in prison without parole.