Jonathan Alexander Warren: Georgia man pleads guilty to the murder of Morgan Bauer who disappeared in 2016

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: A man has been charged with murder after he strangled a woman, cut up, burned and violated her. Jonathan Alexander Warren, 34, has pleaded guilty to the murder of Morgan Bauer, as per The Newton County District Attorney’s Office in Georgia. Warren has locked a deal with the state and the judge followed the prosecution’s request he spend life in prison without parole.

“Warren entered a non-negotiated plea and asked the court to be sentenced to life with the possibility of parole,” prosecutors wrote regarding the plea hearing on Wednesday, January 10.

“The state argued that life without parole was the appropriate sentence based on the facts of the case. After hearing argument from both sides, the court agreed with the state and sentence[d] Warren to life without parole.”

When was Morgan Bauer killed?

Warren pleaded guilty to malice murder, tampering with evidence, concealing the death of another, and necrophilia. Bauer disappeared at the age of 19 in February 2016 when she had recently moved from South Dakota to Atlanta with just $20 to her name.

She was last seen alive in leaving a nightclub where she danced. Katelyn Goble, another defendant in the case, was at first accused of only covering up the crimes, but she was indicted on charges, including murder, in October.

Police announced charges in August 2023, more than seven years after the disappearance. “I didn’t want her to really go to Atlanta. It was something that was really worrying me,” Bauer’s mother, Sherri Keenan, told Dateline in a 2016 report. “But Morgan does everything 100%. She’s a ‘go big’ kind of girl,” Keenan said.

Morgan Bauer was planning to stay with somebody

“She was planning on staying with somebody that she had talked to on Craigslist,” the victim's mother told Atlanta ABC affiliate WSB. Bauer, who arrived there initially unemployed, was supposed to clean the home for the roommates until she got a job, but the roommates had some sort of falling out.

“From what I understand she’d left her clothes there because she didn’t know what to do,” said Keenan, adding “And then she went to go try to find a place to stay, a hotel, and that’s what brought her to dancing.”

She remembered her daughter in glowing terms. ”When she walked in a room, you knew she was there,” Keenan said, according to Dakota News Now in January 2023. “She just commanded a whole room. She was beautiful and funny and her laugh could just completely take you away. She was kind," she added.