She’d kill to be pregnant
This desperate murderer lured a mum to her death
She claimed she was pregnant and wanted to help out…
The STORY
Natalia Roberts, 30, was excited.
She’d seen an advert on the US small-ads website Craigslist for baby clothes.
A woman who lived locally was prepared to give the stuff away free of charge.
For single mum Natalia, this was a godsend. She had three daughters aged 8, 3, and just 3 weeks old.
Money was hard to come by, and the promise of free baby clothes felt too good to be true.
She even phoned her mother Leah to tell her the good news, saying how excited she was to meet her new acquaintance.
She’d chatted to the stranger Catherine Goins online.
Catherine seemed friendly, kind and – most important of all – genuine.
She claimed she was pregnant herself and wanted to help out a mother in need.
So, on 19 September 2014, Natalia agreed to meet her.
Catherine invited Natalia to a friend’s house in Catoosa County, Georgia, where she said the clothes were being stored.
Natalia arrived with her two youngest kids – her 3-year-old and her newborn baby – leaving them in the car while she darted in to collect the clothes.
Inside the house, Catherine pointed down a stairway, telling Natalia the clothes were kept down there.
The unsuspecting mum made her way downstairs. But Catherine was close behind her.
And what’s more, she had a gun...
Catherine shot Natalia in the head with the .38-calibre pistol.
As Natalia bled to death at the bottom of the stairs, a panicked Catherine tried to clear up some of the blood. She phoned her friend and told him she’d shot an intruder in his home.
Then she stole Natalia’s car and sped off with the children.
When Goins’ friend arrived at her home, he found Natalia at the bottom of the stairs. He called emergency services, then managed to persuade Goins to return with the children.
When interviewed by police, Goins reportedly said she was
at the house when she heard a noise, and that she ran to the bedroom, grabbed a gun and shot at a ‘darkened shadow’ in the hallway.
She believed it was an intruder or a dangerous ex. But it’d turned out to be Natalia. It was all an unfortunate, tragic accident, Goins claimed. But her story kept changing. She later told investigators that she’d shot Natalia because she’d believed she was trying to steal something.
‘It’s not for the kids,’ she said, when questioned about whether she’d killed the young mum with the intent of stealing her baby.
But she later added, ‘I’m just so tired of not being able to make anybody happy because I couldn’t have their kids. I guess I just snapped.’
Goins seemed to have an obsession with having a child of her own.
When police searched her property, they found grainy, pregnancy ultrasound pictures dated earlier that year. Goins claimed she’d suffered a placental abruption – where the placenta peels away from the uterus, depriving the baby of oxygen.
Yet, even though she had lost the baby, she’d carried on pretending she was pregnant.
She told her ex-partner she was carrying his child. But she refused to let him attend the hospital appointments, and wouldn’t even let him touch her belly.
It was reported she even wore a prosthetic bump.
Time was running out for Goins. Her fictitious due date was approaching – only there’d be no baby to show for it. Her lie was about to be exposed…
So Goins began posting adverts online for baby clothes.
And it emerged she’d spoken to several other women, too – but had failed to lure them to the house.
Only the poor, unsuspecting Natalia had fallen for the ruse.
Little did she know when she arrived to collect baby clothes that she was actually being led to her death.
After numerous police interviews, Goins apparently confessed the truth. She admitted she was desperate for a baby and had killed Natalia to steal her newborn.
‘She was trying to stay with a particular boyfriend,’ Catoosa County Sheriff Gary Sisk told Press. ‘She felt that if she was pregnant and had his child, that would get him to stay with her.’
In May last year, Catherine Goins, 39, appeared in court and pleaded guilty to murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery and kidnapping, in exchange for prosecutors dropping the death penalty.
She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Her desire to have a baby in order to keep her relationship had turned her into a coldblooded killer.
But, for the three children Goins has left motherless, no sentence will ever be enough.