custody battle is now playing out in court<\/a> to decide whether the children stay with their grandparents in South Carolina or move to North Carolina to live with Gilley’s brother Matt and sister-in-law Cristin. The Bauer’s want sole custody, and the Gilley’s have asked to be primary caretakers in a joint\u00a0conservatorship. The Gilleys also filed for adoption in separate proceedings. The custody dispute has highlighted the challenges facing Christa Gilley’s family and friends as the jury weighs in on what will be best for the children in the wake of their mother’s murder.\u00a0<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The first day of the custody trial documented how the children’s grandparents have worked to maintain a sense of normalcy in the Gilley children’s lives\u00a0as they’ve cared for them during the past two years. Chris Bauer testified about\u00a0Gannon and Madeline readjusting to a childhood without their parents, from birthday parties to bedtime routines and doctor visits.<\/p>\n
More than half a dozen\u00a0of Christa Gilley’s\u00a0friends were present in the courtroom for the first day of the custody proceedings. Several were also moms, and some were friends from South Carolina who caught flights to show their support in Houston. The tragedy and change in custody weighed on parents but also affected the younger generation.<\/p>\n
Lindsey\u00a0Kirgan\u00a0met Christa Gilley\u00a0through daycare in Houston, and their daughters\u00a0would spend play\u00a0dates chasing each other around and romp around outside. Madeline, or Madi for short, has since moved to South Carolina, but Kirgan’s daughter\u00a0Nora still talks about her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“That friendship was really important to her, and that was just taken away from her,” Kirgan said. “And she obviously doesn’t understand why. And that’s what’s sad to me.”<\/p>\n
Back to normalcy<\/p>\n
Gannon was 1, and Madi was 3 when their mother was killed in their Houston Heights home.\u00a0Stout, the grandparents’ attorney, said Chris and Sharon Bauer boarded a flight from South Carolina to Texas on Oct. 11, 2024, \u2014 the same day Lee\u00a0Gilley was charged with murder. Bauer said one of their first priorities was resuming the children’s routine. They focused on Gannon’s eczema treatment and brought\u00a0Madi to her T-ball games.<\/p>\n
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“Children need to get back to normalcy even though we knew it wasn’t going to be normal for quite some time,” Bauer said.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Christa Bauer served as the “dugout mom” for a local T-ball team. After her death, two players are pictured wearing jerseys dedicated to her in 2025.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Sarah Mouton<\/p>\n
The day after their flight to Houston, one of Christa Gilley’s friends said the grandparents and the Gilley children were at Czechfest \u2014 an annual celebration of Czech culture in the Heights. Children there played games, a balloon artist entertained and a Czech band was on hand.<\/p>\n
“I just remember thinking, ‘I cannot believe that they are here,'” said Sarah Mouton,\u00a0a friend of Christa Gilley’s in the Heights. “And the kids are running around. I kind of remember Chris saying, ‘Well, we wanted the kids to be with their friends.'”<\/p>\n
Gannon’s birthday came next. He was set to turn 2 on Halloween less than three weeks later, and Christa Gilley had already made the plans before she died, having placed orders for a bounce\u00a0house and costumes.<\/p>\n
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The Bauers made sure Gannon got his party. Chris Bauer would be a praying mantis, Sharon Bauer would be a butterfly and with help from one of their other daughters, the party was a success. Dozens celebrated at their Heights home before hitting the streets to trick or treat.<\/p>\n
“He put on that costume, and you could not tell at that party what those children were going through, which I think says a lot about how the grandparents carried it out \u2014 that Gannon was still able to have a wonderful birthday,” Mouton said.<\/p>\n
The grandparents remained in Houston for the next eight months before they and the kids moved back to\u00a0Summerville, S.C. \u2014 the Bauers’ hometown where they have operated multiple restaurants. One of Christa Gilley’s\u00a0sisters lives across the street, and another lives minutes away.<\/p>\n
Stout said the two children have thrived in South Carolina. Their weekends consist of swimming, bike rides, church and trips to their mother’s grave.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Friends rally behind Christa Gilley’s\u00a0family<\/p>\n
At the custody trial, Bauer said the two sides of the family drifted after his daughter’s death, and he raised concerns about Matt and Cristin Gilley potentially exposing the children to their father. The\u00a0Gilleys’\u00a0attorney Dennis Slate, pushed back on that notion and said the Gilley children were at risk of losing one side of their family.<\/p>\n
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“Matt isn’t Lee,” he said.<\/p>\n
![\"Matt]()
<\/p>\n
Matt Gilley, brother of Lee Gilley, and his wife, Cristin Gilley, who are seeking conservatorship of Lee Gilley and the late Christa Gilley\u2019s two children, sit in court during the child custody trial at the Harris County Civil Courthouse in Houston on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026.<\/p>\n
Raquel Natalicchio\/Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n
Cara Kelly, one of Christa Gilley’s friends from high school who flew from Washington, D.C. to Houston to attend court\u00a0on Wednesday, has been part of a multi-state effort among Christa Gilley’s friends to raise money for her family as they litigate the child custody case. She has helped organize a “walk-a-thon” and a GoFundMe page, which have raised a combined more than $363,000 in donations as of Thursday.<\/p>\n
She said Christa Gilley’s parents acted as her own as they grew up in South Carolina. Several friends worked at their restaurants.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Family]()
<\/p>\n
Family members and friends of the late Christa Gilley attend the child custody trial over conservatorship of her two children at the Harris County Civil Courthouse in Houston on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026.<\/p>\n
Raquel Natalicchio\/Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n
Kelly\u00a0struggled to find the words to describe how upsetting the custody battle was after the Bauers withstood “an already unthinkable tragedy.” She was there to return the same support they offered her as a second set of parents.<\/p>\n
“We were so lucky to have friends’ parents who looked out for us as our own, and so we’ve tried a variety of ways to ensure that they don’t have to go through this alone \u2014 that we can be with them and help support them through what is really the battle of their lives,” she said.<\/p>\n
This post includes previous reporting by Nicole Hensley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Bauer and Sharon Bauer, parents of the late Christa Gilley and the maternal grandparents seeking conservatorship of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-474074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}