The Case Files: Kaitlin Armstrong
How jealousy, rage, and paranoia led one insecure woman to end the life of an innocent pro-cyclist — all over a man.
All she saw was red. There would be no mercy this night. As she stared at her phone, watching the truth of her boyfriend’s whereabouts revealed, she fumed. Her blood ran white-hot. Her words from that January, when she discovered what she believed to be his affair, crossed her mind.
“I want to kill her.”
Kaitlin thought of the gun. She stared at the location on her phone. An address. She shook in rage. Colin had told her it had been over between him and this other girl. She’d just been a fling while he and Kaitlin took a break in the fall. Just a fling. Just. A fling.
“I want to kill her.”
How dare he? How dare they go behind her back? How dare she? This other woman knew Colin was in a long-term relationship and with who. And still, they had the audacity to carry on as if Kaitlin didn’t exist. As if she didn’t matter. They would pay.
“I want to kill her.”
Colin hadn’t answered his phone all night. At 6:24 p.m., she called him, but he didn’t answer. She sent a text ten minutes later, which also went unanswered. By 7 p.m., she left the house.
Did he think Kaitlin was stupid? She’d been monitoring his messages, his apps, his contacts. She’d deleted this other woman from his phone. Hell, she’d phoned this woman and warned her to stay away. Kaitlin was Colin’s girlfriend, and that was that. No fling was going to make her stand in line.
And tonight, Colin wasn’t answering his phone while out of the house. But the app didn’t lie. It laid it out plain as day where he was and who he was with. As any woman who believed she was being cheated on would be, Kaitlin was enraged and humiliated.
But most women who feel the devastating pangs of betrayal don’t pull out their gun and leave the house to follow their partner back to the other woman’s house. Most don’t get out of their vehicle, go up to that door, and find their way in.
But Kaitlin did.
She turned her phone off at 7:30 p.m. By the end of the night, one of them would be dead. The other person, a devastated family, and the community, would live with the heartbreak.
***
Mo said good night to her friend, Colin, as he dropped her off on a quiet residential street in Austin, Texas, on the night of May 11, 2022. At 8:36 p.m., she entered the door code to her friend’s house where she was staying while in town and went inside, letting the quiet of the walls settle in. The woman with whom she was staying, Caitlin Cash, wasn’t home yet, either.
Mo didn’t see the black Jeep Cherokee drive past the home a mere minute after Colin pulled away on his motorcycle. Nor did she think anything of the fact her location, down to the address, was public on the Strava app.
A week away from turning 26-years-old, Anna Moriah Wilson, or “Mo”, as most people knew her, prepared to participate in a professional cycling race in Hico on May 14, 2022. She was a beloved member of the pro-cycling community, and had met Caitlin Cash six months prior. Within those six months, Cash had watched Mo quit her job, turn pro, release a newsletter, and fully dive into the world of professional gravel racing. Mo wasn’t even 30 yet, and she had so much ahead of her in that world. She had planned a trip to Kenya for the Mitigation Gravel Race in June. Her next six months were planned out, her life filled to the brim with cycling, friends, and travel.
She’d never live to see it.
That black Jeep, at some point between 8:36 p.m. and 9:15 p.m., returned to the residence. How the enraged woman driving the Jeep got inside, no one knows. Cash had given a unique door code to Mo only for her to use while in town for security reasons. Only those two women knew the code.
Mo was on the phone with a podcaster when she got home, utilizing every moment of her time atop of a busy schedule, fitting in whatever she could in the minutes she had. At 9:13 p.m., she hung up the phone.
At 9:15, a surveillance camera caught her blood-curdling screams. Two shots rang out. Mo’s killer aimed the gun, shot her once in the front of the head, and once in the side. Mo screamed on the bathroom floor. Silence descended over the home for five seconds before once more, her killer stood over her, wound up in rage, aimed the gun and shot her straight into the heart.
Her final moments would have been terrifying. An infuriated woman made her way into the residence, holding Mo at gunpoint. Mo knew this woman. Colin’s girlfriend, now taken over by white-hot anger that had her seeing red at knowing Mo and Colin had been out that night. Colin had lied, then not answered his phone, and now someone had to pay for the inconvenience.
With boiling blood, blinded by indignation, Kaitlin became the last thing Mo ever saw before she died on that bathroom floor.
Kaitlin fled the scene, returning to her Jeep to a text from Colin he had sent at 8:36, right after dropping Mo off.
“Hey! Are you out? I went to drop off some flowers for Alison at her sons house up north and my phone died. Heading home unless you have another food suggestion.”
Oh, she was out, all right. And he hadn’t been where he said he was. Now, he would learn. He would know pain and humiliation. This had been payback on Mo, but leaving him alive would force him to face the agony of his actions.
Minutes before pulling in the driveway of the home she shared with Colin, he sent her another text at 9:21 p.m., with no idea of what his girlfriend had just done. Kaitlin found him in the garage, working on his bikes in preparation for an upcoming race. Colin still thought Kaitlin remained ignorant as to his whereabouts that night. He thought Mo was safe, at Cash’s house, finishing off her night. He didn’t have a clue that his world was about to shatter.
The friend who fought for Mo
Cash returned home to her apartment at 9:54 p.m. The first indication something was wrong was the way Mo’s bicycling travel bag sat at the bottom of the stairs, partially blocking the carport. Before leaving at 5:30 p.m., Cash had told Mo to bring her bag inside before it got stolen.
Fear and worry must have overtaken Cash upon realizing her front door was also unlocked.
The horror she discovered in her bathroom would haunt her for many months to come. But in those moments of horror, and in desperation to save her friend’s life, Cash called 911, then gave Mo over 100 chest compressions before paramedics arrived.
Austin Police Department Officer Martin Salinas was the first to respond to the urgent welfare call that came into 911 at 9:56 p.m. that night. When he arrived, he walked into the apartment, where a young woman was performing CPR on her unresponsive friend on the bathroom floor. Still counting chest compressions. Still trying.
Other responding officers noted what appeared to be gunshot wounds on Mo’s head and chest. They also discovered several fired cartridge cases on the floor near Mo, but no firearm was found at the scene.
Paramedics pronounced Mo dead at 10:10 p.m.
Months later, Cash would tell Bicycling.com:
“I did not give up.”
And she didn’t. Cash would stand by Mo’s memory, both in the cycling community and when Kaitlin faced a court of law. But it would be a long road until that happened.
Cash informed the officers that she had picked up Mo from the airport on May 10. Mo was in Austin preparing to participate in a gravel bike race in Hico on May 14. She also told police that on May 11, Mo had texted Cash to let her know she would be out with her friend, Colin, to go swimming.
Cash said she left her apartment at about 5:30 p.m. to go for dinner with some friends of her own. On her way out, she spotted Mo’s large bicycle travel bag sitting by the front door on the porch. Cash went back inside to tell Mo to bring it inside before it got stolen, then left. When she got home, the bag was at the bottom of the stairs, her door was unlocked, and Mo was on the blood-covered bathroom floor.
No one else was in the apartment when Cash got home, but Mo’s beloved Specialized S-Works bike appeared to have been stolen. Nothing else was missing.
Officers searched the nearby area and discovered the bike about 68 feet away, stashed in some thick bamboo south of the residence.
Meanwhile, Cash continued speaking with Detective Richard Spitler. She explained how the electronic lock on her front door worked, and how she had given Mo the unique code to come and go as she needed. When Mo used the lock button to lock or unlock the door, it sent a notification to Cash’s cell phone. At 5:55 p.m., Cash received a notification showing the door had been locked when Mo left to go swimming. At 8:36 p.m., another notification told Cash that Mo had arrived back at the apartment, unlocking the door.
No one saw the shooter come, and no one saw them go. Whoever did this had done so for personal reasons, since the only thing missing had been the bike, and had known where Mo would be and when. They wasted no time in getting to the door upon Mo’s return and wasted no time in ensuring she was dead within moments. This was intentional, personal, and tragic.
Kaitlin thought she’d slipped in and out of the apartment — but surveillance footage saw what no eyes did
At the scene, Detective Rolando Ramirez assessed the tragedy. Why did someone make their way into this apartment to violently murder this 25-year-old woman who had no ties to crime, not even a spot on her record?
Then, he spotted it: a surveillance camera on the exterior of a residence north of Cash’s apartment building, facing her driveway directly. He spoke with the homeowner, who let him review the video it captured the night before. Sure enough, Detective Ramirez watched as at 8:37 p.m., a black Jeep Grand Cherokee drove past the apartment building. The Jeep slowed down, and appeared to stop right next to the building where Cash lived.
Detective Ramirez noted a large bicycle rack mounted on the trailer hitch, a luggage rack attached to the roof, and chrome around the windows. No other vehicles passed by until paramedics arrived.
The next day, May 12, officers from the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force went to Colin and Kaitlin’s home. They reported seeing a 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee with a bicycle rack mounted on the back and a luggage rack on the top, with chrome around the windows.
Detectives Richard Spitler and Jason Ayers followed up with a visit to Colin at the home. Det. Spitler took note of not only the Jeep, but also a 2002 BMW motorcycle and a 1998 Mercedes.
Colin went to the APD station voluntarily, where Det. Spitler informed him he was permitted to leave at any time. As the interview got underway, Colin told the detectives that he lived at the residence with his girlfriend, Kaitlin, and that they had been dating for about three years by that point. But in October 2021, he and Kaitlin took a brief, two-week break from their relationship.
During this break, Colin and Mo began seeing each other. Colin described how, while dating Mo in this snippet of time, Kaitlin called her and said she was the one dating Colin. She wasn’t willing to let him go, after all.
Colin told them about how he had to change Mo’s name in his phone so Kaitlin didn’t see it in his contacts after Kaitlin blocked her, and that he had to delete any text messages between him and Mo to prevent Kaitlin from seeing them. But, Colin added, he and Mo were not in a romantic relationship at this time. They hadn’t been since October 2021. He was simply helping Mo obtain sponsorships. They were platonic and professional.
On the night of the murder, Colin said he picked up Mo on his motorcycle at about 5:45 p.m., after which they went swimming at the City of Austin Deep Eddy Pool. After, he and Mo walked to Pool Burger to get some food before he dropped her off. He didn’t recall seeing anyone near the apartment building, and the garage door beneath Cash’s place was closed. Colin said he left immediately and didn’t go inside, after which he drove northbound down an alley. He stopped on East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, where he sent the text to Kaitlin at 8:36 p.m., lying about where he had been.
By then, Kaitlin would have been pulling up to Cash’s residence. She already knew.
In the arrest affidavit, Det. Spitler observes how Colin “spoke very highly of Wilson and her accomplishments,” and how he was trying to help her get sponsorships.
“Strickland referred to Wilson as the best female cyclist in the United States and possibly the world,” Det. Spitler wrote.
When it came to describing Kaitlin, however, Det. Spitler noted a change in tone. Colin said Kaitlin was more of a “participant”, whereas he was a “racer.” He had told Kaitlin previously he didn’t want her to ride with him because she “holds him back.” Kaitlin called him “grumpy” while training with her because he had to wait on her, since she wasn’t at his level of riding.
More disturbingly, Colin admitted that he had bought two guns between Dec. 2021 and Jan. 2022, one for him and one for Kaitlin. The Springfield Armory handgun was for himself, while he gave Kaitlin the Sig Sauer handgun. These two firearms were discovered in Colin’s home when investigators executed a search warrant during this interview.
As far as Colin knew, Kaitlin had no idea where Mo was staying and had never been to the building before. Or at least, she shouldn’t have known. And, he added, Kaitlin was the only person who drove the Jeep. Nor did Kaitlin know anyone in the area of Cash’s residence that he was aware of.
While police searched their home, and while detectives interviewed Strickland, the Lone Star Task Force (LSTF) discovered that Kaitlin had an outstanding arrest warrant for a Class B offense. It turned out she had skipped out on a $650 Botox bill back in 2018.
The LSTF took the opportunity to bring her in. At the Austin Police Department’s Homicide Unit, Detective Katy Connor interviewed her. However, due to a clerical error of her birth date with the warrant, it was deemed void. Connor informed Kaitlin she was free to go and the door was open.
When asked if she had heard about what happened in the last 24 hours, Kaitlin nodded. She said Colin had come into the house and told her a woman in the cycling community had died. The affidavit notes that Kaitlin remained very still and didn’t move during her conversation with Connor, even when confronted with the fact Colin had been “talking to this girl” which led to Kaitlin’s name surfacing in the investigation.
Then, Connor confronted her with the video evidence of her Jeep in the area, Kaitlin said she had no explanation as to why it was there, but she also made no denials.
Connor also pried into the fact that Kaitlin was upset about Colin being out with Mo that night. Kaitlin, according to the affidavit, “turned her head and rolled her eyes in an angry manner.”
“I…I’m certain as to even what you mean or what he said because I didn’t have any idea that he saw or even went out with this girl… as of recently,” Kaitlin told the detective.
But Connor continued telling Kaitlin her vehicle had been seen near Cash’s residence on camera, and that Colin was talking. Connor told her she wanted Kaitlin’s help to explain what actually happened and to provide a logical explanation as to why her vehicle was so close to a murder scene.
“Maybe you were upset and just in the area,” Connor said.
Kaitlin nodded.
Connor informed Kaitlin that with her Jeep on camera near the murder scene, and with Colin’s official statement, things didn’t look too good. Kaitlin nodded again, but made no effort to deny or explain anything.
In fact, Kaitlin instead complained about the arrest.
“They just came to my house and put me in handcuffs for no reason,” she said.
“I feel like I should have an attorney present,” Kaitlin added.
Connor reminded her that she wasn’t under arrest, and that Kaitlin simply needed to clarify why her Jeep appeared to be at Cash’s residence.
“The door is unlocked, you can leave at anytime,” Connor said.
“I would love to leave,” Kaitlin replied. “You just arrested me in front of my house, in front of all my neighbors, and carried me in here in handcuffs. It was incredibly humiliating.”
Connor continued asking questions, in what she told 20/20 in their documentary was a tactic police used to keep the suspect engaged. But Kaitlin remained guarding, offering no knowledge of the murder or whether Colin and Mo spoke.
“I don’t actually know, and I would like to leave.”
Connor ended the interview.
By the time Kaitlin left the station, she knew what evidence investigators had in their hands against her. Connor had laid it on the table without outwardly accusing Kaitlin of murder. But the implications were there.
The friends who shed suspicion on Kaitlin
On May 13, 2022, Detective Spitler got in touch with a friend of Mo’s, identified only as “Jane” in the affidavit. Jane requested to remain anonymous out of worry Kaitlin might come after her, but she offered up some information. Jane claimed that Mo and Colin had “multiple romantic relationships,” and that it was an “on again, off again” situation between the two. The relationship allegedly had started during Mo’s first trip to Austin in the fall of 2021.
Jane also told Spitler how Kaitlin had gotten a hold of Mo’s phone number and contacted her several times. Mo blocked Kaitlin’s number on her phone. In the last two months before the murder, Kaitlin had brazenly began following Mo on Instagram. Kaitlin had called Mo once more since, and said she was with Colin, and that Mo needed to stay away from him.
An anonymous caller contacted the APD on May 14, 2022, claiming she had been with Kaitlin in January 2022. Kaitlin had apparently just discovered that Colin and Mo were dating behind her back, despite the fact Kaitlin and Colin were still together. The caller said that Kaitlin shook in anger, telling the caller she was so angry she wanted to kill Mo. Kaitlin apparently even went so far as to say she either had a gun or was going to get one.
Detective Spitler returned to the neighborhood on May 15 where Cash lived in order to canvas the street for more video surveillance. According to the affidavit, a man named David Harris approached Spitler, introducing himself as the owner of the property where Cash lives, in the apartment above his detached garage. He told Spitler that on May 11, between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., he entered his garage and left the garage door partially raised. He said he heard what sounded like someone running down the stairs coming from Cash’s front door, adding he believed he saw someone on a bike traveling southbound through the alley leaving the apartment.
Ballistics testing on May 17 of Kaitlin’s Sig-Sauer handgun recovered from her and Strickland’s home revealed a high likelihood that it was the weapon used to murder Mo Wilson. The test cartridge that was fired in the laboratory from Kaitlin’s gun was, according to the affidavit, “compared microscopically to the shell casings located next to the body.” They had, so to speak, their smoking gun.
The pieces were coming together. But not soon enough. By the time investigators assembled enough evidence to issue an arrest warrant on May 17 for Kaitlin Armstrong, she was gone, officially becoming a fugitive running from the law.
And she had a three day head start.
Anna “Mo” Wilson: The gravel race community grieves the loss of a friend and world-class racer
As U.S. Marshals scrambled to catch up the killer-turned-fugitive, Mo’s family, friends, and the community of racers who knew and loved her tried to process a devastating, unfathomable loss. So violent. Senseless. Heartless.
In a moving tribute to Mo, called “The Truth and Tragedy of Mo Wilson,” Bicycling.com wrote of her life and her friendship with Cash. It’s well-worth a read, as in the true crime genre we hear so much about the suspect, while the victim’s life before they were a victim can fall to the wayside in all the details. But since this is a cycling magazine, not a true crime one, they wrote of Mo the human, not the victim. And they did a brilliant job of it. I highly recommend it, and will put the link in the sources section at the end.
I also believe that in order to truly understand a killer, you need to understand their victims. There’s a reason victimology is a focus in criminal profiling. It will help unravel the answer to whether this was, as the media disgracefully called it, a “love triangle” (which is a degrading, tabloid-like phrase to throw into a headline and I don’t believe this was that at all, but we’ll get to that later). There’s a difference between good journalism and sensationalist media, and we definitely witnessed that in this case.
Mo and her brother, Matthew, grew up in the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont, surrounded by skiing. It is an area of over 2000 square miles of “scenic and undisturbed locations,” according to the Northeast Kingdom’s website. It has bragging rights to various areas for all types of skiing, with stunning mountain views and snow-covered slopes.
Mo participated in her first ski race at eight-years-old. She skied alongside Mikaela Shiffrin, who went on to become the world’s top ski racer. In 11th grade, Mo placed seventh in downhill U.S. Nationals. From a young age, she had the drive, ambition, and work ethic to be an elite athlete in whatever she chose to do.
Her father was a ski instructor at Burke Mountain Academy. Despite participating in skiing her entire life, Mo’s skills and power on a bike were apparent from a young age. She started out with mountain biking. Teachers described her as humble, hard-working, and diligent.
Rowan Moore Gerety, for Bicycling.com, wrote that:
“At times, speaking to those who knew Mo felt like researching a candidacy for sainthood.”
A thoughtful friend who listened to people, someone disciplined, and a perfectionist. It is the type of person Gerety revealed Mo to be in his interviews with family and friends. Mo used banana bread baking as a form of therapy from her perfectionism, her mother told Gerety, something that would stick with Mo as she entered adulthood.
A knee injury sidelined Mo’s blossoming skiing career, but she returned to it during her time at Dartmouth College. Mo majored in engineering and also participated in what would be her last ski race. She was ready to take on the biking world.
In 2019, Mo participated in her first gravel race: the Old Growth Classic in San Francisco. After growing up riding mountain bikes everywhere on gravel on Vermont, it seemed like second nature for Mo, it seems. She even went on a three-week bike trip through Europe to celebrate finishing college. She took the gravel racing world by storm. Shortly before she died, she had quit her job to pursue professional racing full-time.
Cash first saw Mo at a race in August 2021 in Vermont, where Mo participated in Rooted Vermont; the only race, Gerety writes, that Mo’s family ever got to watch her in, professionally.
Cash used to work as a project manager for an Austin, Texas tech company. During the pandemic, she and some friends bought an old inn in East Burke in the Northeast Kingdom. Cash raced on weekends and socialized in cycling circles, using the inn as a way of remaining close to her passion for the sport.
She’d watched with admiration as Mo raced, and met the Wilson family later that day. But the two women wouldn’t actually meet until October in Bentonville, Arkansas during the “Lil Sugar” race. They became fast friends and Mo would crash at Cash’s home in Austin. They shared a passion for cooking, as well. Cash quickly became part of Mo’s family.
Amid this blossoming and beautiful new friendship, there was someone else Mo let into her life in October 2021, too: Colin Strickland.
Kaitlin Armstrong: A woman blessed with beauty, but cursed with fatal envy
On the other side of this tragedy is the woman who fired the gun into Mo Wilson’s heart, the thing so many people loved and admired about her. Be it her passion for cycling, her loyal and loving nature, or her enthusiasm for life. It all ended on the night of May 11, 2022.
In six short months, a brief relationship Mo had with Colin, spanning all of two weeks in October 2021, and the friendship following it, had enraged Kaitlin into murder. How had she gotten to that point?
Kaitlin grew up in Livonia, Michigan, a suburb about a 25-minute drive from Detroit, with a population of 94,422 (2021). Fox News unearthed some yearbook photos that show a redheaded teenager who excelled in athletics, participating in volleyball, track and field, and briefly, basketball.
According to LinkedIn, Kaitlin attended Eastern Michigan University, where she obtained a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance. The profile shows that she worked two different bank jobs in the Detroit area before listing her employment as of June 2012 as being at PNC in Austin, Texas.
She continued the pattern of only spending between one to three years at each job, up until February 2017. That lists her at The Studio in Bali, Indonesia, a yoga center, where her profile says she worked up until her arrest in 2022. As of October 2019, she lists her job as “Chief Financial Officer” for Dynamis Racing. It’s not clear what exactly this company did.
Fox News notes that Kaitlin was also a licensed real estate agent who liked to flip houses.
She met Colin Strickland on a dating app in 2019, as he would later tell a courtroom during the trial. He testified that he was “riding bicycles in circles,” gravel racing professionally. The relationship with Kaitlin, he explained, was sometimes tumultuous and at other times, loving and comfortable. He told the prosecutor that he had loved Kaitlin, and believed she had loved him in return.
Colin was questioned on the stand about a woman he was friends with in Colorado, and a specific incident in late 2020. He noted that he had “many, many female friends” yet admitted he knew which woman the prosecution was asking about. Once again, Colin denied having any intimate relationship with this woman, saying they were friends who conversed via texting.
But he did admit that he told Kaitlin about her, just to be transparent. Afterwards, Kaitlin sent him a photo of the woman, wearing a bra and jeans. Colin confirmed that the woman had sent him that photo, but he never sent it to Kaitlin. This bruised Colin’s trust in his girlfriend going forward, and his reluctance to maintain their relationship for the long term would linger.
“I wasn’t sure we were compatible as long-term, life partners,” Colin said in court.
On the stand, he recalled other occasions when he and Kaitlin would argue over her jealous tendencies and invading his privacy.
They broke up for a short time, but by the time the pandemic started, they were on again. In what Colin believed was going to be a temporary arrangement, Kaitlin moved in with him in 2021 when her residence was damaged in a winter storm and deemed uninhabitable.
She never left — and wouldn’t, even when she and Colin would call it quits on their relationship several times.
“I was not in favor of living together, but she needed a place to live, urgently,” Colin said during the trial.
By October 2021, the relationship had broken down yet again. Colin attended a race with Kaitlin in Bentonville, Arkansas where both he and Mo competed. Mo won, as she had been doing so often. After, Colin went on a ride with a group of cyclists, mixed with men and women. He said he didn’t invite his girlfriend, telling her she didn’t have the skill level for the ride. Kaitlin was angry at him over this, and he ended the relationship.
Colin said he saw Mo again five or six days later, when she was in Austin unannounced. He didn’t know she was even coming. Kaitlin remained in the house, though Colin was adamant they were broken up at this point. It was during this time, Colin admitted, that he and Mo became romantically involved.
Mo and Colin went to Marfa for training. During that time, Kaitlin called Mo and confronted her, though Colin didn’t remember what for. The call left Mo understandably unnerved.
Colin wanted to evict Kaitlin, but he noted that “it was hard to evict her before her residence was complete.” She was apparently renovating a house for herself. By this point, Colin said Kaitlin had access to his finances, passwords, email, and Instagram. She was the more tech savvy one, Colin said.
During those two weeks, Kaitlin had apparently dated at least two other men while still living in Colin’s house. Yet, she didn’t quite let him go. She allegedly contacted Mo several times. Before an event being hosted at a local cafe on October 28, 2021, she texted Colin:
“I know you know better than to show up at Meteor with that girl.”
“Could you please be an adult...I am not going because I am trying to respect you,” Colin replied to her.
At 8:05 that same night, Colin messaged Kaitlin again.
“Did you call Mo? Wtf?”
Kaitlin simply told him she couldn’t talk right then.
After that two-week break up, Colin and Kaitlin restarted their relationship.
In December 2021, Colin purchased two guns. One for himself, and the other for Kaitlin. Colin said she had become paranoid about road rage incidents, biking alone, and the nearby homeless population.
Despite Colin and Mo’s brief romantic relationship ending, it appears they remained friends after the fact. Colin said he had been trying to help Mo obtain sponsorships, and they still crossed paths at race events.
But Kaitlin clearly thought there was an affair happening, and it enraged her, if the account of the anonymous friend from January 2022 is to be believed, when Kaitlin said she was so angry she wanted to kill Mo. The criminal affidavit deems this caller as a “credible witness” based on the rest of the investigation. This conversation between Kaitlin and her friend was at an event Kaitlin attended with Colin, and Mo had seen them together. Mo sent a text message to Colin that same day:
“Hey! Sooo I would like to talk to you at some point. I had originally texted you on Friday but appears my texts aren’t going through again. This weekend was strange for me and I just want to know what’s going on. If you just want to be friends (seems to be the case) then that’s cool, but I’d like to talk about it cause honestly my mind has been going circles and I don't know what to think.”
Colin didn’t reply until the next day:
“Hey Mo- I feel very shitty for putting you in a position where you don't feel comfortable. Kaitlin came along the go to a meeting about the sprinter/spartan hotel project. In hindsight, this was not a good idea.”
According to the affidavit, the exchange of these messages indicated that Mo was “under the impression she was still in a romantic relationship with Strickland even though he was currently dating Armstrong.”
This was where the media began calling this a “love triangle,” even though there’s little proof of that being the case. Both Mo’s family and Colin have denied any affair from happening. Colin maintained that they were friends, and Mo’s parents said she wasn’t in a relationship with anyone leading up to her death. For the sake of respecting Mo as a victim of such a cold-hearted murder, it’s important not to make assumptions. The truth is, we don’t know. The only ones who know for certain were Colin and Mo. Based on Mo’s message, it doesn’t seem she was thrilled to be a possible “other woman.”
In March 2022, after Colin posted an Instagram video of him and about twenty other cyclists racing, including Mo, Kaitlin’s passive aggressive nature once more surfaced in a text she sent to her boyfriend.
“Send my love to Mo,” Kaitlin said in the message.
“Can you please stop,” Colin told her.
In court, Colin said he “felt it was extremely passive aggressive at the time.”
Colin set out on a a solo road training tour throughout California in April 2022, while his relationship with Kaitlin remained off and on. He talked to Mo during this time, as well, offering advice and congratulating her on her continuous wins.
Kaitlin joined him in early May 2022 when he went to Arizona to train. They returned to Austin on May 9. Colin knew Mo had a race coming up in Hico, but told the court he had no intentions of seeing her while she was in Texas.
On May 10, Mo texted Colin to tell him about the upcoming race, and that she would be staying in Austin. In his response, Colin invited her out for a short training ride.
At this point, Mo was named “Christine Wall” in his phone, but changing her name didn’t secure her safety. Kaitlin still had access to everything Colin did digitally. She was onto him, so she thought, and was even tracking Mo’s location via the Strava app, used by professional racers to show their followers where they will be racing and staying. Mo had left the address where she’d be staying in Austin — Cash’s residence — public on Strava.
On May 11, the day of the murder, Colin testified that he had started the day with a three-hour bike ride with Kaitlin and his friend. After the first half-hour, he said she turned back while he and his friend carried on.
Mo had also gone for a solo ride that day, and sent photos to Colin of herself riding.
They discussed meeting up afterwards, and decided to get together.
“I wanted to greet her in my home city,” Colin said.
“Sounds great,” Mo replied to their plans to go swimming, and then, referencing the temperature: “I'm dying out here.”
He never told Kaitlin about these plans, or that Mo was in town.
They went for a swim, and then for burgers. When he dropped her off, Colin said they hugged and he watched her go inside, then left. It was the last time he ever saw Mo.
On the run: Hunting a scorned lover for 43 days
By the time police issued an arrest warrant for Kaitlin Armstrong and went to take her into custody on May 17, she had vanished. Ballistics evidence had just returned, indicating that Kaitlin’s gun was the murder weapon.
The last message between Kaitlin and Colin appeared to be on May 13. Brandon Filla, of the U.S. Marshals, originally told media that they believed Kaitlin had remained in the Austin area due to her community ties. Three to ten agents were assigned to the case on a daily basis, Filla added. The first thing they needed to do was find her Jeep, which they surmised may have been abandoned.
“You put that out to the public to hope to generate some type of tip, because a lot of times these investigations, they may abandon that vehicle in a shopping center,” Filla said. “But at midnight, that shopping center is left vacant. So maybe that would be a key to give us that direction of travel.”
From the start, though, Filla and the Marshals worked on the presumption that Kaitlin would change her appearance.
“She’s a female that could change her looks very easy; Change her hair color, maybe change her hairstyle, maybe cut it shorter. You always see that when you have some type of you know, violent case like this, where they had time,” Filla explained.
A tip that came in early on was camera footage from one of Colin’s neighbors that showed Kaitlin knocking on their door shortly after leaving the APD station.
“You can see that she, you know, she has an urgency. It’s an emergency to her. And, you know, she’s trying to use someone’s telephone to call someone else,” Filla said.
But Marshals would be proved wrong when they discovered footage from the Austin-Bergstrom Airport in Houston which seemed to show Kaitlin Armstrong walking through there, a yoga mat strapped to her back. She boarded a flight on May 14, then later boarded a connecting Southwest Airlines flight, making her way to Laguardia Airport in New York City.
In the meantime, while the cycling community and family mourned for Mo, Colin went into hiding, and Kaitlin’s father took to the press.
“I know her. I know how she thinks and I know what she believes. And I know that she just would not do something like this,” Michael Armstrong told “Good Morning America.
“We love you, Katie, and we are going to figure this out,” he added.
A friend of Colin’s apparently told the Daily Mail that, during this time, Colin had gone into hiding out of fear that Kaitlin might target him next.
“None of us can sleep. He’s staying out of sight until she’s caught. I do know where he is but I’m not mentioning where for his safety. He’s not in Texas – he’s got completely out of Dodge.”
Colin also saw his sponsorships stripped and his racing career crumble as a result of Mo’s death and his connection to Kaitlin.
At this point, Marshals had no idea what connections, if any, Kaitlin had in the Big Apple, or where her Jeep ended up. Her social media accounts had all been deleted.
“Come forward. Surrender to authorities. It’s just a matter of time. We’re working day in and out. We’d like to safely bring you into custody so you can have your day in court and tell your side of the story,” Filla said in an appeal via the press at the start of June 2022.
He told NewsNation that Marshals “lost the footprint in the sand when she landed at Laguardia.”
But not for long. Tips came in placing Kaitlin at a campground in New York, where her sister, Christine, was allegedly staying. Fox News reported speaking to a man who told them that “she was [here] a while back. Right before the whole thing blew up.”
NewsNation spoke to a private investigator named Jason Jensen, who revealed that Kaitlin could have been using her sister, Christine’s, name to travel.
“Three days after Kaitlin was seen in the New York area, an address popped up in New York state, in Livingston Manor, where it was in Christine’s name,” he said.
Filla appeared to corroborate this.
“We’ve still been unable to locate a flight that was under the name of Kaitlin Armstrong. Looking at video surveillance, trying to narrow down Kaitlin Armstrong amongst thousands of visitors that come in and out of that airport on a daily basis,” he told Inside Edition.
Marshals discovered that only a day after the arrest warrant was issued, Kaitlin was dropped off at in Newark, New Jersey. Initially, speculation arose that Kaitlin may have been heading for Canada. Marshals picked up her trail again when they found out she had booked a flight out of Newark on May 18.
They also discovered the fate of her Jeep. Marshals traced it to a dealership in Austin, where Kaitlin had sold it for $12,200 on May 13, a huge cut considering Canadian Cycling Magazine reported that it would be worth closer to $30,000 through a dealership. She received a check from the dealership that day.
From the moment she left the police station after the interrogation, she had begun planning her escape, running away and leaving Colin with the mess she no doubt believed he was responsible for.
They were close on her trail at this point, but weren’t saying so publicly. Marshals couldn’t afford to alert Kaitlin in any way that they were onto her location, in case she might flee somewhere with no extradition treaty. She’d already spent time in Indonesia with her yoga background.
On June 28, Filla assured the public the hunt for Kaitlin was still on.
“She is alive,” he confirmed.
The Help Wanted ad: How to catch a yoga teacher fleeing the law
But Kaitlin Armstrong wasn’t in Indonesia, nor had she fled to Canada. She may have had a head start on law enforcement, but the Marshals came nipping at her heels. Deputy U.S. Marshals Damien Fernandez and Emir Perez traveled to Costa Rica after tips led them to believe she may have been staying in Santa Teresa.
Marshals and Homeland Security revealed that Kaitlin boarded United Airlines FLight 1222 using a fraudulent passport via Newark International Airport at 5:09 p.m. EST on May 18, 2022. They discovered that she arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica via that flight.
Kaitlin had, indeed, traveled using her sister’s passport. There were no flights booked under her real name, only Christine’s. After the fact, Christine remained adamant that she never gave Kaitlin her passport, and she was never charged with anything.
Despite being in a small village filled with tourists and sunshine, the Marshals knew tracking down their elusive fugitive would be a challenge. Kaitlin had used multiple aliases and had paid for plastic surgery to change her appearance.
“Pressure’s on. I know we were sitting in the plane and we’re talking, what's the game plan?” Fernandez told Jonathon Vigliotti of “48 Hours.”
“We had other intelligence indicating that … she was staying in hostels in Costa Rica. And I don’t know if you know anything about Costa Rica, but Costa Rica has a lot of hostels, a lot, an unbelievable amount of hostels,” Perez said in the same interview.
Indeed, they hit one dead end after another. Kaitlin had had time to change her identity completely and the way she looked. She knew she was being hunted, and likely wouldn’t get too comfortable in one place, nor show her face too often.
Without revealing how, the two Marshals explained that their colleagues back in the U.S. discovered the phone number of a businessman who may have had connections to Kaitlin at some point.
Detective Marc McLeod explained to Vigliotti that they tried to cold call him, but he hung up immediately when they said they were U.S. Marshals. Three or four call attempts later, the man finally stayed on the phone and answered some questions.
“And we actually ended up sending a picture of Kaitlin … while we’re on the phone with him. He looks at it and he goes, yes, but she doesn’t look like that and she’s not using that name,” McLeod said.
The man revealed that Kaitlin was now living under the alias of “Beth,” and that alongside plastic surgery, she had also cut her hair and colored it dark brown. The man said he had no idea she was Kaitlin Armstrong, but revealed a possible location.
“He’s like, ‘Well, I met her at a yoga studio in Jacó,’” McLeod said.
The Marshals rushed to Jacó, but after scouting surveillance footage and searching what seemed to be every crevice of the place, they had hit yet another dead end until another tip came out, placing Kaitlin in Santa Teresa. Perez and Fernandez rode a ferry to a peninsula, then drove to the small mountain town.
However, Fernandez said they encountered yet another hold up.
“I think from the get-go we were told … you’re gonna be in for a surprise ‘cause a lot of the women in Santa Teresa look just like Kaitlin — a lot of them,” he told Vigiotti, referring to the many American tourists who flocked to the area.
In trying to find Kaitlin in a town of what seemed to be nothing but dopplegangers, they had a female operative attend yoga classes to see if she could spot their fugitive somewhere. She attended three different classes, Fernandez noted.
By this time, Kaitlin was going by yet another name: Ari, as they discovered from Greg Haber, an American man who owned a restaurant in Santa Teresa. Haber described how one day, when he saw “Ari”, she had a bandage on her nose. When he asked her about it, she said a surfboard had hit her in the face.
“It’s like, well, happens to everybody, right, at least once. So, you wouldn’t even question that story here. Like, you see people all the time,” Haber told Vigliotti.
Just as Fernandez and Perez were readying to head back to the U.S., no doubt feeling outsmarted by their fugitive for now, they had one more trick up their sleeve.
“We decided we were gonna put an ad out for a yoga instructor and see what would happen,” Perez said.
They posted it in a local Facebook group, claiming to be at a hostel seeking a yoga instructor, and left a number to call. A week went by with nothing. It seemed Kaitlin wasn’t taking any bait… or was she?
The Marshals were ready to head home. They got to San Jose, about to fly back to the U.S., when the case took a massive turn in their favor.
“We got a bite, somebody that, um, identified herself … as a yoga instructor and said they wanted to meet with us at a particular hostel … and we said … ‘this is, this is our chance!’” Perez explained.
The hunt had led them, with the help of Tourism Police Lieutenant Juan Carlos Solanos’ team, to a discreet little hostel called “Don Jon’s.”
Perez posed as a tourist in the hostel, went up a woman sitting at a table who looked like Kaitlin, and spoke to her in nothing but Spanish. As the woman pulled out her phone to use Google Translate, Perez took in the details of her face. The bandage on her nose. Her swollen lips. Her red hair, dyed dark brown and chopped off to her shoulders. Her eyes, the same ones he had seen in the pictures. This was it.
“That’s her. She’s in there,” Perez told Fernandez and Salanos when he returned to the car.
Costa Rica police swooped in and arrested her on initial charges of immigration violation before handing her over to U.S. Marshals for the first-degree murder charges. No wonder they couldn’t find a trace of her when the first arrived in Costa Rica. That was the period when she was undergoing the surgeries to alter her appearance. They found the receipt for it all when they searched the hostel. And it almost worked, had her changing stories not caught up to her. Filla confirmed that more than 80 tips led to her capture.
Marshals seized two cell phones and more than one passport from her purse. In a lock box in the hostel, they found more passports belonging to Kaitlin and her sister.
While in Costa Rica, Kaitlin had even begun dating another man. She told him she had just endured a “traumatizing breakup.” They went on a few dates. He later said he had no idea she was a highly-wanted fugitive for the murder of a professional and beloved cyclist. Teal Akerson met her outside of a tattoo shop, where she introduced herself as Ari. She insisted on hanging out in secluded places, where they smoked cannabis and spent time together.
“Ari was a strange person. I met her outside the tattoo shop, her friends were getting tattoos and she was awaiting out there on the bench and I was having a beer in the lounge,” Akerson told the Austin American Statesman.
After her arrest, Fox News revealed that Kaitlin had access to $450,000 at the time she went on the run — money that Colin had given her as capital investment which she was supposed to pay back and never did.
Kaitlin was extradited back to Texas and held on a $3.5 million bond. She pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Her one last escape attempt
In one last bold attempt to taste freedom, Kaitlin made another break for it on October 11, 2023. At 8:17 a.m. that morning, Travis County corrections officers were escorting Kaitlin as they left a medical appointment when she broke free of their custody and ran off.
This time, however, Armstrong was only on the run for all of a ten-minute foot chase after which she was taken back into custody by the Travis County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO).
A short, yet dramatic, video was posted online by KXAN, showing Armstrong fleeing in striped clothing on a walking path, her pace quickening with an officer pursuing her. The officer trips and falls while she attempts to climb a fence with her hands still restrained. The video was sent in by Theresa Rangel, a bystander who caught the few seconds of the chase on her cell phone.
The TCSO claimed that she never left officers’ sights when she bolted. According to the 20/20 documentary, officers caught up to Kaitlin on, of all places, Wilson Street.
The Trial: A cold-hearted killer buried in digital evidence while defense claims there were other suspects
Aside from the riveting testimony, digital and GPS evidence played a massive part in this trial. The first day opened up with the prosecutors playing that harrowing audio of Mo’s screams in her final moments of life as Kaitlin shot her to death on the bathroom floor. Cash became distraught at listening to the traumatizing moments all over again, and several of Mo’s family members left the room and began weeping.
Kaitlin, however, remained emotionless. She simply stared ahead while the audio played.
“On May 11, 2022, at 9:15 p.m., the last thing Mo did on this earth was scream,” said prosecutor Rickey Jones during opening statements.
“You can hear those screams, and they are followed by two gunshots. One is to the front of the head and one to the side of the head,” he continued. “You won’t hear any more screams, and there will be silence. Four or five seconds of silence while Kaitlin Armstrong stood over Mo Wilson and then put a third shot right into Mo Wilson’s heart.”
Geoffrey Puryear, Armstrong’s defense attorney, kept his opening statement short, noting simply that no witnesses saw Armstrong at the residence nor did anyone actually see her pull the trigger on Wilson. He added that no surveillance video at the scene actually saw Armstrong, either, despite the fact there were numerous cameras in the neighborhood.
Puryear added that police, after interviewing her, told her she was free to go. So, she did.
“Kate is passionate about traveling, and she’s passionate about yoga, and she was totally cool with traveling to far-off locations that intrigued her at the drop of a hat on a moment’s notice,” he told the court.
He further claimed that Armstrong fled Austin because of “things that could cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety,” and called the state’s ballistics evidence “far from the gold standard.”
“At the end of the (state’s) evidence,, you will be left with the conclusion that the state’s purported forensic science is inaccurate, unreliable and unscientific,” Puryear said.
Matthew Wilson, Mo’s brother, testified that he was close with his sister, and her relationship with Strickland at that time had been purely platonic and professional.
The prosecution revealed that Kaitlin had used the Strava app to track and essentially stalk Mo while she was in Austin leading up to the murder. Since Kaitlin had access to Colin’s electronic devices, she also had access to all of his communications, as well. She could view every message Colin and Mo exchanged that day, see the selfies Mo sent him, and confirm that the “Christine” in his phone was, in fact, the same woman Kaitlin had tried to intimidate into staying away from Colin.
The lock code on Cash’s residence provided the timeline for the night, from when Mo left to when she arrived home. Phone records confirmed Mo had been talking to a podcast host up until mere minutes before she died. And then, the surveillance camera picked up her haunting screams. The lock code confirmed that Cash returned home shortly before ten to find Mo, and the 911 call showed the desperate attempts Cash went to save her friend’s life.
Martin Salina, the first responding officer, testified that he saw no signs of forced entry or struggle upon arriving at the scene, but he did find a shell casing in the bathroom and a second one in the kitchen.
APD Detective Richard Spitler showed several email accounts Kaitlin used to purchase flights, pre-paid Visa cards, and a VPN, which Spitler says she used to hide her location and Skype.
On May 27, 2022, digital evidence also revealed that Kaitlin had entered her own name into Google, while she was already in Costa Rica. She also read various news articles, including the ones about Colin going into hiding.
One search she conducted asked: “Can IMEI be tracked if not making phone calls.”
Spitler noted that IMEI is way for phones to be tracked.
Kaitlin made another bizarre search on June 23, 2022: “Can pineapples burn your fingerprints.” Spitler added that Kaitlin made several similar searches.
Kaitlin had been smart enough to turn her phone off while committing the crime, but clearly didn’t consider that her Jeep’s GPS would tell on her, too. That, and camera footage from one of the neighbor’s, placed the Jeep at the scene of the crime. Kaitlin didn’t turn her phone back on until 9:47 p.m. night, when she was away from the scene.
She turned her phone off at about 7:30, but APD Detective Daniel Portnoy testified that the Jeep’s GPS revealed “track points” of Kaitlin’s travels on the night of May 11, 2022. Portnoy noted that they could verify the timing of the locations within four seconds, when compared with surveillance footage from the scene.
At 7:35 p.m., the GPS system pinged the Jeep to be approaching I-35 before it turned onto MLK Jr. Blvd. From there, the Jeep turned on to Cedar and Maple Avenue. Portnoy explained that the Jeep seemed to stay within that area for about an hour, looping around and around. Waiting. Preying. Watching. The Jeep circled 18th Street, Maple, and the alley behind Cash’s residence.
At 8:37 p.m., the Jeep appeared to be in the alley behind the home. This was the only way to enter the garage apartment where Mo was staying with Cash.
The tracking ended at 8:40 p.m., which Portnoy explained means the vehicle was turned off. The final track point was a grassy parking area near Maple Avenue.
The next track point began when the Jeep was turned back on at 9:17 p.m. From there, the Jeep traveled from the area of Maple Avenue to Fort Clark Drive, the street Kaitlin and Colin lived on.
And just because Kaitlin turned her phone off during the crime, doesn’t mean it didn’t still hold secrets pertaining to the murder. Detectives extracted a note from her phone which she’d deleted, which simply read, “1704 Maple Avenue.” Mo had been staying at 1708 Maple Avenue.
The state’s final witness, Pamela Mazak, showed the locations of Colin, Mo, and Kaitlin’s phones the night of the murder, where they were and when, confirming Colin’s story that he had been with Mo at the pool and the burger place, then on his motorcycle driving home at the time of the murder.
The Defense: Was Kaitlin actually driving her own Jeep that night?
The defense, however, argued that it may not have been Kaitlin driving the Jeep that night. No cameras actually caught Kaitlin herself at Cash’s residence. Kaitlin’s attorneys protested that the data didn’t mean the phone and vehicle were in Kaitlin’s possession at the time of Mo’s death. Despite their earlier claims that there were other suspects, they didn’t bring forth any alternative potential killers come the trial.
While in the middle of questioning Det. Spitler, defense attorneys called for a motion to mistrial, claiming he favored Colin and cleared him as a suspect too soon. The attorneys claimed that Spitler had met Colin at a taco deli years before, and even asked Spitler if he thought of Colin as a local celebrity.
They also brought up the fact that the rape kit collected from Mo was never processed, Mo’s bike wasn’t bagged or protected when it was taken into evidence, and questioned why Colin’s laptop was returned to him eight days after the murder without being analyzed.
The judge was quick to dismiss this motion.
This didn’t stop the attorneys from trying to tear holes into the fabric of the prosecution’s case. They further questioned Det. Spitler as to why two of Mo’s exes were never brought in for interrogation.
Det. Spitler noted that phone data proved they were nowhere near the crime scene when it happened, and said he refused to play the defense’s game of “what ifs.” He firmly believed Mo hadn’t been sexually assaulted, and was confident in clearing the three men, Colin and the two exes, of the crime.
“There is no evidence to suggest that [Mr Strickland} would have committed a sexual offense in the time that she unlocked the door and his motorcycle is seen driving down the alley,” Spitler stated.
Cofer didn’t question that Armstrong’s cell phone was near the Jeep, but he did question who else had access to her Jeep keys and the home she shared with Strickland.
Spitler tracked down an ex-boyfriend of Wilson’s. Some online posts potentially made by Wilson claimed he was abusive. The ex, Gunner Shaw, provided Spitler with flight information and rental car details which put Shaw 700 miles away from the crime at the time it happened. Spitler also confirmed that the online account in question making the posts on Reddit was active after Wilson’s death, so it couldn’t have been her.
Spitler also looked into a man named Allen Lim, who was close with Wilson but Spitler couldn’t say whether Lim and Wilson were more than friends. Lim also provided cell phone records and Stratva data that indicated he wasn’t near the area that night, either.
The defense went as far as to try and discredit Spitler because he had only been a homicide detective for 60 days and had never before been a lead investigator on a case. The defense continued picking apart the investigation, asking if police had talked to every resident of Maple Avenue between 17th and 18th Street, to which Spitler said no.
Rick Cofer, one of the defense attorneys, also turned on Strickland. Cofer called Strickland an “unreliable narrator” who changed his story several times, though didn’t seem to waver from one detail.
“His recollection of every detail has become fuzzier [] except for his opinion of seeing Kaitlin in a black Jeep,” Cofer told the jury, also reminding everyone that Strickland lied to Armstrong the night of the murder about being with Wilson.
“He didn’t lie because Kaitlin is a jealous, psycho killer. He lied because that’s [how he is],” Cofer said.
Kaitlin declined to testify in her own defense.
The Verdict
The jury took to deliberations on Nov. 16, 2023. It took them a mere two hours to reach a verdict: guilty of first-degree murder.
Mo’s parents, brother, and Cash all hugged each other and became emotional.
Kaitlin continued her dead stare ahead while her father, the one who stood up for her so vehemently while she was on the run, looked in her direction.
During victim impact statements, Mo’s family and Cash spoke to Kaitlin.
Cash, the woman who fought so valiantly for her friend, made sure Kaitlin knew that Mo had someone trying to save her life.
“Kaitlin, I want you to know that I fought for Mo with everything I had that night,” she said. “From the moment I got home and started doing chest compressions, which was the longest 10 minutes of my life.”
She said that it was the moment paramedics didn’t being Mo down to the ambulance right away that she knew something was terribly wrong. She’d thought Mo would be okay once she got into the ambulance and to the hospital. Cash said she didn’t even consider that Mo might have been dead when she got home.
“That was the first moment that night when I realized that there was no coming back from this.”
Cash described being interrogated by police for three hours before being able to wash Mo’s blood from her hands, the remnants of her attempts to save her friend.
“I’ll never forget that moment in the bathroom. Watching the sink turn red and wanting to put it back on my hands because it was the only thing I had left of her.”
She concluded her statement:
“I hope I can live a life she would be proud of, and I carry her with me each day. I choose light, I choose joy and I choose love. And Kaitlin, I really hope you can find that too.”
Mo Wilson’s mother, Karen, also spoke to Armstrong in a victim impact statement.
“Kaitlin Armstrong. I’m not sure if my words can penetrate your heart, but I’m going to try. I hate what you did to my daughter,” Karen said. “If you allowed yourself to actually know her, you would’ve never, ever, wanted to hurt her.”
The emotional mother told Armstrong that the murder ruined her life and that of Mo’s family and friends.
“When you shot Moriah in the heart, you shot me in the heart. You shot Eric and Matt in their hearts,” Karen said.
“And she died all alone on the floor of her friend’s house. She did not deserve a death like that.”
Karen also told Kaitlin that had she simply tried to have a civil conversation with Mo, the situation never would have come to this.
“She would have cared about your feelings. She was a caring empathetic person.”
Karen spoke of her faith despite her agonizing grief.
“The only way that [Armstrong’s healing] can begin is to admit your guilt, own your actions and seek forgiveness, not just from us, but most importantly from your Creator,” she told Kaitlin.
Karen added that Kaitlin may have murdered Mo in body, but never in spirit, as Mo was in the presence of God’s pure light and love, where she will never be hurt again.
“You killed her earthly body, but her spirit is so very much alive and you can never change that.”
Kaitlin was sentenced to 90 years in prison and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. She will be eligible for parole in 30 years.
The Appeal
In a rather surprising appeal Kaitlin filed on Dec. 15, 2023, following the verdict and sentencing, Kaitlin claimed she was pregnant at the time of her arrest, as well as once before that, too. She doesn’t say what happened to either pregnancy.
Aside from that, the defense claims that they have new evidence to show an expert witness the prosecution called to the stand wasn’t actually qualified to testify as to how Kaitlin’s DNA wound up on Mo’s bike on the night of the murder. The defense had also asked a judge to suppress statements Kaitlin made to police when she first questioned, which the judge denied at the time.
Kaitlin filed the appeal with a new defense attorney, Jessica Freud. Freud states that had Kaitlin’s original defense brought in more witnesses to testify about Kaitlin’s childhood trauma, her punishment may not have been as severe as it was.
The appeal revealed a fair bit more about Kaitlin than we originally knew. Her parents divorced when she was five because her father had an affair. He remarried, had another family, but he always struggled to pay for two families. Kaitlin’s mother became an alcoholic after the divorce amid the struggle of raising three kids alone.
A friend told the defense that Kaitlin had suffered “multiple instances of (actual or attempted) sexual violence,” according to the court documents, obtained by the Austin American-Statesman.
Kaitlin’s sister also “observed the ability of Kaitlin to disassociate because of the trauma of her childhood.”
The defense also claims that Tim Kalafut, the DNA expert brought in by the prosecution, wasn’t qualified to make the analysis he did during the trial. DNA expert Tiffany Roy emailed him on Nov. 17 to tell him she knew he hadn’t made a report on the case, and that his testimony was “inappropriate.”
She filed a complaint with the Texas Forensic Science Commission regarding the allegedly troublesome testimony.
The defense also states they didn’t even know Kalafut was going to testify until the last minute, the documents say.
“Because this was a circumstantial case and the State clearly felt it had a gap in its proof that warranted the use of this testimony the new information would probably bring about a new result in a different trial,” the motion reads.
There have been no updates on this since the motion was filed.
The Psychology: Possessiveness, jealousy, insecure attachment style, and no remorse
This is one of those cases where there isn’t a whole lot to dissect in terms of psychology, aside from possessiveness, attachment style, and a cold rage that led Kaitlin to holding a gun over Mo Wilson that night — and some of it might be traced back to her childhood.
Kaitlin clung to Colin until the bitter end. She didn’t move out of his house when they broke up, and she always somehow drew him back into her clutches. Her jealous streak showed its true colors anytime Colin dared to befriend other women. And Kaitlin’s most anguished jealousy narrowed in on Mo, knowing that Colin had, at one point, dated her.
While childhood trauma and parental divorce when a kid is young are never excuses for murder, I think Freud may have been onto something. Not in lessening Kaitlin’s sentence — she still deserves to be accountable for what she’s done. Kaitlin clearly knew right from wrong. She took measures to avoid being caught. Turning off her phone before the crime. Going home and acting like nothing happened. Fleeing the day after the police interview. Intentionally trying to throw the Marshals off her trail. These are not actions of someone who acted on a crime while in the depths of psychosis or delusion. She didn’t ask Colin to buy her a gun until after he’d already dated another woman during one of their splits.
Whether that was coincidence or premeditation, we may never know. Kaitlin chose not to tell her side of the story in court.
Her actions can be telling enough, though. The way she held onto Colin despite him trying to let her go speaks to a disorganized attachment style. According to the Attachment Project website, this manifests in childhood as what is called “Fearful-Avoidant,” or Disorganized, one of four attachment types that start early in life.
“Fearful avoidant attachment develops in children when caregivers often exhibit contrasting and unpredictable behavior,” the website reads. On a subconscious level, the child realizes that their parent cannot meet their needs due to contrasting behaviors.
It makes sense, with Kaitlin’s parents getting divorced when she was five, and then her mother developing an addiction, that Kaitlin would have experienced that inconsistent and unstable parenting style. It’s not clear what her relationship was like with her dad following the divorce, but at a young age, Kaitlin watched the devastating consequences of being cheated on, and the anguish her mother went through. And if both parents were caught up in themselves and their vices, it might be safe to assume Kaitlin never received any mental health help after the fact.
If she was sexually assaulted at a younger age, it just would have added to this chaotic and unstable cycle. In fact, if this was ignored or not acknowledged by her parents, then the feelings of resentment and abandonment only would have deepened the already agonizing childhood wounds.
The Attachment Project notes that parents or caregivers don’t always intend to be consistent in their care and nurturing of their children. They might lack confidence as parents, be scared and overwhelmed, or enduring adult problems like divorce which is hard enough for anyone to go through, let alone while raising kids. Parents are humans, too, even when their best efforts aren’t nearly enough for their kids to feel safe or nurtured.
Sometimes, parents don’t realize they’ve become a source of alarm for the child when they should. When a child can’t adapt to their parents’ behavior, then home doesn’t feel like a safe place. They learn they can’t trust their parents, and in turn, the pain and anger relating to this also becomes ignored or berated, causing further damage. It becomes an ongoing cycle that can cause immense emotional and psychological damage if not treated.
In return, the child will react to their parents with conflicting behaviors, struggle to maintain friendships and future relationships, struggle with self-soothing and emotional regulation, have issues being vulnerable with others, and lack personal boundaries.
When a child in this environment doesn’t get help to learn how to correct these behaviors as they get into adulthood, this attachment style becomes classified as Disorganized. These aren’t the typical troublesome behaviors most children simply grow out of. These are patterns that continue into adulthood as a result of emotional disconnection from one or both parents.
It is a combination of the Avoidant and the Anxious attachment styles. In the Anxious style, a child becomes overly clingy and needy, trying harder and harder to get the attention they crave. As they get older, they have a low self-esteem and constantly question their self-worth.
An Avoidant style causes the child to avoid receiving responses from their parents at all. This causes them, as they get older, to become self-sufficient and independent, perhaps even hyper-independent. The child learns not to discuss their concerns and emotions, and come to believe they can only rely on themselves. They come to expect rejection from people around them, especially their parents. As adults, they have a confident exterior and appear to have their life together. They don’t rely on others, and have a high level of independence.
A Disorganized attachment style, according to the Attachment Project, can also accompany other mental health issues, such as addiction, depression, or borderline personality disorder. This doesn’t mean that Kaitlin has BPD. To my knowledge, she hasn’t been diagnosed with any personality disorder, and I cannot find any reports indicating a psychological evaluation was ever done. So, I am working with what we know and my own knowledge and reading about psychology. What I can confidently say, is that there is a high likelihood she has at least the disorganized attachment style.
We see in her more of the Anxious style than Avoidant, but both are still present. Kaitlin’s paranoia that Colin was cheating on her, paired with her unwillingness to let him go, her fear of abandonment, and her previous statements that she never wanted to become like her mother, hint at a severe anxiety regarding her relationship with Colin. And yet, when she went on the run, Kaitlin relied on no one, except perhaps her sister. She simply fled and tried to start a new life in Costa Rica from the remnants of her life and crime in Austin.
She didn’t want to become a divorced woman who had been cheated on, an alcoholic, a woman who became detached from her children and to an extent, reality.
And yet, she did.
It likely comes down to the possibility that Kaitlin never received therapy or proper treatment for her childhood issues. No one soothed her fears of abandonment. Her parents didn’t remain consistent and present amid their own issues. She watched the spiral her mother went down after being cheated on, and in her determination to never become a reflection of that, Kaitlin became obsessed with knowing whether Colin was cheating on her.
And whether he was or not, she became convinced of it. She became obsessed with this woman Colin had a two-week relationship with when he and Kaitlin were on a break. Kaitlin had to know where he and Mo were. She became enraged and passie aggressive when she saw him in photos or videos at races together. She simply couldn’t stand Colin being near other women, especially the one he dated for a blink of time. Mo was younger, a better racer, a better cyclist, more successful in that community.
Maybe Kaitlin saw Mo as all the things she was not. Kaitlin tried to keep up in Colin’s world. She tried cycling with him, only for him to tell her she wasn’t at the proper skill level. Perhaps Colin was trying to ensure Kaitlin didn’t overdo it and possibly hurt herself or burn out, but Kaitlin only heard him saying she wasn’t enough. She wasn’t a good enough rider, cyclist, racer, she couldn’t keep up with him, and therefore, she wasn’t a good enough girlfriend.
And yet, she refused to let him go.
Was it possible Colin was actually cheating on her with Mo? It’s possible, but based on the witness testimonies of him and Mo’s family, I don’t think so. Aside from Colin changing Mo’s name in his phone, and lying to Kaitlin about his whereabouts, and what Kaitlin said to her friends, there is no solid evidence any affair ever happened. It’s all hearsay. There are no texts or messages exchanged revealing a long affair drawn out between the two. Mo wasn’t the only woman blocked in Colin’s phone.
Kaitlin went through and blocked numerous female contacts he had. Kaitlin had access to his electronic devices, messages, finances, everything. It made her feel in control of his whereabouts and of who came and went in his life. It was a way to control her jealousy and paranoia, while at the same time fueling that very indignation she eventually couldn’t control.
And on the night of May 11, 2022, when Colin lied to her one more time, she could only see red. She only saw the lies, the deceit, and she could only see on her phone screen via the Strava app that Mo was in Austin. In Kaitlin’s world, it all added up. In her world, Colin had to be cheating — and she was going to make him pay. Not by killing him, but by killing Mo and making him live with the consequences while she went on the run.
It’s a tragic tale. One of a woman’s jealousy so fierce and toxic, she murdered a beloved friend and sister and daughter, who probably wasn’t having an affair at all. Mo was so focused on her career, her schedule, her racing. What good would an affair with Colin have done her? By all accounts, she wasn’t the type to deliberately hurt someone.
I think the message from January 2022 where Mo questioned Colin about what was going on, whether he wanted to be just friends, came from a place of confusion. Perhaps Colin told her he was leaving Kaitlin. Perhaps he led Mo on in some way. Maybe he made Mo believe they had a future when he left Kaitlin, but he couldn’t shake his current girlfriend for the woman he truly wanted.
Sadly, Mo was a bright light blown out by a cold wind of rage, cruelty, and uncontrollable jealousy. A truly senseless murder that could have been perfectly avoided had Kaitlin simply let go of Colin and moved on with her life.
Colin wasn’t cheating.
Mo wasn’t the other woman.
There was no “love triangle.”
Kaitlin was no longer just becoming like her mother. She was becoming a monster of her own, one who took the fulfilled and breathtaking life of another woman. Shattering many lives, robbing a community of a star, crumbling Colin’s career, traumatizing the friend who found Mo and tried so heroically to save her, and gutting a family, all without a shred of remorse or accountability. There’s no coming back from that.
All because she thought her boyfriend was cheating.
Mo remained friends with a guy who claimed to be helping her with sponsorships, who said they were platonic and professional. Mo was friends with everyone. The cycling community was her world. Why wouldn’t she be?
A life with a brilliant future, cut much too short by one senseless act of violence. In some cases, a prison sentence feels futile. Not enough. Kaitlin gets to spent her remaining years in a prison, and Mo never again gets to bake banana bread, ride her bike, race, travel, or go visit Cash again.
Sometimes, justice is served, but it still leaves a hollow ache in the world.
If you want to support Mo’s legacy, her family started a foundation to honor her life and motivations. It can be found here.
Sources
Bicycling.com - an amazing and moving tribute to Mo Wilson.
https://www.bicycling.com/culture/a42154519/the-tragic-story-of-moriah-wilson/
Court TV
https://www.courttv.com/title/a-deep-dive-into-kaitlin-armstrongs-43-days-on-the-run/
https://www.courttv.com/title/kaitlin-armstrong-captured-in-costa-rica-new-video-released/
KXAN - digital evidence
https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/testimony-continues-at-kaitlin-armstrong-trial-monday/
On the Run
KXAN
https://www.kxan.com/news/crime/us-marshals-believe-suspect-connected-with-homicide-still-in-austin-area/
Canadian Cycling Magazine
https://cyclingmagazine.ca/sections/news/kaitlin-armstrong-may-be-using-this-alias-and-may-have-fled-to-canada/
NewsNation Now
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/cyclist-love-triangle-suspect-could-be-using-sisters-name/
The Daily Mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10853501/Cyclist-center-deadly-love-triangle-flees-Texas-scorned-girlfriend-remains-run.html
Arrest
U.S. Marshals statement
https://www.usmarshals.gov/news/chron/2022/063022.htm
KVUE - Strickland testifies
https://www.kvue.com/article/news/crime/kaitlin-armstrong-murder-trial-nov-3-testimony/269-86ad7791-c0ad-4ba1-8de4-177d12dac24b
News Nation Now - more phone evidence
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/southwest/kaitlin-armstrong-trial-day-seven/
CBS - 48 Hours
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kaitlin-armstrong-anna-moriah-mo-wilson-cyclist-murder-48-hours/
Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-murder-suspect-kaitlin-armstrong-access-450g-practiced-shooting-with-sister-warrants
Fox News - Kaitlin Armstrong’s early years
https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-murder-suspect-kaitlin-armstrong-through-years-love-triangle-fugitive-decades-old-photos
The Escape
CBS
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kaitlin-armstrong-accused-killing-cyclist-anna-moriah-wilson-tries-to-escape-custody-texas/
Trial
CBS
https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/key-witness-colin-strickland-describes-tumultuous-relationship-with-kaitlin-armstrong-in-trial
https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/colin-stricklands-testimony-wraps-up-on-day-four-of-kaitlin-armstrong-trial
https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/a-comprehensive-recap-of-kaitlin-armstrongs-trial
The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kaitlin-armstrong-colin-strickland-testimony-b2441398.html
Fox News
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/kaitlin-armstrong-trial-colin-strickland-testimony-day-4
The Daily Mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12719049/Kaitlin-Armstrong-trial-updates-Texts-messages-Colin-Strickland-Mo-Wilson-revealed-boyfriend-center-jealous-lover-murder-case-seen-shoving-camera.html
The Austin American-Statesman
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2023/11/01/kaitlin-armstrong-trial-murder-cyclist-anna-moriah-wilson-austin-texas/71385384007/
The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kaitlin-armstrong-court-murder-trial-b2444169.html
Victim Impact Statements
https://www.kvue.com/article/news/crime/austin-moriah-wilsons-family-delivers-final-message-to-armstrong/269-a79a52ec-93b3-468b-a806-6ef907d7dedd
Appeal
Bicycling.com
https://www.bicycling.com/news/a46009652/kaitlin-armstrong-files-appeal-district-attorney-drops-escape-charges/
The Austin American Statesman
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/crime/2023/12/29/kaitlin-armstrong-pregnant-arrest-moriah-wilson-murder-cyclist-texas/72059944007/
Psychology
The Attachment Project
https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/fearful-avoidant-attachment-style/
The Attachment Project
https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/fearful-avoidant-attachment-style/