25-year-old Anna Moriah “Mo” Wilson was an up & coming gravel cyclist who was found dead on the floor of her friend’s Austin, Texas bathroom on Wednesday, May 11, 2022 & the cycling world was rocked by the news of her sudden, violent death.
Mo had flown into Austin one week before her 26th birthday for the 150-mile Gravel Locos race where she was favored to win & was staying with her friend Caitlin Cash who had come home to her apartment & discovered Mo’s body at 10 pm & called 911. Caitlin told the dispatcher that she didn’t know what happened to her friend, but she needed EMS. She indicated that her friend wasn’t awake, she wasn’t breathing & there was blood all over her face & on the back of her head. The dispatcher instructed Caitlin to begin CPR. Austin police soon arrived & tragically, it was too late & Mo was deceased.
It initially appeared that Mo was a victim of a brutal beating, but the responding police officer soon noticed at least three shell casings laying on the ground near her body. It was quickly determined that Mo had been a victim of a fatal gunshot to the head & chest. One of the shots passed through her hand which likely happened as she raised her hand in defense & the shot ultimately struck her in the head. There was a second gunshot wound to the head & one shot to the chest that passed through her heart & exited her body, striking the floor beneath.
It appeared that the attack started near the front door of the second story apartment & went backwards toward the bathroom where Mo’s body was ultimately found, Mo likely trying to flee from her killer. Whoever shot her stood over her body & shot her at least once.
There were no signs of a burglary inside the home or a break-in & to investigators, the execution-style murder appeared to be very personal. As investigators began to speak with a sobbing Caitlin, she was asked if Mo had a boyfriend & Caitlin explained that she didn’t; Mo didn’t live in the area & was only in town from San Francisco.
Mo was born on May 18, 1996 & grew up in Kirby/East Burke, Vermont & spent much of her early years skiing with the dream of one day becoming an Olympic skier. She always had the strong belief that if something was meant to be, it would be & that everything happens for a reason. When Mo was a sophomore at Burke Mountain Academy, an elite ski school, she tore her ACL & at the time she was ranked third nationally for her age in Giant Slalom. When she tore it again three winters later soon after she fulfilled her childhood dream of joining the Dartmouth Alpine ski team, she began to use cycling as a form of rehab to build back her strength. Mo earned her engineering degree during her time at Dartmouth. Her family indicated that Mo always embraced adversity with grace & purpose & had an unbelievable work ethic.
Mo was a very athletic young woman who came from a family of athletes; her father Eric had been on the U.S. ski team while her aunt was a two-time Olympic Nordic ski racer. After months of rehab after her second ACL tear, she started to have a new dream after she found interest in cycling. In less than three years of gravel & mountain bike racing, Mo was the top off-road cyclist in America. She soon quit her full-time job & with the support of her sponsors, friends & family, she fully committed to her new dream. She once told a mentor, When you love something so much to the point that you’re fully committed, you make the choice & the risk sort of becomes irrelevant. Because even if you fail, it will have been worth it. The process & all that comes along with that is more important & valuable in the end.
Mo eventually moved to San Francisco to focus on cycling & began to climb to the top of the sport. She had been in the process of moving back to Vermont when she was murdered. She had spent 2.5 years in California training, racing & working & had achieved her goal of becoming a professional athlete. Mo had always envisioned using her platform as a cyclist to give back to the community which she felt had helped shape her into the person she had become. She had previously written in her journal that her mission was to inspire to ride bikes & be active, whatever that may look like.
Caitlin told investigators that Mo had been out that night with her friend Colin Strickland who was a fellow cyclist. Caitlin had gotten a notification from her electronic front door lock that Mo had gotten back to the apartment at 8:36 pm. Caitlin said she herself had left to go have dinner with some friends at 5:30 pm & when she came home, she tragically found her friend, bloodied, unresponsive & on the bathroom floor & immediately called 911. She said that all she knew was that Mo had plans to meet Colin to go swimming that evening at about 5 pm. 35-year-old Colin Stickland was a well-known & decorated athlete within the cycling world. He was considered a pioneer in the cycling community & was sponsored by top brands like Red Bull.
Investigators began to canvas both inside & outside the apartment & as they searched the vicinity of the outside of the apartment, they first discovered the cover to Mo’s bike. Caitlin said she expected that Mo’s bike would have been stored just inside the apartment, but it wasn’t there. As they continued to search outside, they discovered Mo’s bike in the bushes near Caitlin’s apartment in a heavily wooded area. They couldn’t understand why someone would have taken this expensive bike & tossed it to the weeds outside.
Investigators combed through surveillance footage from area homes & noticed a dark SUV with a bike rack on the back circling the neighborhood for about an hour before Mo returned, driving by several times. Unfortunately, the license plate was obscured by the bike rack. Only one minute after Mo had been dropped off at Caitlin’s apartment, investigators obtained footage from a neighboring security camera that showed a black Jeep driving by.
As the neighborhood was further canvassed, they found a neighbor with chilling Ring doorbell footage on the night of Mo’s murder that was recorded between 9:15-9:16 pm, about 40 minutes after Mo had returned to the apartment. The footage picked up the sounds of a person screaming followed by three gunshots; two shots quickly rang out & after four to five seconds of silence, the third shot could be heard.
Earlier that evening, investigators found footage of Mo & Colin at a local restaurant, Pool Burger. Before that, the two had gone swimming & then rode Colin’s motorcycle back to Caitlin’s apartment.
Knowing that Colin would have been one of the last people to see Mo alive, investigators went to his home the following morning & found Colin in his garage. They informed him that Mo had died & when he asked how that happened, he was told that they were conducting a homicide investigation. Colin appeared to be stunned into silence as he learned the news. He told the officer that they had gone swimming at the local Deep Eddy Pool in Austin. headed to Pool Burger after & then he dropped her off. CCTV footage showed Colin driving away on his motorcycle after he dropped Mo off.
As the officers spoke with Colin, they noted several cars in Colin’s driveway that included a 2012 black Jeep Cheroke in the driveway which matched the footage they had seen from the night before in the hours prior to & immediately following Mo’s murder. Lo & behold, the SUV also had a bike rack on the back. Colin indicated that the SUV belonged to his roommate who was also his on & off again girlfriend. When investigators ran the plates from the Jeep, they were registered to a woman named Kaitlin Armstrong who was 34-years-old. Colin & Kaitlin met on a dating app in 2019. She was a woman with a finance background who had also gotten certified as a yoga instructor in Bali & had a love of travel. After she met Colin, she also started getting into cycling, racing on an amateur level.
Colin & Kaitlin would ride bikes & do fun activities together & in 2020 when the pandemic hit, they spent more & more time together & eventually purchased a house & moved in together.
Colin agreed to go into the station for an interview & when he was asked about Kaitlin, he indicated that she had always been a very mild & gentle person. They dated off & on for about 3 years & even started a business together restoring trailers, Kaitlin helping with the finance side of things. In late 2021 the relationship got rocky & the two split up. During a breakup, Colin met Mo & the two immediately hit it off & had a casual, romantic relationship for about a month or two. According to Colin the relationship spanned “only a week or so.” The relationship fizzled out & turned into what Colin described as platonic & professional. Colin was quickly ruled out as a suspect as his motorcycle had been seen driving away after he dropped Mo off & he had been on the phone at the time of her murder.
When Colin was shown the surveillance video of the dark SUV & asked what he believed could have happened, he said, I know both these people & I just can’t imagine. It’s just so far beyond the realm of reality that I live in or I thought. He couldn’t imagine that Kaitlin was capable of something so horrible & violent & that he wouldn’t be living with someone he felt was capable of it. He said that he loved Kaitlin, but didn’t see her as a life partner & instead, felt that they were better business partners & friends.
When Colin was asked if he owned any firearms, he immediately admitted that he’d purchased two handguns in the past for personal security. When a search warrant was obtained & his home was searched, two 9mm handguns were found. Colin said he bought them not too far back & one had specifically been for his girlfriend, Kaitlin Armstrong & they had gone to the firing range to practice. He also indicated that Kaitlin was the jealous type & he was unable to keep female’s names in his phone & specified, Mo’s not in my phone as Mo. He listed Mo’s number under an alias & on the evening he was out with her, he’d told Kaitlin that he was out running errands & his phone died.
On the night of the murder, detectives soon found out that Kaitlin’s phone had not been connected to a cell network, meaning she had powered it off or placed it in airplane mode. As detectives knew, in this day & age, if your phone is off & not connected to a network, unless there’s a specific reason for it, you’re either the victim of a crime or you’re probably committing a crime.
That same day, Thursday, May 12, 2022, police arrested Kaitlin for an old outstanding warrant for failing to pay for a Botox treatment & used this opportunity to talk to her about Mo’s murder. During her interview it was clarified that since the warrant had been filed with a birthdate that didn’t match her own, it was invalid & she was told she could leave at any point. She voiced her frustration about having been arrested in the presence of her neighbors who watched as she was taken away in handcuffs & mentioned the idea of obtaining a lawyer.
Kaitlin was asked if she was aware of what had gone on in the past 24 hours & she said that Colin came inside & told her that a woman within the cycling community had passed away. She said she was not upset by the fact that Colin had been out with Mo the evening before. She remained calm & showed little emotion & when she was told that her SUV had been seen near the scene of Mo’s murder, she asked to leave & continued to respond in this manner to additional questions, including where she had been on the night of the murder. As the questions continued, her demeanor became more & more uncomfortable. Police had no choice but to allow her to leave at this point, not having enough to hold her. Detectives saw that she was not responding in a way that would be expected if she was innocent of the crime.
Police later learned that after leaving the station, Kaitlin went to a dealership to sell her Jeep. Two days later on Saturday, May 14, 2022 Kaitlin’s friend contacted police & said that Kaitlin had been furious about Colin’s relationship with Mo to the point that she wanted to kill her.
However, by the time the arrest warrant was filed, Kaitlin was gone. On May 14 Kaitlin Armstrong fled Austin & the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force which included officers from the Austin PD & the U.S. Deputy Marshals were tasked with finding her. Surveillance from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport caught sight of Kaitlin who first flew into LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York.
Detectives speculated that she may have gone to her sister’s house in upstate New York & their instincts proved correct. Christie Armstrong told investigators that her sister had stayed with her for a couple of days & she had dropped her off at Newark Liberty International Airport. Last she heard, Kaitlin was boarding a flight back to Austin, but when she called her later, Kaitlin told Christie that she just decided to drive back instead, which would be 1,733 miles & would take about 25 hours to do so. This made absolutely no sense to investigators & they soon began checking outbound flights at Newark Airport but no reservations had been made in her name.
Christie had told investigators that she couldn’t find her passport so they checked with their contact at Homeland Security & within minutes they got a call back with confirmation that Christie Armstrong had traveled from Newark, New Jersey, International Airport on a one-way flight to Costa Rica. Christie was adamant that she had not given her sister the passport & she has never been charged with anything in this case.
When Kaitlin landed in Costa Rica Deputy U.S. Marshals Emir Perez & Damien Fernandez collected as many photos of Kaitlin as they could & followed her to San Jose but there was no sign of her in the city. However, she had a one month head start on the U.S. Marshals. They knew that finding her was going to be a challenge despite the fact that they would have help from the Costa Rican authorities & the U.S. State Department officers. A reliable source indicated that Kaitlin had been staying in hostels in Costa Rica, but the area is saturated with hostels which would make it comparable to finding a needle in a haystack.
The team back in the U.S. managed to track down the phone number of an American businessman they believed had been in contact with Kaitlin at some point. They made the decision to cold call him & when he answered, they identified themselves & he treated the call as if a telemarketer was calling, responding, I don’t want any as he hung up the phone. After three or four attempts, the man finally began to talk to them & he told them that Kaitlin was now going by the name Beth. He also told them that she no longer looked as she did in the photos they shared with him. They were told that Kaitlin had changed her appearance & cut her long hair into a shorter style & dyed her red locks brown. He said that when he talked to this woman named Beth, he had no idea that he was speaking with Kaitlin Armstrong, but he did tell them where he believed they could find her. He said he’d met her at a yoga studio in Jaco which is a popular tourist destination known for its nightlife & beaches & would have been the perfect spot for Kaitlin to hide. Since it was their first real tip, they quickly made their way to the area & combed through hours of surveillance video, but found no sign of her.
One month after Kaitlin vanished, the U.S. Marshals were focused on another area within Costa Rica after a source suggested she may have gone to the small village of Santa Teresa on the Pacific coast. As they arrived they were told that their mission would be very difficult as many of the women in that area closely resembled Kaitlin since it was saturated with foreign tourists. A female investigator began attending yoga classes in hopes of finding her, knowing her love of yoga. They also began talking to members of the class who started to help keep an eye out for Kaitlin after they’d seen her in local spots in Santa Teresa.
Kaitlin was using multiple different names, hiding in plain sight. A man named Greg who was from the New York area & owned a restaurant & bar in Santa Teresa indicated that she came in & identified herself as Ari. She said that moved to the area to teach yoga down the street. She gave the appearance of someone who was looking to establish roots & settle into her new home. One day Greg bumped into “Ari” on the beach when he was there with his dog at sunset & noticed that she had a bandage on her face. When he asked her what happened, she told him that she’d hit herself in the face with a surfboard. Because it was a surfing town, no one would have batted an eye at that explanation.
The Marshals were starting to lose hope when they tried a last ditch effort & posted an ad on Facebook looking for a yoga instructor. After nearly a week passed & no one had inquired about the position, Perez & Fernandez were preparing to fly home & made their way back to San Jose a couple of miles away. However, someone suddenly replied to the inquiry & identified themself as a yoga instructor & agreed to meet. They began watching a hostel called “Don Jon’s” where the yoga instructor who answered the ad was believed to be staying.
Deputy U.S. Marshal Perez entered the hostel & spoke to her in Spanish to give her the impression that he was a tourist so as to not scare her off. As he entered, he saw two people sitting at a table off the left & one looked like Kaitlin but he couldn’t be 100% certain that it was her. He began speaking to the woman strictly in Spanish & she grabbed her phone to utilize Google translate & this was when he noticed the bandage on her nose & the fact that her lips looked swollen. It was her eyes that gave her away & matched what he had seen in the photos.
When Perez notified investigators that he had finally found her, local police moved in to make an arrest. Soon, investigators located a receipt at the hostel for plastic surgery for a nose job when she was captured on June 29, 2022. They realized that while they had been searching for her in Santa Teresa, she had gone back to San Jose for surgery. When the Deputy Marshals spoke with their female operative who had attended yoga classes in hopes of finding Kaitlin, she was shown an image of Kaitlin’s new appearance & indicated that her new look would have tricked her & she likely would not have recognized her.
Kaitlin was extradited back to Texas where she was charged with Mo’s murder & held in jail. Three weeks before the trial was set to start, she was escorted by authorities to a doctor’s appointment when she escaped custody & ran away, but was caught shortly after.
As police began looking into the forensic evidence & electronic data, they found that Kaitlin was fully able to go in & read Colin’s text messages, emails & see who he was calling as she had his passwords including access to his Instagram account. She had been following Mo on the Strava app which athletes utilize to track their miles & workouts so she knew exactly where Mo was. Investigators believe that when Mo texted Colin the address of her location at Cailin Cash’s house, Kaitlin was likely at home, on Colin’s laptop & had the ability to see the message. It’s likely she was also tracking Colin’s location on the night of the murder. They could also see that Kaitlin had been harassing Mo before her murder & had been sending her nasty text messages & calling her.
After murdering Mo & before fleeing the scene, Kaitlin had taken Mo’s bike & discarded it in the bushes yards away from where she’d parked her Jeep, likely in attempts to stage the scene as a robbery gone wrong. Another theory is because Mo’s bike was at the center of her sport, it may have been out of pure spite.
The trial for Anna Moriah Wilson’s murder began in November 2023 & the jury was able to hear that four surveillance videos captured images of Kaitlin’s Jeep circling Caitlin Cash’s apartment for an hour before the murder. Law enforcement pulled the GPS from Kaitlin’s Jeep that proved she had been driving in that very area before the murder.
The jurors heard that Kaitlin had left her DNA on both the seat & the handlebars of Mo’s bike in the process of discarding it into the bushes. The three shell casings recovered at the scene & Kaitlin’s gun show that they match those that were fired from the gun used to murder Mo.
The defense argued that there was no way to prove that it had been Kaitlin who was driving the Jeep that night & that information that Colin had provided was only to point the finger away from himself. Not a single witness saw Kaitlin Armstrong commit the actual murder.
More than forty witnesses took the stand & on November 16, 2023, after a two week trial & two hours of deliberation, the jury found Kaitlin Armstrong guilty of first-degree murder & the following day she was sentenced to 90 years in prison.
When Mo’s mother Karen was given the opportunity to speak directly to Kaitlin, she said, I hate what you did to my beautiful daughter. It was very selfish & cowardly. It was cowardly because you never chose to face her woman-to-woman in a civil conversation. She would’ve listened. She was an amazing listener. She would have cared about your feelings. If you allowed yourself to actually know her you never, ever would have wanted to hurt her. This never would have happened. When you shot Moriah in the heart, you shot me in the heart.
To honor Mo her family created the Moriah Wilson Foundation since she was the type of person who picked people up when they were down & was always there for someone who needed support, encouragement & inspiration. It is the foundation’s mission to promote healthy living & community building to support organizations dedicated to expanding access to recreation, sports & educational programs.
It was always important to Mo to inspire others to be active & promote positive body image awareness for women & female athletes in particular. Moriah felt the value of strength within a community & saw relationships as a driver of change. It is the goal of the Moriah Wilson Foundation to strengthen communities as she had hoped to do. This year, on May 11, 2024, the two-year anniversary of Mo’s murder, the 2nd Annual Ride for Mo was held which turned that sorrowful anniversary into a day of joy. The Wilson family raised $34,000 after filling all 300 spots available.
On a bike trail in Kingdom Trails in northern Vermont, a trail was built in Mo’s honor called Moriah’s Ascent since it was a location that was sacred to her.
References:
- Moriah Wilson Foundation
- Law & Crime: Women mysteriously murdered after date in Texas
- CBS News: How U.S. Marshals captured pro cyclist Moriah “Mo” Wilson’s killer
- CBS News: How was fugitive Kaitlin Armstrong caught? She answered U.S. Marshals’ ad for a yoga instructor
- CBS News: Plastic surgery helped murder suspect Kaitlin Armstrong stay on the run
- CBS News: Kaitlin Armstrong found guilty of killing pro cyclist Mo Wilson. Here’s what to know about the case
